use your words

I was noticing tonight that our dog sometimes growls. I wasn't noticing for the first time, but it did occur to me to wonder why it doesn't bother me. Occasionally he'll grumble-growl if he gets poked or shoved in the middle of the night (he sleeps in bed with us). Otherwise, though, he only growls if we try to take away one of his toys. I'm willing to bet most dog books would tell me this is a very bad thing, and I must put a stop to it and sternly punish him next time he tries it. But he never snaps, never bites, just growls. And so I disagree.

What do we tell little children when we're training them to play nicely with others? We tell them not to hit Billy because he took your train away; ask him nicely whether you may have a turn playing with it. We tell them, in short, to use their words. Well, dogs don't have language in the way that humans do, and there just isn't a dog vocalization that comes off as a friendly yet assertive request. Well, as I see it, doggy language is a mix-and-match affair. He growls; that's the assertive part. But he's not biting, and his tail is sometimes wagging -- that's the friendly part. And he's holding onto the toy -- that's the request. What he is doing is not the challenge to my authority some might see it as, but his way of communicating to me what he wants.

I find myself a little amazed that some humans with all the benefit of decades of teaching never manage to learn this simple lesson; but without teaching, without training, without even a common language, my amazing dog figured out the principle -- to use his words.

"endure, my heart..."

I have a quote from Homer's Odyssey pinned up on the corkboard behind my desk. "Endure, my heart; you have endured worse than this." And as much of a comfort -- well, not precisely a comfort, but a strength -- as it can be sometimes, I have realized it's not always true. At least once in each person's life, it has to be false. At least once, every person will have occasion to say, "this is the worst pain I have known." And unless your earliest memory -- or perhaps your first moment of life, depending on how you think of it -- is of the very worst suffering you will ever have, that quote will be false more than once. And when I realized that, I thought it an enormously depressing idea. You mean I have to suffer worse than I ever have before, and I have to do it more than once?! But, at the same time, thinking back on the worst pain in my life, even that thought is, in a strange way, a strength.

I was reminded of a line from C.S. Lewis's Perelandra -- which, remarkably, I remembered almost word-for-word. The hero was going to sleep one last time, knowing that in the morning, he would face his enemy, and fight him, and he'd darn well better win. And he thought, "at this time tomorrow I will have done the impossible." Hard as it will be, I will do it, or die in the attempt. And by this time tomorrow, it will be over. That's sort of how it feels, going through that pain, and knowing that that quote, true so many times, is false this time. This is the worst pain I have ever suffered. But here I am, suffering it, yes, but surviving it. This hurts worse than anything I've ever known, but I can get through it. I know I can get through this, because I am getting throught it. I can get through this.

an overwhelming question... oh, do not ask, "what is it?" let us go and make our visit...

I have long found it a curious fact of life that store brand packages are so unattractive. Sometimes it has to do with cheaper packaging - plastic bottles instead of glass or a plastic jar instead of a little tin. But even aside from that, they tend to be unattractive; the pictures on the packaging just aren't pretty. It baffled me for a long time that they don't bother to put a pretty picture on the package. I'm sure that somewhere working for them, they have somebody who was in his high school photography club and can take a picture of some cookies that makes them look really appetizing. Yet they don't. And I think that I've now realized the reason; they want the packaging to scream "store brand!" at the customer. Because a lot of people (myself included) don't care about buying the name brand for a lot of things. So when we go looking for butter or peanuts or dishsoap, we actually look for that rather pathetic looking box or can or bottle that means it's cheaper than the name brand. And that's how we find it.

What really baffles me, though, is unattractive books. Unattractive books at Borders or Barnes and Noble cost just as much as the beautiful ones do. I grant you that it can be really difficult to design a really beautiful book, but it's really not hard to identify one. There's somebody whose job it is to OK books before they get printed. So how do some books get printed? You know the ones I mean - the ones you look at and think, "Oh, man. The people who published this book must have just hated it 'cause there is no excuse for a book this ugly. I could design a better cover than that." Okay, you're right; you don't spend that much thought on them. What you actually think is, "Nope." An ugly cover does nothing but hurts that book's sales. So why do ugly books exist?

