Dreaming Spires

Time Displacement Activities (as Kim would say)

2011-06-05T12:47:00.001+03:00

Well, you may be thinking that I've fallen off the face of the earth. And I guess I kind of have. Or, to be more accurate, the earth (in the guise of a dissertation due in 19 days) may have opened up to swallow me whole. I do plan on eventually getting around to posting about some pre-term activities, like May Day and the Royal Wedding (which I attended =), but until the world stops turning dangerously quickly, here's a brief update on things I've been doing while I should have been locked away in the library, oblivious to a world beyond my windows:

Sitting next to Christine Baranski at the Perch (you know, that actress from Mamma Mia and The Big Bang Theory?), helping Kim celebrate completing her finals (I don't know if I can stress how big of a deal finals are here -- rather than marking the end of a semester's work, they, and they alone, are the assessing rod for one's entire Oxford degree -- think N.E.W.T.S. in Harry Potter), attending a celebratory birthday BBQ at the Kilns (C.S. Lewis's house) for Jonathan, my Jr. Dean (and Classics tutor) from my SCIO semester, going to a Low concert in London with a friend, and watching (rather than participating in) Summer VIIIs, the summer crew races (I haven't actually been rowing this term, which has probably been a good thing, but wasn't completely voluntary -- we ended up having too many women for the team, and while I would like to blame losing my seat on the fact that I was quite sick during trial week, and couldn't even complete the sprint length, much less make the time cut, the reality is that I'm not much of a speed demon anyway, so might have lost my place regardless -- a bummer, but not something I really have time to mope about).

Here are some pictures from my exciting life (that I should not be living):

Friends waiting for Kim to exit her last exam.

Kim emerging from the Exam Schools.

Flowers and champagne.

What says victory better than a purple balloon?

Flatmates. =)

The Kilns.

Eating ice-cream while watching the division one races.

Trinity Eights: a new boat for a new term

2011-05-01T22:12:00.002+03:00

Well, our new Regent's boat has had its maiden voyage (for all I know, it's had a few of them - but this afternoon was the first women's crew outing). I have christened it with my blood (stupid fingers always getting between the boat and my blade) and my sweat (yes, it was actually warm rowing today).

I've also caught my first crab. Not exciting news. Although, it's pretty crazy how quickly your body adapts to Matrix-like agility when threat of decapitation is imposed. I've never thought of myself as someone with particularly quick reflexes, but insert a massively long blade coming towards me with intimidating power (and speed) and before I know it I've managed to bend my body over backwards and emerge intact. The blade didn't even hit me.

All in all, a good outing. We've been off the water for two months (and some, rejoining from Michaelmas term, for more like five), yet hit the ground running (metaphorically speaking) - rowing all eights, and not doing too shabby.

Best of all, however, the new boat is ten kilos per boy (yes, it is a boys' boat) lighter than the last one. This means that hoisting it out of the boat house and onto the water may no longer make me want to cry.

Communion: Words for Good Friday

2011-04-23T00:46:00.002+03:00

I wrote this collection (would it be called a collection?) of reflections last summer in response to a prompt on communion. I was reading Williams at the time [Shadows of Ecstasy] and (as tends to happen when reading Williams) my writing seems to have been shrouded in obscurity and abstraction.

But these pieces still burn bright for me, even if they're rather inexplicable to others. I post them today in honor of Good Friday and a dying God.

Under the Mercy (as my dear friend would say).

______________________

candlelight flickers

through gentle darkness, warm

mystery embraced

awash in chanted scripture

echoing soft

harmonies fall

and rise back

into the death of god

and all else fades

but the common union

between man and god and god and man

bread and body, wine and blood

as symbols and sacraments blur

and all is one and in one

and every breath

is holiness

______________________________

That which is, becoming that which it is not. The mundane becoming sacred. Barriers breached. Between man and God. The physical and the eternal. Not union – the blurring of all into one, the destruction of difference, the swallowing up of self – but communion, the joining of that which is disparate, of symbol and reality, mystery and clarity, temporal and divine. “Neither is this Thou, yet this also is Thou.” Lewis states that, other than our neighbour, it is the holiest reality we will ever experience. Yet it is holy in exactly the same way that our neighbour is holy. The mystery of fellowship. Of joining. Of being one, and not one. It is humanity taken into God, for it is a taste of the Trinity, and the sacred mystery that undergirds existence – the One that is Three. It is real when the priest transmutes the elements into body and blood and the incarnation takes on flesh once more – expressing the lengths that Christ will travel for his beloved. It is real when the Protestant partakes of the symbol – grape juice and saltine – and the spirit is set free to worship God in truth, deep calling out to deep. And it is real when the Quaker rejects shadows and shells, attesting to the fullness of that which is, was, and will be – the sacred humanity of her neighbour and the God who dwells among them. And when we are ready, it is real in the strange bright mystery of co-inherence – the bound togetherness of all things.

______________________________

I read a book recently, in which there is a scene. A scene in which seven siblings, standing beneath a sacred tree, link hands to pit the fullness of their spirit—their united selves—against the evil which threatens them. There are sacred rituals that take place, sacred symbols that are exchanged, but the reality behind the sacrament’s shadows is the reality of seven hearts that beat as one. Seven spirits who would each, unhesitatingly, exchange themselves for the other. Seven children who feel the pain of the other as their own.

The great horror of this story, the great and unabidable hurt, is that this circle is broken. Evil wreaks its havoc, and the siblings lose themselves within their own isolated battles for courage and hope. The generations turn, but nothing is ever the same. The wholeness that was is no more.

And I think it was this loss that broke me. This loss that made me weep long into the night of the book’s ending. For I had tasted—I had touched—the world as it should be, and it had been torn asunder by forces of decay.

Is it sacrilege to say that this is what Christ came to restore? This unity of heart and mind. This sacred circle of brothers and sister, bound by name, and blood, and every feeling of the heart. This communion of the saints.

my life in the sun

2011-04-22T00:29:00.001+03:00

These last few days (and weeks) have been glorious in Oxford. Sunshine and warmth and blossoms that fill the air with perfume and color. I guess I've never really understood about the spring before - about why it's the season for twitterpation and first kisses. But with a sky so blue and colors so bright it's impossible to feel anything but beautiful.

That is, unless you're spending the day studying in the library. Which I was - for a while. So, in order to cope, I created a new routine: get up (with the assistance of three alarms), spend an hour saturating in the sun while eating a croissant and sipping coffee at Combibos (my new favorite coffee shop), make it to the library around the time they were opening their doors, write, saturate in the sun over a picnic lunch in the Botanic Garden, return to the library, write . . . you get the picture.

my morning routine

lunch in the Botanic Garden across from Magdalen College

Eventually, however, I gave up on the library all together. It wasn't helping my panic attacks, so now I just study in the parks . . . permanently. Usually writing by hand, and then returning to my room to type up the notes at night. But today I actually took my computer with me.

iced vanilla lattes help the writing process immensely

the University Parks

So no, it's probably not the most efficient study plan. And yes, the writing is going terribly slow. But at least I'm happy while I'm doing it. 'Cause like I said, it's impossible not to feel pretty - at home with earth and sky, content, delighted, capable of flight - in the springtime.

Oxford Writing

2011-04-14T13:34:00.002+03:00

This is a picture of me writing my first ever Oxford essay, back in 2008. It still pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about the writing experience.

On that note, off I go to get some more writing done.

Traveling by Train

2011-04-13T14:29:00.000+03:00

There is a strange exhilaration in train travel. Standing on an open-air platform, under a white-cloud speckled sky, waiting for a metal monster of motion and noise to come hurtling, rumbling, trudging down rusted tracks.

There is magic in moving across country, over rivers, beside fields of flowering yellow, with no roads or cars in sight. Just spacious glass-filled images of running horses, rugged keeps, and ancient trees.

In Scotland, rumbling down to the border city of Carlisle, we passed a train, all clashing purples and bright reds, barreling in solitude through empty fields, and I couldn't help but wave hello to the Hogwarts Express.

Holiday on the Island

2011-04-04T00:35:00.001+03:00

I am back at Oxford, after ten days of being filled with coach travel, Scottish treats, ocean views, and the laughter of friends.

I'm hoping that all of this fullness will spill over from my spirit into my writing, and that I'm ready to hunker down to four weeks of academic rigor as I prepare my option and theory essay for submission, and an outline of my dissertation for presentation to my adviser.

But that's tomorrow's worry.

Today I am full of migraine medication, sleep, espresso, an almond croissant, and bright memories.

Amberle, one of my good friends from undergrad (though how exactly we became friends is a bit of a mystery), flew in the Wednesday before last, the day after I sent off a rough draft of my theory essay to my supervisor.

I went to Heathrow to meet her, brought her back to Oxford, and then proceeded to drag her on a several mile walk through the city, and out to a country pub that (rumor has it) Lewis used to love.

We were attacked by a goose on the way.

Day two involved a visit to the Bodleian, and a very long walk around Magdalen's dear park, into the fellows' garden, pictures on their bridge, and more attacks by rabid killer geese, who flew at us, proceeded to follow our every move, glared daggers, and only allowed us to pass if we hid behind groups of elderly women.

I know he looks innocent, but don't be fooled.

Such excitement.

We also ducked in to Univ (University College), where Lewis did his undergrad, to pay our respects to the Shelley memorial.

And, of course, we paid homage at the Eagle and Child, the Inklings' pub.

Day three was an early morning into London, a stop by Leicester Square to purchase theatre tickets, and a London Walks tour of Westminster Abbey and the changing of the guard. A Pret lunch at St. Paul's (somewhat of a tradition at this point), a meander across the Millennium Bridge, and a tour of the Globe, as well as a rather exciting hunt for the location of Shakespeare's actual theatre.

They were rehearsing Twelfth Night while we were there, and I couldn't help thinking, That's my play, when I heard the monologues.

Dinner back in Leicester Sq., and then on to The Phantom of the Opera, my third time seeing it, but the first time in nearly eight years. We were in the last row of the highest balcony, but the singing was wonderfully powerful, and the actress who played Christine gave a uniquely shattered performance – this was not an enamored singer, horrified by a view of ugliness (as Christine often seems to be played – the horror and resistance coming after the phantom's face is seen, not before), but a manipulated and vulnerable child, caught, from the beginning, in waking nightmares she can't escape. The perfection usually required of Christine's voice gives her character a false sense of control, I think, but this Christine allowed her anguish to affect, and even distort, her music, so that, while she rose to tremendous heights (sometimes despite herself: sing my angel of music!), she also faltered and broke.

And hearing the music sung so well, I was reawakened to the reality that the movie, while a fun celebration of color and pageant, simply falls horribly short on vocals.

Back late, late, late to Oxford, and then packing, getting one hour of sleep, and returning to London to catch the coach to Scotland.

Visiting Kohleun in her beautiful house, with gardens and windows and flatmates with whom to drink coffee, and exploring St. Andrew's with tea crawls and trips to the sea.

Then, on Tuesday, a day in Edinburgh before heading to Cumbria for walks in the Lake District and time with the Doubs – dear friends from days in Egypt.

And I left my heart in a used bookstore where 80-year-old copies of Virginia Woolf's books dwell – but despite painfully cheap prices, there is no room in my suitcases to indulge my adoration. But I did purchase a 100-year-old calf-skin bound copy of Milton's collected works, using my dissertation as an excuse.

Then back on a Megabus coach (crowded and stinking of urine) to trek down the country to London, and then home to Oxford.

And now I am alone again, with my books and my laptop, preparing to throw myself into research and writing, and wondering if the day will ever come when I have a home to fill with beautifully aged books, and long hours to write for joy and not for degrees, and days to see friends who do not live half a world away. How I envy Wordsworth his sister and his Coleridge and his writing cottage in the Lake District, yet we must each live our own journeys, and mine, I am afraid, will always be torn between countries and continents and missing faces until the day when all things are made new, and wholeness swallows up the jagged separations.

Until that day I must, with the king and queen of Perelandra, bid my farewells until we pass out of the dimensions of time, and wish the splendour, the love, and the strength upon us all.

shifting seasons under an ever-moving sky

2011-03-22T21:47:00.009+02:00

"What is your favorite season?" That seems to be a question people ask a surprising amount. At least, I get asked it a surprising amount, and I've never really had an answer. I mean, how does one differentiate between hot, hotter, and hottest? Granted, I'm not being completely fair, but most of my life has measured seasonal change in temperature and little else. Even in Oregon the seasons weren't particularly radical. At least, not where I was walking through campus with my head stuck in a mountain of books. Drizzly, rainy, sporadic sunshine. Nothing too exciting.

But here, here I love to watch the seasons change.

Granted, most of winter wasn't particularly spectacular, though there is nothing much lovelier than snow falling in glowing lamplight.

But these days the world is awash with sprinkling petals -- consumed with flowering trees.

And in our college courtyard, I watch a tree, day by day, unfurl tiny, jewel-green leaves, sure I've never seen life bloom so gradually.

But the autumn is definitely how I'll remember Oxford (due, in part, to the reality that it used to be the only way I remebered Oxford and will always be the way I saw it first). The walls of ancient colleges ablaze with flaming vines.

As Virginia Woolf put it, "If the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning."

And over it all, a sky that changes day by day, hour by hour. That glows in swimming blues, and yearns in charcoal grays.

To quote Woolf again (from Jacob's Room with some small alterations [and I'll reward anyone who spots them]):

They say the sky is the same everywhere. But above Oxford -- anyhow above the roof of Christ Church -- there is a difference. Is it fanciful to suppose the sky, washed into the crevices of Christ Church, lighter, thinner, more sparkling that the sky elsewhere? Does Oxford burn not only into the night, but into the day?

What did I do to deserve to live somewhere so spectacularly, hauntingly beautiful?

Oxford in Bloom

2011-03-22T21:19:00.002+02:00

Spring, it would seem, is finally here. Yesterday and today: actually WARM outside.

Just ask Corinne.

Cressida: "the nonsocial, nonpolitical, nonhuman half of the living structure" [Cixous]

2011-03-18T11:13:00.003+02:00

Here's a reflection I wrote on the 2nd best play of the term, Troilus and Cressida. Somehow I failed to post it (I really need to stop doing that).
_________________________________

I went to watch Troilus and Cressida last night (Feb. 8th), with a group of friends from college. It was a student production, playing at the same theatre where I watched The Last Five Years in the fall of 2008.

And, once again, I left the theatre shaken.

I had never watched, nor read, Troilus before, and so had no idea what to expect. I knew it was, on some level, about two lovers in the midst of the Trojan war, but I didn’t know that it was also, much more forcefully, about the dissonance between the heroic world of warrior men, and the women’s realm they took for granted and violated without notice.

Never having read the text, I’m unsure how much of the theme’s prominence was due to the original and how much to directorial choices, but either way it was a powerful (and sickening) depiction.

From the beginning, women, clad in silk nightshifts (for the Greeks) and adapted Grecian togas (for the Trojans) set up the space – space that was then vacated of female presence (or, in the few cases that women remain on stage, active female presence). Initially, I found the costume choices jarring, not least because of the dissonance between the semi-historical Trojan dresses, and the modern military attire of the men. But as the play wore on, I came to appreciate that dissonance as a symbol of the utter separation of the two worlds. As Kim (my flatmate) pointed out during intermission, she disliked the costumes because they made the women vulnerable, and these “were not vulnerable women.” But I think that was the point. They make the women vulnerable despite themselves—barefoot in a world of boot-clad men—as the play goes on to graphically demonstrate that they are.

But where I first truly grew uncomfortable (and began to sense the direction the play must be going) was in the “joyous” scene where Troilus and Cressida finally come together and swear their vows, and where Pandarus declares that if Troilus is true, let all faithful men be named Troilus, but if Cressida is false, let all faithless women be called Cressid. She cannot be honored for a faithfulness that is expected of her, only dishonored by betrayal.

And, of course, the injustice of this curse is staggering. For women are not granted choices in a time of war. They are treated as property, not beings with agency, yet they are still judged by adherence to ideals they have no choice in upholding (or violating).

And so it is that Helen is talked about in all male-councils, bargained with as a possession that will increase or decrease male honor, and kept or given away on this basis alone.

So it is that Cressida is traded to the Greeks, while Helen kept, because giving Helen back (despite general consensus that she is a whore without worth) would lessen Trojan honor, proving that they could not keep what they had stolen. So Cressida is traded in order to return a captured Trojan (male) and uphold Trojan (male) promises.

And Pandarus weeps, not for his niece given to the enemy, but for the boy who loves her, for this, he is sure, will destroy him. It would be better, Pandarus declares, that Cressida had never been born than that this separation pain Troilus.

And while Hector is welcomed into the Grecian camp as a brother in arms, worthy of honor despite the hundreds of deaths he has caused, Cressida, innocent of shedding a single Grecian’s blood, is met with sexual and physical assault.

And, of course, Troilus sees her with Diomedes and judges her by standards of strength and choice she does not posses.

Meanwhile, Andromache's pleas that Hector remain at home are received with the declaration that she is bringing him dishonor, for he has given his word that he will fight that day. Never mind that Hector’s death, and Troy’s overthrow, will mean the enslavement of his prophetic wife and sister. No, it is masculine honor at stake, not women’s freedom.

And Achilles, who has promised his Trojan love that he will not fight, breaks his word to the woman in order to honor his love for his (male) companion, Patroclus.

And the play ends with the Trojans singing, in the face of Hector’s death and Troy’s doom, of the honor for which they will be remembered. And the women, weeping, sing with them – despite the knowledge that they have no part in the heroic deeds that will be passed down in memory, and will, instead, outlive their men to die in captivity and enslavement far away from home.

And it makes me rage, because they simply don’t get it. The men, with their honor and their male bonds and their realms of action and decision, do not understand the cost. They break no promises, and are therefore innocent. And, in their own way, so breathtakingly, fragily, beautiful.

The play itself was well acted, especially by Pandarus, Hector, and Thersites -- the wretched fool -- played by an actress with incredible physical control. Cressida fidgeted too much, and though I understand the intention behind filling her with nervous energy, the movement was generated by the actress, not the character, and therefore distracted from the imagined reality, rather than adding to it. Overall, Cressida, as a character, was not portrayed as overly sympathetic (this is not a girl I'd particularly want to know), but then I kind of think that's the point -- she doesn't deserve sympathy because we like her, she deserves it because she's just an ordinary human girl who's been wronged. And thanks to some pretty impressive directing, the fight scenes, rather than being half-hearted and corny (as I feared they would be) were stylistic and interesting -- feeding the actors' energy and our own.

"Medea I will become"

2011-03-16T18:36:00.007+02:00

They huddled together, a mass of breathing, heaving, humanity: women, sibyls, witches, spirits, chorus, fates, woman. Medea.

Medea unveiled. De-masked. Fractured, powerful, dangerous, vulnerable, mourning, mad, screaming, agonized, laughing, victorious, deadly. Each of the actresses, both Medea and not Medea. Medea as she becomes, Medea as she was, Medea as she is not.

By far the best play of term, it held us in its grasp for only fifty minutes. A bare stage, a flurry of movement, a wailing, cacophony of voices. It embodied the chaos of a conflicted soul, a woman torn between her choices. This Medea was not guilty or innocent, evil or good, justifiable or monstrous, woman or demon, but all at once. This Medea was the raging presence of all her sins and all her virtues -- her past guilt and long forgotten innocence.

It was a Kristevean revelry in the rage, rhythm, and passion of the chora, yet created from its chaos meaning that crystallized like diamond, digging deep.

And at its climax, splattered with the blood of a torn child, Medea stood, gloating in her furious, avenging glory, and crouched, shattered with grief, agonizingly gentle as she gathered the torn pieces of her once-breathing child.

Here's a link to a brief clip from the play.

A Rowing Life

2011-03-15T20:00:00.002+02:00

So, I never truly posted about rowing, so here's a taster from last fall, written by one of my teammates, the fabulous Corinne Smith: back it down, stern pair. She's an English MSt student, the only other postgrad on the team, and I think she excellently captures the gist of the rowing experience. If I had written it though, the title would be, "row it on, bow pair."

Our team has changed a bit since last term, as we lost several girls when the weather turned dreary (not that it wasn't dreary already), and our two captains now row with us (since, having rowed Christ Church, we're no longer a novice crew). But the experience remains basically unchanged, the only real difference being that we now punctuate our midnight study sessions with erg training -- need to work on that stamina.

And for the record, we did lose. And lose. And lose. Good thing that I'm not in it for the racing. Just the early morning training sessions. =)

Oxford ghosts

2011-03-15T16:07:00.004+02:00

Let me just preface this by saying that I don't write poetry. But apparently walking home from the Bodleian in the dark does weird things to my psyche. I jotted this down sometime in November.
_________________________

Are there hauntings in these buildings?—

ancient effigies of stone—

where empty rooms

forgotten stairways

nooks and crannies unexplored

or turned

with whitewashed paint

to modern studies

where boys and girls

read ancient worlds

in artificial lamplight,

the warmth of dying coffee

in ceramic mugs

mismatched,

and fight to enter in

to empire

as shadows are dispersed

by rising sunlight on the river, tamed

until tomorrow

Oxford, London, Stratford: Theatre in 2008

2011-03-11T17:35:00.007+02:00

So, I do realize that this post is more than two years too late. But better late than never, right? So here is a look at the shows I saw the last time I was in Oxford, partially recovered from an unpublished post, and partially written looking back from the present. I have to say, I may have only been here for a semester, but I saw some fantastic theatre.

I went to England about a week early, to have some time to hang out with Kohleun before school started. We spent some time in Scotland (in a B&B on the coast -- so beautiful), a couple of days in Carlisle with one of my best friends and her family, and then our last day in London. We walked around in Leicester Sq., ate lunch in front of St. Paul's (and waited for my migraine to go away), took a double-decker bus past parliament and Big Ben, visited the Tate Modern, took pictures in front of Shakespeare's Globe, and ate in a pub. Then we did what everyone must do when they visit London: we went to a show!

