2009 Reviewed in Words

(As opposed to not in words? they ask.)

It’s been an eventful year. And I’ve discovered a lot of new interesting concepts; or, perhaps, a better way to say it would be that I’ve learned a lot of new words that can be used to describe concepts that I already understood implicitly. Thus, I think, the best way to recap what I’ve learned over the last twelve months is to attempt to define, briefly, all of the words I’ve gained a new grasp of. (I’m going to proceed somewhat chronologically; basically, to write this post, I’m reading through all of the posts I’ve made so far this year.)

• sublime – n. What is extreme, out of proportion to mankind, overwhelming. The sublime, though not itself divine, reminds us of God. An example of the sublime might be a vast mountain, or a storm at sea.
• hue – n. The aspect of color captured by the rainbow, whose essence is variety without inherent moral meaning. Red, blue, green, etc, have different emotional flavors, but are in themselves neither good nor evil.
• value – n. The aspect of color contained within the dichotomy of light and dark, and which carries a moral connotation, but has no aesthetic value.
• empathize – v. To attempt to understand another person’s state of mind despite the impossibility of actually becoming them. That impossibility makes empathy impossible, and yet it remains necessary for human life. To empathize with another is to treat them as another subject, not merely an object.
• sincerity – n. The virtue of presenting oneself as one is, rather than as one wishes to be perceived. Necessary if one is to be empathized with, or (since empathy must be reciprocal) to empathize with another.
• induct – v. To move from a finite data set to a general conclusion. Life itself is inductive, for the universe is finite, and yet we attempt to find meaning in it that is not arbitrary, not finite, divine. Language is also inductive; we will only experience the hearing or reading of a given word a finite number of times, yet we can extrapolate a meaning from it beyond the mere amalgamation of those experiences.
• deduct – v. To apply general laws to specific cases and thus arrive at a conclusion. To act in the world, we must use deduction, and yet we cannot deduct without general laws, which we get from induction; the two are thus inextricably linked.
• faerie – n. The sense of mystery we feel when we encounter nature as separate from the self and from society, impossible to understand, and yet intended by God. Tied to a feeling of strangeness, of the foreign, the “other.”
• numinous – adj. Suggestive of the power or presence of a divinity, and of final causality; the “why” rather than the “how.” Different from “fey” in that the numinous is generally spiritual, whereas the fey is necessarily physical, and related specifically to nature.
• spell – v. To entrance, draw in, convey a meaning. What a poem does to us when we read it: through its language, rhyme, wordplay, it impresses on us an emotional state we perhaps would never have experienced otherwise.

These ten words, as you may have noticed, are interrelated; there are perhaps three or four themes running through all of them. But I don’t want to try to define what those themes are; I’ll let the words speak for themselves.

(Incidentally, this post may end up as a precursor to a new page to go along the top: “Turin’s Dictionary,” consisting of the above plus any other words crucial to my understanding of the world.)

Blah

I apologize for lack of significant posts in the past few weeks. I’ve been quite busy/lazy. But finals end tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll have vast swaths of free time over the next month to read, write, blog, and not talk to people. It’ll be great.

I am thus trying to put together my reading list for Christmas break. Right now it consists of:

• (finish reading) The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Devils by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Seascape, Soulscape by Eugene Curtsinger (a book of literary criticism about Moby-Dick by a recently-deceased professor of literature at UD)
• The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville
• Light in August by William Faulkner

Anyone have any more suggestions? I won’t promise I’ll get to them, of course, since these few may very well get me through the break, depending on how quickly I read.

Also, I figure I’ll announce the classes I’m taking next semester, given they’ve actually already shown up in this post:

• Early Modern Literature
• Special Topics: Moby-Dick
• Faulkner’s Vision (hence Light in August, or whichever other Faulkner book I decide to pick up)
• Analyis II
• Intermediate German II

Feast Days

It is once again the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which celebrates Mary’s (not Christ’s!) conception, which was without original sin even though she came before Christ’s crucifixion redeemed humanity.

