Teenagers

"So, Alvina...how old are you?"

She poured syrup into the cold remainder of her coffee. We hadn't allowed her a refill.

"Eleven and three-quarters."

"You sure it's not eleven and four-fifths?"

She shrugged. "Could be."

"Well," he said with exaggerated dismay, "that's too bad."

She took a sip of the cold, syrupy coffee, decided she liked it, and gulped down the rest. Then looked up at him, debating whether to ask the obvious question. She did. "Why's that?"

He wagged his head grimly. If you hadn't known my father, you'd have thought he had just come from a funeral. "Why? Because you're coming to the end of a beautiful, wonderful time. Your kidhood is almost over. You know what happens next, don't you?"

Experience had taught Alvina nothing—she rose to the bait again. "What?"

"Twelve. That's what happens. And you know what then?"

She didn't really want to answer such a dumb question, but she couldn't resist finding out where all this nonsense was leading. "Thirteen," she said.

My father snapped her a finger-point. "Exactly! In other words, you'll become a teenager." He sighed mournfully. "Such a shame." Alvina looked at me, at him. "Why?"

"Why? Because you know what they say."

"Who's they?"

I thought: Score one for you, girl.

My father ignored the question. "They say teenagers are rotten. They go from being cute and cuddly little kids to monsters who want to stay out late and walk a block behind their parents."

I was a little uneasy. I knew my father was just toying with her, trying to provoke her, but I wasn't sure if Alvina knew...She twiddled her spoon in the empty coffee cup. She shook her head. "Not me."

My father and I were both caught by surprise. The spoon twiddled in the cup. Finally my father prompted her. "Not you?"

The twiddling stopped. She stared into the cup. "No. I'm backwards. I'm a rotten kid now, but I'll be an amazing teenager."

-Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl, 174-175.

Fear

If I'm afraid of someone on the street, I'll turn to him (it's always a boy) and say, "Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?" This is my way of saying to the person, "I see you as a friend, and there is no need to hurt me or take my stuff. Also, I don't even have a watch and I am probably not worth mugging."

So far, it's worked like gangbusters, as Richard would say. And I've discovered that most people I'm afraid of are actually very friendly.

-Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me, 25-26.

Library Books

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke - according to the book jacket, "The capitivating sequel to Inkheart," which in turn was a "Delectably thick and transfixing fantasy..." according to Publishers Weekly. I can quite reliably confirm that Inkspell is also thick. Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli - the sequel to Stargirl, which I do not adore as much as Maniac Magee and Crash - but it's still a good read. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead - I've been hunting for this book for a while - I read a review somewhere that piqued my interest. It's a mystery/puzzle of sorts set in 1979. I'm hoping that it will turn out to be in the grand tradition of The Westing Game. Eliza's Daughter by Joan Aiken - I ADORE Aiken's Wolves Chronicles, and I recently remembered that she wrote several romances that are loosely based on supporting characters from Jane Austen.

Nunc Dimittis

LORD, now lettest thou thy seruant depart in peace: accordyng to thy worde.
For mine iyes haue sene: thy saluacion.
Whiche thou hast prepared, before the face of al people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles: and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
Glory be to the father, &c.
As it was in the, &c.

-From "An Ordre for Evening Prayer Throughout the Yere," The Second Prayer-Book of Edward VI

***

I received The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (Everyman Library Edition, 1938) for Christmas. I also own an old copy of The Book of Common Prayer (1892 edition?), so I think I am now an official collector of ancient-ish prayer books. I read through the order for Evensong a couple nights ago - stumbling over (and thoroughly enjoying) the idiosyncratic spelling* - and was particularly struck by this quotation of Simeon's prayer in Luke 2. I have always read this as the prayer that Simeon prayed - i.e., part of the Christmas narrative, a matter of historical fact, but not of any particular use for personal devotion. But I don't think it's included in the Order for Evening Prayer as a historical remembrance or quote - I think it's intended to be prayed. Every night! And what a fitting epitaph for the day: "Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace...for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

*Re idiosyncratic spelling, it is fascinating to me how much more peculiar the spelling is in the 1549 version (First Prayer Book) as compared to the 1552 version - just three years apart?! E.g., now/nowe, seruaunte/seruant, woorde/worde, lyght/light, bee/be!

Hmmm

Think before sharing with others.

-My fortune cookie at dinner

Merry Christmas!!!

O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing.

