enough to go by
Jan. 25th, 2005 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittenscribbleClimbing last night: exhausting, an overhang I couldn't overcome until the nth try, not to mention a corner chimney route I couldn't quite dislocate my hips enough to finish; I left the gym quite happy actually. Dinner last night: romaine lettuce and pita chips. Had chicken and pasta ready to go but body denied both; body really, really wanted the lettuce. Body is generally quiet enough about food preferences (apart from "chocolate? ooo! more chocolate?") that I've learned to listen when it has an opinion.
I find the smell of boiling romaine to be wonderfully reassuring. Grandma made it for my sister and me, either fifteen or seventeen years ago when one or the other of my brothers was being born and Mom was away from home. Grandma (this is Dad's mother; Mom's mother isn't much for the kitchen) had precisely one method of preparing vegetables: boil 'em up in soup (normally chicken bouillon). Serve on rice.
It's really tasty.
I'm progressing very slowly with St Augustine; over the past week or two I've been continually distracted by Neal Stephenson and I haven't even started Douglas Adams yet. Not to mention I've still got Dorothy Dunnett, who more or less fell by the wayside pre-November. But when I did bother to pick up St A again, I found him busily appealing to the angsty teenager in all of us.
St Augustine, having passed judgement on birth and early childhood, tackles adolescence. I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger. I felt no need for the food that does not perish, not because I had had my fill of it, but because the more I was starved of it the less palatable it seemed...
St A must surely know that such yearning-after-things-unspecified is a normal part of teenage angst, and we all suffer something similar. (Hemingway fils points out that of course St A knows this, and is actually using it as a sort of recruitment technique: "I found my contentment, come get yours!") But St A also admits that he wouldn't have been ready for that sort of revelation at that stage in life. He was busy doing other things, drowning himself in "a hissing cauldron of lust," etc.
Which makes me wonder. Where does it go? (The angst, I mean.) There's this point at which we all want something, want to be something, want to get somewhere. But this is generally a preoccupation of the young rather than the old; after some years, the drive subsides. Contentment comes with age. If St A had waited long enough, he might not even have needed God's words to soothe his yearning soul.
So what happens to this youthful unrest? Do we simply get distracted? We focus on family, on duty, on simply making a living, and overlook the fact that we once wanted something glorious and special. Focus outward rather than in. Or maybe we simply learn to shut up and stop complaining. Heck, maybe we just grow out of it. Call it God, call it Enlightenment, call it what you like: at some point, people just settle down.
At any rate the lust section is not only thoughtful but priceless. St A was apparently quite an interesting character in his youth. At one point he apologizes to God for defying him even so far as to relish the thought of lust, and gratify it too, within the walls of your church during the celebration of your mysteries.
Did you really, said I.
And if you managed to read this far, you get a prize! Because this is the funniest thing I've read all day. Warning: not for people sympathetic to spiders.
I find the smell of boiling romaine to be wonderfully reassuring. Grandma made it for my sister and me, either fifteen or seventeen years ago when one or the other of my brothers was being born and Mom was away from home. Grandma (this is Dad's mother; Mom's mother isn't much for the kitchen) had precisely one method of preparing vegetables: boil 'em up in soup (normally chicken bouillon). Serve on rice.
It's really tasty.
I'm progressing very slowly with St Augustine; over the past week or two I've been continually distracted by Neal Stephenson and I haven't even started Douglas Adams yet. Not to mention I've still got Dorothy Dunnett, who more or less fell by the wayside pre-November. But when I did bother to pick up St A again, I found him busily appealing to the angsty teenager in all of us.
St Augustine, having passed judgement on birth and early childhood, tackles adolescence. I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger. I felt no need for the food that does not perish, not because I had had my fill of it, but because the more I was starved of it the less palatable it seemed...
St A must surely know that such yearning-after-things-unspecified is a normal part of teenage angst, and we all suffer something similar. (Hemingway fils points out that of course St A knows this, and is actually using it as a sort of recruitment technique: "I found my contentment, come get yours!") But St A also admits that he wouldn't have been ready for that sort of revelation at that stage in life. He was busy doing other things, drowning himself in "a hissing cauldron of lust," etc.
Which makes me wonder. Where does it go? (The angst, I mean.) There's this point at which we all want something, want to be something, want to get somewhere. But this is generally a preoccupation of the young rather than the old; after some years, the drive subsides. Contentment comes with age. If St A had waited long enough, he might not even have needed God's words to soothe his yearning soul.
So what happens to this youthful unrest? Do we simply get distracted? We focus on family, on duty, on simply making a living, and overlook the fact that we once wanted something glorious and special. Focus outward rather than in. Or maybe we simply learn to shut up and stop complaining. Heck, maybe we just grow out of it. Call it God, call it Enlightenment, call it what you like: at some point, people just settle down.
At any rate the lust section is not only thoughtful but priceless. St A was apparently quite an interesting character in his youth. At one point he apologizes to God for defying him even so far as to relish the thought of lust, and gratify it too, within the walls of your church during the celebration of your mysteries.
Did you really, said I.
And if you managed to read this far, you get a prize! Because this is the funniest thing I've read all day. Warning: not for people sympathetic to spiders.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-26 06:17 am (UTC)2. Augustine. He sounds like quite the character... Ii'm going to have to pick him up one of these days and see what there is to see... thanks for the interesting snippets...
3. whee! Sauteed arachnids... giggle.
4. I miss you guys... time to see if I can find a red-eye for thursday night instead of flying all day friday.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:16 am (UTC)Augustine is quite the character but it's the problem of getting past his rhetoric to get to the juicy bits. He's very taken by his own conversion, is St A. But once you manage to look past all the "I suck! We all suck! God rocks!" paragraphs, then there is definitely great human insight to be found.
Good luck w/ travel arrangements!
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 04:32 pm (UTC)Hmmm... That's an interesting paraphrase for Romans 3:23.
m&
no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 04:22 am (UTC)