Melon Soup

Having celiac disease has its advantages. My diet has become so much more imaginative and my cooking repertoire has expanded. Recently, I made melon soup and my life is now better than ever. I don't know where I heard of this melon soup business, but I looked it up online and read about ten recipes and then went to the kitchen and didn't follow any of them. I put about half a medium sized honeydew melon, a cup of plain yogurt, a couple tablespoons of orange juice concentrate, a few squirts of lemon juice, a drizzle of honey, a half cup of cucumber, and a teaspoon of ground ginger into my blender, ran the blender, refrigerated the soup, and ate it. And was happy. Slightly less ginger might have been better. But life goes on.   And just think of the possible variations!

Punctuation and Emoticons

So you know how people use punctuation to make smiley faces all the time, like so :), etc? It drives me nuts, in an academic sort of way. The other morning I was sitting in bed and thinking about why I hate punctuation smileys. My conclusion was, it's an abuse of the purpose of punctuation. Then I thought about it more. Here is what I thought:
Punctuation was originally invented in order to dictate pause length and breath location to the reader, who naturally was reading out loud, so that he might properly express the intent of the author. If one breathes in the wrong places, or pauses too long, then it disturbs the rhetorical effect, and the oratorical value must be preserved. Honestly, one can't appreciate a stunning speech of Cicero properly if the pauses are done wrong. Have you ever heard somebody reading aloud and they paused in the middle of a clause? Well, maybe you don't notice. It's probably because you have a more charitable soul than me; or just don't care. Anyway, I notice. It drives me crazy. Because that's what the punctuation is for. It tells the reader where to pause and breath so that the ideas are accurately expressed.
This is what I was thinking. Then I thought, oh dear, because punctuation smileys are, in effect, doing the same thing: ensuring that the reader properly understands the intent of the author. In other words, by my own argument, I have no grounds for hating them.
But I do.

Figures

Last night I dreamed I lived in an apartment near where I used to live, but to get in I had to go through an extremely narrow door in a tree, and when the area flooded I was relieved that my apartment was high enough up that it wouldn't flood, despite the fact that it was evidently underground. I was also friends with a young Asian man who was the hero of the world, and he'd been so busy being a hero that we hadn't seen each other for months and were excited when we got to collect the garbage on campus together. I also ran into a familiar tall blond man I don't know who told me about how they were finally making all the Bolivians be baptized Catholic so they would quit their rebellion, and that the Bolivians who'd been forced to be Catholic were called 'Nolos'. It wasn't until after I'd been considering the oddities of my dream for a while that what is possibly the most bizarre part occurred to me. 'Nolo' is a Latin word which means 'I am not willing'. Apparently even while I'm in middle of entirely irrational dreams, I can't help but have decent Latin.

What is a true story?

People frequently ask me what kind of books I like to read. After considerable thought, I've concluded that my favorite books to read are the true ones. Only, what constitutes a true story? You might think that it would be, say, one composed of facts, or at least based on them; however, I consider this to be nonsense. I don't like factual stories, I like true ones. Some factual stories are true, but not all of them; nor are true stories necessarily based on fact.
The Lord of the Rings is what I would consider a first class true story, despite the fact that it is clearly not only fiction, but fantasy. Let me explain myself to those who doubt my definition (But before I go any further, let me confess that it's been a while since I read the books, and now I don't remember what's in the movie and not the book and vice versa.). The Lord of the Rings demonstrates true principles and the characters make true statements. The most famous of the true statements is probably Gandalf's about how we can't choose what time we want to be in, we can only decide what to do with the time we've been given (I don't remember exactly how it goes). That is true, very true, despite the fact that Gandalf was a figment of Tolkien's imagination. I think that Aragorn beautifully demonstrates true principles of leadership and its burdens, despite the fact that he too, unfortunately, is entirely fictional. Do you see what I mean about The Lord of the Rings being 'true' fantasy? It's not great because it's well-written or has good character development or an epic plot; it's great because it's true. That's why it's the best high fantasy out there - the rest can't compete for trueness (although there are some good ones, I admit).
Some other books:
The Thief (Megan Whalen Turner) - true
The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis) - true
The Mark of the Horse Lord (Rosemary Sutcliff) - true
1776 (David McCullough) - true
The Odyssey (Homer?) - true
The Oresteia (Aeschylus) -true
You will observe that all of the books on this list are true. That's not actually because I was looking for true books; it's because the true books were the ones that came to mind. I forgot the others.

Sparrow

I like Simon and Garfunkel. I realize they may have had some issues in their lives, but the words to some of their songs are amazing. One of my favorites is Sparrow. The words are thus:


Who will love a little sparrow
Who's traveled far and cries for rest?
"Not I," said the Oak Tree
"I won't share my branches with no sparrow's nest
And my blanket of leaves won't warm her cold breast"

Who will love a little sparrow
And who will speak a kindly word?
"Not I," said the Swan
"The entire idea is utterly absurd
I'd be laughed at and scorned if the other swans heard."

Who will take pity in his heart
And who will feed a starving sparrow?
"Not I," said the Golden Wheat
"I would if I could but I cannot I know
I need all my grain to prosper and grow"

Who will love a little sparrow?
Will no one write her eulogy?
"I will," said the Earth
"For all I've created returns unto me
From dust were ye made and dust ye shall be"

I like this song because it's a good reminder of how we ought to behave, and how bad our excuses for not helping each other are. The tree won't help the sparrow; why? Because he doesn't want to. The swan won't help the sparrow; why? Because of what others might say if he does. The wheat won't help the sparrow; why? Because she thinks she doesn't have enough to spare, and won't make it if she shares. Then in the end, what happens? The earth receives the sparrow, as she will one day receive the tree, the swan, and the wheat. Despite their selfishness and unwillingness to help the sparrow, one day they will be nothing more than she is. It seems to me as though the primary reasons we use to avoid helping each other are all here: we don't feel like it, people will laugh at us, we don't have enough for ourselves. But what will happen in the end? Will our desire to put ourselves first, our laziness or vanity, our reputation, our financial well-being, put us in a better position when we all go back to meet our maker? Somehow I doubt it.

On being crippled

Due to the conjunction of certain planets in my mind's sky, I have been considering lately the meaning of the word crippled. I understand what it means in general usage ("a person or animal that is partially or totally unable to use one or more limbs"), but I don't think that's how my subconscious understands it. To me, I think, it has nothing to do with one's physical capacity, but instead depends on mental attitude. In my mind, a 'cripple' is someone who refuses to try doing something because they're afraid they might fail. So a person who's missing a leg, say, but is willing to try, I don't know, ice-skating (which would be difficult - I have a hard time doing it with both my legs intact), is much less crippled than a person who's entirely hale of body but won't try ice-skating because they're afraid they might fall.
That's my profundity for the day.

Why would anyone want to be a lawyer?

It turns out that I don't want to be a lawyer for high moral reasons, or even low money-grubbing reasons. No, after deep personal reflection, it turns out I want to be a lawyer because I have a crush on Cicero, Marcus Tullius himself. I adore him and want to be like him. This would look good in fifty years if it ever came out. "What first lead you to the study of the law?" "Oh, I had a crush on an argumentative dead man." So now I'm going to put it on a blog where, conceivably, anybody could read it.