Helloo.

Hi all!

Just a quick post (a real update will come later--with pictures!) to let you know about my new marriage/home building/housewifery/DIY blog, Househeld. Feel free to check it out!

A.

Benjamin Zander: Making People's Eyes Shine

How is it that I had never heard of TED Conferences until yesterday? Seriously! The following is musician Benjamin Zander's 20 minute segment at the TED Conference in February of last year.






If you are interested, there's a lot more, available to watch for free on their website, www.ted.com. I highly recommend Mike Rowe's (from the television show "Dirty Jobs") segment on hard work, though it's not for the faint-hearted--it's framed in a story about castrating sheep.

On Incarnation (again)

The next few weeks of my life are bound to be very strange. My college career seems to be approaching its climax, with concerts, creative integration papers, my senior project, and exams in abundance. It is strange to think that in four short weeks, I will have reached the end of my four-year journey as an undergrad. I will have obtained a veritable storehouse of knowledge and wisdom, and gained letters and honors attached to my name that no one can take away from me. I will be tossed out into the wide green world to make my own way. And in less than ten weeks, I will be someone's wife.

At the same time, I am only now learning to harness a talent that I did not know that I had: writing. The head of the English department kindly has allowed me to invisibly audit his novel writing class this semester, and it has been nothing short of incredible. It's exactly the sort of boost and direction that I needed to turn my half-hearted hobby into something with real potential. I'd never before been able to get past the first few pages of anything I'd write, and my writing lacked the technical expertise that Buck supplies in class. I now know how to smoothly and successfully integrate backstory, and how to bring the narrative back out again. I can intuit when a plot or character isn't working. I can write psychologically complex characters. And it's So. Much. Fun.

But it's also a difficult and terrifying experience. I'd forgotten how at first I had feared my poetry workshop classes, since writing poetry now comes so much easier to me. Bringing my first novel chapter in for workshopping terrified me. I'd struggled with the text, trying to communicate everything just right, and to set the exact tone of the narrative. My fear was that my best offering would be torn to pieces by my more experienced peers. Instead, they were enchanted--they bought my story and my characters, and they wanted more. It was wonderful to have my risk and vulnerability so richly rewarded. I feel like I'm arriving late to the table in this area, but I'm learning quickly and excitedly.

Anyway, I suppose I should make sense of the title of this blog. So much of my life right now has been focused around incarnation: enfleshing. I've been reading and memorizing poetry that takes a chance to comment on itself and its nature as a work of art within time. I've been thinking about music as art and why we make music and art. And I've been incarnating my own thoughts and ideas into written word. It brings me greatly to mind of Sayers' Mind of the Maker, where she talks about how we are creators created in the Image of the Creator.

I've also been reading Bujold's A Civil Campaign (and Komarr and "Winterfair Gifts") for our honors reading group with Dr. K., which has been wonderful all by itself, but has also brought me to more thoughts about incarnation due to a recent interview posted on the author's blog. She commented, three-quarters jokingly, that she has "sometimes wondered if writing novels isn’t some sort of dissociative disorder, and if only we could all have the right meds and upbringings, we’d stop." Now that I think about it, most novels, barring true Literature, are an odd sort of incarnational creativity. Real art, it seems to me, is transcendent in some key way. I can easily see how writing novels could be a weirdly self-involved, non-transcendent process. I understand why we tell stories, but why tell stories about the far-distant future involving wormhole nexuses, terraforming, accidental isolation, aristocratic military caste societies, and a hyperactive-growth-stunted-genius-hero who falls in love?

And yet, I am so utterly enchanted by this story; it nourishes my soul in a way that is very difficult to describe. Bujold, I think, reaches that transcendency in all kinds of wonderful and unexpected ways. Who else writes so openly about the nature of honor and reputation these days? I would also tell anyone reading this blog (I see you!) that they should read Bujold as well, not least of all because she is tied with Robert Heinlein for the most awards in her field of writing.

