tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67923073601138375802023-11-15T12:43:37.512-03:00Thankless Days, Dreamless NightsWhat is it that keeps you through them?Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.comBlogger179125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-25430782777598092162013-03-26T18:41:00.001-03:002013-03-26T18:41:19.261-03:00Biblical docetismIt's been quite a week, and I have next to nothing to show for it... so let's pick up where I left off.<br />
<br />
Sometime around the discussion of <a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-end-of-my-gnostic-faith.html">Gnostic Christianity</a>, I stumbled across <a href="http://defeatingthedragons.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/taking-things-literally-and-why-thats-a-bad-idea/">Defeating the Dragons</a> (courtesy of Slacktivist), who posted this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There is a term for what happened in those two examples, and it has
actually been referred to as “the evangelical heresy” (and no, I’m not
talking about <em><a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/julyweb-only/128-31.0.html">individualism</a></em>). It’s called <em>biblical docetism</em>, and it is an extension of gnosticism, dualism, and Arianism...</blockquote>
And I wound up having to respond to it.. Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-14099070239227017772013-03-14T14:39:00.000-03:002013-03-17T14:44:45.416-03:00Best 101ing everThe annotated version of this story runs as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(<a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-end-of-my-gnostic-faith.html#disqus_thread">She</a>) I just realized my faith was kinda Gnostic. Wow. This changes things.<br />
(<a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-end-of-my-gnostic-faith.html#comment-828630906">He</a>) Why do Christians worry so much about being heretical?<br />
(<a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-end-of-my-gnostic-faith.html#comment-828686942">Me</a>) Because heresy leads to <a href="http://snarkthebold.blogspot.com/2013/03/in-world-but-not-of-it-but-for-it.html">horrible consequences</a>.<br />
(<a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-end-of-my-gnostic-faith.html#comment-828735739">He</a>) I get that, but why are horrible consequences bad? Even liberal Christians seem to reject them for no good reason.</blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://xkcd.com/386/"><img alt="There's always a relevant xkcd." border="0" height="320" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png" title="" width="290" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://xkcd.com/386/">There's always a relevant xkcd.</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And by the time I finished responding, it was nearly sunrise the next day.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-13720411207930452392013-03-10T21:01:00.005-03:002013-03-10T21:12:44.933-03:00In the world, but not of it, but for itDuring the rampage of theological gushing I went on this week, I passed through Slacktivist's "<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/03/08/nra-not-of-this-world/">NRA: Not of this world</a>," a kvetch about the author's interpretation of "worldliness."<br />
<br />
It wasn't the best post in the series. I've followed Fred Clark's vivisection of L&J since its Typepad days, in fact since the first book. Where it shines brightest, to me, is where it's not just a takedown but a <i>witness</i>: where Fred, pointing to the darkness of the World's Worst Books, makes a statement about what it is to be Christian <i>well</i>. (There have been several, in the past. The last one I remember clearly was an aside in which he observed that Rapture theology leaves the church with no purpose, nothing to do.) And there wasn't really any observation like that today.<br />
<br />
So when I found that I was gonna be a first-page commenter, I decided to <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/03/08/nra-not-of-this-world/#comment-823393165">add one in</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I'm not gonna knock the language of "worldliness." Call me a Johannine fanboy, but I <i>love</i> that rhetoric of "the world," enough that I want to <i>live</i>
it. I grok that we aren't to be of the world, even as we're in it over
our heads. And I get why, too. It's right there in the unread followup
to John 3:16. God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world;
but that the world through him might be saved. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That's the beauty of the
Johannine NT. We're called from the world so we can live in-and-out the
story of its salvation. In the world, but not of it, but <i>for</i> it,
in Christ's name and for Christ's sake.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And that's the horror of the
World's Worst Books. That every Friday we witness anew L&J forsaking
that. Believing, and assuming, and proclaiming that to be Christian is
to be in the world, but not of it - but <i>against</i> it. Not to save, but to condemn.</blockquote>
That first-page comment I blockquoted up there? Got 20 likes and <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/03/08/nra-not-of-this-world/#comment-823534277">a response from a total stranger</a>. I was stunned. The
only post I've ever written that got that much response was a one-liner
about Lex Luthor stealing 40 cakes in the same thread. That got 24
likes.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><i>In the world, but not of it, but for it.</i> I don't know where the words for that came from, but they were mine; and I was awestruck by them from the moment I saw them on screen.<br />
<br />
A page later, Fearless Son posted something about the hostility to worldliness being the equivalent of Buddhist nonattachment, and I responded to him (disagreeing, politely.) My closing passage, when I wrote it, was on asceticism: "Christian asceticism at its best is about discipline: cultivating
virtues and creating spaces to learn a certain freedom from concern, the
better to keep your eyes on the goal and run the race with Paul."<br />
<br />
This is why the monastic tradition exists. This is why the Benedictines and the Cistercians and the Carthusians take their vows: they're not severing their ties to pray for their own souls, their own selves. They cut themselves off from the world to be truly neutral, to give themselves wholly in prayer for the world with the certainty that comes of no ulterior motives.<i> </i><br />
<br />
Unbidden the words came back to my lips again. <i>In the world, but not of it, but for it.</i><br />
<br />
This is something worth pursuing.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-52111123852144252662013-03-10T20:28:00.001-03:002013-03-10T20:28:24.111-03:00Fourth Sunday in LentThe weather was fine today. Too fine; too warm. <a href="http://snarkthebold.blogspot.com/2013/02/lent-2013.html">A month ago this Wednesday</a>, I decided to give up driving to church on Sunday. I will finally succeed at this starting next week: the final NOOMA video (<a href="http://nooma.com/films/013-rich">"Rich"</a>) was shown, and I no longer have to be there before 10:15. For the last two Sundays of the season, I'll be able to walk it with no problems. I was, in fact, tempted to walk it today; and I have mixed feelings about my decision not to.<br />
<br />
The NOOMA film was predictable; the discussions about "God Bless America" and money, which led to... predictable results. (One of the eternally awkward parts of reading as much critical theory as I have: you can sit in a room full of committed progressives and <i>still</i> kvetch about how far to the left you are of the parish in general. It's not really a fair thing to complain about, but it's still a thing.) I was able to raise my voice this time, to remark on a thought about how Rob Bell juxtaposed "grace" and "deserving" at one point (and the greater three-part relationship between grace, dessert and <i>mitzvot</i>, although "grace" only came up once); asked to elaborate on that, I said I'd need a week or so.<br />
