More Song Interpretation Fun

I woke up with "Front Row" by Alanis Morissette in my head, so I turned it on while getting dressed. For the first time I made a certain connection - the line "I like you to be schooled and in awe, as if you were kissed by god full on the lips" - immediately I thought of the movie Dogma, in which Alanis, playing the part of God, does indeed kiss Jay full on the lips.

Then other lines, such as "I started by saying things like 'you smoke,' 'you live in New Jersey,'" and "why can't you shut your stuff off?" reinforced the implication. It's a weird, highly unlikely interpretation, most likely totally wrong, but it's fun to think about on a Sunday morning before I've reached my usual level of sanity.

Tattoo designs and other art.

I have an idea for my second tattoo, and it's so appropriate on so many levels (particularly in contrast to my other one, which struck me as very appropriate about a year before I got it, so much that I immediately decided that's what I would get if anything), that I doubt the design will change much between now and when I might think of getting it, which probably won't be until at least next summer.

Here are the two designs I'm thinking of, which are similar in many ways. I'm leaning towards the one on the left, though I may end up getting both eventually.

I realize either of these would be a very good counterbalance for the more intellectual tattoo on my right arm; I may put it on my left arm, or possibly under the one on my right.

For those who wonder where the idea came from, they're inspired by this sgraffito box I made in high school Ceramics class.

Reality is a Bowl-Shaped Sky

One of my science teachers said something along the lines of "the sky looks a bit like a flattened bowl, but it's actually a round dome." Yes, he was talking more about mapping the visible sky than the actual nature of space, but you know? I never thought it looked anything like a bowl. It looks like empty space to me, occasionally interrupted by things like clouds and stars and birds.

Our ancestors thought it looked like a bowl, though. An upside-down bowl with holes poked in it so the light outside comes in. Now that we know that the sky is actually empty space, it's more difficult to see the bowl – just as it's more difficult to imagine a flat earth when we know we live on a round planet. I've seen people scoff at the ancients, incredulous that they could be so dense as to believe what we know is false, because it goes against what we can see with our own eyes. But what do we see with our own eyes?

Who here thinks of time as linear? Anyone having a hard time imagining a three dimensional space as being bent, without reverting to a two-dimensional mental image? And can anyone really wrap their mind around the idea of a particle that is also a wave?

Is it so ridiculous that ancient minds could not imagine a round earth, or see a sky that goes on forever?

People often mistake perception with reality. The problem goes deeper than you might assume. I've discussed topics like philosophy and theology with friends who are intelligent, creative, and imaginitive, with an uncommon capacity for thinking outside the box, but even they – and I – have fallen prey to perceptual egocentrism.

I asked a friend about the possibility of God having a self-concept, and her reply was "one would think that, as a being more intelligent and aware than man (who has self
knowledge), God would also have self knowledge." It makes sense, even if the "god" in your mind is purely hypothetical. But why the assumption that a superior being would have self-knowledge just because we have it? I suppose because we are superior to lower beings who have no self-knowledge. But where did this artificial scale of superior and inferior beings come from, and why are things placed the way they are?

Humans think they know what makes a higher being high and a lower being low, and generally their scales put humans pretty close to the top – and everything above us is divine, which is convenient because divine beings are not visible to us and we can't actually ask them whether they would have arranged the scale any differently.

I said to another friend: "we only think of it in terms of 'lower' life forms giving rise to 'higher' forms because we're egotistical enough to think of ourselves as best, and we think of ourselves as the last/latest model of creation simply because the future hasn't happened yet."

My friend replied: "Are you saying maybe we were better before? Or that there is better consciousness somewhere out there?"

And I said: "You misunderstand. The idea that one form is 'better' than another is the illusion." And she agreed.

Where did we come up with the ideas of good and bad, higher and lower, superior and inferior? Is it beginning to look a little like a bowl-shaped sky? That's what it looks like to me.

Figuratively speaking.

Logic. Faith. Reason. Memory. Reality. Instinct. Have you ever really seen infinity? Can you really comprehend matter? Which way is up? The sky is up, but the sky is also down. So how do we figure that we're any better than the dirt under our feet?

Someone else's poetry

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree. 

-William Blake

We were wrong about Venus (the prehistoric one)

Remember this lady on the right?

Many like her were made in prehistoric times, all with creepily similar proportions, and they've been a mystery ever since they were first dug up. The prevailing assumption has been that they're depictions of an ideal female figure, faceless because she is not an individual but an embodiment of all women. Her breasts and belly are so huge because those are the most important parts of her - she is valued not for her strong legs and arms, not for her capable fingers, but for her ability to make babies and feed them, and her stores of fat that will help her survive the winter.

