just on the border of your waking mind...

last entry was... about a month ago. sorry.

i didn't mean to let this slip into nothing, but i've been on away trips for work a bunch, recently. pretty much there's no local work, so i've been spending large parts of my week living out of hotels in various out-of-the-way places, and the rest of the week trying to make it up to Asher and HD. Fortunately, my bosses are being very accepting of the limitations of my family situation. i really don't feel like i can go away monday through friday and leave HD to take care of Asher by himself the whole week; or, more so, leave Asher without his mother for the whole week. if it were just a week or two, sure - but this is week after week, probably until Christmas. no can do.

(the downside: yes, they're being very accepting and only sending me out for part of the week, with usually another day in the lab... but i'm only getting 4 days a week, on average. *sigh* plus, i've really been cashing in my favors left and right, these last couple years. soon i'll have to accept the reality of my job and either get promoted or spend april-december living out of hotels while me family carries on without me.)

furthermore, i haven't forgotten about purp's meme of a month-and-a-half ago; i will respond to it. i just have a lot i want to say, and i can't quite seem to get it all in the right order in my head. it's percolating still: give it time.

this one's a question for my Christian friends, or for those who aren't Christian but feel they have some knowledge of the spiritual world. for the last few days, i've had a strong sense that something important has happened, which could of course be within my personal life but could maybe be in a broader sense, so i figured i'd ask the world at large: have y'all picked up on anything different, in the somewhat esoteric sense, recently?

one of my favorite pharses is "Lord willing and the creek don't rise" (it is, of course, pronounced "crick" in this, never "creek", as i'm sure you're all aware). the meaning of the phrase should be self-evident - that the speaker intends to whatever he or she said before, unless God or nature intervene. to anyone that's ever lived in a rural location, especially in the Eastern half of the US where it's quite possible that there's a creek under every road from you to civilization, the "creek don't rise" makes total sense.

except, apparently, to some. a handful of people, in a presumed push for greater esotericism, link it to a Creek uprising in the early 1800s. problems i have with this: nobody cites _anything_ to back it up; the pronunciation's generally different (while the Creek were called Creek by the Anglo-americans because they lived near creeks, I've never heard them called "Crick", though I'll grant the pronunciation could have morphed over 200 years), and proponents of this theory generally assume the phrase is primarily a Southern one... which i don't think it is. rural does not equate to southern.

and i will draw your attention to the similarity of the phrase "Lord willing and the creek don't rise" to "come hell or high water", essentially the opposite side of the same coin. on the one hand if God and nature are agreeable, something shall happen... on the other, it still will, even if they aren't.

they both appear in print about the same time, but are both described as being old idioms by the time they show up in print, so no help there. but clearly they're related.

i'd submit to you all, that even if Benjamin Hawkins really did write, as a few people have said (with nothing to cite!!), "...God willing and the Creek don't rise", it's entirely possible that he was riffing on an older, well-known phrase and actually making a pun (they did that in those days, y'know). you need more evidence to support a Creek-uprising etymology, when it's such an implausible explanation and a perfectly reasonable one is ready at hand.

Gloria

The whole world is full of glory:

Here is the glory of created things,
the earth and the sky,
the sun and the moon,
the stars and the vast expanses:

Here is the fellowship
with all that was created,
the air and the wind,
cloud and rain,
sunshine and snow:

All life like the bubbling of a flowing river
and the dark currents of the depths of the sea
is full of glory.

The white waves of the breath of peace
on the mountains,
and the light striding
in the distances of the sea.

The explosion of the dawn wood-pigeons
and the fire of the sunset doves,
sheep and cattle at their grazing,
the joy of countless creeping things
as they blossom,
spider and ant
of nimble disposition
proclaim the riches of goodness.

To curse life is to err.

The meadows and the yellow corn,
the slopes of the grape clusters,
the sweetness of the apple tree’s fruit:

The provision on the tray
of the warm comely seasons
a part of each hard beginning:

The discretion that insists on respect
for all our partners
–all the creatures of our day
and our life in the world for ever.

Every land, every language,
became bread and wine:

Every labour,
railway stations,
bus stops
at the beginning of journeys,
every aviation:

Every art
under its own fig tree -
the vision of a man and a maid.

