All right, all right. I have a serious question for you folks.

internets, or interweb?

A lazy Saturday. I'm reading JP II's "Love and Responsibility."

"Only true knowledge of a person makes it possible to commit one's freedom to him or her. Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom --- it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another. Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love. If freedom is not used, is not taken advantage of by love it becomes a negative thing and gives human beings a feeling of emptiness and unfulfilment. Love commits freedom and imbues it with that to which the will is naturally attracted --- goodness. The will aspires to the good, and freedom belongs to the will, hence freedom exists for the sake of love, because it is by way of love that human beings share most fully in the good. This is what gives freedom its real entitlement to one of the highest places in the moral order, in the hierarchy of man's wholesome longings and desires. But man longs for love more than for freedom --- freedom is the means and love the end. He longs however for true love, for only if it is based on truth is a genuine commitment of freedom possible. The will is free, but at the same time it 'is obliged to' seek the good which is congenial to it, it can seek and choose freely, but it is not free from the need to seek and choose."

- Pope John Paul II

Heady stuff, that. I wonder how many marital crises could be averted if the spouses truly believed that freedom is for the sake of love. Oh well. Life is beautiful. Let's all learn to dance like Napoleon Dynamite.

So, the other day, I knocked over and broke a lamp. Never one to pass up an opportunity to use life's lemons to make some shite lemonade, I strung christmas lights around the lampshade and plugged those in instead. So, instead of being a transient monument to my klutziness, the lamp is now ob-jay-dar (that's American for objet d'art)!

In general, all the kids were well behaved today. I even got the sixth graders to clean up at the end of the day quietly. This is how:

"OK, kids, I need your attention. This is your mission, if you choose to accept it. Today, we are going to try packing up for the day as if we were ninjas."

the sixth graders giggle, begin making noise and karate chopping each other in the head.

"No, no. All wrong. See, ninjas move quietly, and get the job done quickly. Also, we're all part of the same dojo, so we're not going to fight each other. Just pack up, quickly and quietly, and get out the door as fast as possible..."

Surprisingly, this worked. Relatively well. We still had the boys crawling around under desks (cause hiding under chairs, apparently, is what ninjas DO, DUH), but at least they were quiet.

I think I'll start training them to rappel from ceilings.

And some days...you wander out of Mass, full of God and coffee, and on the way home, wonder what it would be like to give lesson planning a miss, and just book it top speed, driving East (Aslan came from the East), across deserts and mountains, with no destination in mind.

Movement is peace. Changing, we rest.

But staying in one place for a time requires you to confront your weaknesses head on. It's easy to be cheerful and enlightening, warm and positive, charitable and good for hours, possibly even days at a time. New friends, coworkers, and students have no faults. But weeks and months? When the air conditioning is broken and the seventh grade has decided that they are tired of vocabulary, themselves, and you, several high schoolers have just been caught rifling through your desk in search of Slinkies (let this be a lesson to us all), everyone wants just a bit more of your time than you are able to give, and your car tires keep mysteriously deflating? Then you find out what you are truly made of.

In my case, it's Jello.

the lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would now
be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

- archy (don marquis)

we are Zogg

The change machines were broken at my usual laundromat. So I had to haul my clothes to the other side of town...to hell's laundromat. Hell's laundromat does not seem to have a name; the sign out front has lost all lettering. The facilities are filthy, deserted, and covered in tacky fake wood paneling. A mangy chihuahua, with scabs on its forehead, wandered through the aisles; the patrons were mostly disheveled women who looked as if they had lost all will to live.

On the bright side, hell's laundromat had very functional dryers. I suppose hell is a good source of hot air, hmm?

Gosh, Thomas Aquinas College was a strange place to go through the collegiate experience.

how strange was it?

Well, just imagine a whole bunch of terribly sheltered jumper queens (I'm not even kidding) thrown together with a whole bunch of snarky smokers, drinkers, and reactionaries, on an isolated rural campus in Southern California. The hijinks. They were wacky. Basically, due to the lack of cultcha in the surrounding environs, as well as the poverty of the student body, our entertainment options were limited to drinking in various outdoor locations (not, mind you, under the auspices of local law enforcement officials...rather the opposite), and, umm...yes, that may have been the extent of our recreational activity. Ooh, and we had an eleven pm curfew on weeknights; there was an off chance of being chased around by prefects with flashlights if we came in late. Of course, most dorms were one story buildings with windows close to the ground, so curfew was more of a polite advisory than a strict mandate.

In between drinking in the woods and baiting neo-Jansenists, I believe we may have studied some St. Augustine, Lavoisier, Nietzche, Locke, Aristotle, Newton, Freud, and so forth. Classes were small, although a classroom of fifteen glassy-eyed, slack-jawed college students is not markedly more pleasant an experience than a lecture hall of five hundred glassy-eyed, slack-jawed college students. Our classes were seminar style; we had "Socratic dialogues," wherein three or four individuals would shrilly talk at or over each other until it was time for lunch (the less talkative members of the class would typically resign themselves to apathy and stagnation). Truth, pursuit of, often took a back burner to in-fighting, brown-nosing, squabbling over minutiae, sophistry, partisanship, and other activities proper to the burgeoning peripatetic.

Strangely enough, I found this the ideal learning environment. Irritation at the nonsensical statements of others was a powerful motivator in my own scholastic progress. Also, our tutors (we called our professors tutors, cause we all egalitarian like that) were for the most part holy, patient, brilliant people. I made some wonderful friends there; the pressure cooker environment really helped us bond. On the whole, I would say that it was a positive experience. Would I recommend it to the younguns, though? I'm not really sure...

