Of Past and Papacy

Scene 1
 
It is a little bit past eight in the morning. I am lying in bed, emerging from sleep. ROOMMATE is up and dressed and checking her phone.
 
ME: *shows signs of awakeness*
ROOMMATE: The Pope resigned!
ME: Wow.
ROOMMATE: It’s like the first time in 600 years that this has happened.
ME: That’s crazy.
ROOMMATE: *leaves room*
ME: *goes back to sleep*
 
Scene 2
 
It is now exactly 8:45. My alarm has just gone off, and I must begin my hectic day.
 
ME: I do not wish to leave my bed.
ME: I think I had really a weird dream.
ME: Yeah. Roommate told me that the Pope resigned.
ME: That never happens.
ME: My brain comes up with the weirdest #$%& sometimes.
 
Scene 3
 
It is lunchtime. After a busy morning, I am sitting down to a vaguely disappointing salad and checking my Facebook. As one does.
 
ME: Look, Roommate posted a link to a NYT article.
ME: The Pope resigned?!

-end-

 
So apparently the resignation of the Pope was not a fabrication of my subconscious mind, though it says something about my imagination that I would think it was. I have a minor interest in the papacy because of its longevity and its impact on, you know, the entire world. (The list of things in which I have a minor interest would probably come to several hundred entries including folk songs, monotremes, Russia, and the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.) So this news is the sort that makes me very aware of existing in history.
 
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is how all events are critical events and all eras are eras of change. I’m deeply suspicious of periods labeled with words like “stable” and “placid” and “Pax” because I can’t imagine an unchanging time or place. I once read some fiction-writing guidelines that advised a dynamic setting. Stories=change, and so this makes perfect sense. But what setting isn’t changing? It’s a mistake to think that humans anywhere at any time have achieved some sort of mystical equilibrium. I’m a person, I know many, and I know what we’re like. We are forces of change.

 

Forces of change.

 
But we are also wildly irrational. We’re frightened by the world of change we inhabit; we’re scared of our own hurtling dynamism. We’re too small to understand how we produce the incredible insanity that is the past. What I love about history is that it makes something immense (a story that is millennia long) out of something very tiny (the human lifetime). I can’t know what 600 years is like, but I can stand in awe of it. History accesses the human capacity for wonder.
 
What I hate about history is that you can’t work with it until it has inched its way into the part of the past beyond memory. You can’t get a really good look at something until it’s far away, but by then you’ve lost a vital connection to it. The consequences of Benedict XVI’s actions will be analyzed by my great-grandchildren after I’m dead (presuming that they come to love history and also acquire a minor interest in the papacy*).
 
Days like these make me feel like I’m living in crazy times. My rational mind was right to assume that the Pope doesn’t simply resign. It hasn’t happened since 1415. (Way to go, rational mind! You’re awesome.) But they also remind me that no one and nothing is safe from change. All times are crazy times, and history is something we make, not something that happens.
 
--Bridget
 
*If you happen to be reading this, great-grandchildren, I hope that you love history. It’s amazing. I’m a part of it, and so are you. And so is this blog, apparently, which worries me ever so slightly.

Ain't Nobody Got Time for That

A friend and I auditioned for the same student dance group on Sunday. We went to dinner afterwards and started talking about the college balancing act: what classes to take, how many to take, which groups to perform with, how many pieces to dance in, if we should add any other activities to the read/write/dance/sleep cycle we’d had since high school. My friend had withdrawn from sorority recruitment and was considering dropping a class. 
 
“I just want time,” she said.
 
I agreed. I want time more than just about anything else. My worst days tend to originate from overload: my lack of time to do the things that will make me a fulfilled and stable person.
 
I want time to submerge myself in my classes. There’s no way that I can read everything I’m supposed to, but I know that I’ll have a more meaningful education (and thusly a more meaningful life) the more I read. The discussion section I dread will become easier the more I sit myself in a chair and prepare for it. My essays will be stellar if I think through my ideas with care.
 
I want time to correspond. My resolve this year is to be better about communicating with the people I want in my life. The separation of first semester was rough, and I felt distant from the friends I had made in high school. But over winter break, I remembered that my friendships were strong, and I decided to keep them firmly in sight. That means I need to type emails, handwrite letters and cards, arrange Skype dates, respond to texts.
 
I want time to explore and to be spontaneous. I live in an amazing city—I told my mother yesterday that New York is just “more.” Cultural institutions abound, and many are incredibly accessible to me. If only I could get my act together and actually go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or see Paul Taylor Dance Company. If I spot a poster for a cool lecture or performance on campus, I want to be able to drop everything and go.
 
I want time to deal.  Some days I find myself facing the ceiling and saying, “I can’t deal with this right now.” I sift through the contents of my desk and half of it falls on the floor, but I know other tasks take precedence over cleaning and organizing. I see an email that requires my immediate attention, which is already split between two other tasks and tomorrow’s to-do list. Frustration and procrastination result.
 
I want time to be a woman of leisure. I want to read excellent non-academic books and watch awesome television shows and write recreationally. I want to decorate my room and wear interesting outfits. I want to listen to new songs and fall in love with new artists. I want to read the news so I have a clue about what’s happening outside the bubble of my university.
 
