Thursday, November 16, 2006

Closets, and Places Unknowable (whoa, that sounds like an essay I would have to read about Queer Theory, except I made it up myself)

"Well, Saddam, that's why you shouldn't KILL," I said to Saddam when the verdict came up the other day. Not that capital punishment is any better, because in the end you still KILL, but that was not my main focus, because I like to talk to Saddam in a personal and reproving way as if I know him, and his nature. Although, like I have said before, I do think he might end up being secretly jolly if he was kept from weapons and chemicals and all kinds of power, but that does not excuse him, or his acts.

"Why must you hide in closets, and places unknowable?" I just said out loud to Margery.

I do not like the voices of robots. They are unsettling.

I saw my keys sitting on the stove and I thought, What if you baked a pie with keys in it as a festive joke?

I threw Margery's catnip mouse at her, but she just looked at it, and then looked away. "WHY won't you be enchanted by petty toys?" I demanded.

"Damn, Santorum has a lot of kids," I thought as I was watching his concession speech online, and cackling with a devilish glee. And on television the Santorum children were all weeping and trying to console one another, and I just felt bad for them, because their last name is SANTORUM.

Although you shouldn't be an asshole, and then be surprised when your name is vilified, and turned into that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter which is the byproduct of anal sex.

Sometimes English grad students go out after class and drink pitchers of beer and talk about anality, and what it means, and how it functions in American culture today. Those are strange conversations.

Also, one should never buy the generic cheerios from Target, for they are nasty, and unpalatable, and not even fit for DOGS (except maybe that last part disparages dogs, and is not correct to say, for it implies that I think of dogs as somehow being lesser individuals than humans, and therefore their lives have less value, which is not true at all, although it does frighten me when some people dress up their dogs in little outfits, and outlandish get-ups. Often there are pictures of Tori Spelling and her dog with the dog all dressed up in a whole outfit, and shoes and accessories to match, and it looks really appalled at what its situation in life has come to, and miserable as well).

In our medieval Latin workshop last week we translated this selection from the Life of St. Lutgard (who was this 13 th-century Flemish saint), and it was all about this one episode in her life where she had a fever, and started sweating (and back then a fever was NOTHING to shake a stick at, for people DIED of fevers), and so she was like, "You know, I'll protect my life, and stay in bed during Matins" (which were the 2am prayers that the nuns of the convent had to do, and Lutgard was like a spiritual leader by then so she kind of was expected to go to them), but then this frightful voice appeared to her (it was the Lord) and was like, "Girl, you get your ass UP, and you GO to Matins!" and she was frightened, and quickly arose from her bed and rushed off to the church, for Matins had already begun.

But then at the doorway of the church appeared the figure of the bleeding Christ on the Cross, and it was rushing to meet her (I kind of imagining it levitating a few inches of the ground, like those fancy magnetic trains in places like Japan, and Germany, although incidentally those are also places we fought in World War II [is that a coincidence?]). And Lutgard was like, "Whoa, Christ," (and she probably also thought she could be hallucinating, for that is what can happen when you have a fever, especially if it is at 2 in the morning in a church), and then he took down his right arm from the cross and embraced Lutgard with it and pressed her mouth to the wound in his side (and it was the famous medieval motif of Christ offering the wound in his side as a BREAST to sinners, where he would be like, "Hey, guys, anybody want to drink blood and water from my wound?" in a creepy drug-peddler voice. It is true. I saw paintings of it), and she drank of the precious sweetness (ugh, that was what the text said) and was magically restored from then on. And everyone in the medieval Latin workshop was like, "Wow, that is a really fucked-up story," but of course medieval mystical and devotional literature is FULL of fucked-up stories, and images.

And after class I did an imitation of Saint Lutgard pulling away and being like, "Damn, Christ, why you gotta be so NASTY?" and not accepting the drink of water and blood from his side. And plus, I am vegan. Although in the medieval times people did fucked-up shit, and doctors tasted their patients' urine in an effort to diagnose what ailed them, which is ALSO a nasty thing to do, and for birth control some broads resorted to vaginal fumigation with special potent herbs, which could not have been pleasant, and also there was a lot of infanticide.

Haa, that is all.

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