PS: The title line is from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

PPS: As a general rule, I firmly dislike T.S. Eliot. Do not think my quoting him means I like (or understand) his poetry. Neither does it mean I am impeccably cultured, merely that I have a friend who is. (And for anyone interested, I'm taking bets on how long it takes her to respond to that comment...)

the trinity revisited

I was thinking about the Trinity (yes, it is the Pantheon now, but Godspell is still of a very different sort than the other three - Wicked, Fiddler, Les Mis), and I thought of something they have in common that I hadn't thought of before. Speaking of Robert Cormier's books, Lisette Allred said that they encourage hope and noble behavior despite, and even partly because of, their sadly-ever-after endings because "we understand whom we are meant to imitate." Even when the hero's story ends badly, we know we should imitate him because it is his motives, his thoughts, his actions, that the author shows us; we understand who we are meant to imitate.

But in these plays - in the Trinity - we see different characters. Yes, we love and admire Jean Valjean. We know that Marius and Cosette love each other. But we also see why Javert thinks himself a good man. We see that Eponine certainly loves Marius as much as Cosette does. We agree with the choice Elphaba makes, but we see why Galinda makes hers too. We understand Chava's decision to marry Fyedka, but we understand also why Tevye cannot accept them. It's as if the authors of these plays are saying, "I don't have any corner on the truth market. You have to decide what to believe for yourself." It's like in 'No One is Alone' from Into the Woods. (By the way, if any one song could singlehandedly deify a show, I think it would be this one.)

Mother cannot guide you,
Now you're on your own.
Only me beside you,
Still you're not alone.
No one is alone.
Truly, no one is alone.
Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood
Others may deceive you;
You decide what's good.
You decide alone;
But no one is alone.

we believe all sorts of things that aren't true - we call it history

"A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others."-- The Wizard of Oz

It sounds charming at first, doesn’t it? It sounds charming, and sweet, and ever so true. It’s okay: you can say yes; I thought it sounded lovely at first, too. But stop for a moment and think about it. "A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others." Have you realized what the implications are of that statement?

You see, ever since I’ve come to love Wicked (the musical; unfortunately, I was unable to find in myself any fondness for the book), I find myself unable to think of The Wizard of Oz in any other terms. That is, the Wicked Witch will never again be the bad guy for me; she will always be the beautiful heroine Elphaba. Dorothy has been ousted from her position as protagonist, and I’ll never be able to think of her as anything other than that whiny silhouette I saw at the Kennedy Center.

So, returning to my original topic, I repeat the Wizard’s statement: "A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others." As I first read it on my friend’s wall, I didn’t think such a noble sentiment fit the Wizard at all. Then, I thought about it for a moment and realized that it fits him perfectly. I don’t think the Wizard gave a fig for anyone in Oz but himself, yet everybody in Oz thought he was the best thing to happen to them since the brilliant idea of putting marshmallows in hot chocolate came along. He was the Wonderful Wizard – complete with a wonderful heart.

Elphaba tried to help all sorts of people. Doctor Dillamond. Galinda (one time was not long after Loathing, remember!). The Lion. The Wizard (remember the monkeys?). Many Animals, probably none of whom she’d ever met before. The Flying Monkeys. Nessa. Boq. Fiyero. She loved most of them probably more than some people do anyone in their entire lives: she sacrificed her reputation and very nearly her life for them. By the “end” of her life, though, she could’ve counted on one hand the people who loved her. So, she was the Wicked Witch – heartless.

Unfortunately, it would neither be quite fair nor quite true to say the opposite – that a heart is judged by how much you love, regardless of how much you are loved by others; but I think it would be true to say that it ought to be. We humans are rather stupid at times; some bad people have been able to fool an awful lot of us into loving them without loving any of us in return. But, some good people have managed to love an awful lot of us without our ever so much as noticing them. That’s why that quote isn’t noble and sweet: it’s saying what matters isn’t how much you love, but how good your PR is. I’m afraid I can’t say that’s not how the world works, but I’m pretty darn sure that that’s not how it should work. So you keep your quote from the Wizard of Oz – I’m going to go listen to Defying Gravity.