<br />
(These last few days have had a lot of thoughts about grace. Not totally sure why.)<br />
<br />
And so, an hour and a bit later, the 10:30 service started. It was <i>amazing</i>.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Have I mentioned that this is the first church I've ever been at to sing or say Trisagions? Because it does. Wonderfully. (I love singing. Richard Beck was right when he wondered what makes Christians sing so much.) And the rest of the hymnody worked in the context of the lectionary. Psalm 32, a Trisagion, a very new one, a very old one... a whiplash of loving calls to repentance, thanksgiving for forgiveness, cries for mercy, our relationship with Immanuel, God-with-us. It made me wish there was a tip jar.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Great God, in Christ, you call our name<br />
and then receive us as your own<br />
not by some merit, right or claim,<br />
but by your gracious love alone...</blockquote>
(I've never heard that hymn before. It was beautiful; thinking about it now, it neatly expressed what I was thinking about in the NOOMA film. To talk about "grace" is to admit that <i>stuff isn't ours</i>.)<br />
<br />
And, in the middle and the end, the Gospel itself: the parable of the Prodigal Son. I'm sure I've heard it preached about before, but never quite like this, riffing on the readings of the story, touching on <i>how</i> we read (my postliberal theological ears perked on those notes. Anything that acknowledges the story over the data-mining of it is good in my book. Preach!) and ending with the fanon of Henri Nouwen. (Whose name, as it turns out, is pronounced "No-when." I think.)<br />
<br />
And the Eucharist. I was shaken by it; <i>moved</i>. Sitting back down at the pew left me in turmoil, like I could've cried if I'd willed myself to. I wound up looking through the Prayer Book for something to say; really wishing that I had something memorized. I should, maybe.<br />
<br />
The last two hymns were fairly close together. 699 and 696 of the Hymnal, I think. Never heard the Communion hymn before, but it was the right thing to sing at that moment; really wishing I could remember it now.<br />
<br />
And then the Eighth Sacrament, but I couldn't handle coffee hour today. As soon as I'd thanked the rector, I skipped the hell out and made for Bruegger's, to get myself the post-Sunday coffee and bagel.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-64347996696586794522013-03-09T19:10:00.000-03:002013-03-10T22:10:01.535-03:00On confession<i>Originally posted <a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2013/02/confession-confusion.html#comment-824390294">here</a>:</i><br />
<i> </i><br />
Each prayer of the Daily Office has a prayer of confession at the
start; in theory you could say five a single day (plus litanies.) None
of these are sacramental in the sense that James was talking about; and
while we *do* have a rubric for Reconciliation, the refrain about it is
that "Any can, some should, none must."<br />
<br />
When their time comes, I'm sure that I'm not a murderer or a
heresiarch. I'm sure that my sins are small stuff. I say the prayer of
confession anyways. To confess is to humble ourselves, to own that we <i>can</i> be wrong. To confess is to word our weakness, to learn words to confront it as we must.<br />
<br />
To confess is to create a time and space when we can learn to sorrow,
to regret, to come before a God of mercy needing mercy. And that's
ultimately why we do it: confession is the hard work of learning to
appreciate grace. Pardon the cliché, but as long as I can confess my
sins I can celebrate that Jesus died for them; that He is mine, and I am
His.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-79213117757186040012013-03-07T01:26:00.001-03:002013-03-07T01:26:21.839-03:00When you write something that breaks youIt's the third week of my first Lent, and I'm feeling it. Oh, am I feeling it. This is a raw season, and I am going to come out of it a very different
person than when I went in. It's a scary feeling, at once sobering and
intoxicating, feeling myself dissolve in the chrysalis of time and waiting to see what will emerge when the stone is rolled away in three Sundays.<br />
<br />
I've lost a bit of weight. More than that, I've been having moments. One after the next. Several of them back-to-back. And they're starting to get scary.<br />
<br />
Take the one that happened <a href="http://www.facebook.com/edo.owaki/posts/410666042357435">last night</a>, when I wrote this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent">Neil's
a softie. I'm a Christian here, and I *do* have problems with what you
do in church. Because by the time somebody has to tell you to "keep it
in church," your theology's gone very, VERY bad.</span></span></blockquote>
There were two likes, and one comment which I replied to, and that was that. Except that it wasn't.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I dashed that blurb out in two minutes. The gestalt of that link - the two likes (Leila's came later), the two comments - was over and done in fifteen minutes or less. And yet the longer I sit, the more time passes since I posted it yesterday afternoon, the bigger it looms. The harder it is to look anywhere without seeing it, without feeling like I'm looking <i>away</i> from it.<br />
<br />
It's incomplete.I should've said more, or Miranda should've said more. There is
something more that needs to be said, and it's too late to say it there. What I blurbed out is becoming profound, Bottomlessly deep,
and I'm calling out from it, listening to it echo as it never quite
reaches the top. I feel as if I were a child who'd blurted out some deep and
terrible truth, and am still sorting out the implications of what I've
just said.<br />
<br />
And that blurb, which I hadn't realized I thought or felt until I wrote
it, is staring at me.<br />
Haunting me.<br />
Taunting me.<br />
<br />
Like a challenge I'm afraid to accept.<br />
<br />
<br />
Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-29643534530242529952013-02-24T21:42:00.002-03:002013-03-10T22:16:45.366-03:00Second week of LentIn my last post, one of my Lenten fasts was from driving to church. Today marks ten days since Ash Wednesday (eight not counting the Sundays, as is proper) - I'm 20% of the way through the season. And I have not honored that fast once.<br />
<br />
I tried, today. I even got off to a decent start, waking up at the right time to get out the door... and then promptly rolling over to go back to sleep. Dragged myself out, got into the shower, and was out the door... about fifteen minutes too late, so I hopped in the car to go...<br />
<br />
...but as I was leaving, I was asked, very abruptly, if I could run across the street and pick up ten (10) rolls of paper towels and cranberry juice. Why didn't they get them last night, when they were <i>at</i> the grocery store? Bugger if I know, but it's never the day to argue this stuff.<br />
<br />
So I ran the hell across the street, picked up the ten (10) rolls of paper towels, and eight-pack and two loose ones, and the bottle of cranberry juice, and made haste to church, letting them know that the change was in the bag.<br />
<br />
By the time I arrived, I was fifteen minutes late. Just late enough to <i>completely</i> miss out on the video that was being discussed, and to sit in silence as my fellow parishioners discussed grace, the past catching up with us... prison. And I dwelled on the gracelessness of that night in Miami, when I came on vacation and left on probation.<br />
<br />
For all that I contributed, I could've - should've - just walked it like I was planning to.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>And then, of course, I got back home to discover that<br />
<ol>
<li>B. had tossed out the bag without actually checking to see if there was change in it.</li>
<li>He was also grousing about the eight-pack, because eight <i>individual</i> rolls would've netted a lot more sheets.</li>