While weight-conscious modern women can appreciate that a flabbier body type was more accepted and appealing back then, I was never quite satisfied with the above interpretation. I accepted it, though, because nothing better was offered and I was not in a position to posit theories of my own even if I had any. (Gosh, I sound like such a writer. Too many college courses.)

But wait! There is a better explanation, set forth in this study. I found out about it just a few minutes ago, and immediately stripped down to see for myself if it was true.

It's a self-portrait.

The Venus's head is always tipped downward, as if she is examining and contemplating her own body. The breasts, closest to the eye, are seen as huge, as is the belly below them. Even a non-pregnant woman with just a little pudge will see her own belly as proportionally similar to the carving's, and not just because she's self-conscious. It just looks that way. Check yourself.

(According to the study, "direct comparisons between the original artifacts or their casts and one's own anatomy is the ideal procedure. Caution is urged to avoid injury to joints and muscles unaccustomed to such maneuvers.")

The legs seem abnormally tapered and short because that's what they look like from a sharp downward angle. The hands are tiny - well, anyone who has tried figure-drawing can tell you that a beginner almost always draws hands way too small for the bodies they're attached to. Even the peculiar position of the butt makes sense when you consider the perspective of a woman looking down over her own shoulder. And she is faceless, not because she is an abstract archetype of womanhood, but because the artist could not see her own face.

The proportions aren't due to a preexisting abstract notion of what a woman is for, and what's her most important attribute. They're due to the limitations of the best and only reference the artist had: herself. She had no mirrors or photos. She could see other women, but she wasn't trying to carve another woman. She was carving her own body, and carving it with amazing accuracy.

Now why would so many women all over prehistoric Europe decide to make sculptures of themselves? According to the study, "As self-portraits of women at different stages of life, these early figurines embodied obstetrical and gynecological information and probably signified an advance in women's self-conscious control over the material conditions of their reproductive lives."

In other words, it's feminism. Like the authors of that classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves, and creators of countless other artistic celebrations of womanhood, these women were taking charge of their physiology and their identities. The "ideal female figure" theory, that the Venuses are objective statements of what a woman should look like (or what men found attractive), now seems foolish and arrogant, and frankly sexist.

A prehistoric woman, relying on her own and her community's strength and ingenuity for her very survival, needed a keen awareness of who she was both physically and socially, of her abilities and strengths as a human being who every day needed food, needed to feed her children, needed to contribute to the needs of the group. And she accepted that identity as her most important reality. She was not comparing herself to anyone else's view of what's right and proper; that's a new development. Abstract ideals are a construct of fairly modern times, invented around the same time as things like personal property and sexual repression. (Here I'm basing my statements purely on my own unfounded, shamelessly illogical opinions, so don't take them as true. Please.)

Now I'll have to add one more item to my long list of creative projects to undertake in the future.

Love and Politics (or, a short break from 41,000 words)

I can be very dense sometimes when it comes to literature; I can listen to a wonderful song for years and never realize what it really means until one glorious moment of epiphany. A recent example of this has been The Couch by Alanis Morissette, which I was listening to on the way home from the shrink this past week. (Duh!)

I've been discovering Vienna Teng, a beautiful singer whose songs reach into me and rearrange my insides so that they feel much more comfortable and joyful. Some of my favorites have been Cannonball, Daughter and City Hall.

I had listened to City Hall several times before recognizing that it was about marriage, and then several more times before I realized that it was about a specific sort of marriage whose legality has been fiercely contested lately. It makes no direct references to gender, not even a single pronoun: only the joy of being finally allowed to marry.

You can listen to City Hall here: http://www.myspace.com/viennateng
The lyrics are at the bottom of this entry.

It reminds me of a time many months ago when same-sex marriage became legal in certain places, and one news source made the derisive observation that there was a huge jump in the rate of marriage among gays, followed by a drop - concluding that gay marriage was really a fad, only popular because it was new.

But of course there would be a jump followed by a drop! The marriages which occurred directly after they became legal included those many couples that had been "married" in every way but legally for years or even decades. Literally, generations of catching up had to be done. The infernal stupidity of the media is the biggest reason that I seldom watch or read the news. That, and the commercials usually offend what little morality I have.

But before I drive my blood pressure further into the danger zone, here are the lyrics to City Hall by Vienna Teng:


me and my baby on a february holiday
'cause we got the news
yeah, we got the news
500 miles and we're gonna make it all the way
we've got nothing to lose
we've got nothing to lose

it's been 10 years waiting
but it's better late than the never
we've been told before
we can't wait one minute more

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

me and my baby've been through
a lot of good and bad
learned to kiss the sky
made our mamas cry
I've seen a lot of friends
after giving it all they had
lay down and die
lay down and die

10 years into it
here's our window
at the Vegas drive-thru chapel
it ain't too much
for 'em all to handle

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

outside, they're handing out
donuts and pizza pies
for the folks in pairs in the folding chairs
my baby's lookin' so damned pretty
with those anxious eyes
rain-speckled hair
and my ring to wear