Often I feel like I am supposed to do everything and to be able to do everything. I’m not sure why this is, and I don’t think now is the time to pseudo-psychoanalyze myself. But it is certainly pertinent to say that I cannot do everything I want to do and that I will hurt myself if I try.
 
This is a pretty somber post... I think I meant for it to be funnier? That didn’t happen! Next time I’ll write about awkward elevator experiences or attractive foreign celebrities or something.
 
--Bridget

The Quest For Camelot Begins: A Foray Into Merlin

I watched the first episode of Merlin when it premiered and was...not impressed. Many people have recommended it to me/told me it's something I would enjoy, but I have...remained dubious. One of my good friends here at school is a huge Merlin fan, and throughout our acquaintance I have consequently been subjected to much enthusing over the show as it progressed through its final season. I grinned over the cute Merther (the Merlin/Arthur ship) gifs she showed me on Tumblr--watched with a bemused expression as she and another friend of ours freaked out over the series finale, whispering in case any of the rest of us ever wanted to watch the show from the beginning--celebrated alongside her as Merther became canon.

My former snootiness over the...questionable quality...of the show has diminished, and I decided to give it a second shot. So, I watched the first two episodes tonight while completing my Linguistics homework. I've decided to blog my way through the series, because I have Thoughts and because I think it will be fun. And make me stick with it, in case, you know, I end up not being that impressed with it after all.

Well, here we go: Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2.

If for no other reason, I would probably stick with the show because boy, are Colin Morgan (Merlin) and Bradley James (Arthur) attractive. And they have accents. Never underestimate the swoon factor of a  British accent. At one point in the first episode Merlin got wounded, and his Mentor set about healing said wounds.

MERLIN'S MENTOR: Take your shirt off.

ME: Yes, please do that.

I can certainly see why people ship them, and why people fawn over them in general. I admit that going into this I am predisposed to ship Merther, having soaked up my friend's enthusiasm, though I probably would have ended up shipping them anyway. There were several moments within the first two episodes where I wanted to yell at the screen "YOU ARE ADORABLE. KISS. KISS NOW". Knowing going in that there is ample support for a Merther relationship, I will doubtless be picking up on those lines/looks/hints more than I normally would have. I certainly did in the first two episodes (in any case it's not that subtle. The Dragon is a Merther fan, I can tell. He's very vocal about it. But I'll get to him in a moment). If I wasn't going to ship Merther, I would probably ship Gwen/Merlin. Though who knows. Within these episodes, there was a lot of sexual tension. This included sexual tension between:

• Morgana/Arthur
• Morgana/Merlin
• Merlin/Arthur
• Gwen/Merlin

I'll just leave that with it's excessive love-triangle potential where it is. 

Also, continuing with my oh-so-scholarly thoughts on characters, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Gwen is black. I leave you with Sarah Rees Brennan's thoughts. 

Moving on to plot-y things! 

The villain of the first episode is a Creepy Old Woman, and, you know, I really really dislike Creepy Old Women. For whatever reason, I find them terrifying. Give me a CGI monster--I cringe and announce how much I Do Not Like This. Give me suspenseful music and unsettling shadows--I squirm and curl up in my chair and am spooked. But give me Creepy Old Women--I was sitting watching those parts of the episode in utter terror. I jumped, literally almost out of my chair, when a door slammed down the hall. There were shivers and skin-prickliness all up and down my back. My only hypotheses on the subject is that it stems from growing up with The Princess Bride. I remember that the old woman in the crowd in Buttercup's dream terrified me when I was little. She doesn't anymore, but maybe that fostered in me some far-reaching fear of malevolent elderly women? 

Creepy Old Woman from The Princess Bride 

Infinitely Creepier Old Woman from Merlin

The other plot-y thing I wanted to make note of, and which is a much longer-term plot element than the villain of one episode (however much it might scar me) is the Dragon. The Dragon was one of the reasons I stopped watching originally. There were many Cliched-Lines and Cliched-Themes in those scenes and I wanted to bang my head against the coffee table. The Dragon likes to make cryptic comments about the future. I will hereafter refer to him as the Dragon of Destiny.

Merlin finds the Dragon of Destiny in a cave under the castle (I sense there are problems involved with keeping a secret dragon under your castle. The show does not choose to dwell on such problems. Such as the fact that Merlin was quite easily able to find the dragon under the castle). The Dragon of Destiny seems to have some kind of telepathic link into Merlin's brain, as throughout the first episode you hear an ominous voice caaaallllliiiiinnng to Merlin in his mind. The episode is, in fact, titled "The Call of the Dragon". I'm guessing he's an important character.

The Dragon of Destiny, Merther fan that he is, makes vague, mysterious, not-at-all-foreshadow-y and assertive comments about Merlin's destiny, and the fact that it is his destiny to be with Arthur. That is his only preferred subject of conversation. Who knows, maybe someone else will stumble upon the not-so-secret dragon and he will make generic, grand-sounding comments all about their future love life destiny! I've got my eye on you, Dragon of Destiny.

Merlin receives love advice from the Dragon of Destiny

The teaser for Episode 3 looks quite intense (as they always do), and seems to feature Gwen more. I believe she was in peril. Oh, lady characters, why do you always have to be in peril when you're heading an episode? We shall see what happens.

--Flannery