The Gospel According to Dr. Who

I'm told that the exec producer and head writer of Dr. Who (Russell T. Davis) is an atheist, but he must have imbibed the Christian story in his mother's milk, because it seems to be the Ur-Story behind all the stories. I just finished watching (most of, missed a few) Season II.

WARNING: SEASON II (ROSE TYLER) SPOILERS.

I was struck by how Rose's trajectory illustrates this passage from the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 10:


29"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last first." (New International Version).

In the last, "Doomsday," episode, she reminds the Doctor that she has already made the choice of him over her mother (whom she loves). She is willing to die with him to save the world again. At the last minute before she dies, she's whisked away to the parallel dimension where she will live with a restored family, including a father who died when she was very small. Of course, unlike the Kingdom of Heaven, she doesn't get to see the Doctor anymore when she's there. But still.

Kid stuff

So I’d probably seen about twenty or so Dr. Who episodes before I found out that the British consider this a children’s program. While Buffy was a teen-oriented show, it wasn’t for children, and we wouldn’t let the girls watch it when they were younger. Dr. Who is for children? Have I already entered my second youth then, that I find it engrossing and even scary at times? I wouldn’t even have known it was considered a children’s show if I hadn’t watched some of the supplemental material on the DVD and heard the actor speak of it that way. When I started watching, I did tell my husband he’d probably like it, because there wasn’t graphic violence (the fight scenes on Buffy used to bother him). But that didn’t detract from the fact that one usually gets caught up in the real possibility that the universe might be extinguished, or all human life made into stew for the delectation of some alien species. The suspense feels real, though one knows that the doctor, in some incarnation or other, will survive. His survival is pretty much the only thing one can count on.

I remember railing against the crap the girls used to watch on Disney or the other kids’ channels. They all told the same message: kids are powerful; kids know best; kids will fix the world. (It’s no wonder they voted for the big kid who promised to do so.) So I guess that’s the pabulum I expect from children’s programming. The kind of stuff that moves product!

Children in the US were not to be told that the universe is a deeply mysterious and deeply dangerous place, full of aliens that are basically the same as Buffy’s demons, only with pseudo-scientific explanations. They should never be told the truth about human loneliness and fragility. So what makes the British consider it reasonable to reveal it to the young ones? Well, the answer is clear, and was made so in the third episode of the new series, “The Empty Child” which takes us back to England’s primal trauma: World War II. Homeless children fend for themselves, and one in particular who wanders around asking “are you my mummy” haunts the city, spreads like an infection (due to some nanobots, of course).

English children experienced conditions that Americans never have and they have grown up and passed to their children an awareness of the darkness and fragility. Americans still believe they are Superman or at least Mighty Mouse come “to save the day.” I have to say that I find the British view far truer and more compelling. We do need a doctor, because we are very sick.

I have a writing coach

Julia had suggested that I divorce the writing process from work: get out of the office, get away from the computer. It is working, as I now begin to think of scribbling the novel as a relaxing activity, something I can do even if I’m a bit tired, or have already poured a glass of wine. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have to use a system of rewards and threats: no tv or novel reading until you’ve put in your fifteen minutes. Yes, fifteen minutes is what I start with and sometimes it’s longer and sometimes it isn’t, but even fifteen can produce a handwritten page or two. And, thanks to the liberal use of dialogue, the pages start to add up. It’s really much easier than all the agonizing I’d been experiencing. But the practice has not yet become truly a daily one. Particularly now with the thought of a possible full time position at Online U. and the reality of needing to finish prepping for the other online class, the discipline is slipping. When I went to see Julia last Wednesday, with pages I’d hurriedly typed up that morning, (having snatched the time from grading, so I’d have to complete that around 10 pm for the midnight deadline), I thought perhaps I’d not make a follow-up appointment, tell her I’d call to make one. Was it really worth it, after all, paying her when I was barely hanging on to do this thing? It’s still hard for me to define what role she plays in my life. Is she just a writing coach or is she also a therapist? My ambivalence washed away when I walked in the door and she welcomed me. She is so nice! What is it about her? Is it the way she somehow feels like a grandmother: happy to see me, totally accepting? I’ve really never had a therapist that made me feel that way. Let yourself experience that, I told myself. You need it!

Unwelcome blurbs, or appropriate ones?

Sorry, I'm ROTL, that Jimmy-gone-to-the-dark-side-Carter and Stephen Walt are upset that their books have been endorsed by Osama Bin Laden. It is absolutely predictable that their anti-Semitic lies are in accordance with his distorted and warped vision. I hope his "recommendations" ring in the heads of those who choose to read these books and help to keep their propaganda in perspective.