</ol>
I fucking love my life.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-22760683560305091842013-02-16T17:19:00.000-03:002013-02-16T17:19:09.182-03:00Lent 2013<em>Thanks to </em><a href="http://anarchistreverend.com/"><em>the Anarchist Reverend</em></a><em> for providing </em><a href="http://anarchistreverend.com/2013/02/lenten-failure/"><em>a prompt</em></a><em>. My writing here is an expansion of my comment there.</em><br />
<br />
I grew up honoring Lent in the breach. It was the time to set aside bad habits, or try to, or pretend to, or want to really hard. It was a selfish thing, or I was selfish and made it so, or I was clueless and didn't pick up that it wasn't supposed to be. It was so long ago I don't really remember now. 2002 was the last time I became anything more than an obligatory Christmas-and-Easter churchgoer, and with that Lent fell by the wayside too, unnoticed and unmissed.<br />
<br />
Last year, the year of constellations, was the year that saw me back to church - but I still managed to miss Lent. (I actually came back on Pentecost, and started seriously attending on Trinity Sunday.) This is easily the 23rd Lent of my life, certainly of the life I can remember; but this Lent is different from the ones that came before. This is the first Lenten fast of my adult life. This is the first Lent since I grew into my baptism; my first as an Episcopalian; my first where I understood why I was fasting.<br />
<br />
This Lent is going to be special.<br />
<a name='more'></a>I have only two hard-and-fast rules for Lent. One of them is traditional, the other personal.<br />
<br />
The traditional fast is abstaining from flesh. In the historic tradition of the church, Lent was a season for vegetarianism, which would be a much bigger transition than I'm comfortable attempting this year. I'm not exactly ovo-lacto (broth and bouillon is hypothetically okay); the purpose of "flesh" is to save me from dithering over scouring ingredient lists with friends. The money I save will, in theory, be given away. (First discovery of Lent: <em>I have no idea how much money I'm actually saving by this.</em> Really, I should start planning a budget come Easter.)<br />
<br />
My other fast is a personal one, impossible until after the Industrial Revolution: I'm going to walk to church. Church is close enough to walk to (I did it today; it takes about half an hour, less at the hour I'd be leaving when the streets will be empty.) I've been meaning to do it for awhile; I <em>don't</em>, because I wake up too late. The waking up too late is a sign of a broader problem, that for all the words I consistently feel unprepared to worship; a 7:00 wakeup should give me time to prepare myself.<br />
<br />
That part of Lent first becomes salient tomorrow. Wish me luck.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-78091217888290058082013-02-13T23:54:00.002-03:002013-02-13T23:54:42.040-03:00Breakfast for dinnerI have celebrated Mardi Gras a few times before. Until last night I'd never celebrated Shrove Tuesday.<br />
<br />
I've had more than my share of pancakes in church, granted. It was part of the understanding by which my Boy Scout troop could use the church facilities; we'd do brunches after church a few times a year. Last night was also the first <i>night</i> I've had pancakes and sausages in a church building.<br />
<br />
An entire room, half-empty, a number of people I don't know, introversion, what to do? Gamer wisdom kicked in: <i>Sit with my back to a wall.</i> And so I did, as best I could. (Gamer wisdom is actually <i>sit with your back to a corner.</i> There weren't nearly enough.)<br />
<br />
I chose an empty table. Simply by showing up I'd left H. stranded at the health office; not having anybody directly sit next to me would give me an excuse should I suddenly need to excuse myself. So of <i>course</i> it filled up incredibly quickly.<br />
<br />
Shrove Tuesday dinner was quite enjoyable. The only hitch came in turning off the fire alarm at the end; I'm not sure if the church was able to before the fire department arrived.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-68253078891947645612013-01-17T17:07:00.000-03:002013-01-17T18:52:44.914-03:00Standing vigil for the dying<span class="userContent">Standing vigil for the dying<br /> Comes a time past rhyming when<br /> There are no words to say<br /> <br /> So weary and worn away<br /> Are litany and commendation<br /> Standing vigil for the dying<br /> <br /> And no toil and no trying<br /> Can yield them a worthy creation<br /><span class="text_exposed_show"> There are no words to say<br /> <br /> Then lexicons betray<br /> They dawdle in the time of desperation<br /> Standing vigil for the dying<br /> <br /> When comes the time of crying<br /> Unprepared are words of consolation<br /> There are no words to say<br /> <br /> All the time to pray<br /> But waiting for the last amen<br /> Standing vigil for the dying<br /> There are no words to say.</span></span>Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-51462107954730401102013-01-14T17:35:00.000-03:002013-01-14T17:35:24.388-03:00Darkonian funeral prayerPowers dark that no-one knows,<br />
Hear our petition that you might<br />
Now grant our dead their blessed repose.<br />
<br />
Unending stillness now impose,<br />
And rest unending, as is right,<br />
O Powers dark that no-one knows.<br />
<br />
In summer sun and winter snows,<br />
In longest day, in Darkest Night<br />
Now grant our dead their blessed repose<br />
<br />
For peace beyond their dying throes,<br />
For those that live, grant this respite,<br />
O powers dark that no-one knows.<br />
<br />
And as their sightless eyes we close<br />
Accept, we ask, this offered rite<br />
And grant our dead their blessed repose.<br />
<br />
May liturgy and prayers and prose<br />
Be satisfying in your sight,<br />
Powers dark that no one knows:<br />
Now grant our dead their blessed repose.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-3674367986185096632013-01-10T20:52:00.003-03:002013-01-10T20:56:33.302-03:00It was seven days delayedI don't recall the last time I signed in<br />
Before this afternoon. I should have known<br />
That there would be a message in the bin,<br />
Unanswered long enough to be a sin.<br />
So, breathing tight and zeroed at the bone,<br />
I clicked as though the message was a stray<br />
And armed explosive shell. You were alone<br />
And on the train, and missed me; on your phone<br />
You said as much, and sent it on its way<br />
A week ago.<br />
<br />
I started to reply,<br />
And wrote you all that I could think to say<br />
Before remembering that half a day<br />
Of time lag separated you and I,<br />
Deleted my response and wrote a poem<br />
To pass the time and let my sleeper lie.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-23500135756867919572012-12-20T20:05:00.001-03:002012-12-20T20:05:10.784-03:00Baked potatoesShortly after the groom-to-be left the premises, the rest of us realized that we had no plans for dining that night - and all of us were hungry. To prevent any dithering, R. quickly suggested a baked potato bar. And so we did.<br />
<br />
Idaho potatoes, wrapped in foil, baked for half an hour... and then another ten... and then maybe another ten, to be sure the biggest ones were completely cooked through. Sour cream, shredded cheese, chopped scallions in the absence of seasonal chives... and bacon, per R.'s request (although I suspect that he was the only person to actually have any, or maybe he and the bride-to-be.) Probably a bit too fattening, but altogether satisfying.<br />
<br />
I didn't know the baked potato bar existed before that night. I'll have to remember it for the future.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-90965891796560843592012-12-18T17:55:00.002-03:002012-12-18T17:55:37.282-03:00Burger, cider, yogurt, CokeIt was the first time I had seen her in just under a year. The first time <em>any</em> of us had seen her in that time; for some of us, maybe for even longer. Too long for all of us. Too long for her.<br />
<br />