PS: The title line is taken from a line from the musical Wicked by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz.

2 sadly underrated products

So what's this I hear about this new Olay body lotion? I've seen ads for it a couple times, and it's being touted as 'breaking the cycle of dry skin.' Okay, think about that for just a minute. Olay earns money selling lotion. If they invented a lotion so amazing that once you use it, your skin stops being dry, why would they want to market and sell it? This would be like Starbucks giving out a recipe for their amazingly good hot chocolate that actually made amazingly good hot chocolate. I would never buy hot chocolate again; I would make my own. They would have destroyed the market for their product. If I used a remarkable lotion that kept my skin from drying out, why would I ever buy it again? I wouldn't. My skin wouldn't be dry. I wouldn't need to. In short, this is one of the more ridiculous advertising pitches I've ever seen. Whether or not it's a good lotion, I refuse to buy it on principle alone.

St. Ives' Whipped Silk, however, is as far as I'm concerned pretty much the perfect lotion. It makes my skin feel nice and soft without making me feel like I need to wash my hands before I can touch a book. And it smells nice.

It is an interesting fact of life that brand names that become names for types of products in their own right (Xerox, Q-Tip, Band-Aid, etc.) are automatically assumed to be the best of their kinds. Or usually it is only interesting; in the case of Kleenex, it is interesting and unfortunate. For Kleenex is not in fact the best tissue. I have found it to be little better than the store brand. The absolute hands-down best brand of tissue is Puffs. They're much thicker and softer. They may be pricier; I honestly don't know - I don't bother looking at anything else. If they are, though, I promise they're worth it.

10 reasons hot-water radiators are better than hot-air vents

1 While you're taking your shower, you can lay all your clothes out on the radiator, and when you put them on, they'll be nice and toasty. This technique does not work with vents.
2 What if there's something wrong with the heating? Well, if you have radiators, nothing happens. The radiators simply aren't warm. Which I grant you is not a good thing, but with vents, instead of nothing happening, cold air is blowing into every room of your house. Think of a little mini fan going in every room, all day. Nice in the summer. Not so nice in the winter. (My bathroom has this problem perpetually. I don't think I have ever seen the bathroom get warm enough to steam up the mirror, no matter how long a shower I take. I do not like it, Sam I Am.)
3 A radiator simply warms up the room. If it's doing its job, you don't even notice it. But a vent? You can hear it. You can feel the breeze. (I slept directly under one before I moved to the lower bunk. I had to bury my face under a blanket to be able to sleep.) A vent interferes with your life; a radiator is simply there.
4 What if you have exotic allergies to dust or mold? Or what if you just wonder what might be in the air that's circulating through your house? Anything could be in those air vents. No, really. Once more, for emphasis: Anything could be in those air vents. Could you decisively prove to me that there aren't mice living in there? Snakes? Cockroaches? Flobberworms? Pixies? I know I couldn't. Surely this is a bad thing.
5 When a person, or a cat, or a dog, or whatever, stands over the vent, they're blocking the warm air. They're taking the warmth for themselves, and it's not getting to the rest of the room. When a person sits in front of a radiator, or a cat on it, there's a lot of heat still escaping to everywhere else. Warming up by the heating apparatus is not a community disservice when it's a radiator.
6 Some vents are in the ceiling. This is so obviously idiotic that I wonder that such vents exist. But they do. They blow out hot air (ideally), and since heat rises, it stays right there, keeping the ceiling nice and toasty (ideally). Now, I'm in favor of nice toasty ceilings. I wouldn't want my ceiling to be catching a chill. But all the same, I'd like a little of that warmth to be finding its way to me. I grant you, this is not a problem with all vents, but I dare you to find me a hot-water radiator stuck to somebody's ceiling.
7 Well, I wouldn't like the ceiling vents to feel singled out for chastisment, so how about floor vents? Stuff falls into them. Crumbs and bits of food in the kitchen. Hair in the bathroom. Candy wrappers and pencil stubs and scraps of paper and who-knows-what everywhere else. They're difficult to clean, and easy to get dirty. This is a bad combination.
8 Central heating vents require a big ugly box to sit somewhere outside by your house. It cannot be disguised, and is too large to be tucked behind the average shrubbery. A furnace hides in the basement with the water heater.
9 Radiators are so darn useful! Cats can lounge on them. They're a bit high to sit on, but if you haven't a chair, you can use one as a sort of miserichord. They're perfect for goals when you're playing a mostly innocuous game of indoor soccer. Throw a ball under one to add an interesting challenge to your dog's day. You can set all kinds of stuff on them - especially if you put a board on top first. See, useful as can be. Name me one thing you can do with a vent. I dare you.
10 An old-fashioned hot-water radiator just looks so much classier than a vent.