Tsk

I was driving down Maple Street, when I noticed a plain little ranch house with a stunning array of hollyhocks, in as many colors as I guess they come in, gracing the front yard. My tongue went to the roof of my mouth and I made a "tsk" sound. I have made that sound before, but never in response to flowers. Is this something that occurs when one passes a certain age? It seems like I can remember my grandmother making that sound at sights that pleased her, such as how I had grown, or my new tooth.

I love gardens, but I cannot view them without envy. My garden is pitiful. The Easter lilies were eaten completely by some bug: the star gazer lilies did open, but they were quite ragged too. Frankly, they looked like soldiers that had just returned from a routing. I know I've got too much shade and there has been way too much rain but I want to gaze at my own yard and go "tsk." Is that too much to ask?

Worries

I know it's a bit soon to worry about what might happen if this book got published, since I am only in the brainstorming stage, but it occurred to me that it would be hard to keep my stepdaughters, who are now 16 and 19, from reading a book that I might write that has something to do with a stepmother with two stepdaughters. I will, of course, change their names and call it fiction, but I have nothing to draw on but my experience. They will probably hate me. Should this stop me?


My wise friend Pru said not to read other works on the subject you are going to write about, but I think she may have meant not to read them once you've started, and I'm still in the brainstorming stage, as I believe I have mentioned, so I did do a little web search and then got the library to obtain "I'm not Julia Roberts" by Laura Ruby. Judging from some of the comments, either on Amazon.com or LibraryThing, the title is not a success. It requires one to remember a forgettable movie (note to Pru on why you should not reference Ephron's book). But so far, it's pretty good. Here's a paragraph from page 14:

"But worse than hating the ex was that Lu had started to hate Ward for having married the woman some gazillion years before, for having chosen such a solipsistic person as a mate. What could that say about him? And then what did marrying Ward, choosing someone with such flawed taste, say about Lu herself?" Wow, she nails a very essential dilemma very succinctly. Can I top this? Should I bother? Well, Ruby's book is about step sons, which are different. Daughter issues are very potent. Things like how at one point, they could borrow my shoes, but then, their feet grew and grew and grew into the huge feet their mother has, not my dainties. Spell-binding, won't it be?

It may have sounded like I would be satiated with trying new technology, but I have downloaded the trial version of a program that is supposed to help one organize a large writing project (Scrivener, it may be only for Mac) and am excited about learning it. At least, while I am working through the tutorials, I feel like I am actually, almost, working on a writing project. I have been inspired by Samantha Wilde's book on mommyhood: see [http://wildemama.blogspot.com/] to tell my tale of stepmommyhood, mommyhood's nasty underbelly. The advantages of being a stepmom as opposed to a mommom are things like intact perineums and other parts. The disadvantages include mommoms that are not dead and always want more money than whatever amount they have received. For other, fun, exciting pros and cons of being a step mom, stay tuned.

Goats everywhere

I had been listening to Robinson Crusoe on my mp3 player and, while on the elliptical at the gym, had just heard the part where he tames a baby goat. Then I got into my car and headed down the highway. The car in front of me was a red Tacoma, and I saw an animal face in the rear window. Now I'm seeing goats, I thought to myself, believing it must, of course, be a dog. But at the red light, I came closer. No, it really was a goat, staring straight at me! Only in Pixieville, do we take our goats out for a morning spin!

Listening to this classic novel, which I have not read before, is a good way to get through it, as I do find some of the details and repetition (why does he tell the story and present the daily journal that says the same thing?) a bit boring. But it is an important book for me to read in terms of literary history and my interest in literature and geography, and is filling in some missing pieces. Most of my sense of the novel comes from my knowledge of the Elizabeth Bishop poem that refers to it, but now I also see how Life of Pi builds from it. I didn't know how much Defoe dealt with Crusoe's spiritual condition, and questions of God's providence. (So far, in greater depth than The Shack!) I'm also intrigued by how he comes to think of his dwelling as "home." I haven't yet come to the part where he meets Friday, so more comments to follow, if I can figure out how to get the rest of the book onto one of my players, now that I am a mac person and my pc isn't even hooked up enough to use.

old dog

They say it is good to break habits: it keeps the mind supple and prevents mental deterioration. So this switchover from PC to mac must be extending my capacity to rant about them young people for at least another three years. I am amazed at how seamless my interface with my keyboard has been. The habits so strongly ingrained that switching keyboard shortcut strokes is agonizing. The only real shift I am struggling with is using the Command (or Apple) key instead of the Control Key, and for other features, the Alt (or Option key) instead of Control. Control! Interestingly, I do feel like I've lost control. Macs determine for you what it is you want to do. If you have already made your own determinations, their choices seem a bit creepy, at times. But I am discovering some cool things. I will accomplish this and teach my hand/brain interface new tricks.

