Joining the Dark Side

So today's post isn't earth-shattering or world-peace-promoting or anything like that, but it is about something that's been on my mind lately. Or, more accurately, on my legs.

I'm talking about jeans at work. And whether or not I should partake.

At my old job, blue jeans were verboten except twice a year when we were able to purchase for a twoonie little stickers that said "I'm Dressed this Way for United Way" as part of our semi-annual charity drives. (I always wondered whether the definition of "this way" could be extended to anything else. Swimsuits, perhaps. Or ballgowns.)

Now, we were allowed to wear black jeans (which I never did, given that they usually fade to "bought-these-in-the-eighties" status after the first washing) or blue denim skirts, but never could we marry the "blue denim" with the "jeans."

I can't say that I minded. I enjoy dressing up a bit for work. When I first started at the old job, I found it quite easy to cut a fairly fashionable figure. At the time, my stressed-out gaunt frame was well-proportioned to fit into those small sizes that invariably end up on the sale rack given their inappropriateness for normal-sized people, so a quick trip to Jacob and a fistful of dollars and I was good to go.

But my new place of employment is another matter. There we have an all-jeans-all-the-time policy, one that is widely embraced. At first, I told myself I'd restrict my denim-wearing to Fridays, just for a treat. Then it started to creep in on Mondays (post-weekend-easing-back-in, you know).

Now I'm just wondering if I should break down and buy a few more pairs of jeans and be done with it. No matter that I work downtown, where I and my coworkers stick out like a tank top on Portage and Main in -37 degree weather (sorry about that, by the way). Surrounded by smartly-dressed magazine-ready figures, I feel a bit out of place en route to my desk, although once there, the fashion standards ease.

But who knows - maybe if I'm more comfortable, I'll be a happier person. Which could go far towards the whole world peace thing.

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Om

Ahhhh. Who knew I was only some triangle poses and a shoulder stand away from feeling mellow and serene, yet energized at the same time. I went to my first yoga class tonight in a looooong time. Too long. Every time I do yoga, I think "why don't I do this more often."

Well, except at the last class I attended, where our teacher had us doing this very odd "stirring a pot of oatmeal" pose. Then I thought, "I'm so not coming back next week."

And I didn't go back that week, or the next, which is why it's been almost a year since my last class. But the local high school is a site of a large number of community education offerings, so I figured it was high time to sign up again.

Every member of our family is enrolled in something for the next two months. The kids are in swimming; the teacher is trying to teach them the front crawl, to which I say, good luck. The Husband is taking German lessons since the French courses on offer were beneath him.

(This, of course, means he will be a linguistic triple threat, much like our high school language teacher Mr. Bostock, who will remain forever in my memory as the teacher who spit into a kleenex before using it to clean the overhead projector. While it was on, unfortunately, thus magnifying the bubbles in a grotesque, yet mesmerizing fashion.)

It's high time I get some zen going on. Today I felt desperately in need of one of those little sand gardens with a rake.

See, the kids and I have a five-minute window in the morning which dictates the bus I will take. If I get us out the door and to school on time, there's the 7:35, which is a long shot, but occasionally I manage to catch it and get to work with lots of time to get coffee in a leisurely fashion before sauntering over to my desk chair at 8:00.

Then there's the 7:45, which is a more realistic goal. If I jump off and dash from it to the office, much like a Floral Fern briskly completing this side of the shopping mall before crossing over to the other*, I can slide into my chair at 8:03 and pretend my clock is three minutes fast and thus leave promptly eight and a half hours later at 4:30.

But if I miss the 7:45, then I wait for 20 minutes in the middle of nowhere at the bus stop until the next bus at 8:05, which leads to a chain reaction of having to work until 5:00 and getting home almost 45 minutes later than if I'd left the house 5 minutes earlier that morning.

As you might guess, this gives me a certain, shall we say, urgency in the morning. Well and good. But, much to my shame, this urgency tends to translate into a transformation into Harpy Mother. Ever tried getting two kids out of bed, dressed, out the door, to school and seated in front of pop-tarts with 45 minutes turn-around time? It's pretty much cat-herding. And I'm less than serene while doing it.