Specifically, we went to see Chicago. It seemed like an appropriate choice for a girls' night out, and all our other picks were a bit out of our price range. Although the storyline isn't my favorite, it had great dancing (better and more often than the film -- with the exception of Billy's role [after all, how can you beat Richard Gere tap dancing?]), and the woman who played Zelma was great. We also enjoyed Roxie's: "Think big Roxie! I'll have lots of boys!" (maybe it was one of those moments that you had to be there for . . . ).

Then, when Mommy came to visit, we went to see Wicked. I'd seen it once before, with a good friend in the States, but I really wanted to share it with her. It's a great show. Everything a musical should be. =)

Then, my amazingly talented older brother secured us seats to the sold-out production of Ivanov, with Kenneth Branagh! It was amazing. Definitely one of my life dreams fulfilled. I've wanted to see Branagh live since I first saw Much Ado About Nothing when I was nine.

That weekend, Jordan, Marisa, and I went to see Blood Brothers. Jordan and I had seen it before, in London during his senior year of high school, but it's one of our favorite shows, so we were really excited about seeing it again, and sharing it with Marisa. It's an incredible combination of music, story, and acting, and is known for reaping standing ovations -- every single night.

That next weekend my dad was in town, and we took a chance on a show neither of us had ever seen (or really heard about): The Lady in Black. Turned out to be one of the most incredible pieces of acting (and remarkable shows) I've ever seen. The crazy thing about the play is that it's meant to be scary . . . and it is. I'm pretty sure I even remember people screaming. Yet there are only two actors and a few boxes on stage. Everything else (other than a few well-placed light and sound ques) is pretty much in your head. An incredible exploration of the limits (or non-limits) of the medium. Yes, you're constantly pulled back to the realization that you're sitting in a theatre seat, watching an empty stage with a room full of other people, but the remarkable thing is that there are moments in which you forget.

I saw The Last Five Years (which I've written about elsewhere) in Oxford with some friends, and Zorro by myself in London to celebrate my first completed tutorial.

And then there was Stratford.

During the first few weeks of our program, a visiting lecturer talked to us about Shakespeare. An expert in her field, who had talked and laughed with the likes of Sir Ian McKellen, she informed us that Shakespearean history was being made at that very moment: the Hamlet of our generation was being performed in Stratford-upon-Avon. She said it was the performance future students of Shakespeare (actors and academics alike) would study, and that whether we had to beg, borrow, or steal, we had to get ourselves there.

Easier said than done.

Needless to say, it had been sold out for months, and without my brother's awesome eBay skills we were stranded . . . almost. Luckily for us, the RSC believes in student tickets, and they reserve ten, priced at five pounds each, that can only be bought on the day of the show. So we did what any committed fans would do, we jumped on a bus down to Stratford, pretended to be hobos in the RSC courtyard, spent the night shivering in the rain, and secured our tickets bright and early the next morning.

It was incredible. The show, and the experience. There was a matinee of A Midsummer Night's Dream on the same day, so we went to that too (also for five pounds). Never my favorite Shakespeare, it was nonetheless excellently executed, and since the RSC is an ensemble, it was fascinating to see the actors perform such different roles.

Hamlet itself was nothing to look at. No spectacle (other than a cracking mirror), on a nearly empty stage. Which simply highlighted the fact that the acting was phenomenal. I have never been to a show (especially a Shakespeare) where there was so little confusion over language. Every line was pristinely clear, and not because I'm overly familiar with Hamlet (I'm not), but because the actors connected every line so irrevocably to intention and thought.

And who were these actors? Only the incredible Patrick Stuart and incomparable David Tennant (who, I have to admit, I had never heard of before the play, but I quickly learned to laud his wonders, and will be seeing him in Much Ado About Nothing this summer with the fantastic Sara Kelm).

All-in-all, nine shows in fourteen weeks -- not bad for a semester in which I also wrote over 34,000 words and read who knows how many pages of Greek tragedies, modernist novels, and secondary criticism. It makes my current achievements look rather half-hearted.

Sweeney Todd [or the mystery of theatre]

2011-03-11T14:23:00.003+02:00

Theatre is a strange, mystical, and unquantitative experience.

No matter how confidant I feel in my knowledge of the difference between good theatre and bad, there is always an elusive element -- something that avoids description and categorization. That aloof presence that my high school drama class so hautighly rejected in their disdain for viewpoints -- a tangible energy that radiates from the actors to the audience and back, forming undeniable connections.

Case in point: I went to see Sweeney Todd at Pembroke College on Wednesday night, and by the end of the first fifteen minutes I was so disheartened that I contemplated walking out. And I never walk out -- not from theatre, and not from something I've paid for.

What you have to understand about Oxford theatre is that -- while I'm constantly surprised by its level of excellence -- it is a product of hasty craftsmanship. This is not George Fox, where I spent my undergrad, and where theatre is taken seriously as a holistic experience -- where props, costumes, and stage (not to mention sound and lights) are all utilized as aspects of storytelling. As intrinsically connected to the development of meaning and theme.

Oxford theatre, thrown together in a matter of weeks, with no supervising faculty, no costume shop, no prop teams, and no stage to be carefully converted, doesn't have the time or the means to take the visual aspect of theatre seriously. And so it relies, heavily, on the acting. On the ability of the performers to transcend the tacky props and problematic costumes and transport the audience into a world of the imagination. And, perhaps surprisingly, they succeed much more than they fail (I wonder sometimes if it this heavy reliance on the quality of acting that has led Oxford and Cambridge to produce some of Britain's greatest performers).

The problem with Sweeney Todd, performed in the college's dining hall, on a cluttered makeshift stage, was that neither the acting, nor the singing, were compelling (though I have to admit that the lighting was surprisingly excellent). And without that entry into the world of the musical, we were just a bunch of random people sitting on uncomfortable chairs in a glorified dining room listening to bad music. And I decided that I had neither the time, nor the energy, to make that worthwhile.

But no matter how much you aren't enjoying a show, you can't just get up and walk out in the midst of performance. I have far too much respect for the hard work of actors and director to even contemplate it. So I waited for intermission to make my escape palatable.

And that was when that strange, mystical aspect of theatre kicked in.

Did the acting improve? Probably. The actors warmed up to each other and to us, and allowed themselves to actually inhabit the characters (and relationships) they were creating. Did the singing improve? Possibly. Though certainly not on the part of Anthony and Johanna (the young sailor [i.e. stalker] and his love). But whatever it was that happened between those first fifteen minutes, the intermission (when I didn't walk out), and the curtain call -- which left me energized, mesmerized, and (somewhat) shaken -- was the core of what makes theatre so mysteriously and indefinably wonderful. And so very difficult to describe.

Spring ruminations from a Bodleian window

2011-03-11T10:58:00.006+02:00

There really are not words to describe the glory of an Oxford sky
when the sun shines, and the blue is soft as summer dreams,
and the towers of All Souls gleam with half-articulated longing,
and the whole world trembles with possibility
and youthful, age-worn, promise.

surprises

2011-03-09T13:22:00.002+02:00

One doesn't expect one's giants to be human.

Toril Moi --
bulwark of feminist academia -- is
in person
a school-girl
with crimpy blond hair
and a red handbag.

Bodleian hauntings

2011-03-07T13:32:00.002+02:00

There is a woman who haunts the Bodleian. I see her nearly every day that I make my way to the lower reading rooms to sift through dust-covered tomes on mythology and theory (which, if I'm honest, hasn't been for a while, since I currently spend my time in the upper reading rooms exploring Old Norse sagas and related criticism). But when I say haunts, I do mean haunts -- I could easily believe that it is only I who sees her. She walks -- or maybe glides -- from one side of the building to the other, her eyes invariably on the book she is reading while she roams (and who but a ghost could walk and read, never lift her eyes from the page, yet never stumble, bump, or trip?), her hair in the same loose bun, day after day, that could easily have made its way from the pages of the 1800s, and her waist-cinched, ankle-length black dress billowing around her. If she is a ghost -- a female scholar debarred from the library during her time on earth -- I suppose there are worse ways to spend eternity than perusing the eleven million volumes in the Bodleian's collection.

Spring Awakening

2011-02-27T00:19:00.005+02:00

One of the amazing things about Oxford is the theatre. With 38 colleges, six private halls, and two professional theatres in the city, there is never a week (or day) without more theatre happening than I (or anyone else) can possibly fit into their schedules. One of my biggest regrets about last term was that I let this amazing opportunity pass me by, and only went to a grand total of one play. And that one wasn't even that great. I've been trying to rectify this failure by making a conscientious effort to see theatre this term, aiming for one show a week. While I haven't completely succeeded, I have quadrupled my show-numbers from last term, and it's only the end of sixth week.

Today I went to Spring Awakening, and while not my favorite of the shows I've seen this term, it was definitely interesting. A musical set in 19th-century Germany, it was advertised as a kind of period Rent -- a coming-of-age story about sex and death and loss of innocence. As the show was played, however, it was considerably more innocent than Rent, and I think that innocence would have clung on even with traditional staging (which involves considerable nudity).

The thing about Rent is that it's a play about despair and hope -- the search for meaning among individuals who have lost faith in society, and long for something, anything, that can give significance back to life.

Spring Awakening, on the other hand, is a story about "purple summers" -- the innocence of childhood, and the (unthinking, unintentional?) cruelty/stupidity of those (in this case adults/parents) who have the power to crush their dreams. Yes there is sex, and maybe even rebellion, but it is still, in many ways, very innocent -- the uncertain attempts of young adults to find their way forward into a world that no one has been willing to explain. When the main girl gets pregnant, she honestly doesn't know what she's done. Despite her persistent questioning at the beginning of the play, her mother refuses to tell her the "facts of life," leaving Wendla in a place, by the end, where all she can do is demand, "Why didn't you tell me the whole truth?"

But an unplanned, unexpected pregnancy is not the tragedy of the play. It's the way that optimistic hope is crushed, consistently, irrevocably, by "the real world" of the adult community -- a community that can't bend it's rules, whether those involve only allowing 60 students to advance (no matter how hard the 61st has worked to pass) or the moral imperative that declares a young girl evil and sinful if she is carrying life outside of marriage, regardless of the circumstances. It is these rules that refuse to allow Wendla and Melchior to have a future, even though they want one, and that leaves the children wounded and hurting by the play's end -- not looking forward to the uncontained potential of the future, as they should be, but aching from the past and dreading a world that seems to offer nothing but bitterness and closed doors.

However, despite the interesting themes and incredible acting on the part of Melchior (a good friend of one of my lovely college-mates, who also wrote a critique of the show, which can be looked at over here), the play itself was flawed. Not quite what a musical should be. To be honest, it reminded me too much of Glee, where songs are sung because they're pretty (or perhaps reference a relevant theme) rather than as an effortless continuation of the narrative or outflowing of a character's emotional state (or soul). The music was nice-sounding, but out-of-place for a small town in the 1800s (as was the set and costume design), and therefore jarring. But even if this discontinuity is ignored, the music was still hard to follow, and definitely didn't tell a story -- not in the same way that the dialogue did.

What annoyed me most, though, was the way in which thematic elements were thrown in even though they had no grounding in the actual narrative. The parts of the play that worked were the stories: the times when we saw concrete pain and abuse in the lives of characters we knew and cared about. When that theme of abuse (which was clearly what the writer was going for, and hitting us over the heads with) was simply thrown in for the heck of it, without relevance to actual characters (and sometimes actually contradicting information we knew about them) it just became too much. You don't add a song about sexual abuse for the heck of it. It has to matter. And it didn't. Not to the story, and not to our understanding of the characters (who were actually, for all I could tell, dealing with the issue of physical abuse, not molestation).

But perhaps part of it was the way the play was performed. The very innocence of it. Because there are definitely hints of a darker interpretation. Not simply kids being abused by "the system," but the ambiguity of a violence that is contained both within the imposed innocence and within the imposed awakening. In response to learning that her friend is beaten, Wendla demands that Melchior hit her, so she can know what it feels like. And he does; and he goes too far. Later, when they are in the hay-loft, it is far from clear whether Wendla actually wants to have sex. Although her consistent refusals were downplayed in this performance, leaving the audience to feel that she is unsure, but ultimately convinced, and every-bit the willing partner, there is definitely room for a different interpretation.

Is it possible that the ashes we are left with at the play's end (or the dead leaves, if you will) are as much Melchior's fault as they are the fault of the authority figures who tried to impose an oppressive control? If so, what has Melchior learned, how has he changed, and what does his promise to remember his friends' dreams really mean? In this production he doesn't have to change -- not really. His eyes are opened to horror, and he is certainly less sure and less optimistic, but he can still be single-minded in his righteousness. He was right, and the world was wrong. But what if he is as guilty as the lies he hates? What then?

Our Melchior didn't face any such questions, and as such, the play itself felt a bit abusive -- like it had violently imposed a viewpoint of the world that I'm not sure I'm wholly willing to accept.

On a side-note: what's up with creating lighting so dark you can barely see characters' faces for all the shadows? And a side-side-note: the original Broadway cast included Rachel and Jesse from Glee.

Last Things: C.S. Lewis on Hell and Heaven (and the giants I wish I knew)

2011-02-08T23:55:00.000+02:00

There are men I wish I could meet. Men who come across, in the pages of the books wherein I've glimpsed them, as wise, and compassionate, and humble -- with twinkles lodged deep in their eyes. Sometimes I wonder if I was just born too late, here "at the end of all things" -- the world has grown old with television and cell phones and internet, and the Chestertons, Lewises, and MacDonalds have moved on to better realms.*

But tonight I met Bishop Kallistos Ware, and listening to the tenure of his voice in the gilded upper room used by the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, I was reminded that maybe not all of the giants have passed.

He spoke with handwritten notes he barely used, each phrase richly textured with scores of books read and thoughts ruminated. He made us laugh. He made us think. He gave us hope.

He talked of listening to Lewis debate at the Socratic Society during his [Kallistos's] years as an undergraduate. Described him as a great thinker, and a great arguer, fast on his toes with his thoughts.

The topic was heaven and hell -- much of it grappling with ideas I wrote my "C.S. Lewis and the Bible" paper on in college. That we are saved by God's grace, grace that gives us the ability to choose, even if our choice is a hell locked from the inside -- a hell filled still with the love of God, and obstinate rejection of that love.

We talked about animals, and how, while not immortal in themselves, our interaction with them -- knowing them, loving them -- may make them, in Lewis's mind anyway, eternal beings. As Kallistos said, "We cannot know, but we can hope."

It was a phrase he repeated a lot. A phrase he used when he said that believing that all must be saved is contrary to the freedom of a loving God, but still we can hope, while we cannot know, that all will be saved.

And, in phrases that resonated with Lewis and Tolkien's visions of fairy-stories and fantasy, when asked about learning from other religions, he answered that journeys are about coming home with new eyes. In the same way, religious dialog is valuable (and beautiful) in that it helps us see new truth within our own tradition -- and exposes us to new ways of approaching the Divine through prayer.

And apparently heaven (Lewis would be happy to know) will be like the Oxford University Walking Club -- or Felix the Cat who kept walking on ("further up, and further in").

And now it is midnight, and crew training, last minute reading, and Old Norse tutorials await me in the morning. So to bed I must go.

*I will admit that this passion for dead white men is problematic on many levels. But God gives grace even to them, and their words and worlds resonate deep within my soul, calling me home to lost visions.

Early mornings with Percy Shelley

2011-01-17T20:45:00.009+02:00

I am in the process of creating a new lifestyle for myself. One in which I actually wake up in the morning. (Shocking, I know). Eat breakfast (with many, many cups of coffee), and then spend all of my daylight hours in the library.

I've done well so far. With the exception of Saturday and Sunday (where my routine was broken with a migraine and church), I've done a complete week without falling off the wagon. Written about half of a (rough) rough draft of my theory essay, and read about 800 pages of Icelandic myth and history.

The real test will be how well I survive the revival of crew training tomorrow.

But anyway. That was actually just a prelude to say that I was in the Bodleian today, reading The Poetic Edda (translated by the professor I'll be working with this term), when one of the women from my Thursday night Bible study asked if I wanted to take a lunch break with her. So we went to a local deli and bought baguette sandwiches (Brie and onion marmalade) and then ate them in her college's MCR (which, for those of you uninitiated, is the "Middle Common Room" -- i.e. the place where grad students hang out).

She's a member of University College, and gave me a bit of a tour, which included this lovely memorial to (arguably) the college's most famous member: Percy Bysshe Shelley.

In case you didn't know, besides being married to the author of Frankenstein, Shelley is one of the most famous of the Romantic poets, usually remembered beside such names as Byron and Keats.

What I found exceedingly amusing, however, is that this memorial (given to the college because it was too large to transport, as originally intended, to his grave in Rome) commemorates a student who lasted a grand total of one term at Oxford. That's right. On the 25th of March it will be exactly 200 years since Shelley was expelled.

Which explains, I suppose, why, when originally offered the memorial, the Fellows of the college decided to reject it. But granted foresight (and extra money from his daughter-in-law) they finally accepted what has become the college's leading tourist attraction.

It, appropriately enough, is described as the statue that "continues to fascinate and disturb." I think that Shelley, the author of "infidel poetry" (so described by the journalist who gloated, upon hearing of his death, that "now he knows whether there is God or no") and the "inspiration to rebellious students everywhere" (so claimed by one of Oxford's current student newspapers), would appreciate the description.

Writing is Woman's (or why theory makes my head hurt)

2011-01-12T09:25:00.002+02:00

So, this is my attempt to think through, in a space that is nonthreatening in its informality, some of my ideas for the theory essay that is currently leaving me wordless and angsty. I would like to claim (though my college friends would have to verify) that I've never struggled so much with an essay in my life. That I've never been so utterly incapable of coherent thought, or worthwhile expression. Maybe it's the pressure of trying to create something worthy of Oxford (whatever that means), or maybe it's the attempt to reflect on pure, unadulterated theory, without the grounding in literature and life. Or maybe I'm just out of practice. After all, other than two application essays and a few (short) creative writing pieces, I haven't written anything since graduating almost two years ago.

But I really want this OUT OF THE WAY. Done with, so I can move on to better things. Things like Icelandic literature and books on myth.

Here is what I do know:

It is an essay that will touch on the work of Cixous. And Virginia Woolf. And maybe Kristeva, Irigaray, and others.

It is an essay about women. About women and their relationship to writing. About women and the metaphor of writing the body. Feminine ecriture, writing is woman's, and all that.

Toril Moi has an essay, written in 2008, that points out one of the main complications that seem to lie at the heart, not just of women and writing, but of feminism and theory in general. There seems to be a tension, a conflict even, between political feminists and literary theorists (be they queer, postmodern, etc.) Between those who need the signifier "woman" to retain it's meaning and significance, and those who wish to displace the binaries (and the signifiers) altogether. In writing, this issue takes the form of dissonance: a political mandate to read and study the work of women writers vs. the theoretical conjecture that the author (and gendered subject) is dead.

Moi argues that the feminists and theorists have no real answers for each other, and generally escape conflict by avoiding the debate altogether.

But I think there's a way out of this seeming standstill, and always has been. When Roland Barthes wrote about the death of the author, he was affirming, in many ways, what feminists already knew: that the patriarchal, masculine subject -- the mythic phallus, impenetrable and whole -- was an illusion. A protection, as Peggy Kamuf puts it, between the boundlessness of an unlimited textual system and our own power to know. And it was time, Barthes argued, for the myth to be put to death, and the text liberated from the constraints of the Author-God.

But this displacement of the omnipotent (male) Author, rather than erasing the political significance of women's writing (as so many feminists seem to fear) opens new doors to symbolically re-interpret the relationship between gender/sex and writing.

Virginia Woolf famously asserted, in her 1928 treatise on women and writing, that great writers are androgynous (and must not think of their sex). She also asserted, somewhat contradictorily, that women must write as women, and not as men.

Taken on closer evaluation, these two statements prove to be related, for Woolf seems to imply that to write as a woman -- a real woman, and not the stagnate image created in the patriarchal conscious -- is to be androgynous: fluid, multiple, ever-shifting, changing, never coded, never closed. It is, in short, to be all that phallogocentricism, in its obsession with stability, wholeness, and rigidity, is not.

Helene Cixous makes a similar argument, stating that woman has never lost her bisexuality.

As the repressed/oppressed/negated signifier in the binary man/woman, woman holds no commitment to the phallocentric order. In fact, it is the very passion with which patriarchal discourse has attempted to obliterate her that provides the means for her to break free. For the signifier "woman," subsumed/submerged/swallowed/annihilated by its partner "man," can never hold the weight of the real woman, with breath and blood, body and voice. All woman has to do is show up -- write her body, her very self, into being -- for the existing discourse to crash and burn.

And since woman has no allegiance to the phallocentric ideal of unity and oneness (for, as Luce Irigaray so blatantly points out, woman's sexuality is not one, but two, and not two, but many), she is free to be nothing and everything; to return and start again from elsewhere; to never say exactly what she means. Lacking a phallus to begin with, she is unfettered by the fear of castration. She could never claim to posses the (one) truth, so she has no need to defend it.

And since woman is multiple, and writing is multiple, Cixous can make her claim -- bold and threatening -- that writing is woman's.

For it is time for a new metaphor, not the Father-Author and his text, but the mother-writer and the boundless Other that she births. For, as Kamuf points out, the metaphor of the father is one of mediation and intentionality. It is to stand removed, and to present a work whole and unblemished, as one conceived it to be. The metaphor of motherhood, on the other hand, is one of illegitimacy, of borrowed names, and of deep, vulnerable, exposure.

It is the realm, not of the universal (masculine) truth, but of individual (feminine) experience. The realm of the embodied text (and it is, somewhat ironically, embodiment and specificity [rather than universality] that allow individual voices to survive in all their multiplicity and contradiction).

