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Saturday, May 10, 2008
INSIDE OF A CATHOLIC, IT'S TOO DARK TO READ: My book column for Inside Catholic is on Heloise and Abelard, in that order. (And yes, I've been waiting to use this post title for weeks.) Labels: "what is 'kiss'?", inside catholic, la nouvelle Heloise, other people paid me to write this Thursday, May 08, 2008
THE MEN FROM THE PIGS: James Lasdun, The Horned Man. A quick, creepy little fable about a gender studies professor who finds his life and identity slipping from his grasp as he becomes enmeshed in the circumstances surrounding a series of brutal murders. It's... let's say Philip Roth by way of Edgar Allan Poe. It's a fierce and reactionary tale, a horror novel under the skin. The descriptions are especially lovely--"the park, where the snow was now lying in raised veins along every shiny black branch and twig, forming an exact white replica of each tree." I'm not sure whether it's too schematic. I was a bit twitchy on that subject, since several recent conversations with the Rattus had reminded me of the limits and failures of schematic fiction--and come on, it's a doppelganger tale, they're always a little bit geometry-of-symbols. Still, I think there's enough dark weirdness here to overcome the math. OVERSTATEMENTS A SPECIALTY...: Clio writes, Are you really so indifferent to the Church as a "supportive" structure? It seems to me that as the Bride of Christ, it has a duty to be supportive in the right way, and in as much as the Bride fails to achieve this, she is neglecting her responsibilities.It's a fair cop. I was very much emphasizing one angle on the question of how to understand the Church because it had come up several times in several different contexts recently; but yeah, that post was only half the story at most. The other half is our own role and responsibilities as members of the body of Christ. (Like I've said, Catholics are probably the number one reason people leave the Catholic Church....) I was trying to grapple with what we do when those responsibilities aren't fulfilled--how to see and love the beauty of the Church even when its members signally fail. The real tragedy of the action lies in the perfect sincerity with which they both played the comedy of sanctity. --Etienne Gilson, Heloise and Abelard Wednesday, May 07, 2008
THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE SAY, "EVERYBODY BE COOL! THIS IS A STICKUP!": So the other day I figured out why the Pope makes me feel minty. I've talked about this before: The Pope does not stir immortal longings in me. He's a guy in an interesting car. But when he was in town, I had to grapple with the reasons I was so thoroughly disconnected from his visit. I mean, the DCPD was out in force, and I couldn't be bothered to stir from my lair. I think a really big piece of it is that I'm (depending on how you count) Jewish, or half-Jewish, or something. Not non-Jewish, is what I am. And so in order to become Catholic, I had to do a lot of work disentangling "the Church as the Bride of Christ" from "the Church as what a bunch of Catholics do." Because if We Are Church, then the 1096 Crusaders Are Church, and frequently the Pogromists Are Church, and many, many Nazis Are Church. (What's awesome is how many people think I've never considered this shocking perspective. Like, yeah, I went to a 70% Jewish high school, and helped start the Gay/Straight Alliance there, but feel free to believe that I totally shut my brain off when I started worrying about the Catholic Church. And I really desperately need heterosexuals and gentiles to remind me of my responsibilities here, because otherwise I totally wouldn't know.) (Bitter is the new sweet, baby.) But yeah--I guess what's especially strange for me is hearing people who were raised Catholic talk about the Church as if it's a group of people in a room, who may be "supportive" or may be not. When to me, it's the Bride of Christ or it's nothing. If I had to pick a religion based on which people were more awesome, there's just no way I'd be Catholic. If it's a bunch of people in "the bright room called day" of history, why on earth would anyone convert? If the Catholic Church is just your experience, you should stop. Because that bunch of people has done horrible things. That bunch of people is not a good-enough grounding for ethics. Labels: bitter little lady, Gay Catholic Whatnot, shalom chaverim, the pope makes me feel minty THEY CALLED YOUR FAILURES ART: I was at Yale for most of my preceding absence; and so yeah, I've heard about Alisa Shvarts. (Why am I the only person I know who seems to care if she's Jewish?*) I don't have anything to say in public except--isn't she just insisting, yet again, that something once considered sublime is really banal? My uterus is just as boring as my parents' front yard. Even if you agree--does it trouble you that that stance necessarily produces the opposite of art? *eta: Should probably have attempted to explain this parenthetical, even though my concern here is something I have a very hard time articulating. For whatever reason (Pharaoh, even??) I have a stronger emotional reaction to Shvarts's whole deal if she's Jewish--it becomes even more saddening to me. In other words, this parenthetical is about my emotions, not her actions. Labels: enemies of eros, shalom chaverim, sublimity now In winter especially, with the traffic and nearby housing projects unhidden by foliage, you felt the thinness of the romantic illusion of [the college]--something between a country estate and a medieval seat of learning--that it seemed intent on purveying; its closeness to nonexistence. --James Lasdun, The Horned Man Thursday, April 24, 2008