Here's hoping a few downward dogs more in my life will help me to be a bit more calm. If not, then maybe I'll at least be a bit more fit and today's sorry episode of the bus pulling away just as I came running up will not be repeated.

GRRRRR. He Totally SAW ME...ommmmm.


*A habit of one of my BFFs is to restrict one's shopping to the stores on one side of the mall's hallway before crossing over to head down the other side. To this day, I still feel a twinge of guilt if I quickly hop over to Banana Republic because it's just across on the other side.

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And on the Seventh Day She Rested

I love Saturdays. But not just any Saturday. Saturdays are the best when they come after a long week of work, where long periods of relaxation were few and far between, where "spare" time equalled "preparation for the next day's busyness" time. In fact, I've become quite militant that grocery shopping be done prior to Friday night and that the house stays at least surface tidy during the week so that, when Saturday morning rolls around, I can wake up to the delicious knowledge that I don't have to do anything that day.

(An aside: I love being a mother to older children. The Husband and I used to have to duke it out in the wee hours - aka 6 am - on Saturday as to who had to get up and entertain the munchkins while the other parent got to sleep in. Now, they quietly turn on the TV, forage for pop tarts, and only come in around 10 am to get some referees for the weekly "Cartoons vs. Video Games" debate.)

And - hooray- today is that day! I'm on my third cup of coffee and just breakfasted on spaghetti since it felt funny to eat pancakes after noon. We're all in varying combinations of pajamas, housecoats (well, The Husband got dressed in yesterday's clothes). Video games, colouring pages and finally finishing Middlemarch are the main agenda items for the day.

An update on the babysitter who came yesterday: she was fabulous! She was as mature as I had been promised, and the kids had a fantastic time with her. Only minor blood (a cut to The Girl's heel obtained during a hiding place gone wrong during a rousing game of Hide and Seek). When we got home, they were all sleepily watching The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe with no sound on - we'd forgotten to tell her how to turn on the receiver, so they managed to get the TV and DVD player going, but had to guess at the dialogue.

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Adventures in Babysitting

Oh, what I wouldn't do right now to know that somewhere, in her bedroom filled with the latest fashions, Claudia Kishi was sitting and smacking her bubble gum, waiting for my phone call. And that Kristy, Stacey and Mary Anne were all with her, holding a club meeting (in Claudia's room, of course, since she was the only one with her very own phone line).

And that the four of them were eager and ready with their Kid Kits to come and babysit my children.

Sigh. How the mightily-blessed-with-quality-childcare have fallen. One of the hardest things about the move has, oddly enough, been going to a situation where we are the first, last, and only line of defense between our children and the dangers of the world that threaten to overtake them if only the slightest chink in the armour appears. Our "emergency contacts" on the school forms consist of our parents - fabulous people to have around in an emergency, of course, but they would have to be faster than extremely speedy bullets to be of any real help in a playground emergency.

So far we've limped along. Our neighbour girl is absolutely fabulous, but she (like most girls her age) is a busy beaver with sports and friends and all those other things with which teenagers occupy their time. Before Christmas we hit up one of The Girl's school friend's parents for an evening, but one can only play the "pity me - I'm new in town" card so often.

My work holiday party is this Friday and, despite our best efforts, I had given up on going since the neighbour was busy and I just didn't feel up to doing the Craigslist "send-me-your-references-and-we'll-do-a-background-check-and-we'll-meet-in-a-public-place-so-we-can-hire-you-and-pay-you-exorbitant-rates" thing.

But it's amazing what happens when you start to beat the bushes; my boss handed me the list of possibilities she had gotten from her church's youth pastor. When those girls also declined (but not before assuring me that they're happy to be on our list), I hit up the neighbour girl for any of her friends that might be interested. No one available there, but got another name for the list of possibilities. Finally, my coworker saved the day by asking his neighbour and she, miraculously, is free.

Well, not so miraculously. She's only 13 (i.e. has a limited social life), which is much younger than anyone with whom we've ever trusted our brood. But, she assures me, she has completed the babysitter's course, CPR training and has experience with our kids' age group. So, we shall see.