As Woolf writes in Three Guineas, "As a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country." To be a woman is to be an exile, separate from the patriarchal structures of culture and power that have defined so much of our discourse and rhetoric -- our very tools for understanding the world. But as Kristeva states, all writing must come from a place of exile, for only then can we be set free from the bonds of the common sense. Or in the words of Cixous, we must trade places with the moon to gain a new perspective.

Luckily for women -- especially women who desire to write -- we already live on the moon, so writing with a new voice, untainted by the Law of the Father and the rules of a phallogocentric economy, isn't hard at all.

All we need is the courage to find our voice in the first place.

Cooking French in England

2011-01-10T20:44:00.000+02:00

I am in the midst of eating freshly made ratatouille with a giant loaf of French bread. I'm not sure why this fact is so exciting. It just is.

Okay, so that's a lie. I do know why it's exciting, the truth is just a bit embarrassing.

It's the first time I've ever made myself a real meal. Like a "follow the recipe" type meal. I make killer pasta all the time, but I'm usually cheating with ready-made sauce. And while I can also make great quesadillas, pita bread pizzas, and other food involving the oven and melted cheese, I wouldn't consider any of those a "real" meal (even though making ratatouille is probably just as easy).

Now don't get me wrong, I have made food in my life -- just usually with the help of others, for others. It never made a lot of sense to make something just for myself. It takes time and effort, and I can't eat it all anyway.

But I watched an episode of Castle last night (give me a break, I had a migraine), and there they were in the kitchen, cutting up their bright and beautiful vegetables in front of a roaring fire, and I realized that I want that. The time and space in my life to glory over food preparation. To make things delicious and beautiful, the way my mother does.

I didn't put any plans into action -- because the truth is that I don't have the time or space right now -- but then I had a good day today. I woke up, and got up (don't make me tell you what a massive achievement this is for me), and spent the day in the library. And while I didn't get a huge amount actually written, it was a step in the right direction, and I did write some. I signed up for meals (including breakfast) tomorrow, and in the afternoon I met with Professor Paul Fiddes to talk about Charles Williams, and Dr. Lynn Robson to talk about my dissertation. And while I didn't make any new discoveries (I always knew I was falling back on my "images of Eve" option), it's still nice to know that a final decision has been made. And I can't wait to start reading. So much so, that I actually feel motivated to get this theory essay OUT OF THE WAY. Let's hope that holds true tomorrow (or when I come back from seeing my MSt lovelies tonight).

All that to say, I got out of my last meeting, and had a sudden, irrepressible urge to make myself something real. So I did. I went to the store, bought an eggplant, courgette, onion, tomatoes, and freshly baked baguette, and came home and did some cooking.

And now, since the hot water is finally back on, I'm going to go take a shower.

Christmas Trees and Old Icelandic

2011-01-06T20:10:00.009+02:00

Back at Oxford I am. After a glorious Christmas with family (though missing the gametrekkers). A live Christmas tree (with glowing shells), the glory of the Pacific coastline, crackling fires, cookies and goodies galore, and, most wondrous of all, the bright warmth of family -- grandmothers, brothers, parents. How I love them all.

And then New Year's in Minnesota with lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, and the hardest puzzle I've ever encountered.

All while reading Icelandic sagas and NOT writing my theory essay.

But now I am back. In an empty room and an empty apartment, with jet-lag, lovely memories, and the need to get back to work. Hard work, and really fast. I have Icelandic history to read (lots of it), Sagas to plot out (a necessity, since there are so many names I can't keep track of what happens from chapter to chapter, much less book to book), dissertations to plan (along with people to meet with), and, most dreaded of all, a theory essay to write (with all the reading that goes with it). So I probably won't get around to writing that PhD/DPhil proposal and applying to programs. But oh well. I think I need another year anyway. To read and think and really know what I'm planning.

But if the essay ever gets written, and a decision on a dissertation topic and adviser is ever made, then I'll have to admit that I'm excited about what comes next. About getting back to literature. About building arguments from the texts of stories. About learning about Iceland. Though this year is making me wish, SO strongly, that I had more/stronger languages. Norse, Old English, Middle English, French, and yes, a better reading knowledge of Arabic. What I wouldn't give to float effortlessly through Medieval (and modern) texts that now I'm not allowed to touch, or must access through mediation.

And these sagas burn with tales of betrayal and revenge. Friendships destroyed. Blood-ties honored. Loyalty torn. And in the middle the women hover, egging on their husbands, brothers, uncles, to blood-lust and manhood, often at the cost of their own happiness and their men's lives.

And I find it interesting that these stories, of heathen faith and legendary courage, black magic and violent deeds, are mediated through a Christian era. The old gods, it seems, may be rejected but they are never doubted. Thangbrand, King Olaf's missionary to Iceland, tells the people, not that Thor is an illusion, but that without God's will he would never have lived in the first place. And the gospel is spread with both "fair words and dire punishments" (The Saga of the People of Laxardal). God proves himself (for, indeed, the God of the Icelanders is certainly male) with heathen miracles and proofs of power. The ministry of incarnation amongst a culture bound to the heroic code? Who's to say? For isn't this the same God that once ordered the butchering of men, women, and children, proving to surrounding nations that the God of Israel was strong?

But there are hints of another way. Hauskuld, who declares that even if it were true that his foster brothers have been treacherous, he would still "far rather suffer death at their hands than work them any harm" (Njal's Saga). Or Njal himself, the seeker of peaceful restitution, who refuses to shed blood and thinks of the new religion, when it comes, that here at last is a way to God.

Autumn in Oxford

2010-11-15T17:31:00.000+02:00

Today feels exquisitely like fall. The sunlight filtering through the crisp coolness of autumn mist, and the city's austere beauty beginning to soften with the glimmer of Christmas lights and lighthearted holiday shoppers. Add in a toffee nut latte, and the only thing missing is space at a coffee shop to actually sit and study.

But alas, the influx of tourists and shoppers means that back to college I must go, and sit in the dark basement room of the MCR to do my reading. We'll see how long I last.

Punk Rock

2010-11-10T00:32:00.002+02:00

I went to a play this past Wednesday, almost a week ago now. The Oxford Playhouse was running a special offer: a night of free theatre to those under 26, so I took them up on it. I was not overly impressed.

The set was gorgeous. Desks in the center of a library, with shelves reaching up into the recesses of a cavernous, Oxford-like dome.

But from the first line, the acting was off. Not horribly so, but the lines were rushed, mechanic. Spewed at a desperate pace. And I'm still a little unsure why. I mean, I understand why the actors were struggling to connect (when you're trying to jump on a cue without leaving pause for a breath, it's hard to make thought process believable), but I'm not sure why the objective was crazed-pace dialog. I thought perhaps it was a significant aspect of the characters' personalities, but the manic energy wasn't upheld with enough consistency to be believable.

And though the actors warmed up as the night progressed, they never truly recovered from the beginning's recitation. Because the audience failed to see the thoughts behind the lines during those first crucial moments, it was impossible to get a true read on the characters and their objectives. Almost no one is stable in this play, so each mood shift requires more, not less, intentionality from the actors. Otherwise it seems that all we're watching is a loosely sequential series of random actions, dialog, and tragedy.

And while this seems to be a play aiming to frighten with ambiguity -- with the questions it leaves unanswered -- I in no way believe the goal to be leaving the audience uninterested in answers that were never there to begin with.

There were also some issues with blocking, the milder of which I can forgive, but you can't hold a gun within reach of a boy twice your size, recite a monologue, and expect me to believe that he wouldn't have tackled you senseless. He thinks he's going to die, for crying out loud.

Having said all that, there were some fantastic supporting roles, including one chap who looked (and acted) exactly like Jude Law in Wilde.

C.S. Lewis's godson and I

2010-11-10T00:02:00.002+02:00

I just spent an hour and a half listening to Laurence Harwood remember his godfather, C.S. Lewis. His father, Cecil Harwood, was one of Lewis's best friends, walking companions, and debate partners: a man C.S. Lewis literally rolled on the floor with, choked by laughter. For those of you who've read Surprised by Joy, Cecil is the friend described as a Horatio in an age of Hamlets.

Laurence shared his personal correspondences with Lewis. Showed us the pictures his godfather had drawn in the margins. Pictures of Magdalen (the place "like a castle" where Lewis lived), bears and angels from That Hideous Strength, Lewis in baggy trousers that made him "look like a sailor," and the brown bunny he'd been watching from his window.

Talked of his memories of Lewis's visits to his family's home. The boom of his voice in the mornings; the sound of his bellyflops in the pond. Shared letters written to his mother on the topic of love (and being a good godfather), to his father when his mother grew sick with cancer, to himself when he failed his Christ Church exams.

And always, always, that sense of someone wholly present. His childlike joy. Throwing himself onto the floor to play games with Laurence and his siblings, not patronizingly, but for the sheer delight of knowing what children were enjoying, and enjoying it himself. The ability to be all things to all people, even children.

And, may I say, Tolkien's reputation as a walker may have been unjustly tarnished. According to Cecil, on walking tours, Lewis's enjoyment of nature vied only with one thing: his enjoyment of conversation, most of which he carried on himself. So much for his reputation as a "serious" walker. =)

morning on the river

2010-10-21T12:18:00.006+03:00

Walking to the river this morning, alone and in the dark, was like stepping into some primordial past. The stars blazing above Christ Church, only to be blotted out by the trees growing dense and dark on either side of the path. And the river itself, rising out of a rolling mist that shrouded bank and distance in the mysterious grey of pre-morning light.

The puff of breath, the sting of frozen fingers, red with cold, as the sun rose over frost covered docks, and the white geese preened themselves on the ice-covered shore. And in the fields of Christ Church meadow, the deer could be seen bounding between the lumbering cows, frost-covered in their crystallized pasture, as the spires of Oxford rose behind them, gleaming gold in the early morning light.

And that, I suppose, is why students rise early from warm beds, and walk through deserted streets, weaving through trucks unloading merchandise on Cornmarket, to row in the dark on the river Isis.

College Lodgings

2010-10-17T23:19:00.006+03:00

Some pictures of my Oxford space, taken when I first arrived. I've since decorated (and rearranged) my room, so this was just first impression documentation. Hopefully you're properly impressed.

interesting wood designs in the ceiling

oh the beauty of bare bulbs . . .

miniature table, perfect for afternoon tea and biscuits

the original room setup, currently reversed

the kitchen with the baby windows
(but free washing, and bright overhead)

our incredibly disgusting table, that no amount of scrubbing
will clean (we're investing in a table cloth)

the narrow hallway

and last but not least, the bathroom
(which I'm sure you all really wanted to picture)

a jot (regarding radical feminism and queer theory)

2010-10-14T14:30:00.002+03:00

Warning: forthcoming moment of intense geekiness. All those not interested in feminist theory, this is your chance to run away.

So, I just read a transcription of a talk given by one of our Women's Studies conveners (at the London Feminist Network's "Feminar"), addressing the difference between radical feminism and queer theory's use of the term "gender." Fascinating.

But I'm not sure I agree.

Cameron and Scanlon's critique seems to ground radical feminism firmly within a dialog of rights. Liberation from an oppressive system is the goal (and a very worthy one, I might add), and it is achieved through clear political objective.

That I have no problem with.

However, I'm wary of letting utilitarian objectivity (for so it almost seems) discredit queer theory's potential to disrupt established binaries, and thereby enact social transformation. For, by defining gender as the system of power relationships existing between men and women, radical feminism has tied it inseparably to a binary that queer theory seeks to displace. If they succeed (which I would argue they often do) in undermining the concepts of an essential sex, a true gender, or a coherent sexuality, do they not thereby create a world in which the male/female binary is rendered absurd? If the binaries undergirding oppression and inequality (male/female, white/black, etc.) are demonstrated to be, not only unstable, but entirely fantastical, must not the entire system collapse?

It seems to me that binaries cannot survive in a world that has, not two, but (as Virginia Woolf once pled for) an infinity, of genders.

But perhaps I am being simplistic.

Roast duckling, missing tortoises, and the beauty that age and money can buy

2010-10-13T20:54:00.002+03:00

Well, I walked into Balliol for the first time ever today, and it is almost too beautiful for words. Regent's Park is quite pretty, and the red ivy is lovely, but there is a breathtaking grandeur to the rich old colleges (and in this case a luscious beauty) that is really incomparable. I wish I had taken my camera.

I was there for a meeting of the Oxford Walking Club, which I am now a member of. More than that, I spent 130 quid towards weekend trips this coming term. It seems a bit extravagant, both in money and time, but when I really think through my priorities, experiencing England is near the top. And consistently hearing how almost impossible distinctions/firsts really are (an impossibility that I'm required to attain in order to remain for a DPhil) has served to convince me, not that I should spend all my hours in the library, but that I should take full advantage of this year, as it's quite possibly all I will get.

Part of that "taking full advantage" involves joining the Regent's Park novice rowing team, which I've done (along with two other MSt students). We haven't actually been out on the river yet, but tomorrow morning we head out bright and early (6:30) for a crash course on staying afloat. And tonight, after shoveling down dinner, we have to pass a swimming test, fully clothed, to prove that we won't drown in the event of a capsize.

In other news, I have yet to meet Emmanuella, the 90-year-old tortoise, but I keep a lookout every time I walk through the quad (apparently she likes to sun herself on warm days).

Also, I would like to commend the Regent's Park caterers as being truly excellent. While I know it seems a bit decadent to complain about George Fox's cuisine, when there was food in such abundance, I have to say that it is a joy to have truly delicious food at every meal. For formal hall (which takes place every Friday evening) we had roast duck in a delectable sauce, the name of which I cannot remember. We also bowed every time we entered or left the room, and looked very serious in our official robes. The only downside was being informed that one rule of formal hall is not to discuss the portraits hanging on the walls, which, of course, made me look at them for the first time. Which then led me to realize that only one of the myriad of official looking scholars was a woman (who did not happen to look very official, or very scholarly, and was hidden away in a far corner).

I could go on, but alas, dinner beckons. As they say on this side of the pond, cheers.

Harry Potter vs. Christianity?

2010-09-29T19:14:00.002+03:00

I've just been reading a few essays in a collection of literary criticism focused on the Harry Potter series: Mapping the World of Harry Potter. While I'm fascinated by the idea of taking popular work (whether fiction, TV, etc.) and looking at it critically, I'm confused by these particular writers' opinions. Both essays look at the intersection of Harry Potter and religion (Elizabeth DeVos's "It's All About God" and Marguerite Krause's "Harry Potter and the End of Religion"), and while they seem to come to absolutely contrary conclusions, both authors seem to agree on the premise that Harry Potter somehow poses a powerful threat to the world's Christians (the certain individuals "who believe they can only find that magic through narrow interpretation of a very different set of books").

And I'm perplexed.

Krause's argument centers on the idea that Christians' true antagonism to Rowling's books, rather than being enmeshed in a fear of witchcraft in the text, is actually centered on the much more legitimate fear of the absence of any religion whatsoever. Rowling, Krause argues, presents a world where religion is irrelevant, never thought about, never discussed, and never present in any guise. Rowling's characters make their decisions with no input from any higher power, relying on themselves for judgments of right and wrong, and rendering all morality to a state of relativity.

And here I have to pause, for this just feels all wrong to me. Are we really going to argue that there is no moral compass in Rowling's books? Has there ever been a clearer exploration of good and evil? Of the impact of small choices upon the fabric of the human soul? I think where we have diverged, Kraus and I, is in our definitions of religion. Kraus wants evidence of "an organized system of belief centering on a supernatural being or beings." In the absence of such organized systems, she sees the absence of God. I, on the other hand, tend to find organized systems of belief rather irrelevant and unhelpful. Created by humans in an attempt to claim the divine, they in no way encompass God. On the contrary, God is present in Harry Potter in every moment of true kindness, every time a friend is willing to die for his or her companions, every decision that chooses goodness, mercy, and love over evil, cruelty, and hatred. If God is real, the "I am" the bible claims, then Christians should be the last to need labels in order to find God's presence in texts, and in life.

There is no overt mention of Christianity in The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings. Does that mean they are not Christian texts? Are they only Christian texts because we can rest assured in the "christian-ness" of the authors? I hope not. I hope it is because they are full of things like sacrifice and goodness, the attributes of a God who does not need a name to be recognized.

Tolkien and Lewis, I think, would be the first to recognize God in the Potter books. Recognize God, at least in part, for the reasons DeVos puts forward: an awakening of wonder. They were among the first to argue (passionately and academically) for the significance of fantasy, a genre that reminds us of the true magic we long for. A magic present in our everyday lives, yet rendered unrecognizable by the blinders we've accepted against truth. As such, I resonate with much of DeVos's essay, an essay that pleads for new eyes to see the world we live in -- new eyes that Harry Potter grants us. What makes me uncomfortable is her assumption that this is irreconcilable with the teachings of the church. Or, at least, that the church has deemed it so. She suggests that the backlash against the boy with the lightning scar, from religious quarters, is due to his evocation of "awe, faith, longing for the miraculous and divine, and a perception of morality and benevolence" that is deemed by the church as its territory, and its territory alone.

Can she possibly be right? Have we sunk so far into a power driven war of territory and domination, that we can't stomach the discovery of God in anything but our domain? Or is it that we fear we've lost what Harry Potter has found? -- the ability to evoke the power of such longing. I hope not. I hope the backlash against Rowling and the world she's created is based on far more innocent grounds -- authentic ignorance and misunderstanding.

"How deeply reassuring to know -- from personal experience -- that light truly can be created with words. And so we identify, at last, the source of Harry Potter's magical appeal: Rowling's magical world, perhaps more than any other fictional realm, validates our most fundamental longing -- a universal desire to access the amazing power that lets there be light and everything upon which that light shines." -DeVos p.75

east-coast autumn

2010-09-29T02:32:00.000+03:00

Walking home from the library in lamplight, it took me a while to realize that blowing across the red brick sidewalk, and crunching beneath my flipflops, were the yellow-brown leaves of fall.

The Newport Mansions

2010-09-26T05:15:00.001+03:00

On the last stage of the U.S. part of my summer, I'm staying with my family at a friend's condo in Newport, Rhode Island. The remnant of Gilded Age America, it's the site of the "summer cottages" owned by such families as the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and their millionaire friends.

They're the closest thing America has to palaces.

When we lived here five years ago (during my senior year of high school), we had a family membership to the Preservation Society of Newport County, which allowed us unlimited entrance to those of the mansions open to the public. This time I was limited by a ticket to five.

I don't know what it is that draws me back to them so strongly. Maybe it's the way they seem woven into the fabric (albeit at the fringes) of my family's life, their presence looming over Rhode Island holidays for as long as I can remember.

Or maybe it's the unquenchable longing for a doorway into other worlds -- the desire to experience other times and lives, unbounded by the limits of my single soul. The desire to understand how other boys and girls, as intrinsically human as myself, lived in ages and styles so foreign to my own. So beyond the borders of my ability to imagine or comprehend.

Whatever the reason, these marble palaces and dark stone castles, with their ancient trees and lovely walkways, beckon me like friends, mysterious, unknown, yet somehow familiar.

There is the Breakers, the military general of Newport houses, a towering city of unyielding stone. With lawns reaching to the edge of the cliffs and the wave tossed Atlantic, the Vanderbilt stronghold is gilt, gaudy, and unforgiving. Filled with Neoclassical art, gold-plated ceilings, and wide open spaces, there is no coziness within the luxury. But there is beauty in the palatial expanse of the entrance, the light filled corridors, and the outdoor sitting rooms overlooking the sea. It is a house built for drama and intrigue and grandeur.

Marble House, built by the Vanderbilt younger brother, is as mysterious as its passionate, complex, and iron-willed mistress. A museum of medieval artifacts, it is exquisite with a beauty that is austere and untouchable. The most expensive home in America, it was given to Alva Vanderbilt for her 39th birthday. She responded by divorcing her husband, forcing her daughter into an unwanted marriage, and leading suffragist rallies -- all while shrouding herself in dense, inhuman glamour.

No matter how many times I hear the names of Rosecliff's true owners, it's impossible for me to experience it as anything but the Gatsby mansion, where Jay danced with Daisy to the light of a single candle. A house of romance and tragedy. The scene of many films, from The Amistad to True Lies, it's The Great Gatsby that, for me, has made an impression.

Despite it's mottled marble interior, the Elms remains one of my favorite of the mansions. Perhaps it's the location, across the street from our Newport home, or perhaps it's the 'behind-the-scenes' tour we once took, up into the servants' quarters and kitchens, or, most likely, it's the grounds, sprawling with stone lions, garden rooms, and reading trees. But whatever the reason, I feel I could happily live there. =)

And today I saw Chateau-sur-Mer for the first time. A Victorian castle with rich interiors of polished wood and painted walls, it was delightfully warm and cluttered, but so dimly lit as to make me feel almost blind. Once the tour was over, I sat and read in a tree for almost an hour.

Quotes from "My Love Affair with England"

2010-09-25T19:48:00.001+03:00

The past lives on, in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadows backwards. The landscape also changes, but far more slowly; it is a living link between what we were and what we have become.
-Margaret Drabble, A Writer's Britain

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings . . .
-William Shakespeare, Richard II

New York, New York! (and what I did there)

2010-09-24T03:09:00.013+03:00

I spent yesterday in New York. Woke up at 4:30 to drive to Providence and take the Amtrak into the city. It's embarrassing to admit, but while I've been to several of the world's oldest, largest, most beautiful, and most famous cities (Rome, Cairo, London, Seoul, Paris, etc.), I've never been to the Big Apple.

I loved it.

It was unlike anything I've ever experienced in America. A world unto itself. If there is glamour left in this country, then surely it resides there, in the city of brownstone and brick, where age, beauty, and (let's face it) violence intermix, and history has not been flattened like so much unwanted baggage. There was grandeur there, reminiscent of the glory (and decay) of Rome.

