Well, a body does get around...

A body gets around so much that a body doesn't have time to update this. But thanks to a gentle nudge that Darby gave me back in, oh, September, here I am.

About this time every year, I start wishing for a few things. For one, I want to be Catholic. Or some kind of high church thing. I want to sing "O Come Emmanuel" in Latin while incense burns. But it needs to be so ineffably meaningful that even my having written about it right now would spoil it. This is the same impulse that compelled me to take my mom and sisters and brother-in-law to midnight mass at St. Cecilia's at few years ago. We didn't know it would last two hours. They were good sports.

For two, I want to read Christmas stories that make the whole thing new and wonderful again. I think these desires both stem from grown-up experiences of Christmas that can never live up to the glory of childhood Christmases. It's like Charlie Brown says, "I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel."

My solution to the adult Christmas blues is to pay more attention to advent. "Surely," I reason, "if I anticipate Christmas more, it will mean more." Usually what happens is that when I'm supposed to be grading (like right now), instead I read Christmas stories and work on my annual Christmas mix. And then when I really am home, I stop reading Christmas stories and thinking about Advent and sort of slip into filmy-headed family mode. I'm hoping this year I can keep my wits about me and be present and see Advent through.

But in any case, I really like two Christmas stories I've read so far this year. The first is John Cheever's "Christmas Is a Sad Time for the Poor," which I found to be quite funny, despite its pathetic title. The second is John Updike's "The Carol Sing," which opens with these wonderful lines: "Surely one of the natural wonders of Tarbox was Mr Burley at the Town Hall carol sing. How he would jubilate, how he would God-rest those merry gentlemen, how he would boom out when the male voices became Good King Wenceslas."

There's also the fun of saying "Oh, my! It's fruitcake weather, Buddy!" And you can read all about that here.

And there's Patty Kirk's The Gospel of Christmas, which is her collection of Christmas essay. It is wonderful and it gets at all of my and Charlie Brown's and everyone's Christmas longing. It won't come out in next year, but I have an advanced reader's copy. If you would like to read it, you can think about how my mentioning it has doubled your Advent anticipation.

Any favorite Christmas stories? Or fantasies?

Ok. I really should grade now.

one scandal and one confession

you will probably be disappointed with this post because it's not as juicy as i've made it sound. but without further ado: the scandal. all of columbia is covered in a yellow coat of pollen at present (exhibit a: the top of my car). i've never encountered anything like it before moving here. at church yesterday, i scandalized my friend max when i said that if nature were a man, i would have him thrown in jail for what he's done to my car. i find this a slightly more polite way of expressing my friend phil's reading of the situation, which is that we are all extras in nature's porn film. what we need is a hard rain.


and now the confession. i've recently discovered i must be allergic to coconut in high doses. when i was home over spring break, brooke made macaroons for our oscar party and i ate my fill. then two days later, when i was shopping for some new clothes, i noticed i had hives. i didn't know what had caused them until recently, when my friend alicia sent me a care package that included macaroons. when i got hives again, i made the connection. but that didn't slow me down any as i worked my way through the rest of those little tasties. and i would eat one right now if i had one. and i would eat TWO if i had two. and so on.

pleasure reading

Yesterday on my way back to Columbia after the break, I was reading "Great Expectations" on the plane, and three different people asked me if I was reading it as an assignment. They were incredulous when I said it was pleasure reading. It made me laugh. It also made me feel bad for poor "Great Expectations," which must have been assigned in high schools for decades now to the point where no one believes a person would read it for pleasure. But, oh, I do. What a book.

Here's one bit I liked so much:

"Pip, my dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together."

-Joe Gargery

That Joe. He knows a thing or two about a thing or two.