(I'm also feeling better because after googling The Babysitter's Club, I discovered that Kristy et. al. were 13. Somehow I'm feeling quite comforted.)

Goodness knows, I was babysitting at 13. Heck, I cared for much younger children than The Girl and The Boy when I was that age.

Of course, my employers got what they paid for (at the time the going rate was usually about $2/hour but went as high as $3/hour for premium nights like New Year's Eve).

I lost a child once (in my defense, he didn't stay where I put him). I left the oven on after removing the night's supper, which was only later discovered by the parents the next morning. I fell asleep on the couch one evening so deeply that I didn't wake up until the parents shook me - now that must have inspired confidence that I would have been of any help of an emergency.

Then there was the time a quick mid-evening-job visit from the parents ended up in the administration of a couple of spankings. (To my charges, not to me.) On another occasion with the same family, I locked us out of the house.

Oh, and I usually ate the entire bag of chips.

Those were some pretty tough years where my only alternative to penury was spending 20 minutes coaxing Robert G. into that day's sweatpants, despairing at midnight that my employers were already an hour late and likely to be even later despite my exhaustion, and trying desperately to make conversation with whichever strange gentleman was driving me home.

Which makes me all the more grateful for my new club membership list, brimming with six (count them - six!) names that I can call. Hmm - maybe if I give them each other's phone numbers, they'll start their own Babysitters Club.

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I Haven't Forgotten You!

Just wanted to pop in and say that blogging has been on my mind, but not necessarily fitting into the schedule lately. If I have any readers left at this point (The Husband warns me that infrequent blogging will reduce my readership substantially - and yet laziness continues to win, despite the threat), I apologize to you. I'll try to post later.

In the meantime, a quick list of things that have been on my mind lately:

1. Would Martin Luther King Jr.'s "change through nonviolence" strategy be as effective today?

2. Am I a bad parent for arranging to have a 13-year-old come to watch my children for a short evening?

3. Why am I so sad that Heath Ledger died when I feel almost no emotion after skimming the "5.4 million die in Congo" article this morning?

4. Did the half-veggie burger in the take-out container I left in the office fridge last night stink up the entire fridge with onion smell? (Ironic, given that last night was fridge cleaning-out night.)

5. Which will come first: the purchase of new pants or the losing of five pounds in order to fit into the pants already owned?

Discuss amongst yourselves if you so wish. More later.

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Whooo-eee! It's a Cold One Out There!

As much as there are lots of aspects of motherhood I love, I am the first to admit that I didn't take to my new role immediately after The Girl was born. Not only did I not "bond" with her when she was minutes old (whatever that means), but I had trouble not resenting her for the first few months.

Sure, I would have done anything to protect her (that's part of the job description) and I set everything aside to ensure her safety/well-being, but, given her untimely arrival and the ensuing typing of my entire thesis with one hand while simultaneously nursing a squalling infant, she wasn't exactly endearing.

Part of the issue was my own selfishness. I am remarkably self-centered and require tremendous personal willpower or (more usually) a great deal of extrinsic motivation (sticks tend to work better than carrots) to do anything that doesn't lead to the immediate gratification of my desires.

This selfishness gave me a certain oh, shall we say, disapassionate view of my daughter. In fact, at her two-month check-up and immunization appointment, I watched her post-needle distress and though, eh, better you than me - you won't remember it.

(Before you bestow upon me the "Coldest Mother in the World" title, please know that the situation changed quite rapidly as I got into the whole motherhood deal a bit more, and by the time the four-month vaccination rolled around, I was tearful enough to satisfy the most sensitive of you.)

I'm reminded of that initial hard-heartedness as I consider the difference in the recent cold-snap temperatures between here and Winnipeg. I'll admit it - I've become soft. Where last year my battle cry was "YOU JUST HAVE TO DRESS FOR IT!" before charging out into the wintery wasteland in my rated-for-parajumping parka, I now whine just having to go look for my toque.

(Ahem. "Winter hat." They don't know the T-word down here.)

This new softness goes hand-in-hand with a renewed callousness; instead of compassionately commiserating with residents of my former province, I hunch over my steaming coffee as I observe the wind chill warnings up North (!!) and think, "phew, better you than me."