The trans-temporality of this occurance fascinates me. It suggests to me that something else I would like to say is possible; that original sin itself is in some ways trans-temporal, retroactive so to speak. That would allow us to retain a temporal fall while explaining how the world was fallen (and I don’t buy the argument that it wasn’t fallen – sabre-toothed tigers killed and ate wooly mammoths) when it ought to have been prelapsarian.

But asserting a retroactive fall might be going too far. I’m not sure, really. Anyway, it’s three in the morning, and I need to write a paper. Happy feast day everybody.

Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal Lie

So, it’s October now. Isn’t it supposed to be… at least cool, rather than warm, outside? Ah well. I suppose this is Texas.

The title of this post is from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called “Spring and Fall.” It runs as follows:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

A beautifully written poem, though not terribly complex in its meaning. It comes to mind for two reasons, both of which are interesting but unrelated: it is now fall, and so (in theory) I should still be seeing “worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie”; also, I’m doing Gerard Manley Hopkins for my Junior Poet project.

Regarding JPo; it seems fitting to reference Hopkins this month, of all months, since my annotated bibliography is due November 2nd and thus I will this month finish Paul Mariani’s biography of Hopkins (I have about 70 pages left), read three books of literary criticism (I have two done, and need five), and read sixteen articles (I have four done, need twenty). That is a lot of reading to do over just thirty days; it comes out to about thirty pages a day, actually. So that’s what my life for the next month will be about, for the most part.

And regarding the fact that it is now fall; I find fascinating the question of seasonal preferences. Hopkins’ poem seems implicitly to say that fall is depressing, it being the dying of the natural world, and spring being its rebirth. But I actually prefer fall, as a season; that was the main reason I went to Rome Fall ‘08 rather than Spring ‘09. I’ve already explored the question of what it means for me to prefer winter to summer; it means I think of myself as being in combat with the world, rather than allied with it. What does it mean to prefer fall to spring?

It’s not that I like the fall holidays better than the spring. I’m not a big fan of Thanksgiving, Christmas (technically winter, but a lot of the buildup is in fall) is just OK, and I love Easter. Nor, I think, is it just that I dislike summer so much I want to be as far from it as possible – if that were the case, fall would be my favorite, since it leaves nine whole months until summer comes again, but I prefer winter to fall. But I don’t want to say it is because I hate nature, either, even though that seems a reasonable answer (my favorite season is when nature is dead, my second favorite is when it is dying)…

I think the answer, in the end, is that I prefer mourning to rejoicing. It’s not that I have a problem with nature being reborn, but I am more fascinated with its going away. It has a bittersweet feeling to it; spring is more triumphant, and a triumphant attitude seems out of place in this so fallen world.

Moving In (September)

So I’ve spent the last four days moving into my new apartment, buying books for the next semester, etc. The week before that I spent procuring furniture for said apartment. Hence my recent lack of postage. (It seems like a lot of the bloggers I subscribe to have been moving in the last few weeks – makes reading my RSS feed much less fun. Guess I’m doing the same to however few people subscribe to me.)

Anyway, this new semester has another interesting feature, aside from what I’ve talked about several times before, with it being the third year I’ve been at the same school, something that hasn’t happened since 5th grade. Namely, for the last year the class of 2011 has been divided in three – the Fall Romers, the Spring Romers, and the people who didn’t go. Now basically everyone is back. It will be fascinating to see how the different social circles meld and break up. If I make any good observations about social behavior I’ll post about it.

And for those interested, my list of classes: Junior Poet (I’m doing Gerard Manley Hopkins), Medieval Literature, Linear Algebra, Analysis I, Intermediate German I. I’ll also probably sign up to audit The Russian Novel.

Church and School (August)

Firstly: I have spent the last week working on a LEGO cathedral. Pictures can be found here. An explanation of sorts:

So when I was a kid I had a decent number of LEGOs and liked castles. So I built towers; at first just stacks of bricks with people on top, then with staircases and somewhat reasonable dimensions, then with multiple floors and a large wall attached, two feet wide and maybe a foot and a half tall all told. I always wanted to make an entire castle, with four walls and four towers in the corners, but I always figured I didn’t have enough pieces to build anything that large.