So of course the first course of the night was burgers.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
There were eight of us, all told, three men, four women, and her; and the burger restaurant (it was a local place, and had a wine menu, so it was a <em>restaurant</em>) didn't take bookings in advance. There was a fairly long initial wait while they set up enough tables to seat us all, and between us, the umbrellas and the bags we blocked up most of the entranceway. More than once we had to form into line to let people pass (some to leave, two to enter after telling them we were a single group, and many times to stand close to her and talk.)<br />
<br />
The meal started with chips, maybe homemade, and habanero salsa. Most of us dipped very gently; she actually ate some of the salsa itself, rather than the liquid in the jar. It took a soda, an entire packet of sugar, and a few glasses of ice water before she stopped feeling it. An appetizer plate (the macaroni balls were interesting, the rest unremarkable) later, the burgers themselves came.<br />
<br />
A shot-glassed serving of cole slaw on the side, some chips, and at the center of the plate the burgers themselves. They were <em>enormous</em>. Not for nothing the forks and knives; in the end I wasn't able to finish the bun. It was washed down with at least three glasses of water and a glass of hard cider (Angry Orchards, I think, but I'm not sure any more.) Best part of the meal: sitting next to her.<br />
<br />
Once we'd sorted out who paid for how much (she wasn't allowed to pay for any of it - we were hosting), we went for a walk around Davis Square to digest a bit. Hit a comic book store, and spent a fair bit of time browsing but not buying; and then on to the desert for the night.<br />
<br />
Frozen yogurt. The place had a pallette of green, orange white and brick that reminded me, vaguely, of the original designer-color iMacs, reinforced by the rounded shapes of the furniture; it was the comic dystopian future of a 1990s Apple technocracy. There were sixteen flavors of frozen yogurt - vanilla, chocolate, coconut, pineapple, wedding cake, strawberry, peanut butter, butter pecan, gingerbread, eggnog, coffee, brownie batter, raspberry and bugger but I've forgotten three others - and it was self-serve, with the final purchase being priced by weight.<br />
<br />
I wound up splitting between I think wedding cake, vanilla and coffee/brownie twist, topped with a handful of maraschino cherries. Not really my thing, to be honest. The flavors felt a little imbalanced, and the frozen yogurt a touch gritty from, presumably, ice particles. I ate it all anyways.<br />
<br />
The guy who organized the whole affair had to leave at that point, and the rest of us (after some quibbling) decided to have a drink before we parted ways. The bar in question was a downstairs lounge; we were seated along the wall, four inside, three outside. It was as dark as the hotel bar my father took me to in Japan once, as an example of a bar that's dark but not <em>shady</em>; all it really needed was a baccarat table somewhere and it could work as a James Bond set.<br />
<br />
The two remaining guys had Cokes (he had work; I had a two-hour drive ahead of me.) Everybody else had hard ciders, and we spent a good time filling space and providing no real revenue for the establishment, which was probably happy to see us go. (Note to self: next time, bring more small bills.)<br />
<br />
We parted ways at 11:45, when the very last trains of the night took us in different directions.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-10811710211157832482012-12-16T17:02:00.001-03:002012-12-16T17:02:35.474-03:00Once I had hope<em>to the tune of "I Dreamed A Dream"</em><br />
<br />
She spent a year across the sea<br />
A year I waited to be near her<br />
And now she's here, so close to me<br />But it's so very hard to hear her<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For I'm always AFK<br />
Her computer lies in pieces<br />
And we only have a day<br />
'til we're parted once again...</blockquote>
I'll try to write her every day<br />
To tell my love how much I miss her<br />
But there are no words I can say<br />
No words to write that let me kiss her<br />
<br />
Once I had hope my life could be<br />
A life spent lived, and not just waiting.<br />
But I will find a way to cope...<br />
...and last the year without that hope.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-91869383840535770652012-12-16T15:39:00.000-03:002013-02-16T15:40:46.419-03:00Third Sunday of AdventI awoke this morning to something I never thought I'd see: snow. As light as caster sugar, until it turned to sludge under the brush as I wiped it off the windshields. The sky was gray, the ground clear, the air cold as death.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://snarkthebold.blogspot.com/2012/12/first-sunday-of-advent.html">Two Sundays ago</a> the land took my mind to a world of horror. Today I knew that I had arrived.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
There was no psalm. We sang the First Song of Isaiah instead. I remember singing it before, or at least listening to the choir singing it. It was a different setting this week, one I had never heard before.<br />
<br />
The lectionary in Advent is a reminder that as we proclaim the first coming of Christ, we also await his return. Zephaniah, Philippians, Luke - Luke on John the Baptist, proclaiming the winnowing fork and the fire, and that whoever has two cloaks ought to share with whoever has none. The readings are chiliastic, Messianic. Apocalyptic. Heavy on my mind today was the human cost of apocalypse.<br />
<br />
It sat heavy on me through the homily (I didn't entirely agree, but that's nothing to complain about), through the hymns (downtempo, much less organ-heavy than last time I crossed that threshold; it would be sluggish but for Sandy Hook, which <em>darkened</em> the songs, sobered and sombered the hymnody), even through the Eucharist itself. I have no words to discuss it, but I wish it would be discussed.<br />
<br />
The human cost of apocalypse.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-26260959163637161722012-12-08T19:51:00.002-03:002012-12-08T19:51:32.217-03:00This week in Andalusada, 12/8/2012<br />
<h3>
Sunday, 12/2/2012</h3>
After a derpy comment to R. last night, my first edit of the day was an expansion, and then a rearranging, of <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/instead-of-9mm.html">the 8.8mm page</a>.<br />
<ul>
<li>This led to an edit of ACP, to mention that 8.8x53mm ACP was now a cartridge...</li>
<li>I also planned to link the <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-black-friars.html">Black Friars</a> into the mythos of the Palace of Granada, but while I was doing so I accidentally reverted it to a draft. Since I wasn't sure what it was called, I renamed it "<a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/the-winchester-alhambra.html">the Winchester Alhambra</a>," which is now its new URL.</li>
<li>Once that was done (and all the links to it were corrected), the next thing on my to-do list was to fill out the Black Friars themselves. Which was done, linking them (again) to the palaces of Granada.</li>
<li>Next up on the editing list: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/second-mahdist-war.html">the Second Mahdist War</a>, to establish that al-Mahdi dies on April 5th, 182?. Once that was done, the next thing to edit was (unsurprisingly) <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/07/april-5th.html">April 5th</a>.</li>
<li>After that, my next edit was to <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/occidental-french.html">the Occidentals</a>, filling out some details about their relations with the Mozarabs and inventing a small number of them that emigrated after the Sodalite Revolt.</li>
</ul>
Having filled that in, I posted my one new post of the day: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/12/sodalite-revolt.html">the Sodalite Revolt itself</a>. It's still very WIPpy, but that's to be expected.<br />