Still, it's not like it's a balmy palm-tree kind of day here. My tongue would stick to my mailbox (were I in the habit of licking it clean) just as it would back home. Which is why no one is going out of the house today and I'm praying the furnace doesn't decide to break.

We have lots to keep us occupied indoors, however. The Girl has gone from a "meh" attitude about reading and writing to simply gulping down language. In an almost disturbing re-creation of my own past, she has decided that school is in session:

(It's not all bad - we get snack. After we all wash our hands, of course.)

(Proud mother moment: "I [would] like it [if] you can be quiet and if you could find my book for me pretty pretty please")

But at least I'm not The Husband. He returns from San Fransisco today, where he has been enjoying 15+ temperatures. He is wearing his lightest leather jacket and his car has been parked at the airport for four days.

Ah well, better him than me.

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Happy Birthday, Pokemon Trainer Extraordinaire!

My baby is 5 today. There's something about 5 that sounds ominously like the final "click" of the now-closed door to babyhood. It sounds like the harbinger of loose teeth, no training wheels, and "I know what that sign says, Mom!"

Perhaps it seems all the more sudden to me given that The Boy clung to elements of babyness for much longer than my daughter, she of the snark-suitable-for-a-sixteen-year-old.

We still have sippy cups in our cupboard, only recently taken permanently out of chocolate milk rotation. He still loves to snuggle, and his hands creep insistently towards my neck whenever he is tired/sleepy/sad (the neck, of course, being a substitute for some far more comforting parts of my anatomy located a bit lower down. Just call me Jacosta).

He's also wonderfully, yet heartbreakingly, without any emotional armour. He experiences life through his feelings and those around him alternately bask in the glow of his delight and cringe in the face of his grief and wrath.

Perhaps, too, I cling to the image of him as a baby because he is (as far as I know) my last child. I didn't know this when I gave birth to him, and memories of that night have become all the more cherished. Despite the fact that it was the student nurse's first shift on her maternity rotation and my cervix was deemed a remarkable example for her first dilation check.

My darling boy, may you have a fabulous day befitting your age, filled with Pokemon, video games and colouring pictures. Thank you for fitting so perfectly into the The-Boy-sized hole in my heart.

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From Stress to Salbutimol - In One Simple Step

So I was reading CBC News today (gotta keep up with the homeland), and I saw this:

"Children whose mothers are chronically stressed in the early years of their life are much more likely to develop asthma, suggests new Canadian research. [...] Researchers believe that an increase in women's stress levels overall plays a key part in the onset of asthma. 'Growth in chronic stress of women has paralleled the rising prevalence in asthma in the Western world,' reads the study. 'Stress is well-known precipitant for asthma exacerbations in children.'"

(http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/01/15/asthma-moms.html)

At first I actually thought I had misread it - a mother's stress actually causing a chronic condition in her child? Hello blame the mother!

But it looks like they're for true. And it sounds as though this isn't the only study out there that has come to this conclusion.

Which got me to thinking. The Boy's asthma didn't really come as a surprise to us (well, it did, but in hindsight, it shouldn't have) - with his family history, he was certainly predisposed. And if his father and other relatives had asthma back in the day, then it was almost impossible that The Boy could have avoided it in our current-day of who-knows-what-is-doing-it-but-suddenly-everyone's-got-it.

Still.

I can't help but be struck by the fact that The Boy's asthma showed up during a particularly stressful time in my life. And that he had just started daycare (which points squarely towards the lack of bonding with the mother the study suggests is one culprit for the heightened risk).

I'm certainly not going to beat myself up as though I was somehow the reason we ended up in the emergency room that day, but it does get me thinking about how emotional well-being links to physical well-being - even so far as to the health of others around me.

And with that, off to bed. Wouldn't do to get tired and then stressed and then make The Boy's current cold worse than it is.

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Watch Out Elvis Stojko!

Today was a good day. We started it with church; we hadn't been in the door ten feet before our children were bowled over by their two new friends who were so excited we'd come back. Lots of smiling people greeted us by name. After the service, there was an impromptu "Happy Birthday" sung by the entire congregation to The Boy and his friend, whose birthday was today (three days before The Boy's).