10 reasons why everyone should have a dog

1 You never have to suffer the embarassment of knowing that, yes, you really will eat that bit of cookie/pancake/macaroni-and-cheese that fell on the floor because before you can so much as bend over for it, it's been snarfed. He's happy, you don't have to feel like it went to waste, and you didn't even have to clean it up.
2 Once he's housetrained, you almost never have to mop the floors. As explained in 1, foodstuff magically gets cleaned up, and what else do you spill on the floor?
3 You always know when you have visitors. Even if your doorbell is broken. Even if you don't have a doorbell. A dog will always let you know when you have visitors.
4 A dog helps you appreciate your food so much more. No matter what you're eating, his high opinion of it makes it taste better.
5 A dog helps your social life. You're out taking him for a walk, and you start making friends with everyone else on the block who has a dog. Now, just imagine if everyone had a dog, you'd get to know everyone on your block! Wouldn't that be cool? Better yet, you'd get to know all their dogs!
6 Say it's a Saturday, and you're antsy, but you don't want to do something useful, and you're not the sporty go-play-basketball type. What do you do? Well, if you have a dog, you go outside and play fetch. You burn energy, your dog has fun, and everybody's happy.
7 Say you're sick, or maybe just tired, and you want to curl up in bed and read a book, or flop on the couch with a movie. Is there anything better than cuddling up with a dog on such an occasion? Okay, maybe an attractive member of the gender of your choice. But short of that, is there anything better than a dog?
8 Dogs build critical thinking and memory skills. Basic things like remember to feed him, and remember to take him out. But also, remember not to leave food at the edge of the table where he can get it, and judging just how close to the edge of the table is safe. Or, is this Christmas present probably something safe to put under the tree, or could it be chocolate, and I'll find its wrappings shredded all over the floor? See, critical thinking skills!
9 You always have someone to talk to. Okay, so maybe he can't actually converse back with you about politics or books or your miserable lack of a love life or whatever it is you'd be talking to yourself about, but he'll listen. Intently, if you scratch behind his ears.
10 A dog automatically forms a pack, with you at its head. You get to be the alpha. All you have to do is take care of your pack and be a good leader, and you get a pack member who's loyal and good and funny and always likes you. You get the pleasure of knowing there's somebody who prefers your company to anyone else's. You get to have a pack. And, really, what's better than that?

a review: alabama, books, skin

I thought in an effort to find a reason to post more often, I would review movies, books and music as I encounter them. Don't expect anything in-depth; I'm just going to say whether I liked it and not much more.

Sweet Home Alabama is fun movie. I confess I haven't seen a great many honest-to-goodness chick flicks, but I've only liked about half of the ones I've seen. This is a member of that happy club. It made me forget that I generally don't hit it off with rednecks. So, good show.

I'm in a Contemporary American Fiction class right now, so I'm reading a bunch of books I might not otherwise have read (I shop mostly in the SF/Fantasy section). The next several books are among them. I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier never actually made me really care. I'm not sure why, but I didn't. The last couple pages were an absolute mystery to me. In class, Prof. Card acknowledged that there might be people who got to the end of this book and had no idea what had just happened. He assured us (without asking for a show of hands, bless his soul) that we were not idiots. Yet the fact remains that I needed to be told what had happened to know.

