i've got blisters on my fingers!!!!

I.

I judge people who nail carpet down over hardwood floors. Especially when those people were the former owners of my house.

Today's project was pulling up the carpet from the toddler's room, to reveal the wood floor underneath. I have to say, I really don't understand the logic behind covering up lovely, vintage wood flooring with carpet in the absence of irreparable damage to the wood. (Even in a kid's room, whcih is clearly what this space was designed to be and has always been: I mean, that's why Jesus invented area rugs, right? Particularly when it's the blandest, run-of-the-millest carpet you can get at any big-box home improvement store in the coutry, as opposed to, say, carpet form the sixties or the seventies, when the world was resplendent in shag pile several inches deep.

II.

Again, though, it should be said that, although my fingers ache terribly from working the staples out of the wood, and my arms are sore from lugging the discarded carpet down two flights of stairs, the iPod saved the day.

Somewhat unusually for me, I've been listening to a log of "sacred" classical music lately. I'm not sure why. It started with remembering that the CD we had of Allegri's Miserere, which is a piece of music I do not wish to live without, was scratched up beyond all playability; so I looked on iTunes for a good recording. I ended up with the Tallis Scholars' 2007 recording, which also includes Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli. Our old recording of the Miserere also had some Palestrina on it, but at the time we bought it, which was several years ago, it didn't do much for me: it was pretty enough, but it didn't really hold my attention.

This time, however, the Palestrina just--opened up. I'm not quite sure how else to put it: like a flower, or like a good Scotch. It was suddenly deep and complex and beautiful, something to be savored and enjoyed and marveled at. You could use the word "spiritual."

It got me to thinking about how with few, if any, exceptions, the music I love most, my "desert island music," has been music that I've had to grow into, to listen to multiple times, sometimes over the course of years, to really enjoy. From being a high schooler listening to my father's tape of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love to picking up The Essential Leonard Cohen out of a "free" bin at a yard sale to deciding to take the Cocteau Twins' Four Calendar Cafe out of a pile of CDs I was planning to sell even though I hadn't listened to it since buying it, the pattern seems to be the same, and I can identify four basic stages: First I was attracted to the music, allured by it. Then after a listen or two I was repelled by it, headed off by some "difficulty" or lack of accessibility in the music. Then the music lay dormant--or seemed to; it might be more accurate to say that it was taking root in me all along. Then, finally, through some happenstance or synchronicity, I rediscovered the music and it opened up to me.

Of course, the music didn't change: the notes, the lyrics, the recordings were all the same.

Some music, I suppose, waits up ahead for us, until we catch up; and well it should.

evaluation of summer, redux / by faith

I.

Okay, the summer has this going for it (and I write this as it's ninety-two and humid): Rainier cherries, quite possibly the fruit with the world's highest combined score for taste and visual beauty. They are lovely and delicious. Although I have to say that strolling through the Fulton Street Farmers' Market in Grand Rapids of a Saturday morning does tend to complete the experience better than a trip to Sam's Club, but, hey, cherry country this ain't. But if you want ethanol, we got your ethanol. And soybeans.

II.

This strikes me as a sermon illustration for my preacher friends, or an image for my poet friends:

The toddler and I walked down to the park yesterday afternoon. On its far side, this particular park terminates in a steep hill at the bottom of which runs a four-lane highway. After a few minutes on the swings and the slides, she started walking very determinedly toward the slope--no surprise, because for some reason I have a daughter who's inordinately fascinated by the larger transportation devices (semis, airplanes, cement trucks, etc.).

I asked her a few times, as we got closer, as she trundled along very intently, "Do you see all the cars and trucks?"

Then I squatted down to her eye level and was taken completely by surprise: she actually couldn't see any of the cars and trucks. She was going by sound alone. When she finally got close enough to the end of the hill, and saw those lanes of glorious traffic whizzing by--well. May we all experience such delight.

also in summer i bitch about the heat

The first heat wave of the summer; once again I fail to see the appeal of this season, at least smack in the middle of a continent. I mean, it's not without its perks (nice when there is a pool or a beach at hand, etc.). But everyone makes like it's so great, and I can't help but think there's a little groupthink going on, the masses mesmerized by perky meteorologists chirruping, "Another beautiful day!" when it's ninety degrees and humid.

Anyway, October seems distant. And apparently it's not good for one's pocketbook or for Mother Earth to keep the air conditioner at seventy-two degrees, which is something I'd do if I had my druthers.