Then we had the pleasure of being invited for lunch by the parents of the three-days-older-than-The-Boy and The Girl's new BFF.

Now I have always considered Sunday lunch invites the height of hospitality. There is something so warming about communal worship spilling out into the streets and extending over a meal well into the afternoon. There were three other college students there as well, and we chatted over an impromptu lunch while the kids played.

(Of course, our son managed to break one of his host's favourite toys and our daughter had to be hauled down the stairs twice to face the horrendous hound - aka "Ginger the Dog." We're certainly not the ideal guests. Perhaps it will be our only invite.)

After that, we took the kids skating. Only their second time out and they were already dispensing with the sled/stabilizers!

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It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again

I read this today:

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger "before it's too late."

Bush said Iran funds terrorist extremists, undermines peace in Lebanon, sends arms to the Taliban, seeks to intimidate its neighbours with alarming rhetoric, defies the United Nations and destabilizes the entire region by refusing to be open about its nuclear program."

(http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/01/13/bush-iran.html)

Um, isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?

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R.I.P. 1995-2008

Today marked the end of an era. The microwave that has been part of the Peitricia Mae household since its beginning has, much to its owners' sadness, shuffled off this mortal coil.

Ah, our microwave. We have literally had it since we set up house almost fourteen years ago. It was, in fact, a wedding present, one that was all the more meaningful given the pecuniary position of the friends who pooled together their meagre student-life resources to purchase it.

It has had a remarkable career. It started off on Dalhousie Drive heating up nachos and feeding two hungry students in between exams. A move over to Hudson Ave. brought with it participation in a graduation feast for The Husband. In Mitchell, a new type of cuisine - baby food. Vancouver brought more baby food and lots of microwave popcorn for post-kids'-bedtime snacks. For awhile there we thought the microwave would last longer than the marriage it had heralded, but we rallied and worked things through over cups of tea reheated as necessary from its home in Steinbach. Our move back to Winnipeg meant the least counter space yet, so it was given pride of place on its own newly-constructed shelf. And now, Minneapolis, unbeknownst to us its final resting place.

We're not quite sure what finally did it. I was microwaving veggie bacon (mmm - Morningstar Farms - one of the best only-in-the-U.S. product lines we've found) and there was an arc and then...down to the basement, where it will remain until we figure out what to do with its empty shell.

This past week was our first back into usual routine - two kids back at school and two grown-ups back at work. I'm feeling a bit less blah than I was last week. I like routine; even if it's monotonous, it is familiar. And work is starting to get better. I still don't have a hot clue what I'm doing, but I know a bit more than I did last week.

Today was a lovely, lazy Saturday with cartoons, playing and a trip to the library. Some cleaning, too, so I can actually see the floor in some places.

And, to end off the evening, a campfire treat. We don't have a fireplace anymore, but that didn't stop us from making s'mores:

(Edited to change the date we got it from 1994 to 1995 - I was a child bride, but I did *not* get married the summer I graduated high school, thank you very much!)

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Confessions of an iLoser

When I was in grade six, my teachers convinced me to attend a lunch-hour basketball clinic. Their enthusiastic encouragement (some might call it prodding) was prompted not by any particular skill I had thus far demonstrated, but by my height. Always in the middle of the back row for class pictures, I had already spent the latter part of my elementary career trying to pass off ladies' size 3 garments as pre-tween fare as they were the only clothes with enough length to kept me modest.

(True story: I was sent home in grade five to change because my shorts - the correct size for a child my age and cut appropriately for any other child in grade five - were doing the Daisy Duke thing and Southwood School was simply unprepared for the moral disorder brought about by that much thigh.)

Unfortunately, Southwood's propriety extended only to their dress code and nobody thought ahead to the repercussions of forcing convincing one of the tallest, yet undeniably most uncoordinated, girls in school to attend a basketball clinic. Confused by the lack of doctors, I nonetheless gamefully stood at the foul line and was instructed to perform a lay-up with the ball thrust into my hands.