Lest treating
the misunderstanding between man
and his world, becomes
a giving way to meaninglessness:

And perchance we shall see the dancing
in the halls of the atoms
and the meddling with their temperament
as an art of the soul.

The coal in the bowels of the vale,
the clear water of the valleys
and the energy of machines’ atmosphere:

The secret of fresh airs –
old meanings a cold well:

The delicate breeze
like the sun on the seagull’s belly
awakening wings.

All beneficiaries
(unless we spit the original terror of sin on it all)
resounded the Gloria of praise

a friend of mine, that i went to highschool with, was buried today.

i'm really having some trouble wrapping my head around that fact.

i went to the viewing hours last night, to pay my respects and to offer my condolences to family (what can you even say? what is there, that can be said as you go down the receiving line, that even begins to cover it? and then, to look in his mother's eyes, and see everything i recognize in myself except multiplied by maybe a billion... and words fail completely. it's just too much.), and the line to get into the funeral home was about an hour and a half long... with more people still coming. though i hadn't seen him in several years, i will remember him always as a brilliant, vibrant, wonderful individual. the world is a lesser place without him in it.

sorting through the jumble of emotions is tiring. there's grief, of course, because he is no longer here, but also a curious sense that i'm not entitled to that grief - we hadn't talked in years, so i suppose that means we weren't close, i guess. but then, i also just don't talk to people much - i'm not good at staying in touch. and from that, i have a bit of regret tinged with a little guilt - i should have stayed in touch, should have made better use of the time we had. there's the stubborn reminder, also, that somehow this - even this, which seems so beyond the pale - will be turned to good in God's plan. i certainly can't see how, yet - i'm still too far in disbelief and pain - but somehow this loss must work out better.

at least, though, i'd like to think he's at peace now. i'm sure prayers, both for him and his family, would be appreciated.

RIP Scott.

Income-Based Repayment, for everybody out there in a sinking student-loan ship like myself, may be a lifevest. Better yet, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan might just save my skin entirely, especially if the infamous they manages to do something about that pesky taxing-me-on-the-amount-forgiven-in-2017 issue, which could very well sink me at the end, anyway.

Side note: While eligibility for the loan forgiveness thing pretty much comes down to working for a nonprofit, it's sort of nice to see archaeology called "public service", even if it's a spurious artifact of the bureaucracy...

At any rate, I post these things as a PSA, because there are certainly others in similar shoes who could profit from this knowledge. Good luck!!

Any y'all read The Pheonix Requiem? This is my new obsession, and I'm rather thoroughly hooked. Especially on Jonas, but who wouldn't be?

If you haven't read it, I suggest you start. The art is gorgeous, the setting is intriguing, the story complex, and the characters compelling. It's all drama and romance against a backdrop of fantasy Victorian setting, plus women ride caribou, which is so exruciatingly pretty I can't stand it.

At any rate, I spent a single evening reading through the 400+ pages of archive, and then I've spent the remaining days re-reading it with HD and thinking about what is not yet clear in the story....

( cut for long and speculative and a bit spoilery )

there are too many cool and interesting things happening next weekend. namely: i'm going camping with HD, the munchkin, and my brother's family - these plans are set and cannot be changed - and, at the same time, the NY Faerie Festival is happening practically in my backyard, with a freakin' masquerade ball in downtown Bingo. seriously. if i had only known.

le sigh.

it's our intention to be in Sterling for July 18th, though, so at least we'll be getting in on some of the festival goodness. plus, that's midsummer fantasy weekend, so there will be fair folk - i'd personally rather wait a weekend and do pirates, or the 4th for children's weekend, but the chance to do the fair with friends is always welcome and the 18th works for them.

because i got into a discussion about what sign my moon was in (VL was right, it was an earth sign... i was evidently thinking of venus, which is in aquarius)... at any rate, i used here to calculate it.

( cut for long )

my greatgrandmother was born Blennie Elizabeth Bolles.

it didn't occur to me until this morning that "Blennie" is a really unusual name. a quick google search turns up a large number of fish, but not so many people. so where did she get the name "Blennie"?

luckily, my brother - master of all things genealogical - had already answered this question. she was Blennie in honor of her aunt, who had passed away a few years prior. her aunt was Blendenna, nicknamed "Blennie". this, as it turns out from a quick google search, was not so uncommon at all. "Blendenna", "Blendena", "Blendina"; all seem to be popular names for a few generations (great-grandma Blennie was born 1875, died of tuberculosis in 1913; her aunt Blendenna was born 1845, died 1873).

but this begs a question.... where did this name go??

it's not in any babyname book or website i've seen, i can't find any meaning for it, and it's like it just dropped off the face of the earth sometime in the 1930s, with the exception of a couple of Blendinas who apparently are on classmates or facebook, maybe?

