"They're trying to tell me how to feel"

At first I thought she was just being dumb, but upon reflection, I think it's a cultural phenomenon. I was listening to Taylor Swift yesterday, to her new song "Love Story." It's basically a shameless rip-off of Romeo and Juliet, re-set loosely in contemporary times with a happy ending, and it's pretty cute. But there's this one line that ruins it. "Romeo, save me/ They're trying to tell me how to feel!"

There's also a scene in Sayers' Gaudy Night where Harriet and one of the professors are discussing proper feeling and knowing one's true calling. It doesn't matter so much what you feel, they conclude, "as long as you don't try to persuade yourself into proper feeling." Harriet concurs, noting that "trying to persuade herself into proper feeling" regarding her former lover is what got her into trouble. "You will only know what is of overmastering importance when you have been overmastered by it."

Why is it such a massive crime to try and tell people what's right to feel in a certain situation? Especially if it really will make their lives easier? And in some situations, if there really is a right versus a wrong feeling?

So I propounded this puzzle to my true love about six this morning. We blame the Enlightenment, which knew all about reason but didn't have the foggiest idea what to do with emotion. The Romantics rebelled by making emotion their god and their drug. I think that's where Aeolian harps and the wind and the soul all get mixed up together. (I like that mental image--it makes me think of a pretty woods, with harp-strings going sproing! and flying in all directions.) I further think Postmodernism quietly usurped that line of thought--the Aeolian harp emotion bit, I mean. I suppose, if you're defining your own reality, your emotions are about your only guide and therefore it really is a tyranny for someone to dictate those emotions.

I would go about this entirely differently: in the beginning was God, and He set up reality for us. I keep thinking of phrases like, "Rejoice, O Israel!" and "Husbands, love your wives." Yes, love is a verb and all that, but if it's not a commanded emotion too, I don't want it. Emotion is no longer so important, so bloated, so all-encompassing, and so emotions too can be brought into their proper service.

I also think of Lewis' Abolition of Man and his discussion of Men Without Chests. They have Stomachs--meaning appetites of one sort and another--and they have Heads--meaning reason of one sort and another. It's the Chest, the seat of the emotion, that never gets trained. And when things get a trifle sticky, it's not the Head that says "I am about to get shot and therefore I will stay right here"--it's the Chest that says "Yeah I know I'm about to get shot, but there's this flag, you see," and stays.

I don't want to go overboard and say "Yes! People should dictate emotions to one another all the time!" But I do think that if there's a common reality, there's the possibility for right and wrong feelings in relationship to it. So. Taylor Swift wasn't just being dumb, but I do think she was incorrect. Opinions?

Word of the day

Today's word of the day is "swulten," as in, "God bade us that we not eat, nor we that tree be touching, lest we swulten."

(Aelfric's c. 1005 AD Old English version went, "God bebead us thaet we ne aeten, ne we thaet treow ne hrepoden thy laes the we swulten."--and I updated the eths and thorns to mere th's. I daresay my translation is dreadful.)

It appears from this site that it comes from "sweltan, swealt, swulton, swolten," meaning "die." My Merriam-Webster's dictionary lists the Middle English "sweltan" as the root of "swelter," which would be "to die, be overcome by heat," from the Old English "sweltan," "to die." It also seems to be related to the Old English "sweatan, sweat," meaning "sweat." So it appears when they will surely swulten, they will die of heat.

I'm not sure why Aelfric chose the verb for "die" with warm connotations. It's certainly appropriate, hell-fire being what it is, but I question whether Eve would have been quite so on top of things at that stage of history. My source indicates Aelfric was working from the Vulgate, which uses "moriamur," and "mori" doesn't have particular connotations of heat. Was Aelfric just being creative and forward-hinting? Another possibility is that "sweltan" did not necessarily mean "die of heat" when he used it, but it picked up those connotations later, much like "starvan" didn't specifically mean "die of hunger" until it had been used in connection with too many sieges.

Isn't "swulten" a great word? Jonathan claims he's going to start using it instead of "pwned." I will now put away my Guide to Old English, Traupman's Latin dictionary, Vulgate, Merriam-Webster's, and Bobrick's Wide as the Waters, which started all this, and go to church.

Quote of the day

"And one thing I have learned is where craisins are, the joy of the Lord will come soon after."

Improbable

Blood oranges are the improbability drive of the kitchen.

No matter how awesome "blackberry and blood orange tarts" sound, the blood orange portion is not recommended. They develop a Whang when baked: not so much nasty as, well, bizarre. Improbable, even.

Cinnamon

A little thing, this new jar of cinnamon, but it's amazing. So potent, so sweet, so spicy, so holiday-ish. It even has an impressive name: "Spice Islands" Ground Saigon Cinnamon (100% organic, certified). Doesn't it sound exotic and tropical? And monkey-bread made with it makes your house smell just like Cinnabon. Yummm!

It's good stuff, in other words. :-)

I wonder if the forests where cinnamon-bark-growing trees come from smell like cinnamon.

What I've been up to

So: we beat the February 1 deadline at work. We (especially Tech) jollied the server into hanging in there, and even got to use the queues again. We all, but especially my team, had been working overtime like crazy people (especially John Who Attends Conferences), and so when we hit the requisite number of claims about Tuesday noon, the energy level at large sort of deflated, whoomf. It's been a very long week since then.