<ul>
<li>Which called for a significant cleanup of <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/the-sodality.html">the Sodality</a> itself.</li>
<li>And, in turn, an expansion of the post on <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/08/dystopian-catholic-france.html">Dystopian Catholic France</a> to mention the Bastard Prince, and the occasion of his bastardy.</li>
</ul>
And so to bed.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><h3>
Tuesday, 12/4/2012</h3>
The first post of the night was on <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/12/caliphal-succession.html">caliphal succession in the UCNA</a>. It was a post I've had brewing for some time now, but I didn't actually fill it out in any detail until tonight; it's quite a bit of fun, sorting out the pageantry and process of a caliphal succession.<br />
<ul>
<li>The next thing to do was to edit <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/caliph-yusuf-i.html">all</a> <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/yusuf-ii.html">three</a> <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/yusuf-iii.html">Yusufs</a>. Initially, this was simply changing the words from "Timeframe" to "Life," but it got progressively bigger, as I moved a lot of details below the cut to make the page a bit less cluttered.</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/zahra.html">Zahra</a> got a few touch-ups; mostly marking that she <i>was</i> a work in progress, and so forth. </li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/sufyan.html">Sufyan</a> then took up almost the rest of my night. Initially I edited him just to add his dates in, but it turned into a grueling expansion as I cleaned up an ancient, awful post to sort out and flesh out the details of his life.</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/don-musa.html">Don Musa</a> was edited slightly, although I know not how at this point.</li>
</ul>
And, with that written, so to bed.<br />
<br />
And astonishingly enough, that was basically it for the week.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-45624354215363052152012-12-03T23:12:00.001-03:002012-12-03T23:12:31.924-03:00Lost my walletFirst thought to cross my mind when I remember being fully awake: <i>fuck. What time was I meeting with P. again?</i> And so I showered, shaved, toweled off, dressed up, hopped in the car, pulled on my coat, and made for the center of town as fast as I possibly could.<br />
<br />
I remember looking at my watch and realizing it was 12:30-12:40ish. I also remember looking at the sign on the library door, C<span style="font-size: x-small;">LOSED</span> - and feeling like a fool, for forgetting that it wasn't even open until 1:00. And so, since I had the time, I decided to take a walk. I wandered to one end of town, and put this year's last overseas letter to the Love in the mail; I stopped at a few places en route to the other side of town, wondering if they had any college-ruled paper to refill my supplies, much depleted from the start of the school year by averaging 10+ pages of correspondence each week.<br />
<br />
Then I realized that I couldn't find my wallet. I furiously backtracked, as fast as I could - no luck. Scoured the car, turning both of the seats up - not there. Got down on all fours and ducked my head to look <i>under</i> the cars in the parking lot - not there either.<br />
<br />
So I drove back home and furiously searched my coats, my shirts, my pants. <i>Not there. </i>And on that note, I made <i>back </i>for the center of town as fast as I possibly could, for the appointment with P.<br />
<br />
And the appointment with J. after that.<br />
<br />
And then I drove back home <i>again</i>, and resumed the search. Cleaned the floor - <i>nothing</i>. Rearranged the stacks of books - <i>nothing</i>. I called Mom to angst about it, repeatedly, and to sort out my plans for the morrow, when I would get all of the cards replaced.<br />
<br />
And then, at 7:30ish, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. It was AAA, calling to let me know that somebody had reported my missing wallet, and they gave me the number to call her back. And so I did.<br />
<br />
It turned out she'd found it at 12:30ish, within minutes of it being lost.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-78190266871637391772012-12-02T21:56:00.002-03:002013-02-16T15:41:02.782-03:00First Sunday of Advent<a href="http://kathyescobar.com/2012/11/30/when-christmas-is-hard/">Kathy Escobar</a> mentioned that this marks the start of one of the Refuge's darkest seasons. After the events of last night, I can second that. After the events of this morning, I can second that again. <br />
<br />
How there was any light at all in the stained-glass windows, I will never know. The sky was as gray as William Gibson's proverbial dead channel, the ground was wet, the snow crunchy, the commons silent, still, and deathly chill. The mist took me to Ravenloft, in mind if not in body.<br />
<br />
Every Sunday of Ordinary Time, or at least the ones I made it to, started with a processional hymn, accompanied by organ music. Today was the first exception, and the longest to date - there was no accompaniment at all, and the processional wound through the church two or three times as we sang <a href="http://www.bcponline.org/GreatLitany/Litany2.html">the Great Litany</a>. It was beautiful - right up to its jarringly abrupt ending.<br />
<br />
In the Episcopal Church, the liturgical color of the season is blue. Even though it was <i>visible</i> and I had only to behold, it didn't register until it was told to me. I was startled. I was <i>always</i> startled, today.<br />
<br />
The Gospel was <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=221495742">Luke 21:25-36</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="vv" style="display: inline;"></span>"There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see "the Son of Man coming in a cloud" with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="vv" style="display: inline;"></span>Then he told them a parable: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.<span class="vv" style="display: inline;"></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="vv" style="display: inline;">"</span>Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man." </blockquote>
Signs, foreboding. Wars and rumors of wars. As we celebrate Advent, the readings are dark, because our celebration of the first coming flows seamlessly alongside our expectation of the second. Not for nothing was Christmas set to the days <i>after</i> the winter solstice: the darkening is part of the season.<br />
<br />
As the first Sunday in Advent, today also marks the turn to Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary. Maybe that was why I had no idea why I spent this year consistently wrong about what readings were coming up next week.Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-47017024407401543682012-12-01T18:23:00.001-03:002012-12-01T18:23:20.112-03:00This fortnight in Andalusada, 11/24/2012This was supposed to be a weekly post (these things usually are), but due to Thanksgiving weekend I got rather derailed by stuff... so here goes.<br />
<h3>
Saturday, 11/17/2012</h3>
I didn't post anything particularly <i>new</i> on Saturday. Instead, I filled out a number of other things instead - starting with a significant expansion of <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/don-musa.html">Don Musa</a>. His dates were settled upon (1796-1887), and his service with Caliph Yusuf was pushed back a few years because Yusuf I hired his father first (which means that I need to <i>introduce</i> that father for a bit, if only to kill him later.) He's also been made into a dirty old man; his first wife (who <i>also</i> needs introducing) predeceases him, so his wife <i>can</i> bear him Don Ibrahim without being nearly 60 herself; and, unlike the rest of <i>Andalusada</i>, his old age and death have been written in.<br />
<ul>