NAVEL ATTACK!: Hooray--tagged for a meme about me! What I was doing ten years ago: Making a complete fool of myself, in the most traditional undergraduate ways. Also, enjoying my first month as a Catholic! Oh, that first Confession comes so depressingly quickly.... Five things on my To-Do list today: 1. Laundry 2. Personal and work emails 3. Dinner 4. Preparation for week-long trip: Do dishes, take out all trash, make hard-boiled eggs for the journey, check when Metro opens, reset alarm, and pack. And probably something else I'm forgetting. 5. Mail The Seventh Victim back to Netflix, once I've finished watching the commentary. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Develop secret identity. Become superhero and/or supervillain. Wear awesome costume, possibly featuring feathers and sparkly things. Three of my bad habits: Wow, Clio's pretty much work for me, too: "1. Procrastination. "2. Day-dreaming. (A form of the above.)" 3. I don't think I read terribly wicked blogs, so for my third, I'll say spending too much money. Or for something more serious, postponing Confession, which isn't about procrastination so much as shame and self-delusion ("I can do it on my own!" LOL NO). Five places I've lived: I can only remember four: Madison, WI; Santa Monica, CA; New Haven, CT; and the District of Chaos, imagination's capital, Downed City, home sweet hopeless. Five jobs I've had: I haven't. I've pretty much been a journalist and a think-tank thunker and that's it. Yes, I can hear you from here. Five books I've recently read: Ohhh this spring has been bad for reading. Sherman Alexie's The Toughest Indian in the World (which I liked a lot, but which sometimes got a bit too Look At My Acute Social Observations! for me--like David Brooks, but with Indians, which admittedly is an improvement); Revelation; the Gospel of Matthew; four Bagthorpe Saga books which I'm counting all together; and Heinrich von Kleist's mind-boggling, terrific Penthesilea, on recommendation from the Cigarette Smoking Blogger. With illustrations by Maurice Sendak, for that extra hit of vertiginous monstrosity! Labels: self-obsessed MEET ZE MONSTA: A reader writes: Eve, Labels: aristotle aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, mailbag KITCHEN ADVENTURES: PACK YOUR KNIVES AND GO! OK, so I'm a total geek, and decided to do modified, cheapjack versions of some of the challenges from "Top Chef." Thus far none of them have turned out ridiculously well, so I'm also giving you guys a bonus adventure at the end, from several months ago.... season 1, episode 1, "signature dish": I... don't have one, you know? I just cook stuff. So I made spicy squid with capellini. I blanched 1/4 lb. squid (boil water, dump in squid, cook 30-40 seconds, dump into colander and rinse in very cold water--yes, should be ice water, but as we've discussed, my freezer doesn't work). Then sliced the bodies into rings, melted butter in a pan with lime juice, cooked the squid in the lime butter with minced garlic, chopped plum tomato, cayenne, black pepper, possibly cumin?, and a hint of cinnamon, and ate it with the angel hair pasta and more butter. the verdict: Better luck next time! I think the problem here was that I made too much pasta, and/or didn't cook the pasta in the sauce. When I could taste the lime and squid and cinnamon, it was delicious!--but those flavors got overwhelmed by the starch. I'm terrible at judging how much capellini to make. Using a broth of some kind, ideally something like lime-garlic-jalapeno(-shrimp?) stock made with a cinnamon stick, might also have helped. s1, e4: gas station: The challenge was to make a dish using only things you could buy at a gas station, plus dried herbs and spices. My apartment building has a very well-stocked convenience store, so I raided that, but tried to confine myself to things I might plausibly find at a less-well-stocked gas station. So I made a croissant sandwich with Munster cheese and spicy black beans. I cooked canned beans with cayenne, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, a bit of curry powder, and I think a bit of chili powder, then cut the croissant in half lengthwise, topped the halves with cheese slices, and toasted it in the toaster oven. Then filled the sandwich with the black beans. verdict: The beans were great! But I knew they would be. That combination of flavors is hard to ruin. The croissant, on the other hand... didn't work, at all. I'd hoped it would crisp on the bottom, with the melted cheese on top. Instead, it got soggy and limp. s1, e2: fruit plate: This