The purpose of the trip was business -- visit the British Consulate and get my Visa -- but most of the day was spent wandering. Walking through Central Park, exploring Times Square, catching sight of the Empire State Building. And yes, eating a pretzel.
But it sent shivers down my back to know that all the while I was a stone's throw away from places like Harlem and Hell's Kitchen, place names that are evocative of literature and film, broken dreams and distant hopes. New York, like all of Europe, is alive with memory.

I even got to see an Off Broadway show. While it's the West End in London that has really fed my taste for theatre (I've seen over 13 shows there in the course of two trips to the UK), Broadway still echoes in my imagination with memories of my first exposure to Les Miz and my early dreams of being a Broadway singer (never mind that I can't actually sing).

The show itself was an adaptation of C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. A two person show with one speaking role, and one Acting 2 dream part (all movement, and body, and voice). Incredibly well done, Mommy and I were given free tickets by a professor from Carnegie Mellon while trying to get a last minute deal at the ticket window.

We got back to Newport around 11:00, exhausted, sore, and happy.

The Road (a future and a hope)

2010-07-30T12:18:00.001+03:00

"He knew that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke."

My brother described Cormac McCarthy's The Road as being the most brutally hopeful book he'd ever read. I'm not sure I understood what he meant. I assumed, I suppose, that the book would be both brutal and hopeful. And it is. But it is also more than that. It is a book that is brutal in its hope.

On the surface, it seems to be a story about goodness -- human goodness -- in the face of darkness and death. A world gone mad with fear and brutality. A story about a boy and his father, "carrying the fire." As such, the book is powerful, the book is hopeful, and the book resonates, deeply. For who of us does not long to believe that the human capacity for good -- the breath of God inside us -- is capable of overcoming the dark? Of weathering the end of all things? Such truth would be grace enough, it seems. Proof of a loving God.

But McCarthy refuses to end there. He must go further. Must push the boundaries of what we can accept. What we can believe. Must shower his characters with a different type of goodness. So that, despite a world grown old without food, in which humans themselves are the final source of sustenance, his characters do not starve. Their constant luck, in a world long since picked clean, is so beyond the acceptance of realism, that the only answer seems to be in the miraculous. They are being provided for. Ever trudging forward, without reason to expect that anything should be different where they are going than where they have been, they are yet rewarded, like Abraham, for their faith.

And so the foundations of a powerful story are shaken. McCarthy forces his readers to make a conscious choice. Accept his vision, or reject it. There is no middle ground. This is either a fanciful daydream, without relevance in our world of brutal reality, or it is a story -- as unsettling as Old Testament prophecy -- of the active presence of God in our world.

Unsettling, because the question it does not answer is: why him? Why should one child be spared among millions? Why, while one child is baked over the coals, does another love and eat and survive?

The age old question of evil, which has stumped so many philosophers, and agonized the humanitarian minded, is not, I think, primarily a question of existence. It is not the evil itself that bothers us, so much as the unfairness of it all. We don't wonder why there is suffering so much as we wonder why some seem to suffer so much more than others. It is the arbitrariness that goads us, and makes God seem as heartless as the Greek divinities of old.

Yet still McCarthy asks, do we believe the promises? Goodness and mercy that follow us. A future and hope that prosper us.

What, when all is said and done, do we believe about God?

And it is here that my brother came to the rescue. Reminding me, in the words of Aslan, that we are never told any story but our own. This is not the story of the child roasted in the fire, or even the story of those who ate him. It is the story of a small boy, and the father who loved him. If my God is able (and willing) to provide everything I need for life and godliness, surely God is able to do the same for my neighbor, and the stranger I read about in the newspaper, and every other story that God, not I, knows.

It feels safe and reasonable to believe in the goodness of God in the abstract. But it is truth to believe it in the concrete.

On a stylistic note, The Road is written in prose poetry. Beautiful, compelling, and utterly unique.

My Like List

2010-07-25T12:22:00.005+03:00

I used to write "like lists" a lot. They were a way of glimpsing who I happened to be at any particular moment of time. Of inventorying things that were true about me. Where I found my joy, what gave me life. I never thought of them in such epic terms, because they weren't meant to be epic. They were just the small details of happiness. Looking back, I think they were a way of laying hold of the blessedness of life. Of remembering all the ways that goodness surrounded and upheld me.

I bought a new writing notebook a few days ago, and one of the first things I found myself writing was such a list. It's the first time I've done one since high school. I think being here, in Korea, and giving my soul space to breathe, has helped me recover a place in which such details are the truest thing about me. Not the aggravations or frustrations or fears or failures, but the small happinesses -- not large or epic, but quiet and true.

This list is in no way some complete catalog of my life's joys. It's simply the details that came to mind at the moment I wrote it (a few weeks ago now).

My Like List:
- hazelnut coffee in happy mugs
- Mushishi episodes that touch on mystery and longing
- midnight talks with my best friend, who also happens to be my brother
- a good book, and long lazy hours in which to read it
- listening to books on tape while packing, enduring migraines, or falling asleep
- experiencing art my brothers created
- filling hours with projects I set myself to accomplish
- watching the World Cup with Brits
- beer and cider
- winning something on the Wii
- knowing a friend is reading what you're writing
- Farah's moments of languid contentment
- eating Dip-n-Dots by lake Umpa
- being given a duck loofa =)

I now travel INTO THE WILD

2010-07-25T12:06:00.003+03:00

"And I trust for him that everything he is doing has to be done. This is our life."

My brother and I watched Into the Wild last night. It's a movie that makes one long for life, and the courage with which to really live. Since the movie first came out, I've been a little afraid to see it. Afraid of the ending I knew was coming; afraid of the sorrow and loss. But this isn't a movie about death, it's a movie about life. About truly experiencing the moments we're given. So that even at the end, when a 23-year-old boy dies alone in a bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, it's hard to experience anything other than joy. Joy and longing. And maybe pain for the people he left behind.

When Chris/Alex finds the "magic" bus, near the start of the film, I was overwhelmed by the sense of what G.K. Chesterton calls treasure. The experience of being a castaway on an island where a shipwreck washes up, and every ordinary, every-day item becomes something precious to be cherished, rather than scorned. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton speaks of loving Robinson Crusoe for this reason, because it reminds him of the true nature of life -- that everything is treasure. And I long for that right sense of things and their worth -- a worth that only seems graspable when one owns nothing, and therefore has nothing to lose and everything to gain. The delight that sees the world as precious.

It's a truth I knew well as a child, when torn pieces of cloth, abandoned on the sidewalk, could hold my imagination for hours.

The hardest part of the film for me to reconcile is the story of a sister left behind. She says, in one of her many moments of narration, that unlike her parents, who have been purposefully cast off, she receives no word because he knows she doesn't need it. He knows she loves him enough, and is certain enough in his love, to live on in his absence.

Is that the great secret of existence, in this world of separation and loss? The great test of truth? That there are relationships that flounder and die with distance, but real love, as Charles Williams might argue, knows no limits of space or time? Ruth Haley Barton, in her book Sacred Rhythms, says that the life-giving significance of solitude is that it allows us to experience the reality that all things "irreconcilable are somehow reconciled through Christ. Everything is already one through the person and work of Christ in the timelessness that is God." Ultimately, God holds the presence of those we love within God's self, and when we are with God, the perfect Wholeness, separation is impossible. This may seem like spiritualist mumbo-jumbo, but I think the opposite may be true -- that it is simply spiritual truth, that we are often too earthbound, and transient, to experience. But when we live truly, and cease sheltering ourselves from the present moment and the God who indwells it, I think all physical boundaries must burst.

Tonight, Tonight [or Twelfth Night Approaches]

2010-07-17T18:19:00.001+03:00

Not sure why I didn't post this when I actually WROTE it (considering it was actually relevant then), but that seems to be one of the things I do: write, but don't post.
___________________________

This is it. Nearly five months of rehearsal, and tonight we perform.

And I am nervous. Very nervous. Isn't it the performers who are supposed to be nervous?

I wonder if every director feels like this. So . . . responsible. But yet, incapable of doing more. The play is now out of my hands.

May it bless those who see it.

___________________________

I always planned to write more about the play. How it went, what it was like to direct, the things I learned and liked and hated. But, as so often happens, it was too soon, too raw, and then it was too late. The feelings slowly fading into that strange haze of past life.

[the lovely ladies of the cast, minus Olivia and Viola --

left to right: Maria, flutist, Fabiana, Valentina, and Curia]

Suffice it to say, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, stretching me in ways I didn't know I could stretch. At the same time, it was one of the best things I've ever done, and the most enjoyable (easy to say, looking back, now that the stress/tension/terror is over). I'd never experienced anything like it before: sitting in the front row, watching something you created come to life without you. I've always been on the acting side of theatre, participating in the art, but never experiencing it in its fullness. And it was . . . profound? It seems too arrogant of a word, but the meaning is about right. It was like watching a miracle take place. Things happened on that stage that I never would have believed possible. After all of the hard work, pressure, tension, and tears, it was like a taste of grace.

[working with Viola, a freshman with immense dedication]

And I was so proud of everyone. My actors, shattering the limitations they set for themselves. Being bolder, and braver, and better, than they thought they could be. Than I thought they could be.

Being a part of that was joy indeed.

Post Options

[cast party to watch the filmed play -- clockwise from left: Valentina, Sebastian,
Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Priest, Viola, me, Soldier, Malvolio]

Shadows of Ecstasy: a review of sorts

2010-07-17T11:30:00.002+03:00

Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Walter Stansby Williams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Charles Williams' books. Everyone who knows me knows this. Others may think them strange or obscure, but I find them pulsing with life and power. They remind me, in language that transcends knowing, what it is that I'd forgotten I'm looking for.

Honestly, though, I didn't know what to do with this book. Normally I like Williams' ambiguity -- I think it's part of his stories' power. I wouldn't say that I DIDN'T like it this time, only that it left me perplexed and confused, shaken and unsure.

Is Considine an antichrist or a returned messiah? Does it even matter? To some degree, it seems irrelevant to the story's point. A story that is about living in an ambiguous world, where no morality is certain, out of the necessity of your own being. Living the life you have to, in the face of the choices you can't control.

The problem with this is two-fold: 1. Is evil and goodness truly such a matter of relativity? Is physical action, such as murder, truly irrelevant if the perpetrator burns with what, for lack of other words, seems terrifying similar to the Joy of the Lord and the Glory of God? And while it's easy to thrust this back into our black and white understanding, and declare "NEVER!" what do we do with those Old Testament passages in which the prophets, and the God that they serve, seem to burn with just such joy, and act with just such a terrifying mix of innocence and violence? 2. Most of Williams books, the scholars agree, are ultimately about coinherence -- the beautiful mystery of unity. What does one do with a book, thrust in the middle of this collection, that seems to be about the necessity of living first and foremost for oneself? Of turning everything that is experienced inward, for personal power and gain? And the one antithesis to this -- Isabel who lives only for the other -- encourages her husband down its path, because it is what his soul craves. Yet if he were to succeed in his quest, it would separate him from that which makes him whole.

Who is the hero, who the villain? Who's path is righteous, who's selfish? Who makes the right choices, who the wrong? And what ending are we supposed to hope for? Williams doesn't tell us, and sometimes I wonder, does God?

View all my reviews >>

The Bucket List . . .

2010-07-06T17:34:00.000+03:00

I have decided to write a bucket list. I may seem a little young for this endeavor, but one never knows what the future may hold. Besides which, life is just so SHORT. And I want to really live.

This is in no particular order.

1. Live in a commune, surrounded by sun and the presence of friends. To learn how to dig in the earth and grow bright red tomatoes and shiny green spinach. Write poetry in the presence of growing red roses.
2. Spend a year in a convent. Work with my hands, give glory to God. Seek peace in silence and solitude and the rule of community. Live within the beauty of stone walls.
3. Write a novel. Find a story that burns in my spirit, and forces itself to be told. Capture reality within the gently rolling letters of the English alphabet.
4. Work in an orphanage, in India. Let the complex and tattered world fade away, until there is nothing but the sacred, simple, and profound duty of loving, and holding, a child.
5. Get a masters in dance therapy. Chanel my love for dance into a healing art; help children remember joy.
6. Adopt a child. Or seven. Share what I've been given with those aching for a home.
7. Get a D.Phil. at Oxford. Spend long hours in the Bodleian library. Live amid the aged stone, the coffee shops, and the books.
8. Get a masters in theology and the imagination from St. Andrews? Unsure about this one, but it seems appropriate to the study of Charles Williams.
9. Spend six months to a year on the Oregon coast, taking long walks on the beach, sitting by the fire, and writing intensely. Convert to polyphasic sleep.
10. Teach at Fox? I'm not sure that teaching is really my passion, but there are some professors who'd I'd do anything (well, almost anything =) to work beside.
11. Visit Iona.
12. Live in Jerusalem.
13. Rent a flat with some friends. Have afternoon tea, and artsy decor on the walls.
14. Teach in Korea, because, well, why not?
15. Find someone to travel the world with. Someone who understands the conflicting currents that run through my soul. Who longs to live a life of compassion and is unafraid of the unknown. Someone who wants a partner and not a picture. Marry that person. Love them forever.

And that's it, for the very brief moment.

I am not my hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within . . .

2010-07-01T10:13:00.002+03:00

Kohleun just introduced me to the song "I am not my hair" by India.Arie, the themes of which are close to my heart. It may seem like an obvious message, yet there are moments when I feel like the whole crazy world just doesn't get it -- and that it's the most important message we can hear.

It's not just about hair, obviously, but all of the ways in which we're required to live up to expectations and imagined reality. All the ways we're required to hide our true humanity.

I wrote "Bare" for a creative writing class a few years ago. It was a semester of intense angst centered around this subject, and I almost shaved my head over Christmas just to prove a point.

Some people have been offended by this piece, but please don't be. It's not meant to be taken analytically, as an absolute profession of belief, but as an experimental attempt to capture something that I've experienced. And that I long for. As I've said elsewhere, "I think, through this, I was trying to touch on the issue of pain . . . devastation . . . war . . . and the way our society hides from those things. From the reality of sweat and blood, behind the facade of perfection. I believe in beauty, but it is a very different type of beauty than the ideal my culture is trying to force down my throat. It is a beauty that comes through the ashes—the marks of living—rather than by denying them."

Bare—An Ode to Beauty Bald

I want to shave my head. It’s one of those crazy ideas that terrify my parents. They interpret it, I think, as a sign of my slowly dissolving faculties. The warping of my brain by too much study and feminist theology. After all, why would anyone want to destroy all sign of womanly beauty? The golden ringlets that grew into longer curls. Shear them off in humiliation and shame.

I try to explain. How a boy I liked, once told me that he liked my hair. Liked it down. Said it made me beautiful, those strands of tarnished gold. Strands that are not me.

And I rebel. I will not be my hair. I will reclaim my womanhood from a Bible that proclaims me, and my head, to be man’s glory.

I want to be known for the mind that lies beneath the hair. For the part of me that thinks and yearns and ponders. For the passion and the life, under the meaningless wisps that grow and die, without my consent or say-so. That require nothing of me. Reflect nothing on me.

I want to shave my head in honor of those who never had the choice. In solidarity with the broken. The women at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau. Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Those who survived, and those who didn’t. To honor a humanity that was not taken, cannot be taken, with our hair.

To celebrate survival. From cancer. Leukemia. Radiation and chemo. The women who wear headscarves, and wigs. Afraid to show the scars of battle. The sign of loss, and life. Proof that they’re still here.

I want to join the ranks of men like Yule Brynner and Michael Jordan. Of human beauty unadorned. Skin, and sweat, and age. Unafraid to expose the blue veins that pump life, blood and oxygen, through membrane and golden tissue. The sandpaper texture. The shape of their skulls.

I want to demonstrate a different kind of beauty. Sleek and sexy elegance that denies hairspray and color dyes, styling products and curling irons. Proclaim freedom from magazine images and picturesque perfection. From Barbie dolls and Disney princesses, long silken tendrils, hair to their knees. Coiffured and flowing expectations. Stop hiding beneath the mask of color.

I want to wear henna on my head. Make patterns of tribal beauty. Declare myself at home with earth and sky.

I want to stop running from the feel of my own skin. I want to be myself, free of pins and clips and rubber-bands. And I want to love it.

I want to inhale wind and rain through the pores on my skull. To taste life and pain. To deny the acceptability of pretence, to destroy the masquerade, the papier-mâchéd perfection. To mourn injustice with the women of Beowulf—heads bare, weeping to high heaven. Sackcloth and ashes, and shorn hair.

And most of all, I want to be a nun. Set apart for unreserved worship. To return to child-like innocence, and feel nothing between my head and God, but air and sunlight. To be uncovered before my maker, not in shame, but in the humility of a newborn, and beloved, child. To remember my humanity in the presence of a genderless God. A God who created my soul before she created my hair.

I want to feel my prayers rise out of the top of my skull. Float along air currents. Be breathed in by the Almighty (hairless) God.

The Lovely Bones

2010-06-12T11:07:00.009+03:00

"And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it."

I'm sitting in the Hong Kong airport, waiting for my flight to Jordan, having just flown from Korea on a very nice Cathay Pacific flight. With an individual screen, and lots of film choices, but only time for one movie, I decided to go with Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. And I was favorably impressed.

It seems odd to describe a movie about murder as beautiful, but I'm loath to describe it as anything else. Peter Jackson has created a haunting paradox -- a movie about death (and not the peaceful, innoncent kind) that is nothing less than a celebration of life. There are dark moments in the film, to be sure, but the overarching impression is one of light and love. The picture I'll carry with me is of a laughing family, with deep roots and strong ties, fierce in their love and strong in their courage -- the kind of family I want to have.

In the end, I think Jackson is able to take a horrific sort of death (the kind that has haunted my nightmares since childhood) and show that really, in all the ways that matter, Suzie dies the best sort of death (if any death can be good), because she has never spent a moment surrounded by anything but love. As someone states in a different movie I watched recently, "Our finger prints don't fade within the lives they touch." In other words, the Salmons are no less a family after Suzie's death than they were before it. Her place is permanent, and (to quote e.e. cummings) they carry her heart with them.

On a side note, the storytelling perspective is interesting in that it's narrated by Suzie after her death. One of the reasons I was interested in watching it in the first place was that I'd read a review of the book which described it as a 'post-death coming of age story'. Suzie is in every way the protagonist -- a protagonist who must deal with the ending of her idealic childhood, though the cause, in this case, is not growing up but murder. A protagonist who must learn, as we all must, how to hold on to everything that matters (like family and love) while coming to grips with the inevitable changes in herself and the world around her.

And as a final note, I may have watched the film on a bad quality airplane screen, but even so, some of the scenes are absolutely gorgeous.

Angel-in-us Coffee (or things I like about Korea)

2010-06-08T05:31:00.007+03:00

1. The country slogan: Korea Sparkling.

2. The Gunsan lake, with its bridge of lights and happiness (with special orbs to promote love and dreaming).

3. The shoes. Definitely the brightest, craziest sneakers I've ever seen (think fluorescent yellow, shiny, and huge). But they also love their high heels, which are tall, and not at all the standardized American variety.

4. The red roses that spill over every fence.

5. The uniquely poetic way of using English: "provincial tangible cultural asset."

6. Chicken on a stick with amazing barbeque sauce. Street food at its finest.

7. The "couple sets" -- i.e. his and her matching clothing, drinking straws (because drinks are meant to be shared, not experienced alone), chopsticks, watches, and just about everything else you can think of.

8. Jordan and Marisa's bunny, Faraday, who is very inquisitive, and seems to think Brendan and Thani are boy bunnies.

9. Korean pizza -- some of the yummiest I've ever eaten, with sweet potato crust.

10. Green tea popsicles.

11. Shaved ice desserts, with ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, shaved ice, cornflakes and fruitloops. Odd sounding, delicious tasting. As an added bonus, you get to eat them while swinging in rocking chairs.

12. Strangers who invite you to share in their picnics, and offer you food at the side of the road.

13. Open rooms with wood floors in which to take naps.

14. Traditional teahouses, with inner courtyards and low tables, even if they do charge too much for tea. =)

15. Biking around islands where seafood is eaten raw or dried on clotheslines in the sun.

16. The culture of open spaces, bare feet and ground sitting, where pouring water requires respect, and giving and receiving is a ceremony of significance.

17. And, of course, the very best part: seeing family. =)

The Last Day . . .

2010-05-27T14:51:00.003+03:00

I'm sitting in my almost empty classroom on the last day of finals, and it is a very strange feeling.

I didn't expect to be sad when this year ended.

Halfway through the first semester, I was almost convinced I wanted to come back next year. Come back and do it better. Come back and conquer the unconquerable quest for excellence.

But then it just became too much. Too stressful, too exhausting, too frustrating. Working with kids, when respect is the highest need on your list, is a very challenging endeavor. For one thing, it's not easy to gain their respect. For another, they're not very good at knowing how to respect, even when they want to.

So, in the midst of those spring blues, I decided that continuing on teaching was definitely NOT the path for me.

But now, in the midst of goodbyes, final evaluations, talks on the roof about books, class parties, and packing up my classroom (which I've lived in, much more than I've lived at home, these past several months), I'm not so sure.

I'm going to miss these students. Miss these conversations. Miss the crazy drama of my 9th grade class. Miss the wide-eyed expectation of my 7th graders. Miss the quiet kindness of my seniors. And, perhaps above all, miss the thrill of creation with my actors.

Several of my 9th graders stayed behind after their "final" (it was actually a class party mixed with performances of their original tragedies -- the actual test had been done early) to convince me of all the reasons I had to stay. These included (but were not limited to) having all my students dress up like Darth Vader, having Claire make me peach cobbler every day, having Yasmeen hook me up with a British husband (who can sing, is rich, and works for the U.N.), having Star Wars marathons at Matt's house, and being teased mercilessly about, well, just about everything.

