Gnosce Te Ipse

I went back and fixed the spelling errors (I hope) in my post below. I think it's good for me to produce such imperfect blogs, but the English teacher in me reels and when I spot errors I spruce up! I won best costume at the party Saturday night. I did not have the best costume. In fact, I wore Mikey's costume, a giant afro, funny gold sparkle glasses and a big money sign around my neck; huge adidas shirt, baggy blue sweats with a white stripe and his air jordans. Yeah, I was funk guy, or something like that; we didn't know we could go until two days before and I had to hurry. Steph was a goth. If I find pictures on the web I'll post a link. I think I won because of the way my wig bounced back and forth when I was shaking Manhattans. Or maybe it was the Manhattan's themselves. Whatever, I got a bottle of Clicquot as a prize. And I stopped drinking early, before food and dancing. I appreciate both my caution and concern for my health. Our friends have a...

I attended my first Episcopal funeral yesterday. It was for a woman who attended the service at church I attend. She was 70 though she looked younger. I didn't know her well but still found the time very sad. We recently installed a columbarium so her ashes were inurned (I think that's the term) right in front of me. To see a little gold box, it looked almost like a gift box, six by eight inches perhaps, and know that all that used to be an entire, smartly dressed every Sunday, red-headed woman with a lovely british accent is now inside that tiny container...it was chilling, frankly. The service was so beautiful though. At the end, after the priest put that little gold box into the columbarium and tightened the screws on the face plate with a screwdriver we read the final piece of the liturgy, something like 'even at the graveside, we shout alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.' So many times I think of Christianity, church, my faith, as something which helps me now, in...

Just a quick note to say thanks to all my blog friends; their names are mostly in the margin at right and my handful of loyal readers know who they are! Great minds and hearts, all. I'm in blog limbo again. I haven't had time to work on my posts much or even to post much, and I'm afraid I'm getting too English teacher specific. It seems that all I've been doing the last couple of months is read for my Am. Lit. class (and yeah, it's kinda gross that I'm teaching the course and am reading some of the content for the first time, but hey, I do my best and it's only 27 bucks a unit). Since all I'm doing is reading and grading papers, up here I talk about books, mostly. I haven't been in many of my friend's blogs but I'm trying to catch up. Thanks, Scott for telling me to turn on that funky letter looking verification thing; suddenly I see that everywhere and I was wondering where to get the code. It was just a radio button; thanks Scoot...

Apparently my Harry Potter alter ego is Harry himself; I always did like his disregard for convention and innate sense of destiny. According to the quiz, "You can be a little reckless and hot-headed at times, but a more brave and courageous friend would be hard to find." I find this a little uplifing today. Last night after my very happy post I ran out of time rushing to EFM and had Del freaking Taco for dinner; S and I got in a pretty big conflict, again, and have only partly patched it, and then I couldn't find my truck keys this morning so even though I telecommute today I'm stuck here as far as errands and taking Mikey place goes. That last may not be a horrible thing as I have tons of work to do (and am taking just a little break here). Fighting with S I freaking hate, though. And on an even darker note. I found out last night at EFM that a woman I knew in our church, someone very vibrant and healthy and about 60 or so, died of an aneurysm in her aorta this w...

I found a very good article HERE on the American side of the Lewis mythos. It's worth the time to read. The one thing the author doesn't address explicitly, but would probably agree with, is that Lewis' work often holds great appeal because he, somehow, baptized his child-imagination, baptized it into the world of Christianity but also the world of adult reason. His children's books, like his adult books, are about ideas as much as they are about children. And frankly, most of us would rather read theology in narrative form, even child-narrative form, its breathe is so much warmer, than dry rhetoric. I admit in my arrogant soul it used to be bother me how many adult Christians loved the Narnia books. I loved them too...when I was a ten. But there's no reason why adults shouldn't be nourished and nurtured there (and no reason why, when I have a little time, I shouldn't go back and read them myself). Yes they are books for gradeschool kids, but then Lew...

Actually, my office hours are long past; I'm killing time before EFM and catching up on work. When my jaw muscles start to feel like I've been chewing steak for an hour though I haven't been, and my chest muscles contract...time for a break. A blog break! Ah, the sweet luxury of blog. I swear I feel like I'm sinking into a warm jacuzzi right now. I can smell the chlorine...feel my trunks puffing with air... 'Hey man, it's really good to be here; someone pass me a cold Sierra Nevada...what is it when two drugs interact and become stronger, well, that, I want that with the hot water and the beer.' *** Emerson is a language magician, no doubt. We read three essays by him, Nature, the American Scholar, and Self-Reliance. Each has common points but each is also different. I was stunned by the force of Nature; it's not an essay easily dismissed. The other two less so, though SR has some beautiful one-liners, some of the best I've seen in philosophy....

Tonight my Aunt B, the one from Sedona that we so enjoyed staying with last spring, came to my mom's house. My mom, for the last couple years, has only lived about 40 minutes from me in a town more remote than mine. I see her a handful of times a year, usually, though last time I was up I did interact and try to engage her which I knew she wanted. It was hard, truthfully, and even harder later in the day as my feelings came flooding. Aunt B is visiting her and she went to dinner with us and came by our house tonight. It was great to see her, and it made my mom easier to be around. They are very different women. Now S is going to sleep and Mikey too and, as usual, I'm cramming for work. *** I wasn't a good student as an undergrad, not until my last year or year and a half. I had a horrific anxiety disorder then, ocd over which I had no control, and panic attacks, generalized anxiety...I had that whole chapter in the DSM pretty much. For some reason being in school, g...

Yeah, work. It's almost midnight, I can't sleep yet though I took benedril two hours ago, and why? Work. This semester I just haven't been able to catch up for more than maybe a day, then slam, I know I'm behind again. Or I'll get caught up in my online classes and realize I have to read for my lit courses or prep for my grammar class and it's the end of the day and I'm beat...it's been the toughest semester I've had since moving north. Our writing lab was disbanded in favor of a basic grammar class and instead of being less work or a reasonable parity it's been tons more effort even though the students are awesome, wonderful people. Plus, some of the books I picked for Honors and some of the readings in Am. Lit. are very hard...no wonder I never read Emerson's Nature. He's the genius Joseph Campbell. A deconstructionist dream, non-linear, highly abstract, in places circular, do I smoke a contradiction or is it just the bizarre dic...