<li>After that, a bit of editing was done for <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/caliph-yusuf-i.html">Yusuf I</a>: his dates were written in (1772-1839), and mention of Abu Musa was made.</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/don-ibrahim.html">Don Ibrahim</a>'s birth year was pushed to 1860, and his formative years have been colored in more than anyone else's in <i>Andalusada</i>. His details - his relationship with his mother, his memories of his father, how that relates to Yusuf III - makes for the first family dynamics I've written anywhere in the blog.</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/yusuf-iii.html">Yusuf III</a> also got a considerable expansion of his own.</li>
</ul>
And so to bed.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><h3>
Sunday, 11/18/2012</h3>
It's been a tropey night, and tonight's one new post was a trope I'd started awhile ago and forgotten about: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/backbiting-journalists.html">the Backbiting Journalists</a>.<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-ucna.html">The UCNA</a>'s history was <i>greatly</i> expounded upon: Don Musa's death was written in, for starters, and the rhetoric of regencies was dropped as regards Yusuf II. Yusuf III was linked in, as was Basil II, about whom I know next to nothing.</li>
<li>Yusuf III was <i>further</i> rewritten - introducing his reputation as "the Camel," and repeatedly editing both his backstory and his birth year. This made for a hell of a mess.</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/yusuf-ii.html">Yusuf II</a>, for his part, had the background to his succession cleaned up a touch. (And then, once I'd established that Yusuf wasn't necessarily born at the time, it got revised <i>further</i>. Retconning can be such a headache sometimes.)</li>
<li>Since I was linking to it enough anyways, <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/backbiters.html">backbiting</a> got a significant expansion (and a reclassification to "works in progress.")</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/eugen-orff.html">Eugen Orff</a> got <i>slightly</i> expanded upon, although at present I know too little about too much to say more than I do.</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/08/dystopian-catholic-france.html">Dystopian Catholic France</a> was slightly expanded upon, mostly to work in the mention of Syrophilia from the Heretical Hero.</li>
</ul>
And so to bed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Monday, 11/19/2012</h3>
Finally, back into writing again. The first thing I posted was the first <i>wife</i> of the UCNA, <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/zahra.html">Zahra</a>.<br />
<ul>
<li>Yusuf III was expanded <i>again</i>, originally to link him to Zahra. While I was at it, I took my derps from R. and E. and put them to use, adding an anecdote about his puberty, introducing his penpals (and one of his older brothers), and filling out his early ties to the Believers, whoever they are. ("Whoever they are" happens a <i>lot</i> within this.)</li>
<li>Derp with E. started <i>two</i> posts, but before I wrote either of them I edited the <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-house-of-umayya.html">House of Umayya</a> to discuss its survival as a phratry. (At this point, I introduced the fact that Abu Yusuf has <i>several</i> Aqsi Umayyad families tracing their descent through him, including one in Cuba. Yusuf isn't an only son, and if real-world family trees were any indicator his surviving brothers shouldn't have any problems reproducing.)</li>
<ul>
<li>Later on, I edited it again, rearranging the discussion of its madness and linking some of the actual Umayyads I've gotten fleshed out into it. </li>
</ul>
<li>Once I was done with that, I pounded out a post <i>about</i> <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/moorish-phratries.html">Moorish phratries</a>, specifically so I could link things to it. (Yes, it's a terrible post. "It will be expanded upon" includes revisions.)</li>
<li>Once I was done with <i>that</i>, I added my last original post of the night: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/remarkable-mahr.html">the Remarkable Mahr</a>, my first non-character-related trope. It would be very helpful if I had any ideas for stories where it'd show up, but that's going to call for women to request mahrs... and guys to request them from.... and that's gonna involve a <i>lot</i> of work.</li>
<li>Yusuf II had some details added, about the rise of the Believers during his reign (linking Yusuf III to it coincidentally.)</li>
</ul>
After that was done, Yusuf III and Zahra had their lives (especially their lives <i>together</i>) filled out. And so, after that and 100 hits on the blog, to bed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Tuesday, 11/20/2012</h3>
No new post before nightfall, but one thing got a major edit: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/06/new-world-carolingian-literature.html">New World Carolingian literature</a> got reduced from an even <i>more</i> awful name and URL to something that's at least compact.<br />
<ul>
<li>Eugen Orff got expanded again, this time to add his (very WIPpy) legacy...</li>
<li>...and to add him to <i>Andalusada</i>'s <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/authors-of-andalusada.html">list of authors</a>.</li>
<li>After crunching some numbers, I amended <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/instead-of-9mm.html">the 8.8mm page</a>, inventing the French third-bore (<u>~</u>9.02mm) so that it could lose out to 8.8mm rifles, surviving as a big-cat gun.</li>
<li>Speaking of big-cat guns, I got onto a tangent with a friend of mine. By the time I was done, it'd mutated into the French <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/tierseur.html"><i>tierseur</i></a>, the first world-specific family of boutique rifles I've ever designed.</li>
<li>Alongside that, I wrote up my first true parerga in awhile: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/shimoga-man-eaters.html">the Shimoga man-eaters</a>. It was very much a work in progress as of when I signed off last night, though.</li>
</ul>
And so to bed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Wednesday, 11/28/2012</h3>
Wednesday was spent driving, Thursday spent thanksgiving, Friday spent attempting movie-going, Saturday spent <em>successfully</em> movie-going, Sunday spent working, Monday spent driving, and Tuesday spent struggling with the first moment of writer's block in the history of <em>Andalusada</em>. In the end, I wrote up exactly one thing: the <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/tiers-modeste.html">first brand-name <em>tierseur</em></a> I'd touched since that point.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Thursday, 11/29/2012</h3>
Writer's block continued through to the next day; out of curiosity (prompted in no small part by <strong><em>GURPS Horror</em></strong>), I wrote up <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-black-friars.html">the local MIBs</a>... and so to bed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Friday, 11/30/2012</h3>
Writer's block fizzled out yesterday, when I finally got around to starting the writeup of a new ethnicity: the Occidental French.<br />
<ul>
<li>This in turn sent me back to do some actual editing of the <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/the-montagnards.html">Montagnards</a>, the <em>other</em> occidental French.</li>
</ul>
And so to the present day...Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-85985063102551486112012-11-24T03:43:00.000-03:002012-11-28T03:48:54.374-03:00Thai foodThere were two of us for dinner that night, only two of us.<br />
And despite eating naught but leftovers for two days, we couldn't find an appetite for much.<br />
In the end we ordered a tureen of chicken-coconut soup and a plate of pad thai.<br />
But the soup was creamy, and the noodles were cellophaney, and the rice crackers still sizzled when you dipped them in any kind of liquid.<br />
<br />
Thank you, Bangkok, for being there after all these years.<br />
