Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood

 
THE SHORTEST, GLADDEST YEARS OF LIFE (A BLEG): Hi there. I'm working (slowly) on two short stories, and I need your help. Please email me if you were

a) at Georgetown University from around about 1988-1992
b) involved in conservative campus journalism during time period ditto
c) at Yale during time period ditto
d) (different story) at Yale approx. 1975-1982
e) involved in campus conservatism generally during time period ditto
f) at another big liberal arts college during time period ditto

THANKS. Also, please tell all your friends.

The next story I'll start posting is neither of these two, so you all have lots of time. Over the weekend I hope to start posting a story based on the Norse myths, which is such a fiesta of the weird that it will make "Getting Fired" look like Ernest Hemingway. I've been waiting to write this story for over a decade.

posted by Eve at 10:27 PM

 
AMERICA IS THE NAME OF OUR DREAM: Amazing, must-read post here. I expect I disagree radically with the author on what our country needs now. We likely disagree on questions of right and wrong that will remain crucial long after Americans are fairy tales in books written by rabbits. But this is exactly right:

"America compells people to leave everything, to give up everything, to be terrified and impoverished and exhausted and belittled, humiliated and bereaved, because it promises that one day, your daughter who is only two years old will be able to be a student in an American university and work on Capitol Hill during the summers. It makes you not care that your fingers are stuck in the closed door of the El train when you take her to the clinic for her annual dental checkup. It makes you walk to work in the snow after the car is stolen so that she can go to the babysitter with the dog named Barney, after you realize that the old ones kept her locked in a room upstairs. It makes you furious and crazy and wild, dangerous, desperate, and amazing. It makes you amazing. America makes you do things.

"In its conception, America was a furious dream, and when you are not a child of its luxuries from birth, you see that in all its wideness."

read the whole thing

I wrote a hugely scattershot and not nearly as moving thing here on similar themes.

posted by Eve at 8:59 PM

 
POETRY WEDNESDAY: DANCE REMIX: Auden again. "The Two."

You are the town and we are the clock.
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock
The Two
On your left and on your right
In the day and in the night,
We are watching you.

Wiser not to ask just what has occurred
To them who disobeyed our word;
To those
We were the whirlpool, we were the reef,
We were the formal nightmare, grief
And the unlucky rose.

Climb up the crane, learn the sailor's words
When the ships from the islands laden with birds
Come in
Tell your stories of fishing and other men's wives:
The expansive moments of constricted lives
In the lighted inn.

But do not imagine we do not know
Nor that what you hide with such care won't show
At a glance
Nothing is done, nothing is said,
But don't make the mistake of believing us dead:
I shouldn't dance.

We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall.
We've been watching you over the garden wall
For hours.
The sky is darkening like a stain
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.

When the green field comes off like a lid
Revealing what was much better hid:
Unpleasant.
And look, behind you without a sound
The woods have come and are standing round
In deadly crescent.

The bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black remov-
ers van.
And now with sudden swift emergence
Comes the women in dark glasses and the humpbacked surgeons
And the scissor man.

This might happen any day
So be careful what you say
Or do.
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock,
Trim the garden, wind the clock,
Remember the Two.


posted by Eve at 8:15 PM

 
POETRY WEDNESDAY: From W.H. Auden, "The Orators."

'O where are you going?' said reader to rider,
'That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.'

'O do you imagine', said fearer to farer,
'That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
That diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?'

'O what was that bird', said horror to hearer,
'Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.'

'Out of this house' --said rider to reader,
'Yours never will' --said farer to fearer,
'They're looking for you'--said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.

posted by Eve at 7:05 PM

 
There's a nut with a blogwatch, bang bang bang...

Do you need a Honda Accord? Because Krubner needs to get rid of one, fast.

BugMeNot.com: Via Amy Welborn, who describes it thusly: "This site was featured in either Time or Newsweek this week. It's a bypass, of sorts, of news sites that require registration. Supplies a username and password for many--just enter the URL of the newspaper that's demanding some info, and voila. Warning: some verge on the obscene, I'd say. But it works."

Good news from Afghanistan: A roundup. Women voting, people telling pollsters they feel safe, refugees returning, showdowns over girls' schooling, DVDs and ice cream shops, free radios, distance education, international trade, and more.

"A terror ruling's impact on refugees": From the Christian Science Monitor, via How Appealing: "A recent US Supreme Court decision dealing with the war on terror may herald good news for Haitian and Cuban refugees seeking freedom in America.

"The nation's highest court on June 28 extended the jurisdiction of US courts to detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The landmark decision in Rasul v. Bush focuses on the plight of 594 Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects being held indefinitely in military custody there.