10 years waiting for this moment of fate
when we say the words and sign our names
if they take it away again someday
this beautiful thing won't change

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

Happy Anniversary

fellow traveler

travel along with the stars in the night
travel along while the world watches
travel along with us all, make us hope
for a time when we look up and see
look, look what we've done
look, look at the sky that we've made
travel along, help us search for the stars
lead the way into the sky
show us how small the world is
I'm scared of us, at war with ourselves
but could we have gone so high
if we hadn't been scared of the earth?
so travel along with us
in our search for the stars

(I like when Google reminds us what day it is. Today is Sputnik's anniversary. Sputnik roughly translates as "fellow traveler". I've heard that the space program probably wouldn't have succeeded if the US hadn't been locked in fierce, paranoid competition with the Soviet Union, each afraid that the other would get there first and use spacecraft as weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure the United Federation of Planets is very proud of this history.)

(Blogspot thinks I posted this a few hours ago. So in case you're the kind of person who actually checks the date and time of entries, today is tomorrow.)

Yeah, right

Tell me, do you know any animals who would obey this sign?

Sharing - a relic of past preachings

While at a friend's house, I saw a copy of the first thing I ever wrote and read aloud in front of church, when I was fifteen years old. My involvement in the creation of that youth-lead service, which took place on March 30, 2003, was my first taste of the worship-leading experience that lead me to become a worship associate at age seventeen. Moreover, the words in this old piece I wrote had echoes throughout my later preaching experience, and were repeated and elaborated in the sermon I gave during my worship associate year.

Then, as now, my words inspired a torrent of approval and encouragement from the congregation which I have never been sure how to react to. Then, as now, my reaction to the flood of compliments was "Yes, but do you understand?" I touched on that confusion in my sermon, which I may post here later. First, here is the unedited reading from my mind, my mouth, and my life four years ago:

Your community are the people who surround you, and the people you surround. They are friends, coworkers, and strangers. They are your enemies, and the people you wish you weren't associated with. The community forms a vast spider web that holds each of its members up, and each person is a thread.

But, as important as community is, it is equally important to keep one's individuality, to separate from the crowd in order to find a personal balance.

When I first offered to write this reading about connecting with people, I thought it would be easy. After all, who knows better than I the joy of finding friendship after a lifetime of loneliness? And I was more than willing to show the congregation – and the world – how I felt.

But words proved insufficient to describe this feeling. After several failed attempts, I gave up on my original approach – which was to tell my own story from beginning to end – and wrote this.

This service is about balance, a concept I believe in wholeheartedly. It's equilibrium between two opposites, where neither is more significant or more powerful than the other. It applies to so many aspects of our lives, and yet we often forget its importance.

It even applies to the amount of time and effort we spend on our social lives. If you neglect your duties to the community by hiding away from the world, you will starve and die of loneliness. But if you constantly surround yourself with people, whether it be a few close friends or millions of strangers, you will forget about yourself and lose sight of your own goals.

As for me, I spent my whole life starving for connection. I was so alone that I forgot that other people existed, and thought I could curl up and ignore the world and still live a normal life.

But when I finally figured out that I needed friends to survive, I overdid it. I would work so hard on building and maintaining relationships that they nearly suffocated me. I had no time or energy, after socializing, to pursue my own personal goals or develop any kind of personality.

But how can one be social and still retain his or her sense of self? How can one keep the balance from tipping?

I once read an excellent metaphor involving a hand submerged in water. The water completely surrounds the hand, embraces it, some might say loves it. But when the hand is removed from the water, the water lets it go – it doesn't cling possessively to it, or tear off part of the hand to keep as its own.

The key to keeping the balance, I think, is to be like water: to love and trust others completely and easily, and to leave them just as easily. Spend some time alone, without worrying about other people, and then return joyfully to their embrace when the time comes to be social.

I have been told that saying these things, my personal thoughts and experiences, in front of everyone here, would be hard for me. But it isn't, because I know that the more I share, the more I will get back, and that I will have more to share after that. Only be showing myself as I really am, by sharing my story, can I help the community and so help myself.

I did not know that a few years ago, but I know it now.

Drink With The Beloved

Let me pause to marvel ath the fact that my desk is clear enough that I can place Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on it without moving anything aside, and there's still plenty of surface visible around it. The result of the removal of a tall kitchen bag of garbage.


The following is a Sufi song I first heard some time ago. It's one of the songs I sing while waiting, walking, or just goofing off:

Drink the wine down, tip the glass,
Drink with the Beloved.
Take each breath like its your last,
Drink with the Beloved.
We're a caravan you see
Moving towards our destiny
You must find the eyes to see,
Drink with the Beloved.