[the wonderfully crazy 9th grade class]

It was a pretty tempting offer. And I want to come back. Want to teach these students again. Want to see them change and grow. Want to grow with them. I told them that maybe when they're seniors I'll come be their British literature teacher.

But who knows? Dreams are good, but in this transient world, and transient lifestyle, it's so hard to believe that it'll actually come back around.

And it saddens me, much more than I expected, because I believe that we could keep growing together. That we could trust each other more, respect each other more, learn together more. That we've built a foundation (with much toil and tears, at least on my part) and next year could be better.

There are so many things I want to experience and do. I only get to live once, and I want to make it count. Want to experience all I can. Orphanages and convents and farms and universities and protests. And yet, I also want to build. Want to have a foundation, and get to grow on it. Get to see something emerge. Get to lay deep roots. Get to be part of something permanent and stable. Get to invest. Beyond a year, beyond a class.

I want a community and a home.

7th Grade Haiku

2010-05-25T07:44:00.007+03:00

Here is some joy to share with you. This is a selection of some haiku my 7th graders wrote this year. One (by Anna-Lena) tied for 3rd place in the formal category of the poetry contest Whitman held (and there were 180 overall entries, 7th-12th grade, so placing was kind of a big deal =). And "Bob" and "Test Day" are probably two of my favorite funny poems ever.

Flashes of Lightning, Rolls of Thunder
As the the thunder rolls
and lightning flashes brightly
I watch with wonder

by Anna-Lena

Test Day
Is it Monday, Josh?
No, it's Tuesday. The test day.
Oops! I am busted.

Clouds
It's cloudy outside
Every test day, it's cloudy
Like it was promised.

by Chan Young

Who left the milk out?
Spoiled and rotten
unhealthy and so chunky
left out in the sun

by Josh

Bob
Bob is a good friend
But Bob stole my cookie jar
Poor Bob is dead now

by Bassam and Elias

Traveling Clouds
Carried by the wind
Sending shade upon the land
mixing with the blue

Lost Strength
No water to drink,
no sun to shine upon it.
Once strong, it withers.

by Bridget (who wrote a poem that came in 1st place for the humorous category)

Insomnia
Hearing thunder roar,
Seeing lightning flash by me,
Trying to fall asleep.

The Ugly Duckling
Ducklings mocking him,
the small duckling cries,
he just swims away.

by Sarah

Teaching Wrap-ups

2010-05-17T18:02:00.007+03:00

Somewhat inexplicably, I'm only nine days away from the end of my first year of teaching.

This is crazy to me. And very stressful. Who knew there could be so much left to do? So much to simply stay on top of -- not to mention those far-off, crazy dreams of actually finishing well.

Tomorrow I will listen to the last two novel presentations from my seniors, and do a very brief review in which I'll try to recap everything they've learned (or at least studied) this year. Then I'll give them their final on Wednesday, and they will be done. Out of here and on to bigger and better things (like traveling to Turkey for a week).

But it's my other classes that I'm more concerned about. The classes that have wormed their way into my heart and stuck themselves onto the walls of my life, with sticky glue and tenacity. The classes I'll carry with me when I leave.

It isn't that I don't love my seniors -- I do. It's just that they're already individuals, cutting their own paths in the world, without need for school or guidance. It's just that I'm too close to their age to really be a role model or someone to look up to. It's just that they already have one foot out the door, and it's hard to listen while their feet are itching to run.

My 9th graders, on the other hand, while they yell, and jump up from their seats, and hum songs, and speak without raising their hands, and tease me mercilessly, actually believe I have something to teach them. And they're willing and ready to learn. Eager to soak up anything that might fall into their paths. Eager to live and experience and grow.

Then there are my 7th graders. The class that is truly mine. My homeroom. My double-periods of English. Eight hours a week I spend with them, and they spend many more reading for me, writing for me, and learning vocab for me. I never expected to love teaching Middle School, yet somehow, with their energy, enthusiasm, laughter and hugs, they have become one of the bright spots in my day.

How do I say goodbye to these faces, these people? How does it just end one day, among diplomas and waving caps, and then, no more. They'll go on to read or not read, to care passionately or to sit apathetically, and I'll never know.

Or will I?

Northerness in Stevenson's Poetry

2010-02-16T14:00:00.008+02:00

"You know it by the northern look of the shore,
by the salt-worried faces,
by an absence of trees, an abundance of lighthouses.
It's a serious ocean."

Looking over some poetry papers I wrote in college (the aim being to help my students with the fine art of poetic analysis), I accidentally discovered Anne Stevenson's Scottish poems - poems with a "rare weather of aloneness . . . which conjure the landscape and climate of eastern Scotland with its chilly coast and chastened atmosphere" (Ray Parini).

"Fire struggles in the chimney like an animal.
It's caught in a life,
as when the tide pulls the Tay out
scarring predictable mudscape—
seawater's knifework
notching quick runnel and channel.

That's how you remember
the alternative lives.
You saw them, could never have lived them.
A ribbon of birds is pulled raggedly over November.
You're pulled between now and the way you will not escape."

We Have a Theatre!

2010-02-09T14:09:00.002+02:00

http://www.al-balad.org/UI/english/Default.aspx

Sappho the Muse

2010-01-26T14:09:00.003+02:00

I discovered Sappho this week. And she, combined with teaching haikus to my 7th graders, may have changed my life.

I've never really been a huge fan of poetry, especially not the kind with awkward line breaks, overkill descriptions, and no narrative. Epic poetry I love. Smooth flowing poetry (like Boland's and Nye's) I can appreciate. But that's about as far as it goes.

This past week, however, I have been awed by the power of apples turning red, silver moons setting, and 5-syllable lines. The power of simple words, line breaks, and concrete images, to evoke emotion and meaning.

Although they are

Only breath, words
Which I command
are immortal.

-translated by Mary Bernard

Like a sweet apple
turning red
high
on the tip
of the topmost branch.
Forgotten by pickers.

Not forgotten--
they couldn't reach it.

-translated by Julia Dubnoff

The Failure of Charles the 1st to Inspire

2010-01-19T08:58:00.003+02:00

Note to self: lectures do not work. At least, not when I'm speaking them. But what, oh what, should replace them?

The Little Frustrations of Failure . . .

2009-12-15T09:04:00.002+02:00

I made a mistake today. Not so much a mistake, as a miscalculation. One of many that my life now consists of.

Since this is the last week of school before Christmas, and since we just finished our unit on Shakespeare, I decided to take a break from our usual itinerary, and read Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol in my 12th grade English class.

That was not the mistake.

The mistake was assigning the first stave (or "chapter") for them to read at home last night. I didn't think we could complete the story at school, since we only have three class-periods left before break, so I figured we'd read half at school (with hot chocolate, goodies, and hats), and half at home.

This was probably a reasonable assumption. However, the first stave is, in many ways, the most important. It is the chapter that establishes Scrooge's character, and builds a foundation for all that comes next. Without it, there is really nothing spectacular about this story of transformation and redemption. It is just a random fantasy about ghosts and memories and Christmas.

If it were necessary to have the students read at home every night, to stay on track, I would feel justified in my decision. But we are now ahead of schedule, and I regret my failure to consider the implication of assigning THAT chapter, and the possibility that students would not read it.

The reason I post this here is simply that it serves as a great example of what my last three and a half months of teaching have been like. A million tiny miscalculations grinding against my desire for excellence and natural tendency towards perfectionism. And I am torn between giving in to the frustration and declaring that this is clearly NOT the vocation for me, or allowing my competitive side to take hold, and continuing on simply to prove that I AM capable of doing better than this.

Hampton Court Palace

2009-11-20T16:09:00.001+02:00

Another post discovered in my draft folder. I'm sure I was waiting to write more details on this one. Suffice it to say, it was as awesome as it looks.

We watched A Man for all Seasons in preparation for the field-trip -- opening doors into the life of Henry VIII, Thomas Wolsey, and the scandal surrounding the palace.

Oh for the glory of Oxford days and English nights . . .

I try to avoid remembering too often, because it is all-together too strange that I am here, when just so recently I was there [a true statement when I wrote this -- now it's been almost a year].

Rebekah Giffone's ode to Hampton Court Palace, where we spent a glorious Thursday field-trip (led by Jonathan Kirkpatrick), during week2 of British Landscapes.

The Ghost of Hampton Court
Dec. 9, 2008

There were no ghosts at Hampton Court,
When I went there in the Fall,
No spectres graced the pathways,
No spirits walked the halls

The wind that blew was windy,
The air was normal air,
No longing gripped my being,
I sat and shuddered there

I was the ghost at Hampton Court,
That harshish Autumn noon,
Treading wraith-like in the gardens,
And undead through the rooms

The golden ache refused to burn,
No beauty pierced my mind,
No ghost returned to haunt me -
I thought myself unblind

"At last I shall see clearly,
the fancies stripped away,
the Past devoid of feeling,
It cannot see decay."

Lies, insidious lies!
Dear daughter, don't you see?
That in the ghosts of Yesteryears
the Present wakes to thee?

Until you meet them face to face,
These spectres keep you chained -
Let the legions haunt you,
I pray you: feel the pain

For spectres live through death,
In your death, they have their being,
You fill their weightless bodies,
And set their sockets seeing

But let a spirit haunt you,
And you rob it of its breath,
Declare yourself the living,
And the dead remain in death

***

There were no ghosts at Hampton Court,
When I went there in the Fall,
No spectres graced the pathways,
No spirits walked the halls

Yet now the day is closing,
The night is falling fast,
My heart begins its yearning,
for spirits of the past

The wind that blows is windy,
The air is normal air,
Yet longing grips my being,
I sit and crumble there

The golden ache begins to burn
These beauties pierce my soul,
A heavy peace now haunts me -
In the voidness, I am whole.

Until I meet You face to face,
These spectres keep me chained,
Yet in Your haunting Presence,
All questions die away

Your Spirit is the answer,
To bereft and bloodless minds -
Your beauty cuts me deeply:
I know I am alive

-Rebekah Giffone

PNG itinerary

2009-11-20T15:48:00.009+02:00

I found this in my draft folder. No idea why I never posted it (I guess it wasn't finished?). It's a detailed walk-through of our PNG trip. Reading it over brought back lots of memories. =)

Our itinerary, in brief:

May 4 -- meet at GFU (Rick met us in the Bauman parking lot to say goodbye), drive to PDX, fly from PDX to LAX, dinner in LAX (Chiles), fly to Brisbane over the Pacific Ocean and across the equator, skipping May 5 in the process (an empty flight with extra seats, so I slept almost all the way, only watching one movie [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button] on my individual screen).

[one of our many airport stops]

May 5 -- disappears into oblivion

May 6 -- a day in Brisbane. Take the train into the city, store our bags at a Lutheran Church, and go to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Pet kangaroos, hold koalas, and take a boat back on the river. Split up and spend the night with host families (me with Jordan) who shower us with a confusing mix of love and racism.

[hanging out with kangaroos]

May 7 -- fly to Port Moresby, PNG. Todd Luedtke (Rhett's dad) meets us at the airport, as does the first wave of heat. Settle into our guesthouse, and take a ride about town. Houses on stilts (including an entire village built on the water), and everything open to let in the air (what little there is) -- open churches with no walls (as all churches should be . . .) and houses with slatted windows.

May 8 -- rehearse "The Weave," which is still not finished, and drive to the airport by PMV (passenger motor-vehicle? -- an open pickup truck), via the parliament building. Fly to Lae, which will be our home for the next week (and our emotional home for much longer). Jacob Luke picks us up at the airport in the Mapai van, and we stop at Big Rooster for lunch (drive through). The heat is a new level of intense, and the vegetation is a new level of lush. Settle in to the three-room seminary house we'll be staying in, with no walls (everything slatted, including interior walls, to let in the air), one shower, one toilet, one fan (for all intents and purposes), and rain water to drink and wash in. Take a walkabout and see where Rhett grew up.

[hanging out in our home at Martin Luther Seminary in Lae]

May 9 -- a morning theatre workshop with the seminary students. Experience the pieces they've prepared for us (and their love for cassowaries), and perform "Hello," "The Weave," and the myth portion of "Midas." Break into groups and begin to talk about myths that can become staged stories. Then invited to a baby naming ceremony. A huge feast prepared (including an entire pig), and the "Apostles' Creed" as our gift -- our prayer of blessing upon this child's life. Playing with children, listening to them sing in the chapel, and learning hand games in broken English.

[playing handgames with the children]

May 10 -- a church service in English, in one of the first enclosed buildings we've been in. A traditional song while bringing gifts to the alter -- gifts that include vegetables as well as money. "The Creed" performed, again, as our gift. Great joy when Cindy speaks, not in Latin, or English, or sign language, or Arabic, but Pidgin, and Nicole's voice defies language itself. Then rehearsing "American Midas" for three hours -- preparing it for the round -- and presenting it in Chapel that night.

May 11 -- working with the communication class, and an afternoon trip to the market. Bought PNG skirts. Washed our hair in a dripela ren (massive rain storm).

[with our newly purchased PNG skirts]

May 12 -- listened to an Engan storyteller with our eyes closed, so he wouldn't turn white. Rehearsed with our communication group in the afternoon (swealteringly hot), and then again with the drama class in the evening.

May 13 -- morning communication rehearsal, and left exhausted and drenched for the rest of the day. Afternoon rehearsal with the drama class. The women brought amazing props that they had made by hand, on their own initiative. A swealtering performance at Lae Tech, with worship in Pidgin, and then "Hello," "The Weave," "The Creed," and part of "Midas." Amazing conversations with the students afterward.

May 14 -- performing with the seminary students for the whole community, after more morning rehearsals. Six groups in all. Our drama group (Stephen, Whitney, and I) telling an adapted myth about brothers turned to cassowaries, and rescued by a brother-redeemer who never stopped searching for his siblings. In the end, he burns the magician's house to the ground, with the magician trapped inside (a slightly disturbing vision of Jesus). Our communication group (Cindy, Stephen, Emily, and I) telling the story of a witchdoctor, an evil spirit, and the power of the Light. As the evil spirit, who was constantly leaping on tables, crouching, and twirling about, I was exhausted, and completely drenched, once the story was over.

[as the evil spirit, taking up my residence in the house]

May 15 -- for our safety, two seminary students drove with us to Ukarumpa (or "Little America") and rode back on the bus. Staying with host families in groups of two -- Emily and I together.

[creating pictures of redemption with the Ukarumpa high schoolers]

May 16 -- morning workshop with the 7th-12th grade MKs. Creating pictures of their community, and the redemption that even Ukarumpa needs. Going to a drop in center, for PNG children and youth, in the afternoon. Performing, and creating more pictures. Emily able to talk with two deaf boys.

[performing "The Weave" at the drop-in center]

May 17 -- church at Ukarumpa. All English and all white. Rehearsing "American Midas" in the afternoon (readjusting to a stage), and performing for the youth worship in the evening.

May 18 -- early trip to the Ukarumpa market, and creative dramatics with the elementary school students (every grade) after performing in their morning chapel. Brief meeting with the 8th grade drama class, talking about theatre, and working on vocalization. Relaxation with Sister Act 2 in the evening, and our nightly debrief with Tim Tams.

May 19 -- afternoon performance at Iyura National High School. We performed all of the pieces in their entirety for the first time. An hour of performing, then two hours spent talking to students. One girl took her bilum off her shoulder and gave it to me -- it had taken her over a month to make.

[one of our many performances of "The Creed"]

May 20 -- another early trip to the Ukarumpa market, then driving to Garoka, the Round Round Theatre, and NPAT.

May 21 -- a trip into a village, a traditional mumu (a feast with a butchered pig), and a bilasim skin ritual (dressing up in the traditional feathers and art).

[Whitney and I in our traditional headdresses -- they weighed a ton and were made of beetle shell, Bird of Paradise feathers, etc.]

May 22 -- a trip to a different village, to perform and watch NPAT in an open market place. Then performing "The Weave" in the Round Round Theatre, at a variety show.

[preparing to perform at the Round-Round]

May 23 -- driving back down from the Highlands to Lae, and the heat of the sea. Back home at Martin Luther Seminary.

May 24 -- our day of relaxation. A yacht sailed to Salimoa, which once was Lae. Snorkeling in the blue-green ocean, dolphins accompanying our boat, and a walk up the luscious mountain, with butterflies and anti-aircraft weaponry from WWII. Dinner at the yacht club as Jacob Luke's guests, and meeting his beautiful wife, who gave me her own necklace and earrings.

[our group on Salimoa]

May 25 -- flying from Lae to Port Moresby, and from Port Moresby to Brisbane. A night at the church that hosted us on our way in. A potluck dinner, sharing pictures from our trip, a midnight Tim Tam buying run, and sleeping on mattresses on the church floor.

[Cyndi, Jessie and I with our Tim Tams -- I bought two packages,
they each bought more like 20]

May 26 -- flying from Brisbane to Sydney, from Sydney to LAX, and from LAX to PDX. Saying goodbye in the airport. Taking the shuttle to Corvallis. A day that stretched on forever.

The Greater Trumps

2009-11-20T15:19:00.000+02:00

I am reading Williams again, and, like fire, he is pulsing in my blood. May we all "rise to adore the mystery of love" (108).

There had come into her life with the mystery of the Tarots a new sense of delighted amazement; the Tarots themselves were not more marvelous than the ordinary people she had so long unintelligently known. By the slightest vibration of the light in which she saw the world she saw it all differently; holy and beautiful, if sometimes perplexing and bewildering, went the figures of her knowledge [. . .] and she too, in a dance that was happy if it was frightening. Nothing was certain, but everything was safe--that was part of the mystery of Love. She was upon a mission, but whether she succeeded or not didn't matter. Nothing mattered beyond the full moment in which she could live to her utmost in the power and according to the laws of the dance. (191)

"By the slightest vibration of the light in which she saw the world she saw it differently . . . holy and beautiful" -- this reminds me of Lewis and Tolkien's argument for the power of fantasy: we see the world transformed into the mystery it truly is.

Mumu Pictures

2009-07-22T01:25:00.002+03:00

Some pictures of the pig slaughter. The worst was hearing it beaten to death. And the small puppy crying in the background.

Bilasim Skin

2009-07-22T01:12:00.000+03:00

The old women, singing wedding/courting songs, putting leaves in our hair, and laughing. The woman in the green wig (nicknamed Australia by her friends, in honor of her 'blond' hair and quirky personality [they informed us that Australians are weird]) stole me away shortly after, taking me to her hut, and stripping me for the bilasim skin ceremony. She later gave me a bilum (a 'purse' of sorts, handmade without tools, and worn by everyone -- men, women, and children), and told me that I was now her daughter.

Driving to the Mumu

2009-07-22T00:58:00.000+03:00

Our drive to the village in Goroka, where we had a mumu and a 'bilasim skin' ceremony (which involved traditional headdresses, and very little clothing). We left our van in the city of Goroka, because the 'road' was impassable for most vehicles. But driving in the back of a pick-up truck is so much more fun anyway. =)

The Mumu

2009-07-22T00:46:00.000+03:00

A village in Goroka, preparing for a 'mumu' (feast of pig and sweet potato), while we take a moment and rest in the shade.

Reading List [so far this summer]

2009-07-19T00:10:00.000+03:00

Summer Reading (thus far):

By Robin McKinley (one of Amberle's favorite authors; a fairytale/fantasy writer):
The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword -- prequel/sequel; I can't decide which one I like better, but both are good; the world, in The Blue Sword, is a bit Bedouin; The Hero and the Crown is closer to mythical Britain.
The Outlaws of Sherwood -- too broad in scope, but Cecil[y] and Little John make me smile.
Deerskin -- very good; the magic frustrates me at times (it seems a bit of an easy out), but I like the themes; it's tied up in my memories of PNG, since I was reading it in Lae, and as we were driving over the mountain pass into the highlands.
The Door in the Hedge -- decent short stories, though I'm not a huge short story lover.
Rose Daughter -- quite good; her original Beauty and the Beast (Beauty) I read as a kid, but I don't remember it well; she wrote this one twenty years later.

Susan Fletcher's Flight of the Dragon Kyn -- it's set in Kragland, a type of mythical Scandinavia, so it's the right setting for dragons; but not my favorite.

Mary Stewart's The Gabriel Hounds -- her Merlin books (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment) are some of my favorite books ever; I've never read anything else by her, so I was shocked to discover she's also a romance-mystery writer; this book was set in Lebanon, and a fun read.

Elie Wiesel's Night -- powerful, anguishing.

Essays Presented to Charles Williams [Preface by C.S. Lewis; On Fairy Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien; A Note on the Divine Comedy by Dorothy L. Sayers] -- marvelous.

Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn -- awful, but I needed to finish the series; makes me wonder if the rest were this bad and I just didn't notice?

Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca -- have wanted to read FOREVER, since so many people love it; I enjoyed it; a Jane Eyre of sorts, with beautiful understatement, and the compelling ache of fairytales lost.

C.S. Lewis's Of This and Other Worlds -- still working on this one, but loving it so far.

Elizabeth Peters (as read by Barbara Rosenblatt, and listened to as we travel in the van):
The Last Camel Died at Noon -- I enjoyed this; young Ramses is definitely something, and his first sight of Nephret . . . [chuckles].
Guardian of the Horizon -- not one of my favorites [Nephret's a non-entity, Ramses decides he's "in love" with a random female, and the book is written out of sequence (but Daoud is awesome)], and this is our second time through; so I'm half listening.

Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth -- not quite finished yet, but, as USA Today states, "stunning"; she's an incredible short story writer; also author of The Namesake (which I read for my modern novel class) and Interpreter of Maladies (her first book, which won her the Pulitzer Prize).