I think people need stories, and that some people also need to write them. I sincerely doubt that it has anything to do with dissociative disorders, though the process of writing is of necessity one that is extremely involved. But even if writing was a disease, I think it’s an awfully beautiful one; I would never choose to take the medication. And as for the upbringing, it does make me wonder if there will be any novels written in heaven since the whole sin issue will be obsolete. I should think that if there were, they would be more like a new, more glorious form of art rather than resemble their earthly counterparts.

That’s my rambling for tonight. Kudos to you if you stuck it out thus far. I’d love to hear your thoughts.


A.E.M.

Good Friday

I'm in the process of memorizing T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets for my senior project right now, and I'm currently working on East Coker. Part IV is especially relevant for today, so I thought I'd share.

IV

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

Engagement Pictures, etc.

I'd like to officially recommend my brother Ben as a photographer.









Doesn't he take lovely pictures?

As of today, bridesmaid dresses should all be ordered, tuxes have been arranged, guest list is much farther along than before, invitations are being seriously considered, and flowers, food, and equipment rentals are being discussed. Progress!

Wedding!

Hi Everyone!

Turns out this is my one hundredth post! Thanks for sticking around, folks.

Anyway, as most of you should already know, I am getting married in less than six months (yikes!). After a crazy semester-long hiatus from wedding plans, I have finally begun to make some real headway. The location has been booked, attendants chosen, Dress purchased (a steal, really), colors picked... Things seem to be going smoothly. Plus, I'm getting all sorts of fun ideas via the internet. For instance, below are sample color palates I was able to create via Flickr photo searches:

We're going for a more homespun feel, and thinking very summery. Blue sky, ripe strawberries, lemonade, Spectre-like string lights (see below)--if we could, we'd have our reception in a barn.

Basically, now that I finally have time to think about wedding stuff, I'm having a lot of fun. I think the next steps will be guest lists and save-the-dates/invitations. More updates to follow!

Two Poems for Christmas

*sings* Neglected blog!!!!

Hooray for Christmas! Hooray for the miracle of the Incarnation! Hooray for paradox!

Please enjoy these lovely poems, the love of Christ, and your family and friends. Have a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas
by Charles Williams

He who knows all things knows not now
Whither He came, or why, or how.

He who sees all things can but see
A dim and clear Maternity:

Whose mortal mouth alone can teach
Omniloquence its human speech.

But, as from those soft wandering hands,
A universal grace expands.

His blood, in motion regular,
Decrees the course of sun and star.

Creation, leaning o'er the Child,
Beholds its image undefiled.

And His fine breath, in sweet recall,
Draws all things to the heart of all.


I. Nativity (from Two Icons)
by Scott Cairns

As you lean in, you'll surely apprehend
the tiny God is wrapped
in something more than swaddle. The God

is tightly bound within
His blessed mother's gaze--her face declares
that she is rapt by what

she holds, beholds, reclines beholden to.
She cups His perfect head
and kisses Him, that even here the radiant

compass of affection
is announced, that even here our several
histories converge and slip,

just briefly, out of time. Which is much of what
an icon works as well,
and this one offers up a broad array

of separate narratives
whose temporal relations quite moss the point,
or meet there. Regardless,

one blithe shepherd offers music to the flock,
and--just behind him--there
he is again, and sore afraid, attended

by trembling companion
and addressed by Gabriel. Across the ridge,
three wise men spur three horses

towards a star, and bowing at the icon's
nearest edge, these same three
yet adore the seated One whose mother serves

as throne. Meantime, stumped,
the kindly Abba Joseph ruminates,
receiving consolation

from an attentive dog whose master may
yet prove to be a holy
messenger disguised as fool. Overhead,

the famous star is all
but out of sight by now; yet, even so,
it aims a single ray

directing our slow pilgrims to the core
where all the journeys meet,
appalling crux and hallowed cave and womb,

where crouched among these other
lowing cattle t their trough, our travelers
receive that creatured air, and pray.