Tryin' to get shit done
Aug. 27th, 2004 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykomancerHad today off and had to run around like crazy, and still didn't get everything done the way I really wanted to.
I had to run down to uptown to Scout's (of Manitiou Mischief Rattery) to pick up three new girls, got lost on the way there, had to wait for my bus, decided to pick up a bus card while I was waiting, trying to figure out how I'm going to time everything right to drop off the rats and go up to the seminary to talk to the financial aid person and visit the internet. Decided not to drop off the rats, and here I sit 'cause the financial aid lady wasn't in-- or course. I'd really like to have been able to pick up and deposit my paycheck today, but that will have to wait until tomorrow; and I'd really like to be able to hit the downtown library, but I probably shouldn't for time reasons (if I'm going the library, I don't want to feel pressured into hurrying through).
My three new ratties are in a box next to the computer, and I think I'm going to name them Hitotsu, Futatsu, and Mittsu. :) I give my pets such fancy names in Japanese, ne?
So Angela knows, but just to reiterate for the crowds...
When I went to talk to Judith about how to work a budget and stay on top of my finances, she insisted (for about forty-five minutes, until I caved) on giving me the money to pay back Northland. (Now I have to pay back Judith instead, but that's OK, 'cause she's not holding my diploma and transcripts over my head.)
And the more I think about Northland, the angrier I get.
Jenny's pay-gap and sexist treatment at work; Judith finally leaving because she was being sat on and discriminated against; the continual construction that violated EPA noise pollution standards; the pesticides on the lawns; the financial aid office that treats its students like imbiciles...etc, etc, etc. And I have a diploma from there that means nothing, and is barely worth the paper it's printed on. Hells, besides the 1,500 directly to Northland, I have another 30,000 in loans that I hope will be deferred before I have to start paying on them.
Yeah, it's tempting to go in there and raise some hell.
And now journalling I did earlier this week:
Tom managed to irritate me earlier (he bummed yet more money from Judith, after having already bummed the money for the same thing off of Kitty and Hans), so I went outside and called Kris and had a nice long talk.
It's a beautiful night outside, fresh cool wind through the trees...the kind of night that makes you want to take deep, full breaths of the intoxicating air and run until your heart bursts from the joy of it.
After the phone call, I came inside and opened the windows. I did not run. I did not linger. I only spared a single glance at the light-pollution orange colored sky, wondering for a moment if the stars missed me tonight...and I came inside.
I have an hour before I should think about going to bed. I might yet run tonight.
But for now, I sit here listening to classical music and the sound of the wind-tossed leaves, drinking Tension Tamers tea and trying to convince a rat to stay in my lap while I type. Throw back a capsule of St. John's Wort, follow the sweet high pitch of Mozart's clarinet, and contemplate the divinity of the warm furry body pressed against my cheek licking my neck.
That's interesting, that. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, lay your hands on your pet-- whatever kind it may be-- and hold in your mind the idea that the fur or feathers you touch is the outer wall of a temple, and that within in the Holy of Holies, the very throne of the Divine...and that God not only permits your touch, but welcomes it; not just endures your presence, but craves your attention; knows not just your soul, but your scent, the taste of your skin, your gentle affections, every kindness you have done IT.
Now, take another deep breath, and expand your image. Feel not just the animal under your hand, but the texture of your own skin, the press of you and your pet touching. Feel you both breath, your body heat, the minute movements of muscles twitching. Know your body also to be a temple, and that within it, too, is the Holy of Holies; you are Divine...and that you seek the pleasure and comfort of animal-simple love, and that you are as the same stuff, and as humble and spectacular and complex as, a cat or dog or horse or duck or rat.
Now open your eyes. They say that God is love, and I've heard many people take issue with that. I understand. It's hard for me to think of God's love resembling human love, which I cannot define or comprehend except to sometimes know when I experience it. But ah! to say that God is love and think of it in the terms of a dog's soft brown eyes staring at you after you've been hurt, or a ton-heavy horse's gentleness and obedience to humans not even a quarter its size, or the way my rat Munch would follow me anywhere simply because she adored me... Well. Then I understand.