La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah

Go to the East, go to the West,
Drink with the Beloved.
You can’t escape this birth or death
Drink with the Beloved
Drink the cup of loving down.
Truly this is drink or drown.
What is lost it shall be found,
Drink with the Beloved.

La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah

So listen to the inner call,
Drink with the Beloved.
The tavern masters rise and fall,
Drink with the Beloved.
Watch the drunkards reel and spin
Feel the presence from within
Toasting to the dearest friend,
Drink with the Beloved.

La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah

A personal item

One of my lesser-known uncles made these photo boards for everyone in my generation of the family for Christmas, and I have just now gotten to hanging it up and populating it. I have placed it above my desk, so that I can look at it when I want to relax and think happy thoughts. I chose the items to place on it accordingly.


From the top left and going clockwise, they are as follows:

- A card made by my uncle Mike the calligraphy artist, one of my favorites. It's quite serendipitous that I was considering buying this and a few other cards from him when my aunt Margarita gave it to me as a thank-you card. (The inscription is "For all that has been, Thanks, for all that will be, Yes!")
- An amber pendant from my grandmother (the nice one, not the rich one).
- Earings made for me by one of my cousins.
- A tarot card which has been an important object to me for many years, and which until now has mostly been floating dangerously among the disorder of my desk.
- A photo of my two favorite men, my father and brother, when they were both quite a bit younger and less hairy than they are now.
- Photos of each of my nephews, my favorite people under the age of ten.
- A photo of a gorgeous green valley from my mother's stay in Guam.

Since I have reason to believe that people actually read this blog now, I thought I would include something more personal than I have generally been writing, something that actually reveals something about me and my life. This is it for now.

Let me tell you about the Wood Between the Worlds

The Wood Between the Worlds is a place that is nowhere. It was created by CS Lewis and appears in his book The Magician's Nephew, part of the Chronicles of Narnia.

It resembles a wood, with soft, sweet-smelling grass and trees growing as far as you can see. Sunlight filters through leaves that are always green. Other than the grass and trees there are no living creatures in the Wood, except for a guinea pig that the Magician sent there while testing his methods. In between the trees are small pools of water, and each of these pools acts as a portal to another universe. When one travels between the worlds by passing through this Wood, one emerges from the pool from his own world and then moves on to another pool.

Children's literature offers many ways to travel between worlds. In Knock Three Times by Marion St John Webb, two children find the Possible World by following a sentient pumpkin through the trunk of a tree. It's quite simple. There are two sides to every tree, just like there are two sides to every question. But you can't get to the other side of a question by going around it - you must go through it. The same is true of trees.

The symbolism of trees in both stories did not escape my notice, nor did the mythical World Tree with its roots in the underworld and its branches in the heavens. I also do not think it's insignificant that Manannan Mac Lir, Son of the Sea, is a ferryman as well as a gatekeeper; a trip through the water is a trip to another world.

I once had a dream about walking through a city very like my own, except that when I looked up I saw a shimmering, rippling surface of water, far above me. I found that my movements were slowed as if I was walking on the bottom of a lake. Dreamworld is as much a reality to our minds as waking life, and the transformation that we undergo while falling asleep transports us to another world - metaphorically or metaphysically, whichever you prefer. Altered states of mind, both natural and induced, are expressed in literature and art as trips to other worlds, whether we think of them as external and extraterrestrial or buried in our own subconscious minds. The water that carries us to a far-off shore is the same as the wine that unveils our hidden emotions.

This is far from the end, but I never expected to finish. I think of each of these as a small part of a greater thing that will be my life's work: part fiction, part poetry, perhaps even part ministry. I have been trying for many years, with some success and a lot of dead ends. I'll likely be trying for my whole life. But that's okay.

For the Record

These are my theories, predictions, and expectations regarding the events and revelations in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, to be released on July 21^st, 2007. Scroll down for spoilers.

Snape’s Alegiance

One of the most contested issues is also the one that I’m most certain about: the allegiance of Severus Snape. Since the end of the first book, nothing has shaken my belief that Snape is on the good side, a spy against Voldemort and bound to protect Harry. Both characters and readers take his killing Dumbledore as proof positive that he is either loyal to Voldemort or only out for his own benefit. They mistake Dumbledore’s final pleas to be for his own life, when in reality Dumbledore knew of Snape’s vow, and was sacrificing himself to save both Snape and Draco, and enable Snape to continue pretending to be loyal to Voldemort. They misunderstand Snape’s expressed reluctance, assuming that he is reluctant to continue serving Dumbledore. In fact, he is reluctant to take the one action that can ensure that he can continue to serve the cause: to kill the only person in the world who trusts and believes in him. He would rather have let the Unbreakable Vow take his life, but Dumbledore begged him to follow through. It was an act of bravery and loyalty beyond what anyone would expect of a Slytherin.