Then last summer I realized I could just buy $100 worth of LEGOs and that, combined with the by now quite large number of LEGOs I already had, would be enough to build such a castle. So I built it. How big is it? If a LEGO minifig were 6ft tall, the walls would be 35ft tall, the towers 45ft tall. By way of comparison, the Tower of London is 90ft tall.

So I had this castle. The problem was, it was a blue-and-white themed castle, meaning it used up most of my blue and white pieces but not many of other colors. So I had an overabundance of reds, blacks, and yellows. Thus, I decided last week to build a red-and-black cathedral. I finished today. It takes up less ground area than the castle, but is considerably taller; if a LEGO minifig were 6 ft tall, the ceiling would be 55ft tall, the belltower 105ft tall. In comparison, the towers of Notre-Dame de Reims are 267ft tall.

Two comments:
1) I was tempted to build a Baroque church rather than a Gothic one, but… the peak of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is 452ft tall. A LEGO-scale model of St. Peter’s Basilica would by about 8 feet high and take up almost my entire bedroom. I’m not that ambitious.

2) I might try to build something huge out of yellow bricks next summer, but probably not. There’s really nothing that looks good in yellow.

Secondly: It is now August. I’m just wrapping up my Summer II course (Calculus III), have three weeks of free time afterwards, and then school starts. My goals, for the next month, are essentially:

• Finish reading William Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy. I started on this back in June and still haven’t gotten through the second book, which is the slowest I’ve gone through a book in a while. I need to finish it!
• Read at least one more article, and perhaps one more book, about Gerard Manley Hopkins in preparation for Junior Poet (the big English major project for fall of junior year).
• Get at least some other reading done – I have two Gene Wolfe books and the poems of T. S. Eliot checked out from the library, but haven’t gotten anywhere with them, and am twenty pages into a book about the public domain.
• Finish the rough draft of chapter one of at least one of my two secret book-length projects. (I have chapter one of Project1 planned out but not written, and chapter zero of Project2 is written, I just need to start on chapter one. Writing two books at once perhaps isn’t wise, but they’re both pretty fleshed-out ideas, and after I’ve thought about one for a few days my mind goes back to the other, so I figure it’s best to work on both at the same time. Or at least, it can’t hurt.)

So that’s what this month looks like for me. I think that since I have consciously pulled myself away from the Wesnoth project – I no longer actively develop either Wesnoth or Orbivm – I’m going to discontinue theming each month around a Wesnothian character. From now on, just a boring explanation of what’s to come in the month ahead, with a fictional character (not specifically Wesnothian) listed only if one comes to mind immediately. None do right now, except for the main character of William Golding’s The Spire, which I never actually finished reading, insofar as that book’s about building a cathedral.

To Not Be An Academic

As you may have learned from previous posts on this blog, I am a math-English double major going into my junior year of college. The question now becomes, what do I plan to do with that degree? Both my parents are academics, so I’ve always assumed I’d go into academia; I’ve already concluded I’m not really interested in getting a PhD in math, but I’m still considering going for a PhD in English.

But then I read articles like this one and realize that prospect doesn’t really appeal to me either. Why would I want to spend all of my time writing literary criticism no one will ever read of works that have already been critiqued to death?

I would like, of course, to become a professional writer (of fiction, that is). (Wouldn’t everybody?) But that would be quite difficult, and I need some way to feed and clothe myself until when (if) I can support myself through writing alone; since that’s kind of unlikely to ever happen, it’d be great if I actually enjoyed whatever it is I would be getting paid to do.

Ah, the woes of the liberal-arts student.

Discovering Gene Wolfe

One of my favorite authors is Gene Wolfe, but most people have never heard of him. The only people I know personally who have read anything by him are people whom I told to do so.

