As Holy As Anything
Apr. 9th, 2007 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueThis is the first time I've been present for the bulk of the Episcopalian liturgical calendar - Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter. It's nice - traditions like vigils and midnight masses. Easter week started with a celebratory Palm Sunday; there was a Thursday seder followed by an evening service and a wait in the garden. Good Friday, the church went in to mourning, stripped the altar and sang a requiem mass. Easter was for rebirth, and lots of baptisms. It's good, the tradition and the thoughtfulness, the emphasis on community and life rhythms. I admire the Episcopal church for its focus on people, its traditions and based on human needs, the way it does not require faith in God or belief in the supernatural. When I made my "C" list yesterday, I realized how many Christian terms start with C: catholic, cardinal, cathedral, church, cross...
I go back to London two weeks from tomorrow. I finally wrote it on the calendar, which was a very hard thing to do. I have e-mails out to various prospective living places, and to a few friends at LFS. I'm hoping they'll get very excited, which will help me be excited. And I am excited to see my friends - Emily and Tilly and Steve and Julia and Jon and Dror and Annelies and YiWen and Howard and Alan. I am hoping I can get a short-term lease with the International Student House - a dorm, so I'm not so lonely, and communal dinners, terribly cheap and walking distance from the school. It won't stop me missing Ciro, but I tell myself it will give me less empty time to miss him in. Hopefully, he'll join me soon - we think he's about two months away from citizenship.
I find that I am terrified of airports now. Not of planes, or of flying, but of security and customs and even gate agents. I used to like airports almost as much as I like libraries. Now I expect at every moment to be pulled aside, possibly by people with guns. This fear has been growing for some time now. Airports feel less and less a place for humans, and I feel less and less human in them.
My family's Easter traditions are as follows:
1. Dye eggs elaborately, with more interest in eccentric processes than end result.
2. Wear fancy hats to church.
3. Receive gifts from the Easter Bunny, in the form of moderately nice chocolates bought by Mom. Also, DVDs. In the early years, it was computer games instead of DVDs; we also each got a new computer game for Christmas, and for our birthdays in September. These are the same intervals at which we got new toothbrushes. These traditions fell by the wayside when graphic adventures fell out of favor in the development community, and when everyone in the family but me converted to electric toothbrushes.
4. Eat some kind of coconut desert. This can be coconut sour cream cake, or macaroons, or coconut cream pie - just so long as it's coconut. This is a Dad rule. Sometimes, the rest of us have trouble because he wants all the coconut dessert. It is the only food I've ever seen him get crazy about. It's like cats and lamb.
5. I could swear there used to be a Formula 1 race sometimes, but I am increasingly convinced that I made this up.
Something I would like to know more about:
phone tree design theory. How often do people like to be assured that their call is important? What guides hold music choices? How do they decide what order the options come in?
Shopping List for Yesterday:
DayQuil gel caps
Tylenol cold (nighttime)
some kind of expectorant (syrup, gel cap, pill, whatever).
Ciro is ill.
Speculation: Large breasts on women provide an evolutionary advantage not because they attract mates or provide better nursing, but because they provide a soft cushion for a sleeping infant. If the baby stays asleep and doesn't cry, it is less likely to attract predators. Hence, large-breasted women and their progeny are more likely to survive. I have not collected evidence to support this theory, but it's a damn sight better than the idiotic Desmond Morris "breasts look like asses" theory, or the even crazier "women have large breasts to drive potential mates away using the illusion of lactation."
Other primates would not evolve in this direction because they don't walk upright, and because they have hair a baby can grab - it is not as essential that they carry babies held against their chests. Further, large breasts would become sexually desirable as a mark of fertility - not because they increased the chance of conception, but because they increased the chance that offspring will survive to adulthood.
Item! I have been craving Buffalo wings. I don't know why. This is unlikely to be assuaged.
I go back to London two weeks from tomorrow. I finally wrote it on the calendar, which was a very hard thing to do. I have e-mails out to various prospective living places, and to a few friends at LFS. I'm hoping they'll get very excited, which will help me be excited. And I am excited to see my friends - Emily and Tilly and Steve and Julia and Jon and Dror and Annelies and YiWen and Howard and Alan. I am hoping I can get a short-term lease with the International Student House - a dorm, so I'm not so lonely, and communal dinners, terribly cheap and walking distance from the school. It won't stop me missing Ciro, but I tell myself it will give me less empty time to miss him in. Hopefully, he'll join me soon - we think he's about two months away from citizenship.
I find that I am terrified of airports now. Not of planes, or of flying, but of security and customs and even gate agents. I used to like airports almost as much as I like libraries. Now I expect at every moment to be pulled aside, possibly by people with guns. This fear has been growing for some time now. Airports feel less and less a place for humans, and I feel less and less human in them.
My family's Easter traditions are as follows:
1. Dye eggs elaborately, with more interest in eccentric processes than end result.
2. Wear fancy hats to church.
3. Receive gifts from the Easter Bunny, in the form of moderately nice chocolates bought by Mom. Also, DVDs. In the early years, it was computer games instead of DVDs; we also each got a new computer game for Christmas, and for our birthdays in September. These are the same intervals at which we got new toothbrushes. These traditions fell by the wayside when graphic adventures fell out of favor in the development community, and when everyone in the family but me converted to electric toothbrushes.
4. Eat some kind of coconut desert. This can be coconut sour cream cake, or macaroons, or coconut cream pie - just so long as it's coconut. This is a Dad rule. Sometimes, the rest of us have trouble because he wants all the coconut dessert. It is the only food I've ever seen him get crazy about. It's like cats and lamb.
5. I could swear there used to be a Formula 1 race sometimes, but I am increasingly convinced that I made this up.
Something I would like to know more about:
phone tree design theory. How often do people like to be assured that their call is important? What guides hold music choices? How do they decide what order the options come in?
Shopping List for Yesterday:
DayQuil gel caps
Tylenol cold (nighttime)
some kind of expectorant (syrup, gel cap, pill, whatever).
Ciro is ill.
Speculation: Large breasts on women provide an evolutionary advantage not because they attract mates or provide better nursing, but because they provide a soft cushion for a sleeping infant. If the baby stays asleep and doesn't cry, it is less likely to attract predators. Hence, large-breasted women and their progeny are more likely to survive. I have not collected evidence to support this theory, but it's a damn sight better than the idiotic Desmond Morris "breasts look like asses" theory, or the even crazier "women have large breasts to drive potential mates away using the illusion of lactation."
Other primates would not evolve in this direction because they don't walk upright, and because they have hair a baby can grab - it is not as essential that they carry babies held against their chests. Further, large breasts would become sexually desirable as a mark of fertility - not because they increased the chance of conception, but because they increased the chance that offspring will survive to adulthood.
Item! I have been craving Buffalo wings. I don't know why. This is unlikely to be assuaged.