The results of said clinic dashed any daydreams I might have had of the WNBA. Add a soccer ball to the face during recess on a -25 degree day, jeers whenever I proved that I indeed did throw like a girl when the ball - despite my prayers - actually came to me out in the baseball field, and failing the same swimming lesson level (one up from blowing bubbles) three years in a row and I was pretty much cured of any desire to put on ye olde gym uniform.

(And people wonder why I detest team sports.)

My incapacity when it comes to sports is, I have discovered to my sadness, mirrored by my breathtaking disability when it comes to technology. I'm an ardent reader of manuals, only because without them I am totally lost. I only found the "off" button on my Palm Pilot one year after I'd started using it. When I got a new cell phone (an event completely out-from-under-me-rug-pulling), I looked blankly at the salesperson who offered to transfer over my stored numbers. Who knew you could store numbers? More importantly, who knows how?

The Husband tolerates my disability and tries to make anything in our house with a battery/cord as fail-safe as possible. Nevertheless, he still gets frequent phone calls: "I can't get it to work. I hate this (insert name of demon-spawned-product-of-Microsoft-thingamajig)!"

So it really shouldn't be surprising to me that my iPod has been the cause of a fair amount of embarassment this past week. Remember that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the heroine tries to walk over to non-Greek Prince Charming and is yanked back by her headset still connected to the phone?

It's less funny in real life than one might expect.

Even when the iPod, formerly attached to the headphones now dangling in one's ears, goes crashing to the ground, and one almost falls out of one's chair trying to grab it while simultaneously talking to the never-before-met-coworker who appears behind one and surprises the heck out of me one.

Oddly enough, it's even less funny the second time in three days.

Although I suppose that getting odd looks from people on the bus is my own fault if I insist on listening to (really quite hilarious) audio books on my iPod. Here they think that Led Zeppelin is tickling my funny bone (okay, the Led Zeppelin is a bit of a stretch - I suspect I cut a somewhat less flashy figure - my appearance suggests something more along the lines of Anne Murray), when really it's P.G. Wodehouse causing me to snicker.

The fact that my job involves telling people how to use technology is an irony not lost on me. But I suppose if I can understand it well enough to make it work and describe it, then anyone can. As long as they don't mind my dribbling.

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The Gild is Coming off the Lily

I guess it was only a matter of time before I got some real for-true homesickness. Not just the "I miss the parts of my life fitting together" unsettledness (although there's been a bit of that, too), but honest-to-goodness "I miss my old life" sadness.

It was coming back from Christmas break that did it, I think. Until now I've always had the next trip "home" planned - so it was always just a "see you in a few weeks!" And those trips home were frequent enough so that I managed to delay the inevitable. In fact, given that I was more deliberate about connecting with people and that we got to church almost once a month, it was kind of like commuting back and forth.

But now it feels like we're officially here. I've heard that culture shock takes somewhere between 4-6 months to set in. I'd say that fits my experience; the madness of the move gives way to the excitement of rebuilding which in turn gives way to a sense of loss as one realizes that despite knowing it can never be the same, one has been attempting to recreate the old life and simply cannot.

And then all the cultural differences, which seemed so minor before, really start to hit home. Doesn't help that it's an election year - everyone seems caught up in discussing exactly what's wrong with the country in order to somehow garner support for their own version of a fix-it.

Blech. Can you tell that the sun hasn't shone in a week and The Husband is out of town? Hopefully the pity party will end soon and I can get back to enjoying all the things that are really good about this move - two great jobs, a great school for our kids, and a cute little house in a great neighbourhood.

But until then, a list of the things that I miss about my old life (and about which a few tears slipped out the other day):

- More than one babysitter so I don't have to scramble when she invariably has a conflict
- Feeling like I actually knew how to do my job (and even how to do it well)
- Heading straight to the next cubicle with my coffee as soon as I got into work to complain about whatever terrible and horrible event had befallen me the previous evening
- My fireplace
- The division of church and state
-Universal healthcare
- A shared belief that the previous two things are good for a country, not tools of the devil
- Pronouncing the word "roof" correctly
- Bilingual cereal boxes

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Quit Shaking Your Eyes!