Now look at your pet and think again about the relationship between man and beast, man and God.
Random things I learned recently about the various anime I've watched. (AKA: Who says the library's for dorks?)
Tuatha de Danann, the name of the Tessa's submarine in Full Metal Panic, is the name of a mythological Irish race of godlike beings.
"...by the second century AD, 'virtually everyone, pagan, Jewish, Christian, or Gnostic...believed in the existence of [supernatural] beings and in their function as mediators, whether he called them daemons or angels or aions (bold mine) or simply "spirits."'" (Quote from The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination by Patrick Harpur)
Interesting. I've never heard that word used as a synonym for spirit-beings. I want to find out more.
A rather interesting book, Our Vampires, Ourselves, by Nina Auerbach, offers a bit of explanation for the prominence of the full moon in Hellsing and why Alucard periodically reaches up for it: "The vampire may need marriage and blood, but the governing body of his life is lunar... the moon was the central ingredient of vampire iconography; the vampires' solitary and repetitive lives consisted of incessant deaths and-- when the moon shone down on them-- quivering rebirths."
She goes on about this for two or three pages, and then ends the section with this quote from one of the Varney the Vampyre stories: '...a tall spectral-looking figure wrapped up in an immense cloak, who did not seem to observe them, for his eyes were fixed upon the moon, which at that moment again began to emerge from the clouds
'He stretched forth his arms as if he would have held the beautiful satellite to his heart.'
Yeah, that scene's in the anime and the manga. I'm sure it's a deliberate reference.
(Auerbach also points out that at the end of the novel Dracula is "killed" off stage with a bowie knife, and how after Van Helsing's stating of very specific rules regarding killing vampires and then the spectacularly bloody/erotic staking of Lucy this is either A) extremely anticlimactic storytelling that is meant to show how powerless Dracula really was in the face of brave human manhood *coughwhatevercough*, or B) that Stoker deliberately left this so vague as to suggest that Dracula did continue to exist after the novel ended. I hadn't really thought about that before.)
I had to run down to uptown to Scout's (of Manitiou Mischief Rattery) to pick up three new girls, got lost on the way there, had to wait for my bus, decided to pick up a bus card while I was waiting, trying to figure out how I'm going to time everything right to drop off the rats and go up to the seminary to talk to the financial aid person and visit the internet. Decided not to drop off the rats, and here I sit 'cause the financial aid lady wasn't in-- or course. I'd really like to have been able to pick up and deposit my paycheck today, but that will have to wait until tomorrow; and I'd really like to be able to hit the downtown library, but I probably shouldn't for time reasons (if I'm going the library, I don't want to feel pressured into hurrying through).
My three new ratties are in a box next to the computer, and I think I'm going to name them Hitotsu, Futatsu, and Mittsu. :) I give my pets such fancy names in Japanese, ne?
So Angela knows, but just to reiterate for the crowds...
When I went to talk to Judith about how to work a budget and stay on top of my finances, she insisted (for about forty-five minutes, until I caved) on giving me the money to pay back Northland. (Now I have to pay back Judith instead, but that's OK, 'cause she's not holding my diploma and transcripts over my head.)
And the more I think about Northland, the angrier I get.
Jenny's pay-gap and sexist treatment at work; Judith finally leaving because she was being sat on and discriminated against; the continual construction that violated EPA noise pollution standards; the pesticides on the lawns; the financial aid office that treats its students like imbiciles...etc, etc, etc. And I have a diploma from there that means nothing, and is barely worth the paper it's printed on. Hells, besides the 1,500 directly to Northland, I have another 30,000 in loans that I hope will be deferred before I have to start paying on them.
Yeah, it's tempting to go in there and raise some hell.
And now journalling I did earlier this week:
Tom managed to irritate me earlier (he bummed yet more money from Judith, after having already bummed the money for the same thing off of Kitty and Hans), so I went outside and called Kris and had a nice long talk.
