a day
to go away
and for my son's birthday
Can I return much later?
Then said the teacher
(in Avalon to the pupil so wee, asking
"Can I go out, please?")
"You can but you may not."
a way
to go away
and for long summer days
May I return much later?
Saturday, May 31, 2008
dear reader
This morning, she and I are talking, like we enjoy doing so much. She's on her way to run while it's still 72 degrees Fahrenheit this Texas morning. I'm sitting here looking at a friend's note on a draft of my dissertation: "My favorite passage," he's rather generously noted. So, rather randomly, I throw it out into our conversation:
"My thesis is this: Translations of Aristotle's Rhetoric have been ostensibly faithful to Aristotle's authorial intentions; but a feminist translation shows that rhetoric is translational and feminist, even when Aristotle intends to theorize it, to define it, otherwise. Something like that. Sure, I define feminism in opposition to sexism, but I'm undefining definition as something more than mere opposition and binary. Feminism is not just the avoidance of sexism; it is the voicing of the unvoiced. It it the translating of the untranslated. It is the speaking of the speakeresque. . . So, to be very clear, the feminist translating does not reverse the sexism in the text, but rather it opens the text up to alternate readings not constrained by a sexist intention, a masculinist logic, or an elitist's language."
She replies by saying she'd picked up a couple of books I bought for our daughter and suspects they suffer from the Donna Jo Syndrome. Anne Lamott and Donald Miller don't so suffer, she says. And she explains more as I impatiently keep demanding that she get to the point. Donna Jo, one of our good friends, uses more words than she needs to. Oh, I reply. I'm thinking something else to myself but not saying it to her: that in Bird by Bird Lamott herself advises writing shoddy drafts. It's actually the writer's word that sort of rhymes with shoddy. I'm writing one bird after another here, and when someone writes in the margin that it's a "favorite," well. Okay. Yes, and who has to read this stuff anyway? Four professors on a dissertation committee, people who make their living professing things like classical rhetoric and feminist rhetorics and writing tutorial theory & practice and new testament greek and feminism. So I return to talking with her, to listening to her, and she's saying, she this best friend of mine who makes her living by writing professionally and winning awards and cash prizes, that she will be back soon before it gets to be 74 degrees Fahrenheit, on this Texas morning. I pledge to run our dog, named Bear, to the Trinity River, just as soon as she gets back.
And I go back to that friend who'd written the "favorite" comment. He'd asked, "Why, if it's a methodology--in addition to being activism--does it have to be called 'feminism'?" It doesn't, I want to say. And he's gone on, "Why the 'fem' when both men and women can employ the methods?" To which I say (to myself), "Yes, Why?" But "fem" I remember is no simple abstraction. "Feminism," I say, "who defines that? Who gets to say what the Feminine is? Now, tell me about your mother. Simply now, please define her for us. Write a dissertation."
She's back. It's after 8am and up to 74 degrees of Texas heat. She remembers talking with our daughters when they were out together last night, "I meant to tell you." One of them has told her (the one who just graduated elementary school), "Our class is R-rated," which translated means that there's some profound promiscuity going on. "But Jake [one of the boys] texted Susan [one of the girls in class] from Arizona saying that he's thinking of turning his life over to Jesus. Isn't that weird." She tells me that she asks our daughter, "Why is that weird?" And our day moves on. I'm going to run that dog, Bear, to the Trinity.
So I write to you now, dear reader. What sense does that make?
"My thesis is this: Translations of Aristotle's Rhetoric have been ostensibly faithful to Aristotle's authorial intentions; but a feminist translation shows that rhetoric is translational and feminist, even when Aristotle intends to theorize it, to define it, otherwise. Something like that. Sure, I define feminism in opposition to sexism, but I'm undefining definition as something more than mere opposition and binary. Feminism is not just the avoidance of sexism; it is the voicing of the unvoiced. It it the translating of the untranslated. It is the speaking of the speakeresque. . . So, to be very clear, the feminist translating does not reverse the sexism in the text, but rather it opens the text up to alternate readings not constrained by a sexist intention, a masculinist logic, or an elitist's language."