Take another look at the scene in which Snape makes the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa Malfoy. Pay close attention to his body language. If he was not loyal to Dumbledore, why would he have hesitated to say “I will”?

I believe that Dumbledore, though admittedly mistaken in some of his choices, could not have been so unshakenly trusting of Snape if there was not some irrefutable proof of his loyalty. That irrefutable proof may be the magic holding him to his life-debt to James Potter, or something else that Dumbledore has not seen fit to divulge.

Whatever the proof, one thing I am certain of beyond any doubt is that it is NOT, as some so-called experts have claimed, that Dumbledore made Snape take an Unbreakable Vow. Such a spell would go against everything Dumbledore believes, and would not fit his character at all. Dumbledore knows that death is not the worst thing that could happen to a person, and therefore knows very well that an Unbreakable Vow is indeed breakable, and not to be trusted. All it takes is for a person’s desire to break the vow to outweigh their desire to continue living, and considering the life Snape has lived, that wouldn’t take much.

Harry’s Allies

While Voldemort gains followers through threats and empty promises, Harry gains allies through kindness and bravery. He gained Hermione’s friendship by helping to save her from a troll. People like Neville and Luna became assets to their side after Harry showed them kindness and acceptance. Dobby became a powerful ally after Harry freed him from the Malfoys, and though he is not magically bound to Harry, has a bond of loyalty and love which is stronger than the magic that tied him to his house as a slave. Therefore, the potential Dobby has to serve the cause against Voldemort is mind-blowing; his elf magic could provide a huge boost to the effort. I do believe that it is Dobby clinging to Harry’s back in the British cover art, weilding Gryffindor’s sword.

Kreacher is another possibility, but because he is unwillingly bound to Harry and too corrupt to trust, he will not be nearly as useful as Dobby.

Another ally yet to join forces with Harry and the Order, but whom I think is inevitably going to help out, is the Brazillian boa constrictor that Harry freed from the zoo before even knowing that he was a wizard. The boa owes a debt to Harry, and the idea of Harry having a giant snake friend to match Voldemort’s Nagini is simply too beautiful to pass up.

I expect a very dramatic entrance for the boa constrictor, probably in a place packed with good wizards, possibly at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. He’ll cause a huge panic by slithering through the crowd straight toward Harry, then rearing up to eye level and addressing his old friend in Parseltongue, which, of course, nobody else will understand. Harry would have to explain to his friends that this is a friendly snake, and not sent by Voldemort.

Keeping up the theme of symmetry between the sides, since Voldemort apparently has giants doing his bidding, I think it's quite natural that Hagrid, Grawp, and Madame Maxime will join in the fight as well. Their presence on the good side might also help to convince a few of the giants to turn against Voldemort before the fight is over.

Harry may also have help from the portrait of Dumbledore that now hangs in the Headmaster’s office, but I think Dumbledore’s posthumous assistance is more likely to come from the pensieve, which Harry will have to use to view his own and other people’s memories in the effort to deduct the wherabouts of the remaining Horcruxes, and the manner of their disposal.

Dumbledore’s influence also lingers in Fawks. His assertion from book 2 that “I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me” still applies, and Fawks will show up at some crucial time when Harry has shown loyalty to the dearly departed headmaster, and his help will be enough to turn the tide of battle.

There is also the matter of Wormtail’s debt to Harry, which he has not shown much intention of paying. However, the magic that binds him to Harry is too strong to ignore, and he will eventually be forced to act against his master.

In addition to these individuals, Harry will of course have Ron and Hermione, the members of the DA and the Order of the Phoenix, and the influences of his parents whether direct or indirect. However, as always, Harry will have to face the final trial alone.

Sectumsempra

Sectumsempra means "cut forever," but the visible effects of the spell (the cuts that appeared on Draco's body when Harry cast it) did not last forever; that effect was immediately negated by Snape's counterspell. Therefore, I doubt those cuts were the entire effect of that spell, and considering the amount of attention payed to the division of souls in that book, I fear sectumsempra might have done some irreparable damage to Draco's soul. Whatever it is, something about Draco was cut that can never be put back together. What this means for him and for the story, I am not sure.

R.A.B.

I have believed ever since hearing the initials that R.A.B. was Regulus Black. The only evidence against it is Sirius Black’s claims that his brother was a coward, and never close enough to Voldemort to be trusted with anything as important as a Horcrux, and frankly, Sirius has never been very good at putting aside his biases in favor of reason. He doesn’t like anyone in his family, so nothing could have convinced him that Regulus would do anything useful for the good side. Whether Regulus is dead or alive is uncertain.

Voldemort’s Powers, and How They Can Be Used Against Him

Since book 2 we have been told that Voldemort transferred some of his powers to Harry during the curse that failed to kill him. The first example was Parseltongue, which Harry has already used to his advantage. But what else was transferred?