"But immigration-law experts say the ruling may also benefit a second, lesser-known group of individuals being housed at Guantanamo--Haitians and Cubans who fled persecution in their homelands."

read the whole thing

EnviroAds contest: "$6,000 in cold hard cash will be awarded to the creators of the best EnviroAds, as determined both by visitors to this site and by our distinguished panel of judges. Create and submit an ad that's funny, satirical, creative, inspiring, ironic, sexy or dramatic. You could win the top prize of $2,000, or other prizes ranging from $1,000 to $250 (not bad either).

"We're looking for original material that causes people to think about environmental issues in different ways. Your goal is not persuasion per se, but to start a conversation. Make us think. Make us cry. Make us laugh out loud."

Deadline for submission is September 30, 2004. Winners will be announced in October.

I'm messing with the blogroll again. New faces: Ditch the Raft (Buddhist) and Chrenkoff (the guy who does those "good news from Afghanistan and Iraq" roundups--adding him so I remember to read those).

posted by Eve at 6:25 PM

 
"This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened one of my consciences."
--James Joyce, "An Encounter"

posted by Eve at 6:24 PM

 
"MY NAME IS JONES. I'M IN INSURANCE.": Free will, God and man, and time travel in "12 Monkeys" and/vs. "Donnie Darko."

Discuss.

posted by Eve at 8:17 PM

 
"BETTER AT IT": HUMAN RESOURCES. The third and last segment of the story with the aliens. ...I already know "Pete" (who?--exactly...) is going to be excised when I revise. All non-Pete-related comments and (especially) criticisms are more than welcome. Read the whole story starting here or get the final chapter here. There's some fairly wrenching material here, about motherhood, so you know.

posted by Eve at 7:46 PM

 
We're the poison in the human machine;
We're the blogwatch--your blogwatch!...
 
Matt Welch and Tim Blair at the DNC. You totally don't need to know more.

Willow Green: Questions, reflections, possibly changing one's mind on abortion. She's asking for comments from readers, especially those that spring from personal experience. Via Noli Irritare Leones.

"Everything You Were Afraid to Ask About Donnie Darko": The director's cut is being released. Haven't read yet, but looking forward to it. If people have links to discussions of the historical/political context of the movie, please send, as that's obviously doing something and I haven't yet read a convincing explanation of what. Truly fascinating movie though I darkly suspect there's less there than meets the (ruined) eye. But very, very much worth your time: The Book of Revelations According to "Heathers."

Vintage Paperbacks: Covers. Includes such categories as Science Fiction, Lesbiana (whoa, ranging from The Price of Salt to stuff whose very titles would go beyond this blog's electoral mandate...eep...), JD books (including Rumble at the Housing Project--"Old terror in new buildings") and Hillbilly books.

posted by Eve at 7:21 PM

 
"For with thee is the well of life: and in thy light shall we see light."
--Psalms 36:9

And not without thy light, I find.

posted by Eve at 7:17 PM

 
"BETTER AT IT": THE HUMAN CONDITION. Part two of the story with the aliens. Veers briefly into explicit territory, so you know. ...The major issue here is that I don't tell you who's speaking. Yell at me about that if you think it sucks. Also, there's no plot, but that almost certainly isn't going to change. Also-also, please feel free to yowl about anything else you like or (especially) dislike about the story so far. I post these rough drafts mostly to make myself write, but also because I've received consistently fantastic and helpful comments from readers. Be part of the commenting goodness! ...Part three (last part) will be up very soon--sometime in the next four days.

Click here to read the very short story so far; here to read the second segment.


posted by Eve at 4:50 PM

 
"It seemed to me that, seeing in them [=the 'cursings' in the Psalms] hatred undisguised, I saw also the natural result of injuring a human being. The word natural is here important. This result can be obliterated by grace, suppressed by prudence or social convention, and (which is dangerous) wholly disguised by self-deception. But just as the natural result of throwing a lighted match into a pile of shavings is to produce a fire--though damp or the intervention of some more sensible person may prevent it--so the natural result of cheating a man, or 'keeping him down' or neglecting him, is to arouse resentment; that is, to impose upon him the temptation of becoming what the Psalmists were when they wrote the vindictive passages. He may succeed in resisting the temptation; or he may not. If he fails, if he dies spiritually because of his hatred for me, how do I, who provoked that hatred, stand? For in addition to the original injury I have done him a far worse one. I have introduced into his inner life, at best a new temptation, at worst a new besetting sin. If that sin utterly corrupts him, I have in a sense debauched or seduced him. I was the tempter."
--Reflections on the Psalms

posted by Eve at 4:08 PM

 
"BETTER AT IT": THE HUMAN STAIN. Part one of the story with the aliens. This is going to be very short: three sections, all as short as this first one. If you are expecting a plot, I strongly suggest you revise your expectations. There's a paragraph or two in this section where the prose gets soggy, and I'm not sure if that's a usable effect or just bad writing. Your comments and (esp.) criticisms are, as always, most welcome. There are many things about this story that I like, and it requires minimal time investment. Click here to begin....