Essays Presented to Charles Williams

2009-07-02T09:37:00.001+03:00

". . . nearly always on Thursday evenings in my rooms and on Tuesday mornings in the best of all public-houses for draught cider, whose name it would be madness to reveal."
-C.S. Lewis, preface to Essays Presented to Charles Williams, viii-ix

"He was ready to accept as a revealed doctrine the proposition that existence is good: but added that it would never have occurred to him, unaided, to suspect this. . . It is one of the many paradoxes in Williams that while no man's conversation was less gloomy in tone--it was, indeed, a continual flow of gaiety, enthusiasm, and high spirits--no man at times said darker things. . . . But that was only one side of him. This scepticism and pessimism were the expression of his feelings. High above them, overarching them like a sky, were the things he believed, and they were wholly optimistic. They did not negate his feelings: they mocked them."
-Lewis, preface, xii-xiii

"No event has so corroborated my faith in the next world as Williams did simply by dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death that was changed."
-Lewis, preface, xiv

"Creative fantasy . . . may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like caged birds. The gems all turn into flowers or flames, and you will be warned that all you had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively chained, free and wild; no more yours than they were you."
-J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories" from Essays Presented to Charles Williams, 75

MAPAI GIRLLLLLLSSSSSSSSS!

2009-05-28T08:06:00.000+03:00

In the Mapai van, provided by Jacob Luke (one of Todd's past students, now one of the richest men in PNG, and our constant benefactor). As we drove by, children would run down from the hills crying, "MAPAI!" and sometimes, "MAPAI . . . GIRLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!" We grew increadibly attached to the whole experience. This is a bit of our drive up to Ukarumpa (in the highlands) from Lae (on the coast). The landscape was beautiful.

There were several reasons Mapai was such a big deal (and such an answer to prayer). There is still fairly little travel done in PNG, as the roads are quite difficult. Jacob Luke runs one of the biggest transportation companies (transporting goods in huge trucks -- getting highland produce to the coast to be shipped). This can be troubling business, as PNG roads are not always safe, and owning a national company, Jacob can't get the insurance his foreign competitors can. Therefore, his insurance is having each truck "adopt" a town along its route, and basically provide for those families. Villagers know which truck is theirs, and respect all of Jacob's property because it belongs to a generous man who uses his wealth to benefit others (PNGers tend to despise wealth if it's not shared). Therefore, Jacob's name, through his company and his generosity, provided protection as well as transportation.

(the Mapai van, and us -- driving to the airport on our last morning [5:30 AM] in PNG)

PNG to Corvallis in 12 hours . . . or so

2009-05-28T03:22:00.001+03:00

I am back in the Northern Hemisphere. Back in America. Back in Oregon.

Gigi picked me up from the Corvallis shuttle at 7:00 pm last night. A strange time warp: for PNG (our time) it was noon on Wednesday. And yet, here in Oregon, it was only 14 hours after we had started the trip, at 5:00 am on Tuesday.

We went to the Farmer's Market today, and I was struck by the otherworldliness. The pristine tables, street, and sidewalk, all the food neatly arranged on tall tables (away from the dirt, animals, and bugs), colors vivid, air cool, everyone smelling of freshness and flowers (if they smell at all). And it isn't that I mind the cleanliness (who would?), but I don't mind the other world either: the mats on the mud, the small piles of roots and fruit, dirt still clinging to their skin, dirty water poured over to keep everything fresh, insects buzzing, people crowding, smells wafting. Todd announced at one point, driving by a downtown market, that this would be our moment of intensest culture shock. But all I felt was a deep sense of rightness, of being home. Is it strange that part of me likes the smell? The stench of sweat reminding me that we are all human and alive, vulnerable in our bodies, created of tissue and tendons, beautiful, breakable, and salty. We, who are the pristine "ghost people" (and often forget that bodies ever naturally had a smell), try to remove all traces of dirt from our midst, unless it has been first cleansed and sterilized. Treated with antiseptic and bleach.

And I am not sure how to fathom this coexistence: PNG and America (or Western Civilization, if you will), not only in the same universe, but on the same planet. They seem to be mutually exclusive states of being, yet I have walked the roads of both, and my memories, emotions, and longings are entwined (perhaps as strongly) with the stained-glass of Notre Dame as the hot dust of Lae's dirty streets. I have always felt off-kilter by this dual-belonging, unsure of where I fit, or how I can mold myself to either. Yet, transitioning from the heat of Lae, to the cool mornings of PNG's "Little America" (Ukarumpa), I realized what I've always known: I grow accustomed to the comfort, but I thrive in the simplicity.

Life, intense and bare and real (with all its smell and dirt), is a living thing, heavy with peace.

Papua New Guinea is Coming Soon

2009-04-22T10:02:00.000+03:00

In less than two weeks, I graduate. Two days after that, I fly across the globe. And by "across the globe," I mean further than I have ever been before. I am going to Papua New Guinea (via a layover in Australia) to spend three weeks with eight theatre students, sharing stories with the people we meet.

I'm not really planning on blogging about the experience that much (for one thing, internet will be scarce, and I seem incapable of writing about things in retrospect). However, one of my fellow travelers, fellow writing/lit majors, and fellow ARC consultants, Sara Kelm (she was also my stage manager sophomore year), will be writing about the time extensively (she's been awarded a Richter's Scholarship to do travel-writing, and such). So I'm going to send you to her site, unabashedly: Sara is Going to Papua New Guinea.

Here is her introduction to our fellow adventurers [my comments are added in brackets]:

Cast of Characters
Just so you know who I'm talking about when I talk about people:

George Fox: the guy our school is named after; mostly I'll use it to refer to the university (also I may use GFU or Fox).

Rhett: director, professor, genius. He lived in PNG as a little boy while his parents were missionaries. This is his first time back in 20 years. I worked with Rhett on the last mainstage production at GFU. Thinker, mastermind, time-oriented, mildly sarcastic. [My director for As It Is In Heaven last spring. Also my professor for Acting I, Acting II (which I'm currently taking), and Acting IV (a Shakespeare acting class). He is an amazingly compassionate person, and a great teacher. He's also an amazing director, and probably the reason Fox's theatre department is so good].

Jere: executive assistant to the Vice President of Student Life at Fox. She lived in PNG about 15 years ago for a few years with her family. I work with her in the Student Life office, and she is a hoot. Loud, blonde, endlessly funny with a wicked humor and love for animals, travel, and cooking.

Todd: Rhett's dad and the reason we're able to go to PNG. He has quite a few contacts in PNG, and he's there right now, teaching. He's also an adjunct theatre professor at Fox. He loves PNG, loves Pigin, and loves to laugh. Intense like Rhett, he'll be a good help to us while we're there.

Jessie: roommate. Junior. Nursing major. [Acted with me in Moth].

Stephen: old friend. Senior. Spanish & Theatre double major. [Acted with me in Moth].

Nicole: close friend. Senior. Spanish & Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].

Jordan: other token boy. Junior. Writing/Lit & Theatre. [Was our vocal coach for As It Is In Heaven. He taught us lots of great Shaker songs].

Emily: fellow stage manager. Sophomore. Spanish & Theatre.

Karith: fellow writing/lit friend. Senior. Writing/Literature.

Cyndi: lover of the Beatles. Junior. Spanish & Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].

Whitney: sweet girl. Junior. Theatre. [Acted with me in As It Is In Heaven].

And me. Sara: who-knows-what-she's-doing-here. Junior and a half. Writing/Lit & Psychology. [As I already said, fellow writing/lit major and ARC consultant. She was my stage manager for Moth, and is currently taking an idependent study with me and another writing/lit friend].

NUCL and Mrs. Dalloway

2009-04-03T02:44:00.000+03:00

One conference down, and two to go.

This Saturday I'll be reading "Feminine Consciousness, Community, and Isolation in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway" (which should actually be "Mrs Richard Dalloway: the Tension of Feminine Consciousness," or something more like a title and less like a list) at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference for Literature in Portland (assuming we find a ride).

And since I know you're all so interested, here it is! =)

This was the first tutorial paper I wrote in Oxford. The style is pretty different than a thesis-driven American essay, so keep that in mind. Also, it's basically a rough draft since I had to do all the research, and all the writing, in less than a week (not something I'd ever attempted before). I'd love to have the time to completely rewrite it, because some of the ideas fascinate me, but I don't feel like they're expressed very well (or fully articulated) in this essay.

Anyway, this version has been tampered with (I had to rearrange a few of my sections), but hopefully it still flows alright.

The world of Mrs. Dalloway is spilt between the forces of isolation and community. It is a book about the individual within society—a book about fragmentation and unity. At the story’s center is Clarissa Dalloway, and Clarissa Dalloway’s party. Clarissa, the society hostess, defines ‘life,’ that essence that she loves and lives for, in terms of bringing people together, solving the supreme mystery that is “simply this: here was one room; there another.” Asking herself what she truly means by this thing called ‘life,’ she expresses a desire “to go deeper…to combine, to create”: “Here was So-and-So in South Kensington; someone up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it.” It is her “offering,” her “gift,” and even Peter Walsh cannot help but come under her influence, despite his contempt for her social obsessions: “She seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed.” Her party, with which the book ends, is the culmination of this desire to assemble (bringing together characters from throughout the book and Clarissa’s past) but it is by no means its only manifestation.

Indeed, Clarissa seems to associate this same idea of ‘life’ with the city itself. For while the book ends with Clarissa’s party, it begins with her pushing open her front door and plunging into the swinging, jingling, trudging uproar that is the city. She is swept along, surrounded by automobiles and rushing, laughing, mourning humans—individuals who are brought together in chance meetings (such as that between Clarissa and Hugh in the park), mutual awe (like the rumor allowed to “accumulate in their veins” ), and puzzlement over flying advertisements. Throughout the book this theme is maintained—the city as a backdrop for union, the meeting of disparate souls. In Laura Marcus’ book, Virginia Woolf, Marcus argues that this use of city as “consciousness in motion” is typical of modernist authors. However, Marcus suggests that Woolf is unique in her exploration of “communication and circulation in the city”—presenting London, not as a wasteland of isolation, so much as a unifying of individual aspects of society and humanity. Indeed, it is within this larger context of the city that the true significance of Clarissa’s party can be seen. It is not simply to bring together her specific guests that Clarissa plays the enchanting hostess, but to become part of the larger unifying force that London symbolizes: “She, too, loving it as she did [life; London; this moment in June] with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it...she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party.”

But against this physical backdrop of London, there is also the internal struggle for unification within Clarissa herself. It is the struggle for identity; the desire to bring together the different aspects of experience and emotion, and create a coherent whole. Upon looking at her face in the mirror, Clarissa purses her lips “to give her face point. That was her self – pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew the parts together...different...incompatible...into one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room and made a meeting-point, a radiancy.” She must assemble “that diamond shape, that single person” before she can return to the duties of the house. As Marcus explains, “Her identity fragmented, it has to be recollected, assembled, gathered together like the torn dress she intends to wear to her party that evening.”

This tension—this desire to unite disparate elements into a unified whole—is present in Clarissa’s constant memories of the past. Throughout the book, Clarissa is shadowed by her eighteen-year-old self: throwing open the French windows at Bourton, kissing Sally Seton, taking walks with Peter Walsh. The present is constantly filtered through previous experience—through events, relationships, and places. Peter remembers the younger Clarissa remarking, “She felt herself everywhere...she was all that. So that to know her, or anyone, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.” And as she walks through London, Clarissa ponders the connection she still has with Peter, “she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there...being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best...it spread ever so far, her life, herself.” And this constant spreading, these connections that define and redefine Clarissa’s identity, this ability to simultaneously be eighteen and in her fifties (“she felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged” ), leads Clarissa to the conclusion that a person’s essence cannot be defined or captured: “She would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.”

In The Experimental Self, Judy Little argues that the significance of this fractured identity is found in its role in the formation of a uniquely feminine consciousness. She proposes that women’s place on the outskirts of society has left them unsuccessfully socialized, and therefore capable of a subjective identity. They are forced to learn the language of a male-dominated social sphere, while also possessing their own language—the language of their mothers. This, Little states, allows women to be uniquely adaptable, able to migrate between different visions of reality and points of view. She suggests that this grants women an extreme relational tendency (unlike men who define themselves in opposition to the other), and quotes Patricia Waugh to state that women’s fiction “can be seen...as an attempt...to discover a collective concept of subjectivity which foregrounds the construction of identity in relationships.” Such an identity must, by nature, be extremely volatile, changing (or fragmenting) with the relationships that shape it, and Little goes on to state that, in Woolf’s novels, “self is a discourse...a means that facilitates the celebration of friendship and shared lives.”

However, there is another side to this feminine consciousness, and that, ironically, is self-chosen isolation—isolation used to withstand domination and preserve self, even at the cost of community. The suicide of Septimus Warren Smith, and Clarissa’s interpretation of his death, is perhaps the ultimate example of this practice. For Septimus, though not a woman, is certainly an outsider in society, so made by his traumatic experiences in the Great War and his inability to maintain “a sense of proportion.” Clarissa describes Septimus’ death, not as passive acquiescence (though she later cries out against the darkness), but as a self-chosen defiance—defiance, presumably, against men like Sir William Bradshaw, who “make life intolerable” by “forcing your soul.” This is consistent with Clarissa’s hatred of Miss Kilman, who desires, in Clarissa’s mind at least, to convert her, to destroy “the privacy of the soul.” And even when she speaks of the men she loves, of Peter and Richard, Clarissa seems wary to let them too close, or share too much intimacy: “There was a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, watching [Richard Dalloway] open the door; for one would not part with it oneself, or take it, against his will, from one’s husband, without losing one’s independence, one’s self-respect – something, after all, priceless.” She was right, she states, to not marry Peter, because he demanded that everything be shared, “everything gone into,” and “it was intolerable.”

This unease seems to represent, not a backlash against Clarissa’s original desires to combine and create, but a fear of domination. This is obviously true in the case of Miss Kilman and Sir William Bradshaw, but subtler when applied to Peter and Richard. Despite both men’s love for Clarissa (though Peter may deny being “in love” with her), there is a level at which, being female in a male-dominated society, she is very much in their power. This is especially true of Richard, because he is her husband, and even Peter comments that one of the tragedies of married life is that “with twice [Richard’s] wits, [Clarissa] had to see things through his eyes.” Furthermore, Clarissa, while walking in London, “had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway.” All the different fragments of Clarissa’s identity are swallowed up by that name.

However, there is another level at which isolation is beyond Clarissa’s control—not an attempt to maintain identity and withstand domination, but simply a frustration of her desire to cohere. For although an outsider’s status grants freedom to move between social spheres and perspectives, it ultimately prohibits full acceptance to any single portion of society. Thus, beneath the surface of Mrs. Dalloway flows a consistent current of discontent—of failed realization—as communion is sought, reached for, and lost. The moments of deepest separation seem to follow those of strongest union (or attempted union), for, if we are to believe Little’s account of feminine consciousness, that which drives Clarissa to pursue unity is ultimately what keeps her separate and apart.

Even in the midst of the ‘life’ that is London, Clarissa experiences moments of intense isolation: “She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone.” Directly following the contemplation of her own domestic bliss, Clarissa comes to the conclusion, “There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel. At midday they must disrobe.” This last statement, though seemingly peculiar, is particularly significant. In the second to last chapter it is faintly echoed, when, in the midst of her party, Clarissa moves into a side room and finds herself suddenly alone. “There was nobody. The party’s splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.” Clarissa’s dress, representing her role as hostess and socialite, comes into stark contrast with the sudden emptiness and silence. For though it is her gift to assemble, to bring together, it seems that fragmentation can only be held off, delayed, not prevented. For, eventually, “women must put off their rich apparel,” or even if they do not, the darkness may prevail regardless. For even as Clarissa’s party takes hold, turning “into something now, not nothing,” Clarissa feels dissatisfied, “for though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances, these triumphs...had a hollowness.” And when she hears of Septimus’ death, she interprets it as “her disaster – her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.”

And so, the struggle against alienation is lost. Septimus is dead, and the splendor of Clarissa’s party has fallen to the floor. “Closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone.” But no. “She must go back. She must assemble.” “They went on living...they would grow old.” Woolf leaves us with no clear answers, only a continuing dance of isolation and community—of drawing together and falling apart. But perhaps that is as it should be. For Woolf sees identity as a dialogue and self as an experiment—they are not to be established, but explored. Through her novels, Woolf is presenting “the courageous view that human beings are ideologically mobile”—are capable of change. Identity, as Woolf presents it, is contradiction warring for coherence, and, Little suggests, being unwilling to explore the fragments, to know more than “the (one) truth or...just one self,” limits a person’s humanity, and the artist’s creative response. Perhaps reaching coherence—creating unity—is not as significant as the process, “making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh.” The process that, according to Mrs. Dalloway, is life.

Bibliography

B. R. Daugherty and E. Barrett, ed., Virginia Woolf: texts and contexts (1996)
J. Little, The experimental self: dialogic subjectivity in Woolf, Pym, and Brooke-Rose (1996)
L. Marcus, Virginia Woolf, 2nd edn (2004)
V. Neverow-Turk and M. Hussey, ed., Virginia Woolf: themes and variations (1993)
V. Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1996)

the Inkblots, in all our glory =)

2009-04-03T02:37:00.000+03:00

(drinking our tea, a few Saturdays ago
[Kohleun had just spilled hot water on me, twice])

Snowstorms and hail, oh my!

2009-03-09T02:11:00.000+02:00

It is currently snowing outside our front door. But the sun is also shinning. Simultaneously.

The weather has been so odd lately. It has snowed more since I got back from Oxford/Jordan than any other winter I've been in Oregon (and that's discounting the huge blizzard they had at the end of last semester).

I was just at the coast for the weekend, where the weather was alternating between sunshine, massive hailstorms, and snow. Very beautiful, but just so odd.

However, I'll happily take this weather over rain . . . at least for a while.

(the apartments across from ours -- you can't tell in the picture, but snow was in the process of falling)

My slightly heretical view of Lewis and salvation, at my father's request . . .

2009-03-07T04:26:00.001+02:00

Well Baba, here it is. I haven't looked at it in a while, and didn't have a chance to edit before submitting it, so I'm sure there are lots of things that need to be tweaked. For instance, glancing over the first paragraph just now, I'm realizing that I need to rewrite the entire way I refer to God . . . (especially given my last post =).

I wouldn't say this is my best work; I remember being very unhappy with it when I wrote it (over spring break at Megan's house), but it seemed to fit the conference theme better than anything else I had.

If you have any suggestions, or notice other issues, let me know.

God the Father, who is deep and sacrificial love, sent His one and only Son, not to condemn the world, but to bring it life. As I Timothy 2:3-4 states, “God our savior [. . .] wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” This truth is the saving work of Jesus, who came that we might have life, and have it to the full. The life He gives is bread and light; it is salvation, redemption, and the forgiveness of sins. Grounded in the cross and resurrection, this life is eternal, and brings rightness with God and reconciliation with our neighbors. Ultimately, it is embodied in the very person of Jesus Christ.

But there seems to be a problem: God has provided salvation, but it is a limited salvation, available only to those who know His Son. Acts 4:12 reads, referring to Jesus, “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved,” and Jesus himself says, “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But what of those who suffer from ignorance, never having been exposed to the Gospel—those in other religions who are desperately seeking to serve God, but without having heard of Christ, or His atonement? Are they to be condemned for never believing in a name they have never heard? “Given that becoming a Christian is necessary for salvation,” argues James F. Sennett in his essay, “Worthy of a Better God,” “it follows that if God condemns one who has never heard the Gospel, then he is punishing that person for failing to do something she didn’t have the ability to do” (243). Where is the justice in that? Where is the mercy?

Romans 1:20 addresses this challenge, but with surprising implications. It states that, since creation, God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen through nature, leaving humanity without excuse. This verse seems to suggest that humanity has always had the ability to turn to God, but is choosing not to. Those in this passage are not condemned for ignorance, but for willfully rejecting God. As verse twenty-one continues, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” There is no evidence that those spoken of in this passage know God through the divine revelation of scripture or Christ’s incarnation. Instead, they are held accountable for the general knowledge they possess—leading to the conclusion that it must be possible to know and please God, even without hearing the name of Christ.

This appears to be in direct contradiction to the Acts 4:12 and John 14:6 passages. How are they to be reconciled? According to John Sanders, the answer is religious inclusivism, the belief that “the unevangilized are saved or lost on the basis of their commitment, or lack thereof, to the God who saves through the work of Jesus” (qtd. in Nash 104). According to inclusivists, Christ’s atoning death is necessary for salvation, but knowledge of His death is not (Nash 104). This, in many ways, is a continuation of the belief that faith, not knowledge, saves. It is meeting Christ, not any idea about Christ, which is the important thing. Jesus’ own disciples rarely understood who He was, or what He was about to do. However, they knew Him, and that was enough to impel them to leave everything, and simply follow.

C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is filled with examples of such encounters with Christ—such encounters with Aslan. In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory and Polly are entranced with the beauty of Narnia, the new world that is being sung into existence around them. However, once they see “the Singer himself . . . [they forget] everything else” (Lewis, MN 62). In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a transformation occurs at the very first mention of Aslan’s name:

“They say Aslan is on the move—perhaps has already landed.”
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different [...] At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. (Lewis 141)

Then, in The Horse and his Boy, when Aslan reveals himself to Hwin and Bree, two talking horses from Narnia, they do not see the connection between the stories of Aslan and the fierce and dangerous lion before them. Nonetheless, Hwin, in an act she does not recognize as faith, trembling (in fear or delight), walks up to Aslan and tells him: “You’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else” (Lewis, HHB 299). And Aslan, before he has revealed his identity, in a moment that recalls Christ’s “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace” (Mark 5:34), kisses Hwin and declares her his child.

