Monday!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve digested. I think I’ve accumulated enough writing, reading, seeing and listening and so on to justify a re-entry. Let’s go.

Writing: This come first today because I’ve actually been doing a lot lately. I have a couple of mid-sized jobs into which I’ve gone All In – that is, working hard to get things done well before deadline. Like a month before the deadline.  My thinking being – if I’m doing it wrong, getting work in early gives everyone time to recalibrate, if necessary. Also, once I get a project in my head, it sort of lives there, and since I do have a life apart from work, my desire is to tend to it, make it happen, and then be done with it and therefore out of my head.

What is it? Eh, it really doesn’t matter. It’s the kind of work I actually like quite a bit – just work. It has nothing to do with me personally, I don’t have to stress about sales or promotion. I can just use my gifts, such as they are, for a good cause, trust that the words will have an impact, and move on.

I’ve always appreciated the work of the anonymous medieval artisans who did their all to carve and craft images for the nooks and crannies of Cathedrals that no one would ever see except for God. There’s something to be said for that, something to remember as you change diapers, cook a meal, turn in a report or change someone’s oil. Whatever you do with love is a great thing, no matter how many people see it or know that it’s you who did it.

Also – Living Faith on Wednesday. So check that out. 

Cooking: Yes, we did the frittata and the lentil soup I mentioned last week. They happened, and turned out very well. Imagine my shock to see the Kid getting seconds on the lentil soup.

Over the weekend, I churned out my old dependable Mexican braised beef and Chicken tinga– that will do for meals for a few days.

(If you look at the recipe for the beef– I do change it up just a tad. Instead of the generic “tomatoes” I add two cans of hot Ro-Tel. Makes a big difference. I also don’t cook it the slow cooker, because I don’t own one. Dutch oven in the actual oven for me. ThetingaI make exactly as the recipe says, and it’s delicious.)

Plus, of course, the bread.

No sweets!

Then College Kid comes home for spring break, and I’ve already received that list of desired meals.

Watching: Curb Your Enthusiasm( barely tolerable, but I’ll stick it out for two more episodes), Avenue Five (withholding judgment til it’s over), and Better Call Saul (fantastic, will write about this week.)

Not much movie time – but this week we did get in My Favorite Wife. I had remembered it as deeply madcap, which it wasn’t. It was still very funny – a rendering of the Enoch Arden story,  but what’s most memorable about the movie, and which I had noted the last time I’d seen it – maybe 15 years ago, which was the first time I’d seen it as an adult – is that the whole movie is about sex. Beginning to end, all about sex. But made in a time in which movies couldn’t be directly and explicitly about sex, which makes it, then, great.

We begin with the Cary Grant character about to get married. But first he must get his first wife, lost in a shipwreck seven years previously, declared dead. This happens, and that very day (imagine that!) right after the second marriage, as Grant and new wife are going on their honeymoon – first wife Irene Dunne shows up, having been rescued from the desert island by a Portuguese freighter.

And so at this point,once she realizes the situation, her urgent task becomes to prevent Grant and new wife from consummating their marriage. Which then becomes an occasion of tremendous frustration for the second wife, who doesn’t understand why her new husband is suddenly backing away – not putting on the nice robe she’d bought him is the metaphor for what she’s hoping for  – to the point where she even calls in a psychiatrist. Once that’s taken care of, the issue becomes – when will Grant and Dunne re-consummate their marriage? He’s mad at her because she’d not told him that she actually not been alone on the island, and then, once she admits it, she makes as if her companion was a little squirrely fellow when in fact he was Randolph Scott, whom some ladies at the Pacific Club mistake for Johnny Weissmuller. Irene Dunne must spend a great deal of time assuring Cary Grant that no, she and Randolph Scott did not have sex in their seven years on the island – and do so, since this is 1940, without explicitly saying, “We did not have sex on that island.” For her part, she’s sort of mad that he’s been saying he needs to think about things and will probably take a 60-day cruise to sort it out – which would bring him back around Christmas. She holds him to this, even once he’s decided, yes, he’s ready to re-consummate, and he solves the problem (spoiler alert!) by rummaging around the attic, reappearing in her bedroom in a Santa Claus costume, declaring, “Merry Christmas!”

End scene. 

It’s breathtaking and subtle and blindingly obvious all at the same time, which makes it far more satisfying than something explicit and in-your-face  – and here’s why – because life isn’t explicit and in your face. Life is more like a 1940 movie in that it’s subtle and obvious at the same time, with us navigating through things we know, things we can’t say and things we’re not sure of all at the same time.

Listening:  The same. Brahms, Prokofiev, Haydn.

Kid had a jazz recital on Saturday – played riffs/arrangements he’d made of Summertime. 

And of course, church music. No preludes or postludes! It’s Lent!

Reading: Ah, here we go.

Last week, I re-read My Antonia. College kid was reading it, and NO, he had not asked for help and NO, I am not helicoptering, but I did think, “Hey, I haven’t read that in a while. I wonder how it holds up?”

Cather’s writing is so beautiful. And interesting because she is not “writing as a woman” as we moderns might expect – she is just writing. Remembering, describing, sharing. Writing. 

Kid #5 has just started the Odyssey. I’ve never read it, so here we go. As with the Iliad (which he read last fall), I’m blown away by the beauty and the insight of this ancient work. We listened to a great deal of the Iliad, since we were traveling for part of the time, and will listen to some of this – although not as much. The version of the Odyssey which we have on Audible is read by Ian McKellen, so I’m looking forward to it.

As I read – and as I read the Old Testament with this kid as well (the past couple of weeks have been 1/2 Samuel), I can’t help but ponder the difference between a world in which educated people are immersed in all of these ancient stories, know them well, and live and work in that framework – and a world in which no one knows anything except their own experience and the superficial glimpses they get of others’ lives and opinions via the media.

More later on some academic journal articles I’ve been perusing.