My solution is that we should have more than just four seasons, and the new ones should all be cold. Or cool, at least.

Or I'll persuade P to move to Canada. Certainly I'm entitled to some climatological benefits having married a foreigner.

I remember a little bit of Zen wisdom which I've failed to really absorb: "In winter we shiver; in summer we sweat."

a post about slaying

This morning I awoke to the sound of nature red in tooth and claw: our cats playing with a mouse they'd caught.

Kind of annoying, but it's always nice to be reminded of the New England Primer: "The Cat doth play / and after slay." (Edward Gorey had nothing on the Puritans. Having committed The Chinese Obelisks to memory, maybe I'll start on the NEP.)

Then, too, there's Emerson's "Brahma": "If the red slayer think he slays, / Or if the slain think he is slain, / They know not well the subtle ways / I keep, and pass, and turn again." Well and good, but wouldn't you rather not be the slain if it's all the same?

The incident also reminded me that a lot in life has to do with your perspective: to me, the cats are basically pleasant creatures, sometimes irritating, sometimes solicitous. Not, in other words, Predators.

Oh, and it's really light here at five o'clock in the morning. There's one reason to be grateful for Daylight Saving Time, I suppose: without it, it would be really light here at four o'clock in the morning.

california

A proposed solution to the "gay marriage" thing:

Let the government get out of the business of marriage altogether. Let the state issue a civil union to any couple--same- or opposite-sex--who wants one and who meets certain minimum requirements of age, consent, etc., thus conferring no religious benefits but the right to file joint income taxes, be named as next of kin, etc.

Then let the churches recognize and bless as marriages whichever of those unions they see fit, thus conferring no legal benefits but the right to receive communion, hold ecclesiastical office, etc.

Thus any given couple could have both (say, a same-sex couple who were members of a UCC congregation or a cross-sex couple who were Catholics), one (say, the same-sex couple if they were Catholics), or neither (say, atheist polyamorists), depending on whom they chose to be their partner and the religious body with which they chose to affiliate themselves.

Questions:

1. If you typically fall toward the conservative end of the spectrum on this debate (viz., "marriage is between one man and one woman"), would it offend you if Adam and Steve (or Amy and Eve) were permitted to file joint income taxes? If so, why?

2. If you typically fall toward the liberal side (viz., "what do we want? marriage equality! when do we want it? now!"), would it offend you that others' sincerely and deeply held religious beliefs weren't going to be altered by legislation, whether "from the bench" or otherwise, even if same-sex couples enjoyed the same legal protections as opposite-sex ones? If so, why?

Just some thoughts.

but i would still choose flight

I'm not sure whether it's a function of being a parent or simply of being an adult (thirty next month), but it's seeming clearer and clearer to me that I have a magic power: viz., the ability to make time go by incredibly fast. The only trouble is that I can't seem to harness it in any way; it just happens. The fact that it's the middle of May already is, well, harrowing in a certain sense. Things that seem academically far-off when I schedule them (a haircut, a weekend trip) come and go incredibly quickly. It's strange.

In terms of the perennial question of whether one would rather have invisibility or the ability to fly as a superpower, I always chose the latter. Once a number of years ago my family was at the zoo, and some water buffalo or big cat or something did that thing that wild animals seem to be able to do--kind of flicking or twitching their skin to prevent insects from landing on them. It was kind of a hot, buggy day, and my mom said, "I wish I could do that." And my sister and I both said, "Okay, that's your superpower, then."

diphtheria redux, elmo, and a brief digression on politics

I'm having second thoughts about the diphtheria; a cranky toddler will do that to you. What will inoculate a parent against his cranky toddler? Booze, maybe, but that poses other complications, at least at ten o'clock in the morning. The peace which passeth understanding, but we're running low on that. Ha.

---

Okay; three hours later. I retract my second thoughts; who knew twenty minutes of an Elmo video and a chance to stick one's hands in the neighbors' wheelbarrow full of dirt were all that was necessary to make a bad mood better?

Hillary Clinton could probably use that Elmo video about now. Incidentally, I'll go on the record as saying that at this point I completely fail to see the allure of Barack Obama. Not that he doesn't seem like a smart enough guy, which is, let's just say, an improvement, but also a bit of a blank slate onto which people seem to enjoy projecting their amorphous desires for something called "change," whatever that is besides an end to the Bush and Clinton dynasties. Oh well; maybe he'll be our next president. If he is, we'll see what happens. I'm certainly open to being impressed.