During his post-resurection speech to the Death Eaters, Voldemort described what happened after that curse: “Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of others.” (Emphasis mine) This means that the power of possession was one he had before his first defeat, perhaps even inborn like Parseltongue.

He used this power after his resurection to possess Nagini, and also Harry at the end of book 5. The experience was painful to both of them, but because of the Harry’s love of Sirius, Voldemort could not stand it. He was forced to release Harry. What if Voldemort hadn’t been in control, had been unable to terminate their connection to save himself? Such would have been the case if Harry had been the one possessing Voldemort, and if possession was one of the latent abilities transferred to him by the failed curse, then he could use it to finally defeat Voldemort. Of course, possessing his enemy would be incredibly painful to Harry, but he would be strengthened by the thought of the people he loves whom he would be saving, and the very feelings that strengthen Harry will make the experience more excruciating for Voldemort.

The Department of Mysteries

The rooms in the Department of Mysteries correspond to those areas of thought that cannot be known for sure: time, death, thought, love, the cosmos, et cetera. Obviously the room containing time-turners, and the magical bell jar with the hummingbird egg, is where the DoM wizards study time. It was probably after much research in this area that they developed the time-turners themselves.

I believe the room with the tank of brains is where wizards study the phenomenon of human thought and memory; I believe the invention of the Pensieve was a result of this research, just as the time-turner was invented in the Time room. Obviously, coming into contact with thoughts in the Pensieve is not nearly as dangerous as tangling with the “raw” thoughts swimming in the tank; the purpose of the Pensieve is not simply to allow the thoughts to be seen, but to allow them to be seen safely.

Some fans think the final battle between Harry and Voldemort will take place either in the veil room in the DoM, or even in the world behind the veil itself. I won’t rule out the veil room as a possible locale in the last book, but I don’t think it’s likely to be the setting of the climax. I also don’t think Harry will go through the veil at all during the book, as going through the veil means death, death is forever, and Harry will not die prematurely.

Horcruxes

Known horcruxes are the Ring, the Locket, the Cup, and the Diary, and there should be two more. The Ring and the Diary have been destroyed. The Locket may have been destroyed, as claimed in the note from R.A.B., but we don’t know if R.A.B. might have been prevented from carrying out the task. I think the heavy locket that was found in 12 Grimauld Place in the beginning of book 5 is indeed Slytherin’s locket, which Voldemort made into a Horcrux and which was taken from the cave by R.A.B. Whether it’s still a Horcrux is unknown. It may still be at Grimauld Place, or it may have been stolen by Mundungus Fletcher; if the later is true, Harry will have a job trying to track it down.

I think Harry will realize the locket was at Grimauld Place while perusing his own memories of cleaning the house in Dumbledore's pensieve. I think it will take him completely by surprise, like his sudden realization in book 5 that the corridor in his dreams is the Department of Mysteries; it's just a matter of noticing that he's seen the same thing in two different places.

Dumbledore speculated that Nagini is a horcrux. I think it’s possible, though some people think that theory is a red herring. I think either could be true.

As for locations of the horcruxes, there are a lot of important locales in Voldemort’s life that could be good candidates. I'm betting at least one is in Albania, especially after seeing the delux edition US cover. I believe the trio will visit Romania to visit Charlie Weasley and borrow an Antipodian Opaleye Dragon from him, and ride it to Albania where they will find one of the Horcruxes and probably meet Voldemort himself, in the greek-looking collumn-lined arena shown in the US cover (remember, Albania is very close to Greece). Since Bulgaria is in that area too, I'm willing to bet they'll visit Viktor Krum as well.

Who Kills Whom?

That there will be deaths is unquestionable, but whose?

First of all, Voldemort will die, and Harry will live. Ron and Hermione will also live. Of this I am as certain as I am that Snape is on the good side.

I believe one of the Weasley parents will die, and it probably won’t be Molly. I don’t think it’s likely any other Weasleys will die, though all of them are in terrible danger; they’re a huge target for many reasons.

I believe Mad-Eye Moody will be killed by Fenrir Greyback, and that Greyback will be killed as well, possibly by one or more of his victims. I don’t think Remus Lupin would be the one to “pull the trigger,” so to speak, but he could help.

Bellatrix Lestrange will be defeated, not necessarily killed, by Neville.

Dumbledore is dead and will remain dead forever, as is Sirius. People who might not be dead are Regulus Black, Olivander, and Florean Fortescue, whose knowledge of history might be important in the search

What Happens To Them?

I think Harry's definitely being set up to be an Auror. In fact, I'm sure that after all this is over he'll be allowed into the Auror training without finishing his NEWTS; an exception will be made. He might even skip most of the training and go straight into work. I think his involvement with the DA also suggests he has a future as a Hogwarts teacher; maybe after Voldemort's defeated there will be a chance for a DADA teacher to last more than a year.

