Bihold! Hit am I. It snowed on Sonntag, which *mirabile dictu* caused them to close School on Montag (when I didn't need it) and go for Inclimiate Weather (which is a fucking cop-out) on Dienstag and Mittwoch. Nevertheless, I seem to be getting Things done, even with the Madness and All. I don't even have a legal Excuse to skip Landscape Architecture this Morning, dammit, though I pray to God that he's snowed in down in Winslow and perhaps has frozen to Death in some Arctic-Tundra Jack-London sort of Way.

I finished Ex Mundis Tacetis and have started Peralandra. Lewis' writing is holding up well. I also stole Abbey Hoffman's Steal This Book and have found it all very familiar: it's either Tramp Lore or Common-Sense I Learned from Ana & Grizz. No German this week, and I'm starting to feel the pinch. No matter; soon I'll have been paid, and can get on with life.

I've lost the last two days to the SCWCA conference, which isn't that bad since I'll make 1 2/3 paychecks (about $250 or so after taxen). On the other hand, I'm way behind with everything: I have to finish a summary for Dave, and do it right this time; then there's Sexton's readings, Latin, German, and Philosophy, more or less in that order. I also need to finish up tapes for Die Richardsons, so that I might make another $250 or so in the space of a few days. Of course, it's also snowing like a madman, and I've got bread in the oven (that's bread, dammit, not "a bun").

I started reading CS Lewis' Ex Mundis Tacetis, and have found it much, much more of a book than I remembered from my days as an ignorant seven-year-old. I may actually make it through the series this time -- but then I did that with Tolkein, too, and found them also pleasing.

Anyway, back to attempted work.

Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges.
-- Cicero, Pro Milone 11

I skated through this day. 92 on the LARC exam, B+ on the Philosophy paper (I left out some supporting details, and got a little pendantic, but other than that...). Dave writes really concise, clear prose, which is rather a change from Judith Butler, whom I am rereading, notepad in hand, in the hopes that ideas can be extracted from the nightmare of prose that that this Apuleius of California ejaculated on the screen. The rest of the day went grindingly slow, except for Petrine Basilica, wherein I did some writing, and piped up with something witty and semi-informed at the right times, despite having not read the assignment.
Latin's done, I'm about to start some German, and then finish reading the Roman Gaze biblio. Wednesday's todo list is getting longer by the second, and I have to drop some bucks by the bank or it's no bread for this boy come Satruday.

Management Advice 52 from the Cheese, by Fang Yuan.

Man, I've been a space cadet all day, and I have no idea why. Fredrick said that it might just be stress, and he may be right -- I swear by IOM (and Adonai, yes yes) that I'm not taking this kind of class load again. Christ's wounds! This is madness. If I were the sort of person who might do it, I'd buy some grass and blow a hooter.

In the meantime, I've got this Plotinus to read -- and he's rather clear, or at least didactic, so that's all right. I've also got to plow through some articles, and make a nice "homework sheet" for Drew, but I'm going to read some Harper's and eat dinner. At least Dave moved the Cicero summary to next week, so I can rest easy on that.

The sparrow's secret name is £èðß. It is pronounced "¤".

So...
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

It's cold, it's warm, it's cold, it's warm, I'm lonely but I have good friends, assholes do vex me with their clamoring for work, and if Cicero weren't dead, I would cut off his head and hands and nail them to the Rostrum (which I would have to rebuild for the sole purpose of doing so). But both projects that are due this week are for Dave, and one of them is almost done, while the other has yet to be done because he hasn't sent the assignment yet, so I'm reading this speech with no clue as to what I'm to seek.


Sexton wanted more Gender readings in my bibliography, but didn't elabourate; Coon says there's a nice Early Medieval biblio, but I haven't seen it yet. Dave lent me a copy of his fabulous new book The Roman Gaze, so the (late) Antique section is go.


Speaking of bookes, I sold a few today -- about £43 6/- worth for £16 12/-. I'm not knocking it, though: £3 6/- will go to copy card, and the rest will be ancillory groceries. Yaay!

I should do dishes. I should do work. I should go to church. I should write longer sentences.

Remember that thou art mortal. Remember that thou art mortal. Remember that girl from the bar?

Today's supersecretspy message is:
.won pots tsum I tub

Okay, dig this: I was reading in the back of the 1979 BCP the Cannons of Faith, and came across this:

X. Of Free Will.

The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn
and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to
faith, and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good
works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ
preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when
we have that good will.

XI. Of the Justification of Man.

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or
deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most
wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely expressed
in the Homily of Justification.

XII. Of Good Works.

Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after
Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of
God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ,
and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that
by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by
the fruit.