She replies by saying she'd picked up a couple of books I bought for our daughter and suspects they suffer from the Donna Jo Syndrome. Anne Lamott and Donald Miller don't so suffer, she says. And she explains more as I impatiently keep demanding that she get to the point. Donna Jo, one of our good friends, uses more words than she needs to. Oh, I reply. I'm thinking something else to myself but not saying it to her: that in Bird by Bird Lamott herself advises writing shoddy drafts. It's actually the writer's word that sort of rhymes with shoddy. I'm writing one bird after another here, and when someone writes in the margin that it's a "favorite," well. Okay. Yes, and who has to read this stuff anyway? Four professors on a dissertation committee, people who make their living professing things like classical rhetoric and feminist rhetorics and writing tutorial theory & practice and new testament greek and feminism. So I return to talking with her, to listening to her, and she's saying, she this best friend of mine who makes her living by writing professionally and winning awards and cash prizes, that she will be back soon before it gets to be 74 degrees Fahrenheit, on this Texas morning. I pledge to run our dog, named Bear, to the Trinity River, just as soon as she gets back.
And I go back to that friend who'd written the "favorite" comment. He'd asked, "Why, if it's a methodology--in addition to being activism--does it have to be called 'feminism'?" It doesn't, I want to say. And he's gone on, "Why the 'fem' when both men and women can employ the methods?" To which I say (to myself), "Yes, Why?" But "fem" I remember is no simple abstraction. "Feminism," I say, "who defines that? Who gets to say what the Feminine is? Now, tell me about your mother. Simply now, please define her for us. Write a dissertation."
She's back. It's after 8am and up to 74 degrees of Texas heat. She remembers talking with our daughters when they were out together last night, "I meant to tell you." One of them has told her (the one who just graduated elementary school), "Our class is R-rated," which translated means that there's some profound promiscuity going on. "But Jake [one of the boys] texted Susan [one of the girls in class] from Arizona saying that he's thinking of turning his life over to Jesus. Isn't that weird." She tells me that she asks our daughter, "Why is that weird?" And our day moves on. I'm going to run that dog, Bear, to the Trinity.
So I write to you now, dear reader. What sense does that make?
it's The End of the world (as we know it) and I feel fine
καὶ διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου καὶ Σαλώμη ἠγόρασαν ἀρώματα ἵνα ἐλθοῦσαι ἀλείψωσιν αὐτόν
2 καὶ λίαν πρωῒ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων ἔρχονται ἐπὶ τὸ μνημεῖον ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου
3 καὶ ἔλεγον πρὸς ἑαυτάς τίς ἀποκυλίσει ἡμῖν τὸν λίθον ἐκ τῆς θύρας τοῦ μνημείου
4 καὶ ἀναβλέψασαι θεωροῦσιν ὅτι ἀποκεκύλισται ὁ λίθος
ἦν γὰρ μέγας σφόδρα
5 καὶ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον εἶδον νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν
καὶ ἐξεθαμβήθησαν
6 ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε Ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον ἠγέρθη οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε ἴδε ὁ τόπος ὅπου ἔθηκαν αὐτόν 7 ἀλλὰ ὑπάγετε εἴπατε τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῷ Πέτρῳ ὅτι προάγει ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν ἐκεῖ αὐτὸν ὄψεσθε καθὼς εἶπεν ὑμῖν
8 καὶ ἐξελθοῦσαι ἔφυγον ἀπὸ τοῦ μνημείου
εἶχεν γὰρ αὐτὰς τρόμος καὶ ἔκστασις
καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν
ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ
It’s come to that Seventh Day when Mariam from Magdala, Mariam of Jacob’s family, and Shaloma have been to the market for perfumes to go slather him with.
It’s very early on this one Seventh Day when they go, when on the memorial cave the sun’s just risen.
They’ve talked among themselves: “Who’s going to roll the boulder for us out of the doorway of the memorial cave?”
Looking up, they see that the boulder’s been rolled.
There it was, in fact, massively huge.
Going into the memorial, they observed a youth sitting on the righthand side of a white wrapped up robe.
They were freaked out.
He talks to them: “Don’t freak out. Joshua who you’re searching for who’s from
Going out, they ran from the memorial grave.
What they had, in fact, each of one them, were the shakes and weak knees.
Nobody said anything.
Terror had them, in fact.
[UPDATE: there's this alternate updated ending that ends with something like "Amen." It's to tidy up the terror in the text; it's the textual war on terror, if you will. But don't updates, like this one, somehow detract as alternates, unless we stay open to what might have been, which changes what is (as we know it)? If everybody thought that was the original ending, or the final one, then I would just translate that "The End."]
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