posted by Eve at 2:23 PM

 
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RIDICULOUS?: Nice reply from Andi at Ditch the Raft in re suffering, Buddhism, sublimation, and selfishness. Should possibly clarify our points of agreement and disagreement. Hard to tell though, since the same terms are often used so differently by Buddhists as vs. Catholics. (I, lamely, lack both the time and the wakefulness needed to carve out a real reply.) Also, Noli Irritare Leones has a post that may clarify what I was trying to get at with citing Frederica Mathewes-Green's book.

posted by Eve at 2:14 PM

 
"The grasshopper also has a lesson to teach to man. All the summer through it sings, until its belly bursts, and death claims it. Though it knows the fate that awaits it, yet it sings on. So man should do his duty toward God, no matter what the consequences."
--Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1: From the Creation to Jacob. I really like this twist on the "ant and the grasshopper" fable.

posted by Eve at 2:09 PM

 
"YOU WILL BE PULLED BACK": OUT IN THE FIELDS WITH GOD. Well, the Not Really Much of a Ray Bradbury Pastiche At All in the End story is completed. There are many things I like about it, but it isn't at all original, and I think the main thing I wanted to do with the story got lost as it shaped itself too perfectly to the genre-cliche contours. Ah well. It's fine, really, it just doesn't add to the sum total of human knowledge. Next story will be the one with the aliens, which (I think) is significantly more original. I'll begin posting that by the end of the week and should be done before the end of next week. (It's short.)
 
So: Go here to read the story from the beginning, or here to get the final chapter.
 

She pictures the broken glass, pictures the steam.
She pictures a soul with no leak at the seam.
Let's take the boat out; wait until darkness.
Let's take the boat out; wait until darkness.
Let's take the boat out.
Wait until darkness comes.
 
 
Did you perhaps go further than you told us?

posted by Eve at 7:00 PM

 
You spin me right round, baby, right round,
Like a blogwatch, baby, right round round round...
 
After Abortion: Annie reflects on her experiences as a sidewalk counselor. Both heartening and heartbreaking, as is typical of such accounts. She also links to Sursum Corda's excellent post on being an abortion escort, and how he ultimately came to change his mind about abortion.
 
Ditch the Raft: Fellow Yalien life form Andi offers an interesting Buddhist response to my post on sublimation. Not being a Buddhist, I don't share her view of suffering: All sublime experiences and acts require some suffering; avoidance of suffering is not a worthy human goal; we should move through suffering rather than away from it; great suffering and great joy can often coexist, and great joy often has embedded within it a necessary edge of pain. This is the romantic, desiring aspect of Christianity, where the soul longs for God as the deer longs for the running stream. Or, as Maggie Gallagher put it in The Abolition of Marriage, "[Marriage] is the Song of Songs, and the Crucifixion."
 
I also may disagree or wish to add something to Andi's discussion of love, virtue, and selfishness. I'm not sure, since I'm not sure whether Andi is using "selfishness" here in the ordinary everyday sense. Selfishness in love is wrong; but it isn't the only way love goes wrong. Women, especially, but men too, are often tempted by a kind of self-immolating romance that is much closer to idolatry than to real love. Then, too, there are the women Frederica Mathewes-Green interviewed for her excellent Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion. Many of these women aborted not to please themselves, but to preserve relationships: with their mothers, with their families in general, with their boyfriends. This isn't anything we'd ordinarily call selfishness--but neither is it, obviously, the fullness of love.
 
Anyway!--Andi's post brings up all kinds of fascinating stuff, and you should go read it. Also, anyone interested in these issues would probably find Denis de Rougemont's Love in the Western World an engrossing read. I certainly did.
 
"Downloading for Democracy": "While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings." Must-read, via Hit and Run.
 
"Charity Should Begin in Congress": Ignore the lame title. This George F. Will column is divided between a description of an amazing San Diego ministry, and a wonkish look at a bill that would make it much more difficult to donate your car to charity. Both halves are very much worth your time.

posted by Eve at 6:40 PM

 
"It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible."
--C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

posted by Eve at 3:00 PM

 
I feel a blogwatch
On my shoulder
And the touch of a world that is older...
 
