Tales from the Id

Back at Ave K.Mads and I took this special topics Flannery O'Connor course.  And it was great.  And one day we had this idea to read one of the stories we were scheduled to discuss for the next class out loud with another one of our roommates, Meg, the Ginger.  The story we read was hilarious.  It was about this woman, Millie, who was something of a spinster (a plain woman in her 40's: never been married, never even had a boyfriend) and a bad writer.  In fact, more often than not she actually didn't write anything, she just daydreamed herself into her stories.  This particular story she dreamed up concerned a cow farmer, who owned just one cow, and lived in a hut of a house with a belligerent wife who cooked him lumpy grits.  The poor, beaten man just sat there at the table, his big, sad, watery eyes soaking up the abuse his wife dished out into his bowl, his fiery red hair smothered, lank, and defeated from years of a loveless life -- and Millie can...

In honour of National Coffee Day - which was also, epically, the Feast of the Arch Angels -- we have Puck and a coffee cup. *Disclaimer. National Coffee Day was Sept 29. I realize this is late.*

Happy 137th Birthday G.K. Chesterton!! :)   High in the wreck I held the cup, I clutched my rusty sword, I cocked my tattered feather To the glory of the Lord. Not undone were the heaven and earth, This hollow world thrown up, Before one man had stood up straight, And drained it like a cup.  

Many years ago, when I was a tiny pipsqueak of a child, I played make-believe all the time.  As I grew to be a little bigger, my worlds of make-believe didn't so much dwindle as become more complex and sophisticated.  By the time I was a teenager, I put dress-up behind me with childish things, but fantasy was still alive and well.  In fact, fantasy worlds and egos are a rather integral part of my person and occasionally this is expressed in overt ways - playing Cowboys and Indians with my friends in Georgia, or Puck running around clear as day, for example.  But for as real as fantasy is, it has never wandered into the realm of Reality... until one day two years and seven odd weeks (give or take a handful of days) ago when I was invited into Someones Else's world of make-believe and dress-up, and found out that it was actually a different dimension of Real Life. When I was little, my friends and I were always going on adventures, exploring, digging to China, buildi...

So why not the God of Thunder? Meaghan, I know you asked for Daniel Craig.... but he's just a man in a suit. Why have him when you could have younger, hotter, and immortal?

Starting yesterday, Good Friday, it has been overcast and rainy.  And the weather calls to mind the only other Easter I ever remember rain on: Easter in Rome, 2008.  And when it rains there, it goes all out. When the girls and I got on the metro the sun was shining.  So we were totally unprepared for the severe thunderstorm that was waiting to greet us as we got off and headed towards St. Peter's Square for the outdoor Easter morning Mass.  After a while of standing in the square getting drenched (no thanks to the ripped plastic bag we had found and were holding over our three heads in vain), a sweet old Italian lady took pity on us and gave us her little brown polka dot umbrella, which leaked, and we had the best Easter ever.  God's power shouted in the thunder, spoke gently through the words of the Pope, and soaked into the very marrow of our bones through the rain.  All in all, it was awesome and exhilarating to be in the midst of the storm with Christ...

This is a belated Tuesday the 5th of April post. Last Tuesday the sky was casting the rain about with such frantic urgency that it seemed as though the atmosphere above the D.C. area had suddenly realized it was several thousand years late for the Flood.  It was oddly fitting, therefore, that during one of my class breaks I flipped through a Chesterton book and came across a short story called "A Picture of Tuesday", which is about the Second Day of Creation.  I read the story, looked out the window and thought: On the Second Day, God separated the waters above the earth from the waters below the earth. And today all the waters above the earth decided to come back down.