(i'm currently creating a page on babynamewizard.com for Blendenna, and maybe Blennie. i think these names deserve some form of recognition, if only on one babyname site. but, y'know, they certainly existed.)

the best i can figure, maybe they're related, etymologically, to "Blandine", or maybe "Belinda"? i also can't help but feel like it's connected to "Blonden/Blondin", an equally lost name, or perhaps is a real straightforward English place name one the order of "from the fair pasture"? or how about it's from german "blenden", and we're going for "blinding, dazzling"?

actually, come to think of it, "blinding, dazzling" makes the most sense. there's also an old english "blendan" for blinding, and it's got a good, solid girl-name logic. i'm gonna go with that.

if "America runs on Dunkin'", does Canada run on Tim Horton's?

'cause if it does, i think it's running on better stuff.

(not to mention smoother and faster, but that's beside the point)

"Cross Patch,
draw the latch,
sit by the fire and spin.
Take a cup,
a drink it up,
then call the neighbours in."


Best Advice Ever.

as of yesterday, i'm 10,000 days old.

this comes to my attention, in part, because i read Howl's Moving Castle, which is a fantastic book and everybody should read it. i'm now as old as Howl was at the end of the book, which is perhaps a little disturbing considering that Sophie was only 18 (though she takes the phrase "old for her age" to new lengths)....but i digress. at any rate, "10,000 days" in Howl's Moving Castle is actually a reference to John Donne's Song, which you should also read, and which has me thinking about being "born to strange sights, things impossible to see", and in general (not really because of Donne, but still) thinking about the momentousness of 10,000 days

's a long time.

i don't think i have any big revelations to impart, however. i've got a lot of unfinished musings, none of which are ready to be put to paper... and that's about it.

(this is why this journal's so quiet, lately... i'm in musing, rather than writing, mode. sorry.)

don't know how far behind the curve i am, but for anybody who's even further: it looks like they finally set a date to air the last three Pushing Daisies episodes. the first one is Sat., May 30, 10/9 central. the next two should be on the two successive Saturdays.

bittersweet, but at least we'll get to see them.

the site i've been working on for over a year now was finally finished up yesterday. you can't begin to understand how awesome this is - for a bit of perspective, originally we were supposed to be done with the site sometime in October. but then again, originally we thought we'd find 3-6 potential features, not 120 (though the vast majority didn't pan out), and we never counted on the baffling conglomerate of features we nicknamed "george".

(we called it george because, at the time, we couldn't decide if it was one or many, if it was many which ones were cultural and which were natural, and several other crucial things. calling the whole area "a feature" sort of reified it in a way we weren't entirely comfortable with and got us thinking in set ways, and calling it "the thing" was both too unspecific and didn't give us the sort of anthropomorphized target for our frustration and anger that we were really starting to need. "george" was a much better term. we could arbitrarily define george's borders, debate how many features george consisted of, slowly tease out cultural and noncultural components of george, and all the while declare "I hate George, and he hates me back!")

i think i may someday write a fictionalized account of this project, though, simply because there's so much material to use. it was really a very funny project, for someone who wasn't out there every day. the project got off on the wrong foot on the very first day, when we laid it out, because the project director misread her map and we laid in the wrong squares. we also had trouble recreating the site exam grid, and were off maybe a degree or two... which across that whole field led to a somewhat larger error. and i learned a lesson in block excavation: if you know you're going to do a block excavation, lay in all the nails for the area at the same time, because even with the total station there will eventually be error introduced that will somehow lead to trapezoidal or rectangular squares. if you just put the whole grid in at the same time, you may be able to prevent that.