I came across a quotation today that I wish I'd had in my tool-belt when I was teaching:

"We cannot succeed in making even a single sentence mean one and only one thing; we can only increase the odds that a large majority of readers will tend to interpret our discourse according to our intentions." (Gopen and Swan 1990)

I fought a number of battles with students over the issue of authorial intent. Some students refused to believe that I couldn't explicitly answer the question "but what is the author trying to say here?" (as if there were only one possible meaning) and got frustrated when I answered their question with, "well, what do you think it means?"

Other students teetered on the other edge of the reader-response spectrum and decided textual meaning was as individual and personalized as their tattoos. One student posited that the titular character in "My Last Duchess," whose posthumous portrait is the ostensible subject of the poem, is actually not dead but, in fact, is imprisoned behind the wall and looking out with "Scooby-Doo Eyes."

(You know, the way that the eye-holes in the portraits in Scooby Doo are always peep-holes for the villains in which their pupils dance around. The same student also diagnosed the unfortunate duchess with teen alcoholism - this on the strength of a passing textual reference to flushed skin.)

When it comes to the question of "can we know what the author intended?", I place myself somewhere in the middle. No, I can't rule out a portrait whose eyes really do follow you around the room or youthful exuberance caused by hitting the bottle too hard, but I (and everyone else I've consulted - dead or alive) have a pretty good idea that that wasn't what Browning had in mind.

Which is where today's quotation comes in. Writers assume at their peril that they can ever convey exactly what they wish - no matter how detailed or how exact their attempt. Readers likewise perilously assume that they can come up with exactly what the writer intended, no matter how careful their reading. Yet readers also err if they go on to assume that they can read a text however they wish, just because.

The quotation struck me doubly as I've just embarked on reading the entire Bible in 2008 (yikes - now I'm committed - nothing like accountability to blog-lurkers to keep me going) and today's reading included the giants. Yes, that little-read and even less-often-preached-upon reference to the sons of God marrying the daughters of earth.

My guess is that interpretations of this passage are as various as the readers themselves, with a majority clustering around one particular reading and a few outliers suggesting space aliens or a vertically-challenged author. And that's fine with me; I believe that there is Truth, but when it comes to that which we view through this glass darkly, the best we can do on this side of Heaven is come close.

Which is why those who hold their opinions to be The. Only. Right. Interpretation. Of. The. Bible (Creationists who break out the smelling salts, picketing signs and lawsuits over the merest whiff of the "E-word" and hysterically demand that we keep such satanic teachings out of "our" schools, yet who refuse to even look either at biblical literary conventions or the science which both suggest "six days" is metaphorical - I'm looking at you) bother me so much.

Clinging to the belief that it's "my-way-or-the-highway" when it comes to textual interpretation (particularly interpretation of religious texts that inform faith/lifestyle/doctrinal questions) is a precarious position for the reader. If any part of the interpretation is proven wrong, the entire set of suppositions on which the reading is based falls like a house of cards. Ask citizens of Britain in the mid-19th century how faith-shaking that can be.

At the same time, consensus in terms of interpretation is important; if other people, faced with the same evidence, come to a similar conclusion as you, then you're probably closer to the author's intent than the out-in-left-fielder.

It's not that I necessarily disagree with Creationism or any other interpretation; it's the refusal to admit that there might be another possibility that is so frustrating. And the sense that I get that such a dogmatic position defense arises from a fear that if the possible existence of another position is admitted, suddenly the Bible will be submitted to scrutiny that it ultimately cannot withstand.

Bottom line: multiplicity of meaning is a potential for every text (yes, even the Bible), despite the likelihood that the author(s) had one particular intention. This is not scary; this is simply an invitation to refuse to accept blindly what other people say the text "means," an invitation to scrutinize what you take away from a text and what it is about the text and its author (and, of course, its reader) that leads you to come to that conclusion. You might very well come to the same conclusion as everyone else. But at least you got there on your own.

Wanna shake your eyes at me and tell me I'm the one who's reading it wrong? Go ahead. Just make sure you have a good reason to shake'em.

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Happy New Year!

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.


Tennyson In Memoriam A.H.H 1850

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