It's a beautiful night outside, fresh cool wind through the trees...the kind of night that makes you want to take deep, full breaths of the intoxicating air and run until your heart bursts from the joy of it.
After the phone call, I came inside and opened the windows. I did not run. I did not linger. I only spared a single glance at the light-pollution orange colored sky, wondering for a moment if the stars missed me tonight...and I came inside.
I have an hour before I should think about going to bed. I might yet run tonight.
But for now, I sit here listening to classical music and the sound of the wind-tossed leaves, drinking Tension Tamers tea and trying to convince a rat to stay in my lap while I type. Throw back a capsule of St. John's Wort, follow the sweet high pitch of Mozart's clarinet, and contemplate the divinity of the warm furry body pressed against my cheek licking my neck.
That's interesting, that. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, lay your hands on your pet-- whatever kind it may be-- and hold in your mind the idea that the fur or feathers you touch is the outer wall of a temple, and that within in the Holy of Holies, the very throne of the Divine...and that God not only permits your touch, but welcomes it; not just endures your presence, but craves your attention; knows not just your soul, but your scent, the taste of your skin, your gentle affections, every kindness you have done IT.
Now, take another deep breath, and expand your image. Feel not just the animal under your hand, but the texture of your own skin, the press of you and your pet touching. Feel you both breath, your body heat, the minute movements of muscles twitching. Know your body also to be a temple, and that within it, too, is the Holy of Holies; you are Divine...and that you seek the pleasure and comfort of animal-simple love, and that you are as the same stuff, and as humble and spectacular and complex as, a cat or dog or horse or duck or rat.
Now open your eyes. They say that God is love, and I've heard many people take issue with that. I understand. It's hard for me to think of God's love resembling human love, which I cannot define or comprehend except to sometimes know when I experience it. But ah! to say that God is love and think of it in the terms of a dog's soft brown eyes staring at you after you've been hurt, or a ton-heavy horse's gentleness and obedience to humans not even a quarter its size, or the way my rat Munch would follow me anywhere simply because she adored me... Well. Then I understand.
Now look at your pet and think again about the relationship between man and beast, man and God.
Random things I learned recently about the various anime I've watched. (AKA: Who says the library's for dorks?)
Tuatha de Danann, the name of the Tessa's submarine in Full Metal Panic, is the name of a mythological Irish race of godlike beings.
"...by the second century AD, 'virtually everyone, pagan, Jewish, Christian, or Gnostic...believed in the existence of [supernatural] beings and in their function as mediators, whether he called them daemons or angels or aions (bold mine) or simply "spirits."'" (Quote from The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination by Patrick Harpur)
Interesting. I've never heard that word used as a synonym for spirit-beings. I want to find out more.
A rather interesting book, Our Vampires, Ourselves, by Nina Auerbach, offers a bit of explanation for the prominence of the full moon in Hellsing and why Alucard periodically reaches up for it: "The vampire may need marriage and blood, but the governing body of his life is lunar... the moon was the central ingredient of vampire iconography; the vampires' solitary and repetitive lives consisted of incessant deaths and-- when the moon shone down on them-- quivering rebirths."
She goes on about this for two or three pages, and then ends the section with this quote from one of the Varney the Vampyre stories: '...a tall spectral-looking figure wrapped up in an immense cloak, who did not seem to observe them, for his eyes were fixed upon the moon, which at that moment again began to emerge from the clouds
'He stretched forth his arms as if he would have held the beautiful satellite to his heart.'
Yeah, that scene's in the anime and the manga. I'm sure it's a deliberate reference.
(Auerbach also points out that at the end of the novel Dracula is "killed" off stage with a bowie knife, and how after Van Helsing's stating of very specific rules regarding killing vampires and then the spectacularly bloody/erotic staking of Lucy this is either A) extremely anticlimactic storytelling that is meant to show how powerless Dracula really was in the face of brave human manhood *coughwhatevercough*, or B) that Stoker deliberately left this so vague as to suggest that Dracula did continue to exist after the novel ended. I hadn't really thought about that before.)
