"Wishes can come true, whistle while you work...so hard...all day..."

I was going to forget about a blog for today; nothing much happened. But every day is a gift (even for vampire slayers brought back from the dead), so this one can’t just pass without comment.

Read most of Perelandra today. English is too tempting. I have all my books stored right here by my desk…maybe that’s a bad idea…they’re always in view, waiting for me to pick them up. But I feel refreshed after Perelandra…a homecoming, to a primary author of my youth…I remember who I wanted to be when I was twelve and try to commit myself again to becoming that person. And there is always something I missed before, though this time it’s mostly Lewis’s less-than-equitable view of women…I mean, he tries…but when this book was written he hadn’t been “surprised by Joy,” namely (literally) his wife, hadn’t had the epiphany that “wow…it’s a bit chauvinistic to consider such things as “courage” to be male traits!” rather than realizing there might be manifestations of courage which are more masculine or feminine. As far as I can tell, he had only an academic knowledge of femininity, having lost his mother at an early age and never gotten beyond hormone driven adolescent encounters with girls his own age, which he seems to have given up upon seriously starting his academic life.

(Tolkien wasn’t too happy with the whole business, as Joy had been divorced before she married Lewis (both the first time when it was just to stay in the country and the second time after he realized he was really in love with her after all), but I imagine, as Joy’s first husband was this abusive alcoholic type, there had to be grounds for annulment somewhere in his makeup) (and there I go, using her first name and his last name…but I don’t know her last name…and I just can’t call him Clive Staples!)

Oddly enough, that night he had the dinner party, Pierre lent his copy of Perelandra (as ancient as mine I think…) to Maude. Do they realize how unapologetically Christian its inspiration is? Is it ok to recommend something like that to a colleague? Obviously…so what is permitted and what isn’t? Is it like a code? As long as you don’t do or say anything too overt, it’s ok? I guess by the same token we discussed The Da Vinci Code, but mostly its inaccuracies as they relate to the layout of Paris. (The R. parents had more to say about other inaccuracies)

But anyway… life is good.

So is brioche.

But not in the same way.

Tomorrow I fais le queue to get my titre de séjour, which should give me ample time to start my FRENCH reading, as well as a feeling of accomplishment when I finally have it out of the way (while standing in line for my titre, I plan to be reading French for awhile.)
Lessons of day:
God is good.
Don’t worry, you don’t carry the merit of doing________. You’re still little.
Take the good that is given to you. And don’t wish for it again.
If you’re a frog on Venus, steer clear of white men with long fingernails.
Brioche: it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, though nearly indistinguishable from it.