Thank you, for being as delicious as I've always remembered. Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-15338691141737715642012-11-23T22:55:00.000-03:002012-11-28T00:59:12.902-03:00A winter picnicWe went to see <i>Skyfall</i> in Wilton (the showings closer to home were all way too late for our tastes; we'd be getting home at midnight.) It was completely sold out.<br />
<br />
Then we doubled back to the theater in Danbury, and I hopped out and bought some tickets. For tomorrow, because it was too late for tonight. And when I came outside, and passed Mom the tickets, we ate.<br />
<br />
Dinner tonight was served on a red plate, wrapped in plastic wrap, wrapped in tin foil. A sandwich, cold turkey and cold sambal oelek to heat it up. Too-tart cranberry sauce. A banana, because I hadn't had one in too long.<br />
<br />
And we ate out there, sitting in the car, the oddest packed dinner I ever remember having. Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-23111023478061524702012-11-22T23:43:00.000-03:002012-11-28T00:37:16.483-03:00Thanksgiving dinnerThe turkey was a twenty-pound behemoth that Mom bought because it was the smallest one she could afford. It was brined this year. It was also butchered; I did a disgraceful job of carving it. Dad taught me better, and I was genuinely ashamed of the hatchet job I did on the beast.<br />
<br />
The guests were two in number, an old couple that Mom met from somewhere (I think the UU meeting.) The husband was the quieter one. The wife was an old German woman, a former teacher; we hit it off instantly, and talked through a bottle of champagne about <i>Andalusada</i>. (It's very nice to have somebody else who knows what Low German is, and can talk intelligently about it, even though she spoke <i>Hochdeutsch</i> herself.)<br />
<br />Dinner wine was white, with a nose so soft it was almost watery. Dry, yes, but fruity for all that, and fruity without being citric, which is a nice change of pace. (Why I say that I'm not sure, because I don't drink wine on my own. Maybe because most of the beers I've had this year that described their subtle fruit notes had overpowering ones instead.)<br />
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The non-meat parts of the meal were actually the best, at least to my taste. There was an enormous amount of spinach - collard greens, mustard greens, a few other greens, at least three pounds of them, all of which I'd shredded myself the night before, but growing up I'd still call it "spinach" and I'd still hate it - with what was supposed to be a cream sauce, but wasn't, because Mom didn't make it after all; and there were steamed walnuts mixed in. <i>Perfect</i>. There was chow-chow (totally out of place with the rest of the meal, and cold.) Sweet potatoes, as ever, and they had been baked faultlessly; I didn't even think to butter them. And there was lingonberry sauce, brought by the guests. <i>Lingonberries</i>.<br />
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Pies for dessert, pies and creme de cassis for me. And ice cream. Apparently there are <i>two</i> places on the planet that make chocolate lace ice cream; came as a hell of a surprise to me.<br />
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A memorable meal. Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-3508079647707479122012-11-17T17:47:00.000-03:002012-11-17T17:47:00.817-03:00This week in Andalusada, 11/17/2012This week was much less productive than I'd hoped it would be. A big part of that was because of something that hasn't happened much before: posting on both of my blogs about convergent topics, which occupied most of my week because it took so long to write.<br />
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<h3>
Saturday, 11/10/2012</h3>
Yes, I mentioned it last week too, but I got one <i>further</i> post up before the library closed: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/maud-missionary.html">the Maud Missionary</a>, which I should've written last week. (Or not.)<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/seadling.html">Seadling</a> got edited a fair bit, to incorporate what I know about both Japanese pistol cartridges and to incorporate some details about Seadling as an <i>ammunition</i> company.</li>
<li><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/07/hispano-baltic-texas.html">Hispano-Baltic Texas</a> had its foreign affairs rewritten, to state that it has some historic ties to Taiping China through Ross.</li>
</ul>
And so to bed.<br />
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Monday, 11/12/2012</h3>
The one thing I managed to post today was a work in progress if ever there was one: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/prime-meridian.html">the Lisbon Meridian</a>. It's fractured, it introduces things I have no way to link to, it introduces tags I have nothing else for ("Portugal" most notably)... it's a hot mess.<br />
<ul>
<li>So what else did I do? I revised the Maud Missionary a bit. And when that was done...</li>
<li>...I totally overhauled <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/khalwa-in-umayyad-seville.html">khalwa</a>, to the extent of changing the URL. By the time I was done, it was so much shorter and denser it merited a status change to stub.</li>
<li>After that was done, I linked it to <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-house-of-umayya.html">the House of Umayya</a>, and cleaned that up a bit for brevity. Goodbye, bullet-pointed list of reasons why Umayyad claims to Hishamite succession are implausible. You won't be much missed.</li>
<li>While I was at it, I rewrote the legacy of <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/umayyad-seville.html">Umayyad Seville</a> a bit too, to establish that for all the good things said about it, it was basically a dark age that doomed the metropole.</li>
<li>That was based off the comment on <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/caliph-yusuf-i.html">Yusuf I</a>'s page, that he's the first truly great caliph the modern House of Umayya produced. While I was at it, I added some details: linking him to <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/07/april-5th.html">April 5th</a>, specifying that his first wife dies in 1811, and changing the periodization a bit.</li>
</ul>
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<h3>
Tuesday, 11/13/2012</h3>
Exactly one thing got posted on Tuesday: <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/Andalus.html">Andalus</a> itself, and the beginning of my retrospective on that first concept outline. The rest of that time was spent, for the most part, outlining a MBTI-based revelation, the final form of which can be read <a href="http://snarkthebold.blogspot.com/2012/11/myers-briggs-for-world-building.html">here</a>.<br />
<ul>
<li>And a fateful, crucial edit of <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/don-musa.html">Don Musa</a>'s page, to mention (somewhere) that he was ESTJ.</li>
</ul>
And so to bed, really.<br />
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<h3>
Thursday-Friday, 11/15-16/2012</h3>
The only post I have to show for these two days was about <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/yusuf-iii.html">Yusuf III</a>, the UCNA's current caliph. Thursday was spent posting him; Friday, filling him out a bit.<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6792307360113837580.post-60193215574607481332012-11-15T03:22:00.000-03:002012-11-15T20:45:36.707-03:00Myers-Briggs for world-buildingWhen I demiurge, I build offices without officers, kingdoms without kings, planets without people.<br />
<br />
Populating my worlds is <i>hard</i> for me. People are so concrete, and stories are so ethereal. (Thinking about it, it's kinda interesting that the fictional characters I know the most about in <i>Andalusada</i> - certainly the ones I've already written about, and a few others like Simon Twice-Traitor - are the ones who are at least partly <i>mythical</i>, and that the myth gets fleshed out before the man.) There's gonna be <i>thousands</i> of people that need at <i>least</i> names and a bit of personality, and <i>Andalusada</i> isn't my only world - or my last. And thus far, the non-mythical characters I've written up (and <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/guillermo-i.html">the one</a> I invented) have stagnated as stubs. Not a good sign.<br />