David Lubar's Hidden Talents was way fun. Likeable characters (I almost typed lickable - Freudian slip?), a cool premise, and a happy ending. In addition to the copy I have, I bought a copy at Wal-Mart for my brother and another for the next kid that I decide should have one.

Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak is one of the best, most personal books I have read. High school was a rough time for me, and the books that helped me then are some of the most personally meaningful books for me. This book is meaningful enough to join them. Painful, but beautiful, and very good.

Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson was not for class, but Speak made me think of it. I had somehow got through childhood without reading it, and read it recently. It's beautiful and sad and wonderful and true. I rarely cry for books, but I cried when I read this.

John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany was not a book I disliked. But then, neither did I like it. It was slow as anything. I'd feel like I'd been reading forever and find myself thirty pages in. Somebody else in class said that she'd start reading this and suddenly realize, "Oh, y'know, I should go do dishes..." That seemed to be my class' concensus -- that it wasn't painful to read, just... not particularly gripping, and slow as molasses.

Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool was similar in that not much happened, and it wasn't terribly gripping, but I liked it far better. Reading it was like being with a friend. Not gripping -- when you say goodbye to a friend, you don't sit around biting your nails, counting the minutes 'til you can find out what's going to happen next! No, you're happy to see your friend, and you enjoy your time together, but then when one of you has to leave, that's okay too. That's this book -- friendly and comfortable and pretty darn likeable at an easygoing pace.

I feel silly reviewing an individual song, but I like it. I ran into Natalie Merchant's My Skin in a music video featuring Firefly/Serenity's River Tam on YouTube.com.

in response to the bar theory

So, the bar theory basically says that no guy, when he encounters a number of females he doesn't know, looks for one with a great personality. He goes for the pretty ones, hoping to find one with a good personality before he gets too far down the line. Whether or not we believe that guys do this, we all agree that guys shouldn't do this, right? It's the old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover."

Let's go with this analogy for a minute, shall we? You're in a bookstore, and by some terrible bad luck, they don't stock any of your favorite authors. In fact, they don't even stock any authors you've even heard of. So you go and pick up this sort of ugly-looking mass market paperback, right? What's that, you say? No, you'd go and check out the hardcover with a beautiful, appealing cover? Well, of course you would! You can't read the back cover and first few pages of every book in the bookstore. So you pick up the ones that look appealing, and see if the story seems interesting and the writing good. It's what you do. If you know you like the author, or if the book has been recommended to you, you'll pick up an ugly book, but all other things being equal, why would you?

So back to the point. What honestly is a guy supposed to do besides judge by looks, at least initially? I feel like a traitor for writing this. I'm a girl who's not blonde, fashionable, cool, athletic, or a size 2. I don't want this to be true. I don't want this to be the only reasonable course of action open to a guy. But how is it not? It's not as though likeability and attractiveness are mutually exclusive or even inversely related. A guy is just as likely to meet an attractive girl with a great personality as an unattractive girl with a great personality. So, assuming he can woo either, why shouldn't he go for the cute size 2 blonde? If I'm wrong, please tell me. Or better yet, convince every guy you know of the fact. I promise you, I do want to be wrong, for if I am right, the world has suddenly become a far more depressing place for me and mine.

a college student's unrealistic fantasies concerning what life will be like when she has a source of income

I have long used the term 'made it' to refer to that happy time of life when your wishes come true. As in, "y'know how I'll know when I've made it?" followed by a favorite fantasy. I suppose this is really just a thinly disguised way of saying, "y'know what I wish?" but ah well. Indulge me. This is, after all, my blog. Get your own if you want to have realistic fantasies. (But then, who wants to have realistic fantasies? They're no fun.)