Hermione's probably an activist at heart, and might even make a full-time gig of SPEW, or else broaden her scope to advocate the rights of all non-humans and part-humans, including Werewolves. I think she and Rita Skeeter might maintain a precarious alliance, and Rita might continue to be Hermione's journalistic contact, making sure the stories she thinks are important reach the press.

Though Neville has in recent times shown his usefulness in battle, I think he will not follow in his father's footsteps and become an auror; the theme in his life seems to be that he must discover himself as distinct from his father, and prove that he is his own person and just as good even if not at the same things. He will continue to study herbology and find his niche there.

I think Ernie MacMillan has a future in politics, and will eventually become Minister of Magic. He would make an excellent peacetime leader.

Other than that, I don't have much of an idea for the future careers of the minor characters.

A Return

I have heard that not all who wander are lost, but I would add that not all who are lost really mind being lost.

I spent the morning in Rocky River Reservation. I never found my way to where I'd planned to go, and where I was expected to be, because it wasn't where I expected it to be; the road doesn't always turn the way you want it to, and I spent three hours following what might be called the "wrong" one.

I have long been of two minds, one which trusts and one which doubts. While I walked that path, not knowing whether the next turn would lead me to my destination or just to more trees and plants and flashes of river, each step was an expression of my trust that I wasn't wasting my time. I filled my senses with the place, and my camara with the things I saw. Still, I always worried that I would never get there, that I would let people down and exhaust myself trying to navigate this winding valley. That doubting mind was right. Do I regret it?

Of course not.

Even after I spent half an hour climbing a hill which peaked at the top of the valley itself, only to turn around and walk back down, no closer to my original goal but closer, perhaps, to the acceptance that there really was no hope.I have not acted responsibly. I have made many mistakes, and made the same ones many times. I have kept following paths that lead me farther from home and offer little in return for tired feet and lost hours. I have broken promises and left people waiting while I lost myself in moments for which I have nothing to account. Why? My good sense has never stood firm in the face of my foolish trust that it will all turn out okay somehow.

It's not the same road going the other way. Everything has two sides; sometimes the sides look similar, but they are never identical. Even having travelled the road once before, it was still as new to me retracing my steps back to where I had come from. I couldn't get lost going home, though, because my good sense - the same that told me not to trust the road before - knew that it would lead me exactly where I wanted to go. In going home, I was at last of one mind. Hope was long gone, but trust had never been stronger.
My rational mind has never been able to shake the idea that nothing is certain, that everything is subject to doubt and change. It takes that as an excuse to follow any damn lead it comes across, because if we're not sure what's true, we can never be sure what's false either. It thinks it can find a way to believe in everything and nothing at the same time, and for all I know, it's on the right track.

All I have known is the road. I have never reached my destination, and I don't think I ever will. But see how far I've gotten by going nowhere.

Faith, Reason, and Scripture

There's a thing called Christian Apologetics which I've regarded with a crooked, curious smile, not sure whether to dismiss it entirely, attack it directly, or consider that maybe I don't know enough to understand it. I've actually read enough to address many of the common arguments – the ones brought up by Thomas Aquinas, for instance – but it's not on the top of my list of things to know, and I really don't see why it's necessary for such an argument to exist on either side.

I've also seen quite a bit of talk that looks and smells an awful lot like Christian Apologetics coming from the mouths of many an amateur theologian who has studied their scripture with considerable care and scholarship in an effort to better understand the mind of God. I admire these people for their dedication, and I have no qualms about their faith; I'm as dedicated to my own brand of theological study, and I know the Bible is full of wisdom and poetry that shouldn't be ignored. (Parts of the book of Proverbs, for instance, have both made me critically examine my own actions and made me laugh my ass off.) It's just my assertion that to apply something as sharp and hard as logic to something as soft and intangible as spirituality is rather foolish.

The issue that I have been mulling over the most lately is what many call the infallibility of the Bible, to the exclusion of all other sources. I've found that most of my discussions with Christians revolve around citations of the Bible, which is trusted as an authority on all subjects and not to be questioned directly. If anyone questions something the Bible says, it is indirectly, saying that it has been poorly translated or poorly interpreted; nobody considers that it might be poorly written or poorly conceived. The infallibility of the Bible is widely accepted as the basis for spiritual discussion, much as Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is in secular philosophy.

However, readers of Nietzsche will know to question even the sacred "I think, therefore I am", and those who examine Christian rhetoric closely will observe a fundamental logical flaw. A Baptist friend of mine who directs Bible Studies once cited this passage, from 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” He presented this quote as proof that the Bible – all of it, and only it – can be trusted to contain the whole of God's truth. This is known in logic as a circular argument: in order to accept the evidence (2 Timothy 3:16-17), you must already have accepted the conclusion (that the Bible is infallible). Without the conclusion, there is no reason to trust the evidence.