was really supposed to be a challenge about "knife skills." I have the hand-eye coordination of a monkfish. So I just tried to use fruits and cheeses that would taste good together. I used a pink lady apple, an Asian pear, some goat gouda, some Parrano (a nutty, grainy, delicious yellowy-orangey cheese), and some Morbier. I also tried out black pepper and balsamic vinegar on the fruit. verdict: Hmmm. The fruit went really well with the Parrano (and also the pepper; not so much the vinegar). Fruit + goat gouda was okay. The Morbier was too stinky for me, and not nearly stinky enough for my cheese-loving snacking companion. I think the leftovers here would've been really good in scrambled eggs. I ended up not doing that, but I think if you diced the fruits, the Parrano, and the gouda, you'd be ready to go. and now, success: Whiskey Pork with Apples & Onions. I made this a while ago, as I said, so I don't really remember how long I cooked everything. Besides which, my oven doesn't always seem to work the way recipes think it should--sometimes it cooks much faster than predicted--so I tend to play it by ear, check up on the food and stir it and so forth. Anyway, this is what I did: Turned oven to 375. Thickly sliced a red baking apple. Covered a baking tray with foil. Laid the apple slices on the tray, doused them with Jack Daniels, peppered them, added cayenne I think (possibly I only added cayenne to the pork--as you may have noticed, I'm crazy about it), and cooked for maybe ten, twenty minutes. Then stirred the apple and added two pork loin... chops? The things you get at the store that say "pork loin on sale." A bit more whiskey, more pepper, cayenne. Back into the oven. Cookity for ten to fifteen minutes, while chopping a peeled medium onion into big chunks. Turned the pork, stirred the apple, added the onion. Cookity for fifteenish minutes more. Stirred, tasted; it was ready. Consumed! verdict: Oooh this was good. Moist, porky, whiskeyed, peppery, sweet. I microwaved the leftovers for lunch the next day and it was still fantastic. This is obviously more of a wintry, comfort-food dish, but I'm going to keep it in the repertoire, for sure. I received some help from Cooking with Booze. Labels: if whiskey were a woman I'd be married for sure, kitchen adventures, magical animal, squid Wednesday, April 23, 2008
TWEED FOR WEED. Photos from a Yale anti-Drug War protest. Yeah, I was pretty fond of the sign reading, "I couldn't protest the Drug War on 4/20 because I was in church." Families Against Mandatory Minimums "Battlefield Conversions" Law Enforcement Against Prohibition HOW DO YOU SAY "WOOT" IN BRITISH?: Go congratulate the Rattus!!! (more blogging soon btw) Labels: awesome, oh what a ratly feast, Rattus Thursday, April 17, 2008
CERVUS AND LEADERSHIP: Tonight's work at the pregnancy center made me realize I need to think more about the ways in which counseling is leadership. I tend to think--almost certainly over-dichotomizing--that there are at least two possible paradigms for what we do, leadership and social work, and I need to work in the former category. There are ways in which that's true. Leadership requires creation of an individual persona--the mask of command. It requires personal relationship and intimacy. Although I would never claim to be the friend of the women I counsel--I don't risk nearly enough in our relationship to claim that title--I do give out my phone number a lot, for example, in part because I need to be available, open, personal rather than systematic. Leadership involves me in complicity with the client and her choices. The social-work paradigm, to the limited extent to which I understand it, involves the counselor in complicity with "the system," capitalism and the welfare state, and the pressures it imposes on the client. ("Client," a social-work term.) Catholic charity and social justice work seems to me to swing wildly between these two complicities, in ways which sometimes make sense and/or are equalizing, and sometimes make no sense and/or are condescending. Nonetheless, there are ways in which the social-work paradigm is necessary for what we do. To take an obvious example--a lot of boyfriends want to come and sit in on our counseling sessions with their possibly-pregnant girlfriends. These boyfriends are pretty evenly divided between awesome, supportive, loving guys... and controlling/drunk/generally-loserish schmucks. In order to persuade group #2 that we don't see them as members of group #2, we lean heavily on language like, "I'm sorry, it's our center's policy that we always do the first part of the counseling one-on-one. Afterwards, you can come on back and we can all talk together." That's system-based, non-individualized, anti-leadership talk, and it really helps. Still... I need to think about when each paradigm is appropriate, and how to play to my strengths, which--to the extent that I even have any--are all in the area of leadership, not social work, or not the construction I'm calling "social work." I'm pretty sure one thing I can do is pray more often with our Christian clients, and pray in more traditional Christian, Catholic