I will know I have made it when I have:
1 solid wood doors
2 wood floors in every room, except possibly the bathroom and kitchen
3 windows with wooden frames
4 a house to have all these characteristics
5 a horse
6 and a buggy
7 a bookstore
8 and a personal library the size of a small bookstore (or a large bookstore, as long as we’re wishing…)
9 a cat
10 and a dog
11 enough money to drink milk at every meal
12 and enough money to eat real mac-and-cheese, not the kind in a box with cheese powder, but with milk and real cheddar cheese melted in a pan - lots of cheese, more cheese than anyone should eat in one sitting, enough to be coming off the macaroni in a long string extending from your bowl to your mouth every time you get a spoonful - real mac-and-cheese!
13 to feel awkward and guilty for not knowing what to get family and friends for Christmas, instead of feeling awkward and guilty because I have no money to buy them Christmas presents
14 a dwelling-place where I can sing in the shower and not fear that I’ll wake anyone up

love is many things, none of them logical

What does he see in her? What does he see in her? What does he see in her? What does he see in her? What does he see in her? In one way or another, we have all had ocasion to ask that question. When I was younger, my family used to watch a show on the Disney Channel called "Road to Avonlea." It's loosely based on the town of Lucy Maud Montgomery's books (Anne of Green Gables, etc.). Anyway, the undeserving female in question is Felicity, the eldest child of the King family, around whom most of the stories revolved. I think the best and most concise description of her I can give is one of Susan Pevensie given in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle. "She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can." She's always vain, usually selfish, often conceited, and rarely likeable.

When she's maybe 14, the age at which she best exemplifies all these fine attributes, she meets Gus Pike. He's a good, kind, hardworking young man maybe 17 or 18 fallen on hard times looking for work and lodging for a few days before he moves on. He meets this truly insufferable girl, and he likes her. Later, he returns to work as The Lighthouse Guy. And he still likes her. For the most part, she likes him too. Sometimes, she only likes being liked by him. For a while, she is courted by a richer, more educated young man, whereupon she drops Gus like a rock for a few episodes. Once, trying to impress some snobby out-of-town friends, she disowns him to his face (and her family too, for that matter). And yet he still likes her. Why? She's really not half so pretty as she thinks herself. (I personally suspect very few women ever manage to be as pretty as Felicity thinks herself.) But even if she were, Gus is wiser than most men twice his age and not one to be taken in by a pretty face. So why does he like her? It was in watching an old episode recently that I saw something I'd never seen before.

She had done something cruel and stupid. When she finally repented of her mistake, I found my answer in his eyes. I don't remember what he said. Maybe nothing. What I saw quite distinctly in his eyes (I certainly wasn't the one thinking it) was, "that's my girl!" That's when I realized why he likes her. She has the potential to be a decent human being when she actually tries to be one. He's not stupid; he knows exactly how rude and selfish and bratty she usually is. But he really is as wise as I give him credit for being; with a far greater clarity than I have ever had, he sees her potential, and is is for that potential that he loves her.

My next realization was, "Oh my gosh, this man is like God!" He loves us when we are stupid, rebellious and cruel because we have the potential to be like Him. The more I think about it, the more it scares me because that how I'm supposed to love. That's how I'm supposed to love everyone. Everyone's a lot of people. So... Tom Hanks... okay! My little brother... yeah. My roommate... sure. Felicity King...... um...... mhngh... uh-oh. I hope I live a long long life. I may need a lot of time to learn to love Felicity King.

PS: The title line is from William Goldman's The Princess Bride. I thought I should credit him.

three is a good number... until four is better

For quite some time, I have loved musical theatre. For nearly as long, I have known what my favourite musicals were. Only relatively recently, however, did it occur to me to wonder why my favourites are my favourites and make any systematic listing of my Very Very Favourites. But, as I now have, here they are, in no particular order beyond that of their addition to my list: Wicked, Fiddler on the Roof, Les Miserables, and Godspell. Early in my freshman year of college, I was introduced to Wicked, and quickly fell in love with its music. I have since seen two absolutely exceptional performances of it by a touring company. I was fortunate enough to see my university do a production of Fiddler on the Roof the summer of my freshman year, and (though I had seen it before) then began to love it in earnest. Only during the summer of my sophomore year did I see Les Mis, but when I did (in London), I realized what a great show it was, and promptly went home to fall in love with its music. About that time, I decided I should know what my favourite musicals were. "Three," I said to myself. "Three is a good number for that sort of thing, if you can't have one Absolute Favourite." Well, I knew Wicked had to be part of the trinity, and I knew Fiddler would be, but I was at a bit of a loss as to the third one. I'd recently helped with a production of Beauty and the Beast, which I loved, but it didn't feel quite right. None of the other musicals I could think of that I knew and loved felt quite right either. Until I thought of Les Mis. And it took the coveted (okay, maybe not) position of the third in the Trinity.