Another reasoning for the infallibility of the Bible is that it was divinely inspired, that it came from an infallible God. This is a leap of faith: that the authors of the Bible were the mouthpieces of a divine truth which speaks to us all. My Baptist friend spoke of how each of the Bible writers spoke a part of the truth, and that all their writings together present a complete picture of God. He also urged me to not fully trust any mortal claiming to own the truth, but to trust only God, and I heartily agreed with this approach. What he did not acknowledge was that the Bible was written and compiled by men. Fallible men. If we accept that it is possible for men to tell the truth about God, as the authors of the Bible did, then we must accept that the truth can present itself in other forms, from other sources. If we accept that men can make mistakes, and present a false image of God, then we must accept that anything in the Bible is possibly one of those false images.

The truth, in the spiritual sense, is evasive. It is hard to find, and easy to lose track of in the mundanity of daily living. If you try to grasp it in your hand, it slips away like a wet bar of soap. And if you try to apply logic to it, as so many theologians do, either the logic will crumble or the truth will die. I understand the motivation to trap the truth in a cage of reason, to show it to others so that they might be enlightened and saved, but there is no way to pass such enlightenment directly from person to person – only from God downward.

By no means do I advise an end to all theological discussion. After all, just as God can speak to us through an ancient scripture, he may also show his face briefly in an honest debate between seekers of truth. All that I would like to see is a little less rigidity: the Bible isn't necessarily right, and other sources are not to be entirely dismissed. Of course, I also know that the trustworthiness of the Bible is a deeply held belief for many people, and they won't find it very easy to set aside. Uncertainty is scary. All I can really hope for is that we all might find our way through the dark, hopefully with a little help from each other, for as unreliable as our various sources are, they're the only ones we have.

Life is a waterfall; we're one in the river and one again after the fall.
-Aerials, System of a Down

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day might bring forth.
-Proverbs 27:1

Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.
-Proberbs 24:25

An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.
-Proverbs 24:26

Better is open rebuke than hidden love.
-Proverbs 27:5

inability

I've spent the last few hours trying to maneuver around the buggy system of Blackboard, which is the site where I must take my online English course this summer. I hate it. More often than not when I open a thread in the discussion board, the text doesn't show up at all. Every time I open a link, a dialogue box tells me the page contains "unsecure items", and asks me if I'm sure I want to open it. It never goes away the first time I click "okay". All the while, deadlines get closer with alarming speed.

To make matters worse, I'm denied the satisfaction of physical violence. As much as I feel like firmly grabbing my laptop and smashing it against the wall, I must refrain even from pushing a single button as it makes its glacial way through the sludge of information. More than once today it has reduced me to screams of frustration. The sense of futility and weakness is overwhelming.

Appropriately, one of the readings I've been required to write about for this course is a narrative by a woman with MS about her attitude toward her disability. As a physically able but frequently mentally incapacitated person, I could relate to a lot of the sentiments described in the essay. My response to it had a very personal flavor, citing my own personal experiences, and I hope that doesn't negatively impact my grade. Actually, I'm counting on it giving me an advantage. What good is hardship if you can't milk it for attention?

eight things

Perhaps more regular entries here. No idea what they'll be about, but they'll keep me busy. Eight things about me.

1. I'm currently reading the archives of a webcomic called "Wigu", which is by the same creator as "Overcompensating" which I've been reading ever since it mentioned the creator of "Goats", which is my favorite webcomic. I really like this guy's style; somehow he creates a sense of motion, action, and sound through a very static medium, and the characters are very real. Plus I like how in "Wigu" a year and a half was necessary to describe four days of action.

2. To be honest, I'm a little tired of introspection, which is why I've taken a few hours just thinking about things to put here. I'm seeing less and less point to just sitting around thinking about myself. Maybe I'm just getting old.

3. I like riding the bus. I realized that today when I got on a bus and the atomosphere and familiarity of it made me relax significantly. It's gotten to have a lot of positive associations; it means I'm on my way, that I'm getting somewhere. I haven't yet gotten to the point where I just get on a bus to chill out, but I could see myself doing that.

4. I sometimes don't trust my opinions because I'm biased toward them. Kind of a weird reason, isn't it? It keeps me from speaking my mind sometimes.

5. Sometimes I really want a boyfriend. Other times, I really want a girlfriend. I never really want to be single.

6. I am a very heartless and selfish person sometimes. I acknowledge the inherent worth and dignity of every person, but I also aknowledge that most people aren't worth that much to ME. There are very few people whom I really care about, and I've very little interest in increasing their numbers.

7. I liked this sandwich:Too bad it was so long ago.

8. I'm really glad this is over. I used to be much better at this stuff, and I'm not so sorry that changed.

I tag whoever actually reads this.