So how did I come to read Wolfe in the first place? The article that brought his work to my attention appeared on the website of First Things, a monthly journal focusing on religion, culture, and the arts. It was called The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe. It’ll do a better job of convincing you to read Wolfe than I ever could.

First Drafts and Calculus (July)

So the month of June has ended, and I haven’t posted in over two weeks. There’s a reason for that; I’ve been on vacation since June 22nd, but forgot to mention it here.

In any case, it’s now July, which I plan to spend doing two things. Waking up at 5:30AM every M-Th in order to take Calculus III, and finishing the first draft for Chapter 0 of (one of) the books I’ve wanted to write for a long time. After all, if I’m going to be a speculative fiction writer, I have to start writing eventually. (And incidentally, I got honorable mention in the WotF contest, so I might as well actually keep submitting short stories until I manage to achieve something or it turns out I can’t get any higher than that.)

What’s strange about this is that, as I said, it’s a first draft. I have very little prior experience with writing “first drafts”. I almost always edit as I write and so go from nothing-written to everything-written, with no first-draft stage. But with something as vast as a book, it seems somehow pointless to make minute edits to a section that might end up on the trash heap. So I’m trying to do a quick write-through, getting everything on paper, then I can go through and tidy up, so to speak. We’ll see how that goes.

Oh, I also have other plans for this month, including reading Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy and a bunch of Gerard Manley Hopkins criticism (I’m going to spend the next several months thinking about his poetry). One thing you might notice missing from this list is “working on Orbivm”. I’m semi-retired from crafting the Orbis Terrarvm; I’ve written the last campaign I have planned (though have frustratingly been unable to publish it online due to technical difficulties) and no longer do pixel art. Since those were the two main things I did, I’m pretty much done. Perhaps that’s a mistake; I might come back to it eventually. But I think I’ve done everything with the Wesnoth campaign format that I can do, and there’s no point in continuing to churn out campaigns just to fill out the rest of the Orbivm universe.

Oh, the last thing I plan on doing this month is, get a cell phone! Unfortunately, it seems it has come to this; I’ve avoided getting one for longer than I thought possible, but I really do need one. They’re basically mandatory in my social circles; people often get irritated at me for not having one.

Which brings me to the Orbivm character I will resemble. A cell phone is a way of instantly communicating with those far away. In Orbivm, none have that capability save the Cavernei Monitors. They use runic magic to transmit information across vast distances. So if I get a cell phone, I’ll be rather similar to Trondar, the Cavernei Monitor who assists Gali in “Gali’s Contract”.

The Swing of Things (June)

So, May was what might be called a bad month. Not because anything bad happened – nothing did, and in fact several good things happened – but because for the entire month I found it difficult to concentrate or get anything done. I finished the required schoolwork on time, but haven’t really gotten any further in my various writing pursuits, and since summer started I’ve basically been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer several hours a day (not that that’s a bad thing) and read a bunch of Tim Powers books (not that that’s a bad thing either).

It seems to be going away though. Over the last few days I’ve gotten “back into the swing of things”; I’ve actually gotten some work done on the cave-orcs campaign, and started on The Sound and the Fury – for fun, yes, but Faulkner can never be considered light reading. And I’m about to finish season 7 of Buffy, at which point I’ll have no excuse for not actually doing something with myself.

But anyway, I currently feel like someone who took a break when they shouldn’t have and is just now getting back into it. Who does this remind me of? None other than Thursagan – the Runecrafter. Guy who forged the Scepter of Fire. His backstory is, essentially: He quarreled with Durstorn, the lord of his clan, and went into self-imposed exile in the far north, not really accomplishing anything there. Many years later (how many, exactly, is unspecified), Rugnur dragged him back and got him to forge for them the Scepter of Fire – a task taking ten years.

So, if this analogy holds up, I’m going to create something awesome this summer. Of course, it also means I’m going to die – creating the Scepter cost all of the dwarves their lives (though Alanin and Krawg the gryphon escaped). Oh well.