Now, I read all that and thought, "Wait a second... if Faith is all that is needed to be saved, why do good works? It's not as though anything benefits you from doing them... or does it?" You see, it's more like this: that Faith instead engenders us to know the Mind of God, and in so doing, allows us to do those works which are pleasing to him (and therefore good, since I take it like most everyone else that God == Good in a very Platonic sense). However, each of us has a soul, and it is by Works, which is nothing more than being the Hand to the Mind of God, that your soul is made better.
And then, I thought, what if that is a definition of Jesus? What if Jesus very early on connected fully with the mind of God, and was then engendered to do the greatest of these works? And also perhaps this is the explanation of his apostles, and all other saints who perform miracles -- they are simply those who have come to know fully the Good, i.e. God. God therefore is no less open to us now than he was before (ditch that line about "well it was only in the past-times" and the tendency to read Hebrew scripture as the long departure from God), and we ought to be able, with enough patience and energy, to do good, even miraculous, works.
This is wonderful news, if it be true. God did not turn God's face from us; we turned our faces from God, and thus, being self-absorbed, we managed to reach the spheres and find them empty. Let us turn back to God, who waits for us with patience that would try any time-bound being, and put our trust in God.

I'm still having trouble with the salvific cross, though. That's going to take some time.

Man, it's been almost non-stop snow for the past few days. Just as it was starting to melt -- bvrrrt! -- there's some more. It's keeping me confined to quarters as it were, since I don't want to kick around in the snow to get places, and it's sure as shit that the truck won't start in this mess, even if it were to have forward gears.

That's all right, though, because I've got to finish a draught for Spellman today, and I've got some Latin to do, and a ton of reading for Dave; I can't do Sexton's reading because I need to copy it off, and it's on reserve at FAL. At least I went shopping yesterday -- and started a new, very carefully budgeted menu plan -- so there's food in the house, and the clothes are drying behind me as we speak. Don't worry, kids: there's plenty to do. Stop picking on your brother! Patrick! Patrick Christopher Lewis! Take that mitre off and quit exiling your sister. Mary, go convert the dog.

Now, Ross, I belive it was your move?

"Every time you call my name, I see St Peter wave!
Dig my grave!"

Possible socio-religious significance with respect to the cult of the saints?

Today's favourite line:

"I dobut whether anyone could adequately celebrate the nature of the number seven, since it is beyond all words."
-- Philo of Alexandria, De Opificio Mundi 89-90

Snow! Lots of glorious, non-school-stopping snow!

Big men often tremble as they step aside,
I thought I was big once, but she changed my mind.
-- They Might Be Giants, "She's Actual Size"

I've been through the fire of introducing my Conference paper to other people, and having it questioned mildly. I did choke up a little bit, and turned bright red, but that's my usual reaction to being uncofindiently on the spot. They did point out a major flaw in my thesis: I don't have a damn clue what I mean about gender. So, this weekend is going to be a marathon reading of Begotten Not Made and Flesh and Stone. I really need to get my own copy of those books, and perhaps someday I will, but for that money is required. Maybe one at a time -- I have a list, but it gets expensive quickly, even the paperbacks (when bloody acedemic publishers bloody feel like publishing them, the bastards).

Anyway, the big focus of this weekend will be writing my first philosophy paper for Rhetora Spellman. I'm hoping to focus on Plato's schpiel in the Phaedrus about the soul being like a chariot. It shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Man, Dave wants a paper in two weeks, and there's a quiz in Latin on Monday. There for a while I was afraid that I wasn't going to be able to swing this much intensive stuff, but it looks like I might.

"The point is frozen, the beast is dead."

What is it about man that such terrible things can happen, and yet they seem, in their explosion of light and fury, it seems that your life is shown to be just that much more... interesting? In this Sunday, in which I have skipped several things, like church, and writing the first portion of my conference paper on Gender in Petrine Pilgrimmage Shrines, and as such, somehow feel better, I have just been.
This does not, of course mean that I will stop doing these things; instead it seems that I just need to feel less guilty about things. Regrets, my friends, are troubles -- failures, lost opportunties, gloom, doom, vituperation, brimstone -- all are not worth caring about, in the end.
I think, of course, that what did it was that I came home, to a temparate house in February, to drying clothes, to a few societial pressures, to Garrison Keillor godspelling the news on the radio, and finally, to the tiniest, most delicate of blooms on the spider-plant in the living room, and it just hit me that, no matter how little money I end up with, how hard the times may get, I just need to let things go.
How long I can let things go before they get too pressuring again, I don't know, but I'm not going to worry about that either.

Columbia has broken up. Hats off, boys; here's to you, you shining sailors of the heavens.