In all of these instances, Aslan is adored and worshiped before he is recognized, and in most cases, before he is named. Perhaps the greatest example of this doctrine-less conversion is Shasta’s meeting with the great Lion. After walking beside an invisible Aslan for some time, Shasta asks, “Who are you?” Aslan, refusing to name himself, replies, “Myself” (Lewis, HHB 281). When the fog clears, Shasta comes face-to-face with the King for the first time, and falls at the feet of the unnamed Beauty. He knows nothing of Aslan, not the lies of Calormen, nor the truth of Narnia, but he sees the Lion, and it is enough (Lewis, HHB 282).

However, all of this is one step removed from the issue of inclusivism. In the previous examples, encounters with Christ (or Aslan) save without being fully recognized for what they are, or who they are with—but they are with Aslan. In the same way, in Saul’s climactic conversion experience, he acknowledges the speaker as Lord before he knows who is speaking—but Christ is speaking (Acts 9:5). Arguing that encounters with Christ save, even when they are not recognized as encounters with Christ, is not the same as arguing that salvation can occur without encountering Christ. Lewis does seem to take this step, however, stating elsewhere that “there are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it” (qtd. in Sennett 234). This seems to imply that not all who are saved will have come face-to-face with Christ, whether recognized or not.

But perhaps this is not what Lewis means by “belong[ing] to Christ without knowing it” (qtd. in Sennett 234). For, is he really saying that salvation can occur without encountering Christ, or is he arguing for the possibility of encountering Christ, not only without realizing that we have done so, but while actually thinking He is someone else? In other words, is it possible to have come to Christ through a different religion, not because Allah and Christ are the same, but because that which we called by the name of Allah, was actually Christ? Can we know Christ by a different name? Acts 4:12 appears to answer this question with a forceful negative, reminding us that Jesus has the only name with the power to save humanity. Lewis does not necessarily disagree, but he cautions us with the reminder that names, in our fallen state, tend to be misused.

Two examples from The Chronicles of Narnia bear testimony to this fact. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver is furious to hear the White Witch call herself Queen of Narnia, but Aslan is unperturbed. He affirms that titles have indeed been stolen, but promises that “all names will soon be restored to their proper owners” (Lewis, LWW 175). Then, in The Last Battle, there occurs an even more significant misuse of names. In it, a donkey is disguised to look like Aslan, and is given the blasphemous name “Tashlan,” a mix between Tash, the demon god, and Narnia’s true Lord. However, even this false name does nothing to alter reality, and the true natures of the donkey, Tash, and Aslan all remain unchanged. As the young Calormen warrior, Emeth, argues: the existence of a false Tash does not make the real Tash any less true (Lewis, LB 756)—and it is this loyalty that sets him apart as “worthy of a better God” (Lewis, LB 728). Aslan himself declares, “if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted” (Lewis, LB 757). This is because Aslan and Tash, regardless of name, retain their identities and are unchanging.

Therefore, although Christ saves, Lewis seems to argue that he does so through His deeper name, the name that manifests His very identity and cannot be misused—“Myself” (Lewis, HHB 281) the “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). For, ultimately, it is not any word, but Christ Himself, who brings life. It is the person behind the name, not the name itself, which is infinitely significant. Aslan can respond to the White Witch’s treachery with the words, “Peace, Beaver” (Lewis, LWW 175), because her misuse of sacred titles can have no ultimate effect. She can lie, but she can never change reality. In the same way, Tashlan can be invoked, but Aslan remains himself, regardless of name. As Aslan tells Emeth, “Not because [Tash] and I are one, but because we are opposites—I take to me the services which thou has done to him” (Lewis, LB 757). The implication is that Jesus, the one and only, who declared that “no servant can serve two masters” (Luke 16:13), is so abounding in goodness that service done to Him will never be mistaken for anything else.

Of course, Lewis may be in danger of taking this concept too far. His emphasis on good motives has the danger of focusing salvation on human actions and attitudes, rather than on Christ’s all-redeeming grace. In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape makes the statement, “[God] often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes He thinks bad on the monstrously sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best they knew” (Lewis 136). And Lewis once wrote in a letter, “I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know him” (qtd. in Sennett 235). One problem with these statements is that they assume a capacity for sincerity, and authentically good motives, in unredeemed humans. They also imply that those virtues are enough to gain God’s grace. But are we not taught that, although Christ transforms us, and through Him we can do all things, without Him we are dead? Has Lewis progressed from the possibility of encountering Jesus by a different name, to the non-necessity of encountering Him at all?

Before this question can be answered, however, we must establish the effect that encountering Christ actually has on the process of inheriting eternal life. In the previous examples of salvation in Narnia, transformation always comes when Aslan is seen. Does this mean that encounter and salvation are synonymous, and that experience of Christ is enough to bring life in itself? If so, and God’s goodness, beauty, and terror are too awesome to be resisted, then God could force Himself upon us by simply revealing His presence. However, this is not the case—a choice must still be made. In The Horse and his Boy, Prince Rabadash meets Aslan with the hate-filled words: “Demon! Demon! Demon! [. . .] I know you. You are the foul fiend of Narnia” (Lewis 307). This statement bears a strange resemblance to the demonic cry of recognition: “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). Rabadash stands as a reminder that Aslan’s grace must be accepted, not simply experienced. As James 2:19 states, even the demons believe—and shudder.

But if encountering Aslan is not enough to lead to salvation, the question still remains, is it necessary? The answer to this question is complex, but ultimately, I think it is affirmative. Coming to life in Christ is a perplexing and mysterious process, about which C.S. Lewis says, “A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; [but] what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work” (Mere Christianity 37). Although we may never fully understand how Christ saves, part of His work seems inextricably bound up in the individual’s response to “the central Christian belief [. . .] that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start” (Lewis, Mere Christianity 37). In God’s infinite wisdom and mercy, Christ’s grace does not seem to be enough; we must respond to that grace. We must respond to Him. And how are we to respond, if we never encounter Him?

This is not a question of knowing Christ by the right name, or of knowing “the true stories of Aslan” (Lewis, HHB 282), but of simply knowing Him. It is about having the opportunity to look Him in the face—Him of who Emeth says, “It is better to see the Lion and die than to be the Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him” (Lewis, LB 756). And it is about responding to that look, with either hatred or love. For, ultimately, those seem to be the only choices. As Christ himself states, “He who is not with me is against me” (Mathew 12:30).
But if an encounter with Christ is necessary, then we are back to a slightly modified version of the question, what of those who have never heard? It now becomes, what of those who have never seen? Never seen Aslan, never looked into the eyes that are “gold that is liquid in the furnace” (Lewis, LB 756), or had him touch his tongue to their foreheads—what of them? Is this a twisted form of predestination, where Christ reveals Himself to some, and not to others, therefore selecting those who can choose to respond, and banishing the rest to the darkness? I believe C.S. Lewis answers this challenge with an emphatic no.

I John 2:23 reads: “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” The implication is that, to lose life, Jesus must be denied, not merely lived in ignorance of. If salvation results from a person’s belief in Christ, once encountered, then, conversely, damnation is a rejection of Christ, also once encountered. Salvation cannot occur without meeting God, but neither can damnation. Both result from a person’s response to the Messiah, and response requires encounter.

And encounter we shall have, every one of us—though not necessarily on this earth. The Bible makes it very clear that all of humanity shall stand before its Maker on the Day of Judgment. Christian or not, we shall all have our hearts laid bear and be without excuse. As Lewis says of that day, “This time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature [. . .] That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not” (Mere Christianity 42). We shall see the glory of the Lord, and we shall respond with all that we are, and ever have been.

In the Bible, Jesus states, “Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:7-8). The promise is that those who search will find God—but when is never specified. In The Last Battle, Emeth meets Aslan on the other side of death, and like Shasta on the mountaintop, takes one look at the Glorious One and falls on his face in worship. And Aslan, who is “more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty [. . .] surpasse[s] all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert” (Lewis, LB 756), responds by bending his glorious head to kiss the Calormen’s forehead. Sennett argues that the only significant difference between Shasta’s meeting with the Lion, and Emeth’s, is that the one takes place in life, and the other after death. And this is only important because it is not important at all: “Aslan’s ability to grant the grace that is the natural culmination of the journey is not limited by the confines of birth and death [. . .] In the context of the all important matter of searching after truth, the question of which side of the Stable Door Emeth stands on when he finds it strikes us as totally irrelevant—and it is. All that is relevant is what the Lion knows—that Emeth, like Shasta, was on the journey (Sennett 241).” Whether Christ is met in life or death is insignificant—the important factor is that, once seen, He is embraced.

In the end, Lewis is urging us to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. We must seek truth, respond to the beauty we see, and go forward in obedience. We can only walk on in the knowledge we have, but walk on we must. Ultimately, many of us may find ourselves in the position of Emeth, meeting the Lion with the brokenhearted confession, “I have been seeking Tash all my days.” But our God is a God of mercy, as well as justice, and Aslan’s response is not to condemn, but to declare, “Beloved [. . .] unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek” (Lewis, LB 757). Regardless of language, the I AM is Lord, and He will reward all who have honestly pursued Him. Every journey will culminate in an audience with the High King, and there shall be no excuses. He shall either be the fulfillment of everything we have lived and longed for, or the horror we have always fled. All things shall be made clear, “justice shall be mixed with mercy” (HHB 307), and God shall save all who are truly His.

Works Cited

Lewis, C.S. The Horse and his Boy. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 205-309.
---. The Last Battle. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 669-767.
---. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.111-197.
---. The Magician’s Nephew. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 11-106.
---. Mere Christianity. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 1-118.
---. The Screwtape Letters. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 125-188.
Nash, Ronald H. Is Jesus the Only Savior? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.
Sennett, James F. “Worthy of a Better God: Religious Diversity and Salvation in The Chronicles of Narnia.” The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy: The Lion, the Witch, and the Worldview. Ed. Gregory Bassham and Jerry L. Walls. Chicago: Open Court, 2005.

Feminism and Faith

2009-03-06T02:43:00.000+02:00

"Rather than employ a variety of names to more effectively illustrate the mystery of God, the teachers and preachers of our childhood always used the male pronoun. Their words contradicted the lessons they taught us. Religion had given God a man's name while claiming that God was beyond naming, that 'he' was a mystery." -Patricia Lynn Reilly

We're reading Reilly's text, A God Who Looks Like Me, for Feminism and Faith, a group I attend on Thursday nights. So far, I'm not a huge fan of the book. Mostly, I think, because it's a bit too "self-helpish" for my taste. And I'm not completely sure where the author is actually going with her observations. However, it is a good jumping-off place, and has led to good conversations.

The group is a slightly modified continuation of something we started in the fall of 2007. It sort of died that spring (Megan, Tammi, Kohleun and I were the only ones who showed up on a regular basis), was discontinued last fall, and then resurrected this spring. We meet at the home of a religious studies professor (Kendra Irons, who Kohleun T.A.s for), make dinner, watch the occasional movie, and have discussions.

It's a lot of fun, and really refreshing. Most of the students are sophomores, who I hadn't met before this spring, but it's a good group of interesting (and interested) people.

If you want to be bored to tears, you can read the article I wrote about the group for my journalism class (fall '07). This is a great example of why I hate this particular form of writing:

A new women studies group at George Fox University will discuss the gender of God, body image, sexist language, female sexuality, the presentation of God in art, domestic violence, identity and other related issues.

At 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, Kendra Irons and Jill Lepire held the first meeting of a George Fox discussion group focused on women’s issues and faith. Twelve students attended the meeting on the outside patio of Newberg’s Coffee Cottage. Following meetings will be at 5 p.m. every Friday at Hoskins House, located at 214 River St. on the George Fox campus.

Irons, an assistant professor of religious studies at George Fox, facilitated the meeting, which Lepire, a junior double majoring in psychology and religion, organized. Lepire approached Irons about being the group’s faculty advisor in the spring of 2007. Irons said she agreed because she is passionate about helping women on the “road to feminism.”

Susan Suihkonen, a senior elementary education major, offered Hoskins House as the group’s venue. Suihkonen, who lives in Hoskins House with seven other women, said that they want their house to be a place of safety where people are accepted unconditionally. She sees this as an important environment for the women studies group because “being part of this group puts people at risk of rejection.”

The women who attended the first meeting ranged in age from sophomores to seniors, and were pursuing majors in religion, Christian ministries, writing and literature, art, international studies, elementary education, psychology and philosophy. When asked why they were at the meeting, most answered that they were becoming dissatisfied with the church and its presentation of a male God.

Katiana Hultz, a junior international studies major, said she’s excited about the group because it’s a place where she can be true to herself without offending others.

“We’re very limited in what we feel we’re allowed to think and believe,” said Hultz. “Knowing that there were other people who thought like this made me very happy.”

Inklings, Inkblots, and one more conference . . .

2009-03-04T01:05:00.000+02:00

Kohleun and I just heard back about our last conference. We'll both be reading at Sigma Tau Delta's Faith in the Humanities Conference, at Northwest University (near Seattle, Washington). The conference is March 19th and 20th, the two days before spring break. We're still not exactly sure how we'll be getting up there, but I think one of our professors is going to road-trip with us. Which should be a lot of fun. =)

Kohleun will be presenting a creative non-fiction piece (somewhere along the lines of her first memory, and the church), and I'll be reading a paper I wrote two years ago for my C.S. Lewis and the Bible class: "C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Issue of Religious Inclusivism." Both papers are a little . . . heretical. So things should be interesting. =)

On a side note, the class/professor I wrote my C.S. Lewis paper for is still exerting significant influence on my thinking, and the thinking of my friends. Starting this spring, a group of us has been meeting every Saturday, from 2:00-4:00 (i.e. 2:00-5:30/6:00), to share ideas, fellowship, and papers. We jokingly refer to ourselves as the Inkblots -- similar to the Inklings, but with no beer, few men, and one two-year-old child (and rather less brilliance =). We meet at the house of a married student (who took C.S. Lewis and the Bible with me) and his wife (who grew up in Africa) and we drink lots of tea. Although the idea was to form a writing group, it isn't that exactly. For one thing, we read our papers aloud, rather than handing out hard copies, so it's very hard to comment on grammar, syntax, or form. Invariably, it becomes a discussion about content -- the ideas conveyed, the imagery used, and the emotional power expressed. Since I'm already in a writing group (two of my fellow writing/lit majors and I are doing an independent study with our favorite writing prof) this is a nice change of pace. A very different focus.

In many ways, this group is a culmination of ideas we've been discussing for the last two years (since taking Roger's class). For all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, the Inklings, Lewis, imagination, fantasy, Tolkien, etc. have always been significant (at least in the abstract), but I think Roger's class inspired a deeper academic/intellectual exploration of what those authors are actually doing, and why they are successful (an exploration that leaked into Shared Praxis the next year, and reading Charles Williams' work). I'll admit that this doesn't hold true for all Inklbolt members (*cough* Kohleun *cough*), but it's the foundation that inspired the group. And the core that keeps it going.

On a further side note, favorite professors should NOT go on sabbatical during students' last year of college. It is most distressing.

(While at Fox, Roger Newell's classes have probably had the most significant influence on my spiritual journey. I've found each of them to be transformative in some subtle, but powerful, way: Bible Survey, Christian Foundations, and C.S. Lewis and the Bible).

Conferences on literature . . . here we come!

2009-02-27T01:10:00.000+02:00

Now that I'm in my last semester of my senior year in college (we're not even going to address how scary that thought is), I have finally gotten around to submitting papers to literature conferences.

So far, I have submitted to three, and have heard back from two -- both good news. I'll be presenting some of my creative non-fiction work (potentially two essays) at the Speaking Truth to Power Conference (sponsored by the Conference on Christianity and Literature), hosted at George Fox University, April 16-18.

I also just heard that Kohleun and I have been accepted to present at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference for Literature (NUCL), hosted at the University of Portland on April 4th. I'll be reading one of my Oxford essays: "Community, Isolation, and Feminine Consciousness in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway."

Kohleun will be presenting the paper she wrote (in Oxford) on the women poets of World War I.

Now I just have to figure out what people actually DO at conferences...

The Vagina Monologues

2009-02-26T02:46:00.007+02:00

If all goes according to plan, Kohleun and I will be graduating in May with the first ever Women Studies' minors from George Fox University. While a minor may not seem that impressive, it's a huge step for the school (and something the writing/literature department has fought hard for). Hopefully, a full-fledged major will be next . . .

As part of this new minor, Kathy Heininge (one of my favorite literature professors) is teaching a Gender Theory class this semester. Kohleun and I are both taking it (it's my sixth class with Kathy), and it's one of the highlights of my week. There are only eight of us (7 girls, and 1 brave guy), and we sit around a table, in a bright sun-light room (assuming it's not raining), and talk about fascinating issues. We never have enough time to really delve into the topics (which is crazily frustrating), but it raises a lot of good questions (something that Kathy is great at -- she always says that she doesn't lecture, she questions).

Anyway. All of this to say that five of us (and Kathy) went to see the Vagina Monologues this past Friday. We went over to Kathy's for dinner first (and petted her beautiful cats and wonderful dog), and then drove down to Western Oregon University in Monmouth.

We actually got there a little late, so we missed the very beginning, but it was still a pretty compelling show. That's not to say that it was an easy, light, or uncontroversial show. There were definitely portions that I found highly problematic and very disturbing. However, I completely support the show's existence, and believe that it raises important topics that need to be voiced, discussed, and demystified. Of course, I suppose the question is, are all of those topics of equal value? Female sexuality, sexual violence against women, the vagina, orgasms . . . ? Is there a point at which the show goes too far? I don't thinks so, not really. If this were simply a show to amuse and entertain, and used sexual/vulgar references as an easy way to achieve those goals . . . then I would take issue. The Vagina Monologues, however, is a far cry from easy, or shallow, entertainment. It is meant to be thought provoking, amusing at times, and perhaps inappropriate (although, who decides what is and is not appropriate in a patriarchal society?) . . . but it is none of these things thoughtlessly or pointlessly.

Ultimately, it is a show that asks questions. Where do we center our value as women? Is it in a particular part of our anatomy? And if so, is that identification a good or a bad thing? A liberating or enslaving thing? Why are we so afraid to use the word vagina? What is it that society has told us about our vaginas, and our relationship to our vaginas? Should we be afraid of them, value them, do everything within our power to protect and hide them, treat them as something odd, shameful, painful . . . inhuman?

As a Christian, the implications go even further: how does God intend us to view our sexuality -- a sexuality that was divinely created, and declared good? Is it a sexuality that needs to be reclaimed from all of the warping connotations and practices that have been imposed upon it, associated with it, etc.? And if so, how does that reclamation happen? What is the road forward?

There is another aspect of this show which is easier, perhaps, to categorize according to morality and the heart of God. And that is the issue of sexual violence, particularly the large scale sexual violence being perpetrated in places like the Congo (here's a link to an article detailing the reality of the situation). Or the comfort women of Asia, still pleading with the Japanese government for a formal apology before the last of them die, taking their stories with them. If men have the right, in so many societies, to use women’s sexuality against them, surely women have the right to join together and discuss what their sexuality actually means.

The Vagina Monologues is not just about provoking-thought or raising discussion, it is also about protecting the unprotected and eliminating violence (the show inspired a grass-roots movement known as V-Day, dedicated to ending international violence against women and girls).

(Kohleun's Vagina Monologues T-shirt)

"VDAY: Until the Violence Stops"

Back to the States

2009-01-05T20:22:00.006+02:00

It's almost the end of Christmas break. In three days I fly back to the States for the first time in more than eight months. It's strange. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Since I left, I've spent almost a week in Paris, two weeks on a house-boat in southern France, three days in Rome, visited Florence and Venice, spent my summer at home in Jordan, took a trip to Palestine and Israel (Bethlehem and Jerusalem), volunteered at an orphanage for girls, re-visited Egypt (Sharm el-Sheikh) for the first time in four years, stayed at a B&B in Macduff, Scotland, stayed with friends in Yeovil, England, spent many days in London, saw a good friend in Northern Ireland, went on field-trips to Stonehedge, Salisbury, Old Sarum, the British War Museum, Hampton Court Palace, and Bath, lived in the amazing university town of Oxford, attended the university of the same name, went back to Rome with my Classics Tutor, celebrated Thanksgiving with one of my best friends' family in Carlisle, and came home to Amman for Christmas.

And now Christmas is over, and I'm going back. Back to my last semester at Fox. Back to graduation in the first week of May.
Back to . . . the rest of my life.

Yeah, like I said, I'm not sure how I feel.

The Bodleian Library

2008-11-16T21:11:00.011+02:00

There are over a hundred libraries in Oxford. Most belong to the individual colleges, and can only be used by members (for example, we can use the Wycliffe Hall library, but not the Trinity College library). Others are more widely accessible, such as the faculty libraries (there is one for every subject). You have to be a university member, and you have to register with each library individually (I'm registered with the English, Classics, History, and Theology faculty libraries) but they allow you to check books out, which is hugely helpful.

And then there is the Bodleian. The Bodleian is the only actual "university" library, and it is HUGE. Several of its main buildings are clustered in the general vicinity of the Radcliffe square (the Old Bodleian, the New Bodleian, the Radcliffe Camera, etc.), and they are constantly building on.

This library, while gorgeous and amazing (you feel like you've stepped into history when you walk through the doors) is hugely complex. There are books located in each individual portion of the library, called "reading rooms." These cannot be reserved, and must simply be found on the many shelves of glorious knowledge. The vast majority of books in the Bodleian's collection, however, are found in "the stacks." The stacks are a mysterious entity, location unknown, where literally thousands of books wait to be requested. To get a book moved from the stacks to somewhere you can actually access it, you look it up on their database, and have it requested to a specific reading room. Within a specified amount of time, your book will arrive, and you go to that room to pick it up and read it there (my reading room of choice is the lower rr of the Old Bodleian). The Bodleian does not allow books to be taken from the premises, or moved from room to room.