language--I think "may Christ our Lord shelter you in His wounds" is actually more appropriate to my leadership persona than the standard evangelical "I just thank Jesus for bringing us here today" stuff which makes me really self-conscious and fake. Comments, questions, suggestions, howls of execration? Labels: mask of command, pregnancy center THE CHEATIN' SONG AS FRACTAL: This post made me think of the fourth section of this one. And check out section five for an entirely Eve-approved use of the term "distilled"! Also, me vs. realism. Labels: anti-realism, gayer than a picnic basket, genre, horror PITY THIS BUSY MONSTER, MANUNKIND: This post about Junji Ito's horror manga Uzumaki (h/t Sean Collins) made me think about a couple of things. First, I realized that I have a harder time with cosmic-horror than with small-scale horror, and so realized that if I went back to Uzumaki knowing that cosmic horror was on its way, I wouldn't be disappointed by the later volumes, and might get a lot more out of them. But also! There's this: In his superb The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart, Noel Carroll argues that monsters are central to the effects of horror, and the primary trait of these monsters—beyond their obvious malicious intent--is their impurity, defined by their “interstitiality and categorical contradictoriness” (43). As human beings, we structure the world into mutually exclusive categories and respond with dismay and revulsion when we encounter something or someone that doesn’t fit into that worldview--i.e. a monster.(link) And I couldn't help thinking: OK, but so here, Christ is a monster (in a monstrance!)--genre-crossing God and man. The Eucharist is a monster, bread and flesh and God. The Trinity is a monster, three and one. The Mass is a monster, now and always. And man is a monster, several times over: clay and breath, soul and flesh, consciousness and meat, sinner and imago Dei. I don't have a huge amount to say about this, really. One: Monster horror is self-recognition. Two: Possibly the best genre for the Crucifixion is horror, not tragedy. Three: Not all "impurity" is the same kind of impurity. If people have more to say... I'd like to hear it. Labels: horror ROMOPHOBIA--THE WORST DISEASE: Speaking of things I haven't read yet, the Cigarette Smoking Blogger has posted her senior essay: "Decadence, Christianity, and Oscar Wilde's Conversion to Catholicism." I've been putting it off for fear that reading it will cause me to explode from sheer awesome. (Was a bit conflicted whether this post title was the best possible punk reference; would also entertain nominations of, "When Two Heavens Clash." 1877, and we are going mad....) Labels: CSB, is this the decadence?, romoeroticism, while wilde is on mine, x-ray spex MARRIAGE MAKES THE BOURGEOISIE AND THE REBEL: The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy has collected the Pope's statements on marriage (PDF). Learn the secret connection between weddings and world peace! (...I haven't read it yet.) Labels: disco paradiso, marriage, the pope makes me feel minty, those who can't do RIDDLING WHILE FOAM BURNS: I just saw The Way Things Go. In a seemingly-abandoned warehouse, an incredibly complex apparatus has been set up, with no apparent purpose save its own destruction--and glory. A slowly untwisting garbage bag sets off a chain reaction of rusty, low-rent, slow, implacable old objects. The camera moves in relentlessly; the soundtrack is intensely tactile; there are menacing knives, whistling kettles, huge wooden spools rolling all catawampus toward an inevitable destination. There are unnatural combinations, like the burning foam, and eerie puns, like the shoes that walk by themselves. The action accelerates, but mostly decelerates, its rhythm winding you up into a fever of anticipation. What if it won't work? What if it doesn't work? ...But you know it will work. Oh my gosh, you guys. This is basically a horror movie where nothing bad happens! Incredibly highly recommended. Parents and teachers might really love this as a science hook for their kids--I haven't watched the special features, but I'm pretty sure the physics and chemistry of the crazily awesome Rube Goldberg contraption get explained--but really, I loved this for its funhouse reflection of horror. Many thanks to the Rat. (Title credited to Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It.) Tuesday, April 15, 2008
THE FOUNTAIN OF BETHESDA, MD: Claw of the Conciliator writes, Just saw your new Weakerthans article. Just FYI, in case you don't know: St. Boniface and St. Vital are the names of two neighborhoods here in Winnipeg. St. Boniface is the historically French one, and St. Vital is a fairly upper-middle-class one that people make a lot of jokes about. I guess because it's got a high proportion of rich kids with time on their hands there's a lot of wild parties and whatnot. I did not know that! Because the alternative would make me look dumb (and, to be fair, the line does specifically ask for the saints'/neighborhoods' intercession), I stick to the story that it's a double reference.... Labels: weakerthans |