This week in Andalusada blogging: 6/30/2012

Last week was Chinese week on Andalusada. This week is much more French:

• A little bit about bewbs;
• A lot about booze;
• A short, thoroughly self-contained work about speaking Korean badly;
• An introduction to a place that doesn't exist;
• And Gallo-Moorish fandom for books you aren't familiar with.

Not an enormously productive week, because I was busy blogging here instead.

And only a few small edits:

• Oliver Farrell got an edit, to clearly indicate that he has two Bibles to his name and to cross-reference it with the Opus Transtulit.
• Farrellitism got a bit of a cleanup too, to spell out "Romandy" a bit more.

Thoughts for next week:

• Some extended derp about the Farrellite Biblical canon may be in order. Or not. Depends on whether anybody cares.
• Because I started touching on the chansons de geste (and the cantar de gesta tradition), you know what else may be in order? Actually outlining what Rodrigo Diaz does all the way back there at the beginning. That sort of thing is going to have a literary impact, to say the least.
• I started derping out a little bit about Korea; should I write some further thoughts on the emergence of the Korean Orthodox Church?

...and there are other further thoughts, had I the sleep last night to think them. I pronounce this week reviewed.

On caretaking and self-neglect

It seldom fails to awe or to impress
How frighteningly easy it can be
When called upon, in direst distress,
To be on hand for anyone but me;
Heroic, really - deftly plucking specks
From eyes (by now I've learned to do it blind),
Or rescuing the others from their wrecks
While leaving mine for  last (since who would mind?)
Though all may be of need, I still believe
That all else equal, they should need it more;
That I may strive, their burdens to relieve,
And my afflictions casually ignore.
For theirs I have no right to hesitate;
For mine, no wish to face them -
Mine can wait.

The Lower Room daily confessional

I have no idea what his name was. He had the kind of hair that comes from having no comb to brush with, the kind of beard that comes from no razor to shave with. I'm not sure if he had a second change of clothes with him.

He knocked on the door, and asked in a lowered voice if he could sleep back here for the night. He'd be okay with the floor. I basically told him I'd think about it.

On presence

"I am a creature," I wrote, "of inertia and sequence and force of habit."

I wake up. I take Concerta. I shower (always shower, or when would I shave?), lie down, let my hair dry badly before I comb it. Brush my teeth. Check my pockets. Step out for the day. Go somewhere I can write. Plant my ass in front of a monitor and write. Go places to look at books we all know I will neither read in full nor bring home with me, or won't read if I do bring them home. Eat a meal, sometimes even a memorable one. Brush my teeth again at night before I pray before I nominally go to bed.

More than a few times, that prayer's been awkward when I realize how little I have to say. The well-being of my friends, because I'm the only one who isn't routinely sick with something. The causes of peace and justice that nothing I do causes. And then, invariably, my self.

Who am I here for? The honest answer is, most days, "Not even you, Edo." 90% of life, they say, is just showing up. On a lot of days I don't even put the effort in to do that. And changing that is no easy task.

On regular writing

"What do you mean by 'regulate'?" Therapist asked. That was, at least, where I left off these thoughts.

Let's start off with the big issue: framing my life and work in terms of "discipline" and "goals" feels futile, because I have neither.

"Goals" imply achievable things; "setting goals" involves dreaming about what could be, looking at what was plausible, and planning how to achieve them, and doing them. For the longest time nothing was plausible; I had vague wouldn't-it-be-nice ideas, but no way to get there from here, even if I was the sort of person who could - and I'm still not. Building worlds without me was as much as I could manage. My goal was "the status quo," because hope was always and consistently the first step on the road to disappointment.

Regulation, presence, and Thomas Merton

A few weeks ago, I discovered Thomas Merton. I picked up Contemplation in a World of Action from the library; I actually bought No Man is an Island a few days ago, because it was ridiculously cheap. It's like legible outsider art, reading him discussing problems that I will never have the leisure to have.

A few weeks ago, I also decided to commit to regular writing, which (reading back) I realized that I'd never actually defined. This is not the post for that definition (defined here), but it's as good a time as any to say why I wanted to write on schedule: most of the "regular writing" that I wanted to do was disciplinary.

I've never tried to write about specific things at specific times. I've done so - when I sit down I can, for instance, write sonnets without much prior thought - but I've never tried to do so. And that's a problem. Because part of the reason I read my favorite blogs is because they are regular writers: able to write something new consistently. (Charles Dickens was able to write serially. Achieving that kind of consistency is a long-term goal of mine.)

Looking back on it, though, I had a problem: I was writing at cross purposes.

This week in Andalusada blogging: 6/23/2012

In this last week there have been all of five new posts:

• On Taiping pneumatology and such;
• On Taiping handguns;
• On Taiping literature and historiography, and Chinese translations being horrid;
• On Taiping gender presentation;
• And oh yeah, on the *Renaissance too.

Four guesses where my attention was this week.