-Edward Hamilton Sears, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"

Courageous Love

Gertrude, it is not the perfect, but rather the imperfect who have need of love...it takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love.

-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Looking vs Seeing

To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing, and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Better to Receive Than Give?

We prefer to think of ourselves as givers - powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. Luke and Matthew go to great lengths to demonstrate that we - with our power, generosity, competence and capabilities - had little to do with God's work in Jesus. God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins, and stars in the sky to get it done. We didn't think of it, understand it or approve it. All we could do, at Bethlehem, was receive it. A gift from a God we hardly even knew.

- William Willimon, "The God We Hardly Knew"

Marmalade

"Perhaps it's a sticky ceremony, Mrs. Bird," said Paddington hopefully. -Michael Bond, Paddington Marches On, 26.

Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody

A Sackful of Squirrels

Two figures in particular seemed ill-matched. One, a young man, was tall, thin and angular; even muffled inside a heavy dark coat he walked a little like an affronted heron.

The other was small, roundish, and moved with an ungainly restlessness, like a number of elderly squirrels trying to escape from a sack. His own age was on the older side of completely indeterminate. If you picked a number at random, he was probably a little older than that, but--well, it was impossible to tell.

-Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, 12-13.

Girls

It's no good. You may treat girls as well as you like, and give them every comfort and luxury, and play fair just as if they were boys, but there is something unmanly about the best of girls. They go silly, like milk goes sour, without any warning.

-E. Nesbit, The Wouldbegoods, 246.

Divine Discontent

But it is wonderful how soon you get used to things, even the things you want most. Our watches, for instance. We wanted them frightfully; but when I had mine a week or two, after the mainspring got broken and was repaired at Bennett's in the village, I hardly cared to look at the works at all, and it did not make me feel happy in my heart any more, though, of course, I should have been very unhappy if it had been taken away from me. And the same with new clothes and nice dinners and having enough of everything. You soon get used to it all, and it does not make you extra happy, although, if you had it all taken away, you would be very dejected. (That is a good word, and one I have never used before.) You get used to everything, as I said, and then you want something more. Father says this is what people mean by the deceitfulness of riches; but Albert's uncle says it is the spirit of progress, and Mrs Leslie said some people called it 'divine discontent'. Oswald asked them all what they thought one Sunday at dinner. Uncle said it was rot, and what we wanted was bread and water and a licking; but he meant it for a joke. This was in the Easter holidays.

-E. Nesbit, The Wouldbegoods, 3-4.

Fashion

No human being would willingly wear pants that zipped off at the knee—no normal human being—unless they had rocket-thrusters in place of their detachable feet.

-M. T. Anderson, Jasper Dash and the Flame Pits of Delaware, 377.

Pluck the Day

But here's the thing. Horace didn't say that. "Carpe diem" doesn't mean seize the day—it means something gentler and more sensible. "Carpe diem" means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be "cape diem," if my school Latin serves. No R. Very different piece of advice.

What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things—so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant—pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man that Horace was.

-Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist, 127.

USB Cables

I looked at the USB cables dangling there, and I laughed pityingly at them, and I thought, Whoever designed the connector of the USB cable was a man who despised the human race, because you can't tell which way to turn it and you waste minutes of your tiny day, crouched, grunting, trying the half-blocked connector one way and the next. -Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist, 121.

Mermaids in the Plumbing

I know a boy (we’ll call him Horbert, though that isn’t his name, thank goodness), and for years he lived in a house where the bathtub had a magical drainpipe that led straight to the lost city of Atlantis! But Horbert was always in such a hurry to get where he was going that he never lingered in the bath. Whenever he got really filthy, and his mother nagged him to wash, he just jumped in and briefly splashed at himself. Then he’d spring right from the tub, and out the door he’d fly, afraid that his older brother Noah was beating his high score on Super-Space-Zombie-4000, his very favorite video game. Though mermaids sang in the plumbing, he never heard their call.

-Laurel Snyder, Any Which Wall, 1-2.

Gospel

You think the Gospel—Christianity—is something you’ve committed to, and you haven’t been consistent. The Gospel isn’t a promise you make to God; it’s a promise He makes to you.

-Joey Pensak, from my retreat notes

Purchasing Grace

...Still I feel the old clinging dirt of wanting to deal so with God that I may contribute something, so that he will have to give me his grace in exchange for my holiness.

-Martin Luther