In other news, I've been getting Officially and Properly Hired, and am no longer a lowly temp worker. Not that anyone said so; but thus it was. Less easily got rid of was the insurance from the temp agency, which in a brilliant burst of irony called the very afternoon I'd signed up for the new insurance, and said actually there was a glitch and it isn't my fault but I wasn't signed up for 2009 after all, and did I want to? Well, probably. So I've had to be firm but very charming with two insurances.

It occurs to me that I haven't introduced the characters at work. We have them. John the Conference-Goer is called so to distinguish him from the other Johns in my work life, especially John My Supervisor and John Boatwrong. John the Conference-Goer started the same time I did, and before a meeting we got to talking.

"Have you been to the aquarium in Baltimore?" he asked. I hadn't. Had he? "Well--I hear it's really good, and I've been to it, but I haven't gone in." Why not? "I was just back from a... Conference. And I'd spent all my money on... Goods."

"What Conference?" I asked, innocently. I really was innocent.
"Arcfhmmf," he mumbled.
"What?"
"Arconfmfm."
"WHAT?"
He looked around sheepishly. The room was full of people pretending not to be listening.
"It's an anime conference..."

That's the kind of Goods he'd spent his money on! But he's a good enough sort; friendly; I shared my Christmas cookies with him, and today he offered me his extra egg roll.

He's been working maximum overtime, which is 7 am to 10 pm. That's not civilized. I asked what he's going to do, now the deadline's over. He looked pensive and replied, "Take kung-fu." Apparently he's already signed up.

He likes to wander up to my desk while I'm working.

"Hi."
"Hi."
Pause.
"What's up?"
"Not much."
Another pause.

Usually at this point, one of us will offer a topic, such as fish or movies, and we will actually start conversing. I find this process entertaining. He likes fish, especially in tanks, but eats sushi. I don't ask.

Quotes

"It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains, that all men desire to be happy."

"Being attached to him, or rather let me say, re-attached--for we had detached ourselves and lost hold of Him--being, I say, re-attached to Him, we tend toward Him by love, that we may rest in Him, and find our blessedness by attaining that end."

"For our good, about which philosophers have so keenly contended, is nothing else than to be united to God."

--Augustine of Hippo, City of God, excerpts from Book X, 1-3. You've got to love Augustine, especially when he's cheerfully co-opting Platonism for Christianity!

A melancholic server

"A server crashed at a big law firm downtown and ended the world as they know it." --Mrs. Smith

The server of my big law firm downtown has developed something of the melancholic, not to say obstreperous, temperament. It becomes burdened with self-doubt around 3:00. This becomes particularly evident to those who finish a claim, go to the queue, and request another claim.

The server finds itself forced to make a decision. It freezes. "Maybe I should give you this one. No, that one. No, that one. Oh no! Someone else wants another claim too! AHHHHH!" And the patient reviewer sits and waits, and gets timeout messages and unhandled exception messages and "You have been chosen as the deadlock victim" messages, and has time to write short stories about deadlocks and victims while the server second-guesses itself, and eventually restarts her computer in an attempt to jolly the server into thinking she didn't really mean it.

Julie, my project leader, is keenly, even painfully, aware of the server's shortcomings. So she's trying to work with it. She has a spreadsheet of all the claims that need to be dealt with, and she doles them out as we go. This has helped keep the server from having to make queue decisions, but now it isn't sure it can even work up the strength of soul necessary to save our work. We ask, and it sits and contemplates something, probably its own impending doom. The reviewer is reminded of the strange Renaissance habit of painting decorative young persons meditating on skulls as a memento mori, a reminder of death. Hamlet's random conversation to Yorick's skull comes smack out of that tradition, and isn't quite as random as it looks.

My theory is that the server gets an afternoon low in its blood sugar, and needs a snack. I find reviewers do. Either that, or the tech-gnomes need an afternoon snack and get a bit nibbly in the gigabytes. Meanwhile, our January 31 deadline is getting loomier and loomier. We all hope Julie doesn't have a stroke, or a conniption, or a fit of insanity, or whatever project leaders do get, brought on by a melancholic server.

Quote of the day

"And I don't think he's developed much of an idea of my constitutional reasoning, because of yet the only words I have said in his class, and I quote, are 'Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped.'" --Jonathan

A name for a pizza

Every once in a while, we feel the need for a pizza. It's a natural, human desire, I think. So we generally get carry-out from our closest little Pizza Hut. They're quite nice and all, but they do have a terrible time with our name.

The first time we went--not long after we moved here--I explained to the girl what our name was. "With a B," I said. We picked up the order for "Vail." Ah, well.

Next time we went, I explained our name again. They earnestly wrote it down, and they found our pizza under the name "Bates."

Yesterday, on the way home from work, I called in our order. I gave my name and phone number, and the guy took forever to enter it in, as they just got new software. (I feel his pain.) But he repeated my name back correctly, and even said, "Oh! With a B!" So I was reasonably confident.

I got there--a bit later, because in one of Richmond's less charming traits, during rush hour they randomly put up "No left turn" signs at intersections, and haply the intersection I wanted was one of them so I had to go up and turn around--but I got there.

This time the ticket was for "Cales."

!!!