<br />
For projects on this scale, I'm going to need a way to mass-produce <i>persons.</i> And last night, while I was editing Don Musa, I had a breakthrough, brought to me by the words "Myers-Briggs."<br />
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<a name='more'></a><h3>
Four-letter chargen</h3>
The initial catalyst for this thought was playing with the <a href="http://ja.partridgez.com/lineage.html">Random Family Tree Generator</a>. Random generators are some of my favorite things to play with (<a href="http://www.chaoticshiny.com/">Chaotic Shiny</a> is my friend), but not many are useful for allohistoric purposes. My modus operandi is to button-mash until something interesting comes up. (Alas, the Alternity Daily Planet website is gone forever.)<br />
<br />
Up until two nights ago, the RFTG had been restricted to random button-mashing, because its output isn't really useful unless you're planning families of short-lived horde races with gibberish names. They <i>did</i> come with Myers-Briggs types, though, and two nights ago something possessed me to decide that Don Musa was an ESTJ, and to look up what exactly that meant. (It hadn't occurred to me to read about non-INTP types, not being any of them myself.) And it struck me: this could be <i>incredibly</i> useful.<br />
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<h3>
The Myers-Briggs history of the Caliphal Household</h3>
As a test of concept, I sat down and hammered out this:<br />
<ul>
<li><b><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/05/caliph-yusuf-i.html">Yusuf I</a> is ENTP.</b> Half Napoleon Bonaparte, half Haruhi Suzumiya, with a dash of Dom Pedro II thrown in there for good measure. Yusuf I (like myself) is a world-builder; unlike myself, he has the position, power and personality to enact a social vision.</li>
<ul>
<li>His son <a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/10/sufyan.html">Sufyan</a>, meanwhile, is ESFP: a strong people person (you don't father that many children <i>without</i> being one) grounded in the here and now. Yusuf doesn't <i>get</i> him; he keeps expecting Sufyan to be the visionary he himself is, and keeps getting disappointed. (For his part, Sufyan sees his father as a megalomaniac making castles in clouds and bloody lines on maps, trying to build a space-filling empire.)</li>
</ul>
<li><b><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/09/don-musa.html">Don Musa</a> is ESTJ.</b> Practical and administerial, Musa Cordovero spends Yusuf's life as the Jeeves to his Wooster (or perhaps the Kyon to his Haruhi.) A lot of their clashes (that aren't </li>
<ul>
<li>On his death, Don Musa experiences a bit of character evolution, reconciling himself with the <i>new</i> establishment. He handles this transition too smoothly (Altermeyer might type him as a case study in a transition from right-wing to left-wing authoritarianism.)</li>
<li>As senior figure in the Caliphal Household, and the one closest to Yusuf I, Don Musa steps up as the guardian and enforcer of roles - not least the role of the caliph himself. In this sense, his clash with the first post-Yusuf caliph (the one he <i>deposes</i> after what's shaping up to be an epic Machiavellian showdown) could be understood as a clash with another ESTJ who doesn't share that understanding of what a caliph should be.</li>
<li>After the deposition of that caliph, the UCNA goes through 40 years of what are called "the six weak caliphs," all of whom have Don Musa as their secretary. Their relative weakness can be understood in terms of them either clashing with him and being subverted, or letting him work and being eclipsed.</li>
</ul>
<li><b><a href="http://andalusada.blogspot.com/2012/11/don-ibrahim.html">Don Ibrahim</a> is INTJ.</b> Because of how <i>long</i> the two Cordoveros serve in their offices, and how powerful that office is, the difference between the two types isn't just highlighted, it's written into world history.</li>
<ul>
<li>Don Musa was a public figure, and (in Don Ibrahim's eyes) played that too much. By 1870, it was common knowledge that the buck stopped with him, and he was very much the master of ceremonies. Ibrahim <i>wasn't</i>, and consciously passed a lot of the more visible positions away to people within the Household. (This lets him focus the political limelight <i>away</i> from himself.) </li>
</ul>
<li><b>Yusuf II is ESFJ.</b> Charming, warm, visible, and subtly <i>airheaded</i>, Yusuf II is everything his advisor isn't. (ESFJs can become self-sacrificing; in Yusuf's case, this manifests as a total lack of personal ambitions beyond putting in a good day's work and partying hard.)</li>
<ul>
<li>Yusuf II's regency begins on a tense note; Don Musa's initial impression of Yusuf is that they have nothing in common. They don't. Once they learn to talk <i>at</i> each other, though, things warm up considerably.</li>
</ul>
<li><b>Yusuf III is INFP. </b>More than that, an INFP with an ASD (at the very least an odd streak of train obsession.) In principle he should be able to get along with Don Ibrahim, and in the future he may well do so - but at the moment, Don Ibrahim's written him off as a weak caliph.</li>
</ul>
All of that was hammered out on Monday night, to a friend of mine whose response was: "Wow."<br /><br />
<h3>
So why am I so excited about this?</h3>
MBTI typing offers me <b>insight.</b> Writing this has made me realize that I'm a behaviorist demiurge: I know how my characters <i>act</i>, not how they <i>think</i>.
My people exist for my world, not vice versa; when I flesh somebody
out, it's less to know them than their consequences. And it's pretty difficult, when you're thinking in, say, tropes and how a given stock character might express itself in an alien world. (Or, more concretely, in <a href="http://snarkthebold.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-logic-of-andalusada-and-gurps.html"><i><b>GURPS</b></i></a> format, trying to define a personality by its dysfunctions and up to five quirks.) Yusuf I, for instance, is Pedro II, reskinned as Napoleon; Yusuf II began his concept as a blatant Teddy Roosevelt clone. Where I create original characters, they're philosophical zombies: on Monday night, for instance, I knew <i>nothing</i>
about Don Musa's personality.<br />
<br />
Trying to type characters by MBTI has made me think about how they think - and it's made Don Musa into <i>Andalusada</i>'s first character defined in his own right, not for fluff or plot demands. It's also made the two father/son pairs of the Caliphal Household the first <i>relationships</i> of the verse that I've subjected to any fraction of the attention I normally pay to guns. Oh, and the icing on the cake? It's as transparent as astrology (which I'm also using to flesh out characters.) Until <i>Andalusada</i>'s contingent fandom starts trying to type people themselves, this is no more visible than I choose to make it.<br />
<br />
More than that, though, the biggest thing about applied MBTI typing for me is that it's caused an awareness of something: that personalities and relationships can shape history, no less than science or war or religion or demographics. Whenever there is somebody, there is a substratum of their identity to explore and analyze. Wherever there are two or three people, there are relationships between them - and those relationships shape their interactions, generating not only history by their results but historiography and self-understanding by their observers.<br />
<br /> <br />
Yes, I realize that's a really remedial thing to have an epiphany about. I call myself a demiurge because at the craft of world-building I am neither competent nor good.<br /> Edohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00602882541235633505noreply@blogger.com0