I'm heading to a graduation this weekend at the alma mater. There are a lot of people graduating from various places in the next few weeks...the process of college graduation marks for some (heh, not all) the final drop-kick into the proverbial realm of real life. So. Ahem. As an AGED, and VENERABLE spinster, of SPOTLESS REPUTATION and CONSIDERABLE LEARNING, I feel it my duty to impart to you young people some advice:

Don't try to find a Purpose in Life. Find something to take care of.

Everyone's vocation in life, whether it be to marriage, to remain single, or to enter a religious order, is going to be fulfilled in the mode of motherhood or fatherhood (in some cases biological, in some cases spiritual). It's never too early to start practicing the nurturing of ungrateful children. In fact, I would be so bold as to say, the transition to maturity begins when you stop saying "I'm soooo screwed up, why won't someone fix meeeeee!" and start saying "Well, God will fix me. Eventually. I hope. In the meantime, what can I do to help others along in this messy, painful business of being alive?"

The problem that a lot of folks face today is that they have to become nurturers and lovers without themselves ever having much of nurturing or love. Also, lots of people have a hard time finding a vocation in life which makes good use of their abilities. Too many options. We should really just be sold as apprentices at the age of fourteen, or something. So, I'm not saying that you should stop whining completely (I whine constantly...I think it's good for the spleen). However, you should find something to take care of, some unlikely soul to befriend, some forlorn project to take charge of, some metaphorical mangy dog to de-louse. Waiting around for the perfect job, the perfect spouse, the perfect monastery, where you'll be just perfect and holy and happy and covered in lovey dovey love...is not how maturity happens. Rather, find something or someone in need of love, and give it. Rinse and repeat. Until one day you find out that you're living your vocation, instead of waiting around for the Vocation Bunny to leave your purpose in life under your pillow.

(also, if you ever visit my family, make sure to ask my dad about the Crap Fairy. it's a much more viable concept than the Vocation Bunny, honest.)

sixth grade

I'm reading Tuck Everlasting with the sixth graders; we're having a bit of a class discussion about aging, immortality, and death. I'm sure this helps them sleep well at night. Anyway, I asked them all to tell me what they thought they would be doing ten years from now...twenty years from now...sixty years from now...and one boy proudly volunteered "Twenty years from now, I'll still be a momma's boy!"

Also, apparently, most of the girls want to get a college education and raise a family, and most of the boys want to be a Jedi and/or assassin. Hmm. Well, there's a relationship advice book waiting to happen...girls are from Earth, boys are from the PLANET OF THE EXPLODING NINJA-PIRATES!

high school

The upper grades are taking a standardized multi-subject evaluation type test. I, the unfortunate test proctor, am reading the fillinthebubble directions in a bored monotone. All is going well until we get to the part where, under SEX, you fill in either M or F. After that, the proctoring instructions direct you to ask the students "Do you have any questions about how to fill out this section?" I read that out loud, and started giggling hysterically. As did my class. As it turns out, none of them wanted help in picking a gender, so on to the next section.

William Shatner in the Sky With Diamonds

warning: contains Shatner as flying nun.

Car adventures, part the second:

Apparently, it's a good thing that I don't take care of my car the same way I take care of my health. Whenever I'm ill, or achey in some way, my policy is to ignore the problem until it goes away. Which, almost always, it does. Sure, this means that I occasionally limp for a month and a half, or spend three weeks with an increasingly severe respiratory ailment, but I feel that this helps my body build character.

In any case, ignoring the rattling sound my car was making...didn't make it any better. Although, playing loud music so I couldn't hear the car rattling helped some. Eventually, since the self-healing capabilities of the Cadillac were not coming into play, I caved in and took it to a mechanic. Umm. And I discovered a NEW CAR PART! WHICH I DID NOT EVEN KNOW THAT CARS HAD! It's called an "alternator." I'm still not entirely sure what an alternator does, but now, thanks to the friendly services of D Mac's Automotive, I have a new one. Also, some new pulleys, the purpose of which I'm even less clear on.

The car does not rattle now. This, I believe, is the important thing. And, since I have the Friday off (cause of Ascension Thursday, dontcha know), I'm going to avail myself of some MGD. This is the best beer I'll be able to afford for a good long while. Damn pulleys.

reason why I am a bad person, #4858:

Last Sunday at Mass, when the priest asked us to pray for our "very special intentions," I bowed my head and, as is my wont, implored the good Lord for one of those morally upright boyfriends (but with a degenerate wit, so as to avoid boredom) of whom I've heard tell. As I did so, I thought idly of the various dates I had been on over the past few months. My mind began to dwell on a disastrous dinner with someone we'll call Chain Mail Boy, and I started snickering quietly. Y'know, during Mass.

Fellows in the audience, here's a tip. Ren Faire reminisces make better conversational material for the second date. Also, the making of chain mail is not a hobby likely to win over the, uh, wenches.

I had a fun conversation after Mass today; one of the parents waylaid me to talk about her darling son, who we'll call Rico Suave. Rico is a high school freshman---a sweet kid, just a bit talkative, scatterbrained, and more into carrying a guitar around and chatting up the ladies than the doing of algebra homework (hence my secret nickname for him). Rico is one of my favorite students, and will play "Stairway to Heaven" for me on his guitar whenever I want. Anyway, his mom was trying to think of ways to motivate Rico's scholastic efforts. I suggested that failing to turn in homework should be punished with washing my car. Rico's mom thought this was a great idea. So, in other news, I have free carwashing for life...or until young Rico passes Algebra II, whichever...

Gosh, am I poor. Poor poor poor. All the bills hit at once. Apparently, having a steady income is like having a big neon sign over your head saying "PLEASE EVERYONE TAKE LOTS OF MONEY FROM ME! ESPECIALLY THE GOVERNMENT, YAY!"