Hit & Run: "Yesterday the Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration sweeping authority to regulate the production and marketing of tobacco products. The bill incorporates the restrictions the FDA tried to impose unlilaterally under David Kessler, including a ban on color and pictures in print ads. It gives the FDA the authority to prevent the introduction or promotion of demonstrably safer tobacco products if it thinks they will ultimately be bad for "the population as a whole." And it protects Philip Morris' position as the market leader by restricting competition through regulatory burdens and limits on advertising (which is why the No. 1 cigarette maker supports the bill and its competitors oppose it)."
 
more
 
Hulk's Diary: Hee! "Here you can read diary about Hulk!" Lots of fun. Via every comics blogger and his momma.
 
Julian Sanchez announces the next DC Blogorama, Thursday the 29th at Rendezvous Lounge in Adams Morgan. Hope to see you there!


posted by Eve at 5:45 PM

 
"As late as 1913, Max Beerbohm was still able to mock the vogue for Russian literature by creating an all-purpose Russian writer named Kolniyatsch, of whom Beerbohm wrote: 'his burning faith in a personal Devil, his frank delight in earthquakes and pestilences, and his belief that every one but himself will be brought back to life in time to be frozen in the next glacial epoch, seem rather to stamp him as an optimist.'"
--Joseph Epstein, The New Criterion, October 1992
 
via Ratty via Otto-da-Fe

posted by Eve at 5:43 PM

 
MARVEL SOLICITATIONS ON CRACK: Yup. Click and bask in the blank unholy surprise of it all.

Oh, and there's foxy boxing in outer space. Yes, FOXY BOXING!
posted by Eve at 8:22 PM

 
"YOU WILL BE PULLED BACK": INSIDE THE CLIMBING SPIDER. The second, and second-to-last, part of the Not Quite As Ray Bradbury-Like As I'd Expected story. Read whole thing from start here or get newest segment here. I'll likely complete this over the weekend.

Nowhere in the corridors of pale green and gray
Nowhere in the cities, in the cold light of day
There in the midst of it,
So alive, and alone...


...So the wind swept the whirlpool across the sky.
posted by Eve at 8:00 PM

 
THIS IS THE LAST POST ABOUT THE MOTH. Probably a cecropia or maybe a polyphemus. Aren't they pretty?
posted by Eve at 7:27 PM

 
BEAUTY, ART, PRIESTS, MORE!: Barbara Nicolosi of Church of the Masses addresses people who work in the formation of seminarians. Tons of great stuff. Here are some quotes that spoke especially strongly to me: "...I have no business talking to you about how to form priests--but I can speak about some of what we have come to in trying to form artists and in the same way that we are trying to realize the priesthood of the artist, perhaps you can begin to brood over the artisthood of the priest? ...

"Of course, the arts are also inadequate. People told me that the movie The Passion of the Christ was too much for them. Without getting into a discussion of the artistic merit of the film, it is still worth saying that, as bad as all the violence was in the film, it still doesn't even come near to representing with any accuracy, the horror of one venial sin. ...

"[Pope John Paul II] goes on to make the pretty radical statement--particularly in this moment of ecclesial and artistic 'disengagement'--that art is not just an object that proceeds from theological brooding, but is actually a source of theology.

"That is, if you don't reference the arts when you are studying the Annunciation, for example, in theology, you are missing other layers of meaning. You need to listen to the movements in Bach's Gesu, Word of God to more completely 'get' the Incarnation. I love this. It points to the fact that the sacred artists is as much a vehicle of divine inspiration as are theologians. ...

"'The Church that marries the spirit of the age is a widow in the next generation.' (Dean William Inge) ...

"Beauty makes us homesick for heaven. It is a 'holy sadness.' ...

"Beauty is expensive to produce: time, details, talent, money. The little things like getting the lighting just right, having the flowers arranged, rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. You are going to have to pay your artists to practice and produce. (My sister is a professional opera singer. She used to get $100 a week to cantor at the local Episcopalian church which has an endowed chair for a mezzo soprano. At our parish church, they want to pay her $40 a week, and as she has said to me wth a shrug, 'And they want me to sing crap.'

"It has to be said. Much of the art we are making as a Church is ugly and painful. It has the opposite effect that it should. There is a problem when the Church is singing music that would be better suited to an episode of Barney, and Nora Jones is singing music that stings people to the heart."

more!
posted by Eve at 6:05 PM

 
"I joined the A.C.L.U. and became a liberal. Then a drunk. Sober, I could not bear to look at Belle Isle and the great oaks; they seemed so sad and used up and self-canceling. Five good drinks and they seemed themselves."
--Lancelot
posted by Eve at 6:04 PM