and there was flooding at locus 4; and there was Mr. B_____, gone daft and beligerent and lecherous from alzheimer's, and his harridan of a wife, bent like a question mark (from osteoporosis?) and wearing shorts and ballet flats even in December, with whom he only spoke on Thursdays; the local diner, food poisoning, and the scuttlebutt that Mr. B_____ had finally grabbed the wrong woman's behind (was she an out-of-towner?) and she'd turned around and slapped him; the corn harvester and how he nearly ran us down and didn't care; all the many things we thought george could be; cleaning up wallcollapse and three months' worth of moss off the walls at locus 4; the $3,000 plan view of fea. 25; the letting nature run its course at locus 4; profiling in the snow.... good times.

so, until i get around to writing "The Chronicles of George", i'll leave you with quotes from my recently-finished project:

Me: "So, plan A is to dig faster than the water? Plan A sucks; what's plan B?"
S: "There is no plan B."

Me: "Wheeeee!"
S: "Did you ever notice that when [Alecto] says 'Wheee!', what she really wants to say is 'F***!'?"

Mr. B_____: "Hey Fatty, do you know what you're doing?"

Mr. B_____: "Where'd you find this clown?"
Me: "I think he's from Boston."

Me: "We're not looking for artifacts, we're looking for stratigraphy!"

S (on the phone to the office): "Hey, when will this rain stop? Should we wait it out or go home?"
the office: "It's not raining where you are."

last week i wore my winter coat to work

this week i have early stage heat exhaustion, with maybe a touch of water intoxication? and a migraine, but it's related.

i think the changes in the weather are giving me whiplash.

meme yoinked from caitrin because the questions are more interesting than usual.
( meme meme meme )

observation:
it might actually be possible to get so caught up in the decrying the commercialization and pagan imagery of Easter, and how we all lose the message in it, that one, conversely, loses the message in the midst of their condemnation. just a thought.

i know i've posted a whole lot of lyrics on here lately, and Easter is, in fact, over, but while i've seen a lot of Easter poetry and so forth it's been kinda angry and there's been no love for George Herbert. methinks there should be some love for George Herbert. (seriously, what is it with the Welsh poets and the awesome? remind me to expound on the awesome that is Euros Bowen sometime)

accordingly:

Easter - George Herbert

RIse heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing His praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With Him mayst rise:
That, as His death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound His name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with His sweet art.


I got me flowers to straw Thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But Thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st Thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With Thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

(happy Easter!)
i remember how the snow fell in december,
the angels flew in pageants and in dreams.
and i came in at 6 o'clock from a long, hard day of playing
to the warmth of mama's cooking,
or was it the warmth of mama's love?

there were cardboard pirate ships and mud-puddle seas
and the backyard was a battleground for cowboys.
when daddy drug me out of bed on early sunday morning,
i remember how he smiled at me and said,

he said, "rise, rise and shine.
the sun is coming in
and the morning light is shining in
your eyes; o, rise and shine.
the day is coming on
and you know the night is gone
so rise."

i remember how the shepherds lay in slumber
and the angels came and broke them from their dreams;
when mary raised her weary head
and joseph stood there grinning
the world awoke to the coming of a King

there were haystacks in His palace,
and a manger was His throne
as a hush fell on the little town of david.
the hillside never shined so bright
as early christmas morning -
you could almost hear the very heavens sing.

they sang, "rise, rise and shine.
the sun is coming in
and the morning light is shining in
your eyes; o, rise and shine.
the day is coming on
and you know the night is gone
so rise."

i remember how the sunlight turned to thunder
and people ran for shelter from the rain;
and the curtain tore and the saints awoke
and the whole earth seemed to tremble
from the fury of God's anger,
or was it the fury of His love?

there were shadows on the tomb there in the garden
and the mist was rising slowly through the trees;
and when mary saw the silhouette on early easter morning
i remember how He smiled at her and said,

He said, "rise, rise and shine.
the sun is coming in
and the morning light is shining in
your eyes; o, rise and shine.
the day is coming on
and you know the night is gone
so rise."

No temptation seize a man that he can't overcome
who am I to be fallen?
Crack your back on a slab of wood
Come freedom, nail it down
I come crawling,
I come crawling

Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me
split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me

Testimony come now, quickly, whisper in my ear:
celebration
Peace at last not far away, empty sheet, a borrowed grave:
salvation
come freedom, come
come freedom, come

Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me
split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me

come freedom, come
come freedom, come
come freedom, come

Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me
split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me