This, though it sounds easy enough, was really difficult to get used to. Not the system per se, but the inability to check books out. The necessity of always reading in the library. Getting your books at the beginning of the day, claiming a table (by an ancient window, overlooking the towers and spires of Oxford), having to leave your books behind every time you needed a coffee break or food (there is a coffee shop in Blackwells, a really famous bookstore across the street), and then handing them back at the end of the day (you can have them held for you, or returned to the stacks). It was especially tricky during the British Landscapes course, because the library was still on holiday hours, and closed down at 7:00pm, and wasn't open during the weekend. However, it has definitely driven home the importance of taking good reading notes. =)

One really cool thing about the Bodleian is that it was England's first copyright library. This basically means they get a copy (or can if they want) of every book published in England since 1610. This, needless to say, has made the Bodleian a world famous research library (and is the reason it's constantly outgrowing its space allotment). The library was named after Sir Thomas Bodley (1545-1613), who secured its copyright status (and left his fortune to it) after he refurbished, and reopened, the Oxford Duke Humfrey's library in 1602. The Duke Humfrey still exists within the confines of the Old Bod., and is where the forbidden section of the Hogwart's library was filmed for the Harry Potter films. If you want to see some amazing pictures, I highly recommend you search Google images for "bodleian library."

A little archaic, but I think the following poem is cool just for the realization that every book written by every English scholar, poet, or novelist will stand tribute to this creator of libraries. What a legacy!:

Most noble Bodley! we are bound to thee
For no small part of our eternity.
Th' hast made us all thine Heirs: whatever we
Hereafter write, 'tis thy Posterity.
This is thy Monument! here thou shalt stand
Till the times fall in their last grain of Sand.
And whereso'er thy silent reliques keep,
This tomb will never let thine honour sleep.
Still we shall think upon thee; all our fame
Meets here to speak one Letter of they name.
Thou canst not dye! Here thou art more than safe
When every Book is they large Epitaph.
-Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)

(the passage to Radcliffe Square)

(the Radcliffe Camera, with the University Church in the background)

(the Radcliffe Camera, with All Souls College in the background)

(the Radcliffe Camera -- the upper reading room has a reputation for looking like Bell's library in Beauty and the Beast)

(in the Old Bodleain courtyard)

(a door inside the courtyard of the Old Bod.)

(by the "Visitors May Not Pass Beyond This Point" sign in the Old Bod.)

Virginia Woolf and Cambridge: why she isn't there

2008-11-12T20:07:00.006+02:00

I don't think it would be a stretch to say that Virginia Woolf loved Cambridge. She was in awe of its wealth and history -- the heritage of learning it represented and embodied. Of walking there, she wrote: "The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning" (Oxbridge is the term used to sum up all that Oxford and Cambridge together represent). And of course, there is her description of the aftereffects of lunching at King's (a multi-course feast of partridges and ducklings and salmon and soup and cream and salads and potatoes and puddings and wines): "And thus by degrees was lit, halfway down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."

This week, for my primary tutorial, I'm rereading A Room of One's Own (for the third time). It's an amazing text, filled (anti-feminists may be surprised to hear =) with compassion, good humour, and a lot of common sense. I've loved it every time I've read it.

My tutor assigned a piece of secondary literature, however, that's been making me realize how intensely ironic it is to be reading/studying A Room of One's Own in the context of Oxbridge.

On the one hand, Woolf was intensely aware that she, as a woman, was an outsider. Women were not allowed to receive degrees at Cambridge until 1948 (about 30 years after Oxford students), and in 1921 (just 7 years before Woolf gave her historical address at Girton) a mob of male students destroyed Newnham's beautiful bronze memorial gates, in celebration of voting "overwhelmingly" to prevent women from receiving degrees. "The symbolic and real violence of this chilling scene is mitigated in most accounts and turned into a joke to shame the women" (J. Marcus).

To add to this, there is Woolf's own account of visiting Cambridge -- an account riddled with exclusion: "He was a beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me" . . . "[A] kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library" . . . "and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and the poverty and insecurity of the other and the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge."

And of course, there is her less than shining description of dinner at Fernham (Oxbridge's female counterpart) to compare to lunch at King's, and her conclusion: "The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. The lamp of the spine does not light on beef and prunes."

While this is disturbing enough, and the starting place for Woolf's discussion of women and fiction, there is the added peculiarity that Woolf, the uneducated daughter of an educated man, never truly belonged at Fernham either, and, as Woolf, has never been accepted at Cambridge. Jane Marcus, the author I was reading (Virginia Woolf, Cambridge, and A Room of One's Own), states that nowhere in Cambridge is there a single plaque to commemorate Woolf's work, and that none of her manuscripts are available in the university's libraries (being held in open collections, instead). All her male relatives, and all her Bloomsbury friends (with the exception of her husband), figure prominently in library and college, and even her female cousins are well respected at Cambridge, having served as librarians and presidents for the women's colleges. Virginia, on the other hand, has only the remembrance of absence and trespass. She -- who visited Cambridge often to see brothers, friends, and a Quaker aunt (the famous Friends' theologian, Caroline Stephen), and delivered one of the century's most celebrated feminist lectures within its confines -- she is only an outsider:

"It is October, 'October, the birth of the year,' as Virginia Woolf says in A Room of One's Own. It is Michaelmas Term in Cambridge, the birth of the academic year. How differently Woolf's elegy for the lost history of women writers echoes on these ancient stones. Why did I expect that she would have left some trace in this town, some mark on its walls? . . . Why is it such a terrible reality to face the facts of Virginia Woolf's analysis of the university as a patriarchal institution, to feel her discomfort here, her sense of being a stranger, as she complains in drafts of the essay? Not much has changed. I itch to take out a tube of the lipstick she so disdained and write 'Virginia Woolf Was Here' all over the walls that bear the names of the great dead who studied here, men's names of course."
-Virginia Woolf, Cambridge and A Room of One's Own: 'The Proper Upkeep of Names' by J. Marcus (1996)

A Week in the Life . . .

2008-11-04T22:50:00.009+02:00

So, I'm not sure how much information people actually want about my life, but I'm going to give it to you regardless. =)

My week schedule (approximately) is as follows:

Sunday:

* Either high mass at St. Mary Magdalen's or unprogramed worship at the Oxford Friends meeting (which is right next to the Eagle and Child, where Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams used to hang out).
* Tea at Crick (where I live) from 4:30-5:30. Jonathan (our Jr. Dean -- basically, an RA/RD) serves, and we have lots of biscuits. There's even a tea faerie who takes our orders, which involve secret codes such as "Dracula's Dream" and "Fat Cow."

Monday:

* Every other week I have a paper due at 9:00pm.
* Some weeks there's a Young Friends meeting, which involves 30min of silence, and free dinner.
* I was going to WomCam (Women's Campaign) meetings, but I've been busy.

Tuesday:

* 10:00am lecture on Virginia Woolf ("Contextualizing Woolf") with Dr. Whitworth, author of Virginia Woolf: Authors in Context.
* Every other week, my secondary tutorial (Classical Literature) at 11:30. It's with Jonathan, and involves coffee, and sometimes biscuits. They've tended to run about two hours (rather than the designated one), and have been a lot of fun. Which is great, because Classics is, frankly, terrifying. I have absolutely no background in the discipline and it's so HUGE. But Jonathan asks great questions, gives me time to process and gather my thoughts, and has very enlightening opinions (and an amazing store of knowledge). I've learned a ton.
* Tea at Frewin Court (where the program's offices are) from 2:00-4:00. This involves a ridiculous amount of chocolate, and lots of cheese puffs. Simon, our Tutor for Student Affairs (dean of student life) serves, and most of the 60-some students pass through his office during the two hour period. Kind of crazy.

Wednesday:

* Seminar lecture at Wycliffe Hall (the actual college we're members of) from 2:30-3:30, followed by tea. The subject is "Faith and Scholarship," which they are very quick to emphasize is different than "Faith and Learning." Unsurprisingly, it's about pursuing Christ, and academic excellence, at a research university (such as Oxford) -- especially long term.
* Movie night at the Vines (the other house), which I go to if I can. They're usually playing something that has something to do with England (e.g. Fawlty Towers, A Man for all Seasons, etc.).
It's about a 40min hike, out into the sort-of-country, through fields lit by old-style lanterns, under an Oxford sky. Really beautiful and silent. Reminds me, for some odd reason, of Narnia.

Thursday:

* A Virgil lecture at 11:00, with Dr. R.W. Cowan. He's in his mid-twenties (I would guess) and loves to jump around a lot, have goofy pictures on his slide shows, and read ancient texts in different voices. He was very disappointed last week, 'cause we ran out of time before he could impersonate Venus. =)
It's held in the Examination Schools, a gorgeous, huge, old building where Tolkien used to lecture.
* "Contesting Texts" lecture at 3:00, with Dr. Methven. It's a small lecture (held in a big room, but not many students go), but really interesting. Basically, the point is to demonstrate literary criticism in action, and the professor analyzes two texts every week, looking at them through various lenses.
* Then, at 6:00, I have my primary tutorial on Virginia Woolf. It's been a challenge. I love Woolf's writing, so have really enjoyed the primary texts and getting familiar with criticism and secondary sources. However, I feel a complete lack of connection with my tutor. I don't think I approach the texts the way she wants me to, but I'm never sure what she does want, and she's given me barely any feedback on any of my work so far. It's a bit frustrating, but I'm hoping I will get better at understanding her expectations and communicating my ideas as the term progresses (though, freakily, I'm already half-way done).

Friday:

* 9:00am lecture on sexuality and gender in ancient Greece and Rome, with Dr. T. J. Morgan. This is for my "long essay" due the week after term finishes. My subject is something along the lines of interpreting Medea as a feminist text within its historical context, and whether that's even possible.
* 11:00am lecture on Homer, with Dr. R. B. Rutherford. If truth be known, I tend to fall asleep slightly in this one. It's fascinating, but the week is long, and it comes at the end. Need I say more?
* Best part of the whole week: Taruithorn, the Oxford Tolkien Society! So fun. Depending on the week, we might be doing dramatic readings, mock trials, or hobbit dancing. =)
Next week is Gandalf's fireworks. But, sadly, I'm going to miss them.

Saturday:

* Totally depends on the week. If I'm going into a two-tutorial week (like this one is), Saturday is spent trying to crystallize the ideas for my Monday classics paper. If not, exploration is in order.
And even though last Saturday should have been spent studying, I went to an open-air French market and bought Turkish delight.
(I went with a friend I met at the Tolkien Society -- she happens to be Egyptian, and we recently discovered that we have HCC and CCS connections, amazingly enough). =)

Overall, this may not seem like that much, but our handbook is infamous for saying that most tutors will assign more weekly reading than U.S. students are used to reading in a semester. Since I'm a lit. major, that's not exactly true, but the load is definitely not light. I read most of my primary sources this summer, so that's been very helpful, but I'm still getting used to the process of spitting out research papers. I'll let you know if I ever manage mastery . . .

But overall, a fun challenge. Such a different way of doing education -- completely research based, and dependent on the student's own quest for knowledge. Reminds me of home schooling, just a bit. =)

Northern Ireland

2008-11-04T16:41:00.004+02:00

Between British Landscapes and Full Term (the normal 8-week Oxford term) we had a five day break, and Kohleun and I went to visit Megan in Northern Ireland. Well, first we slept all day Friday (at least, I did -- having pulled at least two all-nighters the week before), and then we flew on Saturday. We had a good amount of time in the airport (due to bus schedules) so we pretty much walked around, ate, sat and read, and bought warm hats. =)

We then spent a lovely time in Belfast. Sleeping on the floor, under wonderful comforters, and watching House at night. So relaxing.

On our last day, we took a train to the coast, drank coffee, and soaked in the beauty.

(in Belfast)

(at the train station, waiting)

(at the coast)

(colorful houses)

For a slightly more serious post about Belfast (and the murals on Shankill Road) here's a link to my other blogsite: Belfast Murals.

London's Imperial War Museum

2008-11-03T14:32:00.003+02:00

This is a bit impersonal, but here's a link to some of my impressions from the Imperial War Museum in London: In Memoriam: The Great War.

During the first four weeks I was here, I took a course called British Landscapes, created especially for SCIO students. It was an amazing class, integrating aspects of history, literature, philosophy, theology, political science, and physical geography. We averaged about two lectures a day, one from dear old Simon Schama, and one from an Oxford guest lecturer -- a specialist in whatever discipline we happened to be studying. We also wrote three intense research papers.

Anyway, getting back to the War Museum, we had a field trip every Thursday, in which every student on our program, as well as professors, would pile into a double-decker bus, and go gallivanting across England. Our last trip was to London's war museum, which happens, ironically, to be hosted in the hospital that used to be called Bedlam. That's right, the insane asylum.

At the time, I was writing a paper on women poets of the world wars, dealing with issues of propaganda and the voices we get (and don't get) to hear. I was deeply impacted (and exhausted) by the sheer volume of death and pain. I walked into an exhibit called The Children's War, and started crying just looking at a wall-sized portrait of a child who lived, and perhaps died, during World War II.

I couldn't even bring myself to enter the Holocaust exhibition.

And through it all, the deep nagging feeling, what are we doing here? Commemorating bombs and steel and awful death. Watching children (there were several school groups present) running and laughing through the exhibits, climbing on the fighter jets (there to be touched and enjoyed), and enthralled by the missiles taking up the center of the atrium. I felt sick, but unable to do anything. Sick that we forget; sick that we pretend it was a game; sick that boys and girls still go off to die in gruesome ways. Sick that 90 years after World War I (the anniversary of the Armistice is the 11th of November) we still don't seem to grasp the horror of war's impact.

* * *

On a slightly different note, World War I is still called the Great War in England. Although I've always been taught about its horrors, the gas and pointless death, the lost generation, etc., World War II has always been the real war in my mind, partially, I think, because of the Holocaust. The Great War, however, had an affect on Europe that, as Americans, I don't think we're ever taught, or fully understand. In our psyche it's simply the prelude -- a war we barely fought. But though everyone here will admit that World War II was awful, it doesn't seem to have had the scarring affect of its predecessor. In some ways, World War I was and is the only war:

Whenever the November sky
Quivers with a bugle's hoarse, sweet cry . . .
I remember,
Not the war I fought in
But the one called Great
Which ended in a sepia November
Four years before my birth.
-Vernon Scannell, from The Great War

The Last Five Years: a Musical

2008-11-02T00:53:00.004+02:00

Tonight, I went to watch the closing performance of The Last Five Years at Keble College. I had heard the music before, but never seen the show. So good. So powerful. So heartbreakingly tragic.

A two person musical, it's the story of the characters' marriage, told forward from the moment they meet (by Jamie), and backwards from the moment it ends (by Cathi). They sing together only once, at the very middle, when they decide to spend forever together.

Though heartwrenching, I actually find the show incredibly hopeful. Their love, and joy in each other, is so palpable. So real. And though it is SO painful to watch them reach out, and draw back, and fail over and over again to truly connect, the potential for reconciliation is potently present. And even though they fail to ultimately save their marriage, the play is in no way a testimony to the inevitability of that failure. Nor is it a trivializing of heartbreak, or a cheapening of love.

This particular rendition was performed in a tiny black box theatre, and we had incredible seats (front row of a balcony that was maybe 10ft off the ground). The actors were great. So full of energy. They drew you in and became the characters -- melding their reality with your own. Their vocals struggled a bit (at times), but they were so real that it was hard to mind. We were also right next to the musicians, who were great, but tended to drown them out a little.

Overall, such a full experience. And I can't get it out of my head. How, oh how, do I concentrate on my Aristotle, Oedipus, and Bacchai essay?

And Keble, like all colleges at Oxford, is beautiful behind its stone facade.

Snowing in October!

2008-10-28T22:21:00.005+03:00

I just had one of the most amazing experiences ever. I walked home from the Bodleian in the snow! Yes, it is snowing. Melting as soon as it touches the ground, but still. It's coming down in big, beautiful flakes. They're caught in the yellow lamp light, twirl, dance, and die. I stepped out of the Bodleian (where I was studying) to find the courtyard empty, dark, and full of falling snowflakes. Still and magical. I grinned like an idiot the whole way home (even though my fingers almost froze off). Oxford and dancing snow. Smile. Sigh.

Oxford in Print

2008-10-27T22:52:00.009+03:00

Some of these are just funny (and yes, they do enjoy taunting Cambridge), others hit closer to home:

Oxford is on the whole more attractive than Cambridge . . . and the traveller is therefore recommended to visit Cambridge first or to omit it altogether if he cannot visit both.
-Baedeker's Great Britain (1887)

What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford, broadly speaking, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels compelled to write about it.
-A. A. Milne

Who can . . . walk up the Oxford High Street on a sunny morning or linger on a clear night in Radcliffe Square and not be aware of something more authentic than the life of everyday?
-The Character of England (1950)

Folded in a druidical mist, viewed from a sodden hillside through a screen of dripping branches, seen against a clear dawn, its towers like diacritical marks upon the lines of a text, or coyly changing its colours as evening comes on, Oxford beheld from a distance is as elusive and capricious as it was when we were there within it. Matthew Arnold spoke of it, twice and memorably, as dreaming, but the only reveries were Arnold's, those of a flesh-and-blood Oxonian eternally lacing his quest for gravity with delicious inventions. Oxford never dreams, it is far too wakeful and predatory, too eager to take us for its own. Turning to look back from Cumnor or Iffley or as the Paddington train pulls out, each of us reads the chosen signals. A warning? An insult? An invitation or an embrace?
-Jonathan Keats in Drawings and Sketches of Oxford (1983)

"It doesn't matter what the professors teach, it's what the place teaches..."
-Quoted in Richard Tames' A Traveller's History of Oxford (2003)

A Sunday Afternoon Walk

2008-10-27T01:14:00.015+03:00

Here are some pictures from an amazing walk I took last weekend (when I should have been writing a paper -- but it was SO worth it!). Not 15 minutes from where I'm living, and suddenly there is open country, and river, and so much sky. I took the walk with the junior deans (RDs) from the Vines (the other SCIO house, where I'm not living) and two other students. It was a trip in "the lovely fall-coloured Port Meadow, through the quaint town of Binsey, past cows and horses and an abandoned abbey to the famous Trout Inn -- to enjoy some food and drink amongst lovely country scenery." Apparently it was a favorite walk of Lewis and Tolkien, and there was even a statue of Aslan across the water.

(the old abbey)

(Oxford, across the water)

Adventuring in London

2008-10-26T22:31:00.007+03:00

I took myself on a date yesterday, and went to wander London alone. The Oxford Tube (a popular coach company that runs between Oxford and London, with buses leaving every 10-20 minutes throughout the day) had given out 1 pound vouchers at Freshers Fair (an event that will probably require a post of its own -- basically, a HUGE university club fair). An amazing deal, since tickets are normally about 13 pounds for students. The voucher was about to expire, and I had just finished an amazingly stressful week, so I decided to take a break and explore.

(the V&A courtyard)

As tradition dictates (my own tradition, not necessarily the tradition of humanity at large), I started off at Leicester square (after spending two hours reading Virginia Woolf on the bus) and visited the wonderful half-price ticket stands. Most shows were sold out for the day (I had been hoping to see Rain Man, with Josh Hartnett), so I ended up caving, and getting a ground floor ticket to Zorro -- a new show about (you guessed it!) that amazing hero in the black mask.

I then bought myself some coffee (a significant and necessary component for any adventure), and sat on a bench to enjoy.

Then off to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which had been highly recommended by my brother and sister in law. There I saw real samurai armor (Brendan and Thany -- how cool am I?), and an amazing display of fashion development. I also sat by a fountain in a central courtyard, enjoying the gorgeous architecture of the building, and the strange sensation of solitude.

(the V&A courtyard)

And then on to Zorro. What to even say? The stage was amazing. The lighting magnificent. They obviously had a large budget, and a talented artistic director. Some scenes were exquisitely blocked [blocking refers to position and movement on the stage], and visually stunning. So it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the acting, singing, and general story line were not very good. Which was hugely unfortunate, given the amazingness of what they were dealing with (how can anyone beat Zorro for style?).

But the dancing! The dancing may have redeemed it regardless. Everything that was true and heartfelt in the entire show was conveyed through the dancing. They weren't just good dancers, they WERE dancers. Movement was in their souls. It was the way they conveyed hate and love and experience and freedom. Dancing was life, and joy, and pain, and reality. It was community and it was power. (And by dancing, I mean that strange and beautiful realm of Spanish dancing, which captured my heart one summer in Minnesota).

I especially loved how dance became synonymous with resistance, especially for the women. They had no power to physically fight injustice, but they could dance. So they did. In one scene, three men are sentenced to death by hanging, and their wives (joined by women from the town) dance their protest, and their pain, beneath the scaffolding. The raw power of this scene, and the wordless vocals used in mourning (reminding me of Beowulf -- hair torn, crying to high heaven), could have made this a phenomenal show. But the creators kept trying to wrestle the script back into a traditional lyric-filled musical format. Which made a bizarre combination of eerie, primal emotion, and broadway-ish cheese.

However, the curtain call was so energetic and passion-filled they had the audience dancing in the aisles. And I was almost tempted to give in, and give them a standing ovation regardless (here's some footage from the experience). Alas, integrity must be upheld.

But the sword-fighting was INTENSE. =)

Oxfordshire, England

2008-10-22T02:26:00.001+03:00

So. I am at Oxford. Studying Virginia Woolf and Classics. And this is my blog. It will probably be random, and it will definitely be sporadic (as my schedule dictates), but it will attempt to capture a piece of that deep and glorious burning that, for me, has always been England.

The Oxford Sky

2008-10-21T20:31:00.001+03:00

They say the sky is the same everywhere. But above Oxford -- anyhow above the roof of Christ Church -- there is a difference. Is it fanciful to suppose the sky, washed into the crevices of Christ Church, lighter, thinner, more sparkling that the sky elsewhere? Does Oxford burn not only into the night, but into the day?

Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf (with some small alterations =)