After some thought on the matter, I realized what these three had in common that placed them in the trinity. They, like life, present their characters with difficult choices -- or, perhaps more accurately, choices not only difficult for the characters, but for the audience. The questions they ask are difficult ones without easy answers. As a wise man once said, "the truth is rarely pure and never simple." And so it is in these shows. Should Glinda have gone with Elphie? I'm tempted to say yes (insofar as I think it might have been the more moral decision), but I'm by no means certain, and I think the world might well have ended up in a much worse state if she had. Or what about Chava? Should she have stayed away from Fyedka to marry some man twice her age with half her intelligence? Should Fyedka have pursued her in the first place, or just watched while the aforementioned man won her hand simply by having been born to Jewish parents? Or what about Tevye -- should he have accepted them? I'll grant you that in a way I wish he had, but at the cost of jeopardizing his faith? As I said, no easy answers are to be had in these shows, and I think that is a large part of their greatness.

And then a group of students from Huntington University that was doing shows of Godspell up and down the east coast and some of the eastern bits of the midwest came to town. I'd loved Godspell since the beginning of my freshman year. (I can in fact date it to that precise day -- I first listened to it the day I was finishing packing and driving down to school.) I'd seen the movie of it too, and loved that. But though it was one of my Very Favourites, I wasn't sure it quite made the Trinity, and once I realized what it was that made the Trinity the Trinity, Godspell obviously didn't fit. A Pantheon was out of the question. But back to that Huntington production. I saw it, and realized that it was a very different sort of greatness, but a greatness nonetheless. I went away from it not with the warm fuzzies that so many nice romantic shows bestow on their audiences (Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, et cetera), but with a desire, even a determination, to be a better person. The Trinity did this, but not to the degree Godspell did. The Trinity made me think and judge differently, and some of them made me want to act differently; Godspell affirmed the values I already hold, but made them more real to me -- and more action-oriented -- than they had been in a while. And that, I now think, is the qualification for these Great Shows -- that they have the power to change you. Obviously Godspell has joined Wicked, Fiddler on the Roof, and Les Miserables as a member of my Pantheon -- in fact, with high honors; for it is able to change me while affirming my values, while the others had to question them. John-Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz set themselves a hard task when they wrote it; for succeeding at it, they deserve the highest honors I can give them.

idiots will be idiots, whether or not they are adults

(in case this is too small to be readable, the interchange goes like so:
- Look. It says you have to be eighteen to buy cigarettes.
- Eighteen?!? By then I'll know better!)

Alas, if only it were so. I worked at Food Lion over the summer, and one night one of my coworkers came through my line to buy a pack of cigarettes and some cigars. I was disappointed, as he looked younger than me, and I hadn't known he smoked. As such, I carded him, and his birthday had been maybe a week previous. He told another coworker that since he was eighteen and hadn't smoked, he wanted to try. The good James responded with what I was thinking: if you haven't smoked before, why start now? Anyway, the young idiot went his way, and that night I prayed that when he tried his purchases out, he would become violently ill for hours afterward. I have pity on those who smoke because they are addicted. I don't condone it, but I do pity them. I pity this boy much less, and only insofar as idiocy buys my pity, which isn't far.

an explanation

I thought that a good way to begin would be to explain the title of this blog. I still think that; ergo, that is what I am going to do. First, it is in reference to a running joke between a friend and I concerning my resemblance to a monkey. Since (metaphorically), I do want to and try to fly, I liked the title. Second, it's meant as a little nod to Wicked, the extraordinary Broadway musical. (to the less enlightened, there are flying monkeys in the show) Third, and so obvious I hesitate to say it, it's in reference to the old "as the crow flies." Ecce! My firstest blog.