Nightmares wrapped in dreams

We climbed the stairs at the museum to see a featured exhibit: the display of an arm that had been severed from its body. This was a political statement. But I worried it would cause nightmares. And to prove it, I could see them. This woman dreamed of her daughter’s arm being severed. Then she was an arm, waving goodbye.

Don't get out much

Doing all one's work online can lead one to do strange things, such as sit on the sandy floor of an attic-like bookstore, near people who smell like their dogs sit on way too many of their clothes, to watch some one-act plays, the final one being Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. I had forgotten that I was a character in a Beckett play. Any of his plays. Back in New York, I remember seeing the Public Theater’s production of Happy Days, in which a woman named Winnie rooted around in her purse for things, while sitting on top of a garbage heap. After that, the man I was seeing at the time aptly referred to my purse as my "Winnie Bag." In this play, Krapp first deals with his filing system and has some things fall of his desk. That is a day in my life. Then he listens to a tape of himself talking on his 39th birthday. While I do not have tapes, I have my diaries, and while I have not made a ritual of retrieving them, I know they are there, awaiting me. In fact, just today I had an idea about a story culled from the letters a beach bum I met in California when I was eighteen wrote me for a while. {Funny that I think first of taking someone else's words. But I am curious as I try to remember what on earth that drifter had to say in so many letters.} I realize I have reached the point where the accumulation need not continue. Now is the time to shape the material into something. But I feel dread, like Krapp, who felt disgust at listening to his younger self, yet then proceeded to speak again into the tape recorder. He is so pitiful and so typical. One doesn’t want to just pronounce alone in one’s room. One must record: imagine a listener (the listeners he actually has, because he is a character in a play; the listeners we don’t have, but imagine because we write). I blog, therefore I am! The imaginary listener gives some meaning to the meaninglessness: the confrontation with one’s washed up dreams of grandeur.

I don't even know who the actor was, but he was good. The performance was free, and very low budget, but that in no way matters to a Beckett play. As far as I know, this was it: the whole performance. All the work, all that talent, for a room of about forty people, to see once.

It kind of reminds me of last weekend. We went to a party up in the Live Free or Die state. "Pyroman" provided the fireworks. He spent the entire day setting them up. The introduction began before dark. He stood on the platform he had built, in a vinyl, boxy like costume. He began dancing in a robotic fashion to “Relax, Don’t Do it” playing on a boom box. (Interestingly, a search for that song title turns up the lyrics on “One Hit Wonders.” It’s kind of a theme here.) . Fireworks shot forth from his arms. He was a living fireworks display! He turned around, and his back presented a spiral item that spun and spewed white light. He stepped back and forth, no major dance moves, but it was clear that he was in bliss: dancing in the showers of sparks. When you thought he was done, two big blasts of fire and smoke that went up behind him, like the ones that appeared before the Wizard of Oz. What a delight to see an artist at work, focused and rejoicing in his creation, temporary though it may be.

Repurposing

Don't you hate that word--repurposing? I do. Nevertheless, that is what I will do. Rather than start a new blog, I will continue this one, though it no longer contains the ramblings of a crazed parish administrator, but a deranged online adjunct college professor. Contain your excitement.

Guess what's back in style?

The Jerusalem Post provides some information I don't hear much of in US media:

On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas's endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn't feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

Time is strange and all that

Everytime someone says "only 10" or "only 9" more days till the election, I think, "what election?" That's in November, this is only October. October what? I can't believe how autumn is slipping past.

Today we had a reminder of sunshine and warmth. I had no idea how much it rained during the night, and didn't know that was why there were strips of leafless areas down my driveway, until, on my run, I saw the stream roaring by. I ran in a tank top, and then went into a sunny spot in my backyard and stretched in the sun. I even felt too hot to lie there in shavasana! The birds were very active. Why do that blue jay's feathers seem a much brighter blue than in the summer?

Those ads for some phone that features Google are aimed just at me: all those random questions you want answers to right away! Fortunately, I'm usually close enough to my computer.

Today is a day of recuperation after the academic conference it was mandatory for me to attend at the local college where I adjunct. They have to appease the accreditors by assuring them they are making sure all the adjuncts are toeing the line. So I had to listen to them proclaim as recent discoveries the facts about online teaching that I am practicing every day. I kind of feel dirty.

it's the space between

I grew up listening to vinyl. One by one, I added to my record collection, and played my favorite albums over and over. Now there was a thing this technology would do. Any little scratch in the vinyl would cause it to skip and the record would repeat a musical phrase over and over again. Sometimes you could stop it by stomping hard on the floor, but mostly you had to get up and tap the needle arm. It would reach the point that the skips became a part of the song. To this day, there songs from Janis Joplin's "Got Dem Old Kozmic Blues Again" that startle me when I heard them blasting right through the place where it was supposed to get stuck.

In the same way, record listeners grew to expect that songs would come on in a certain order, after a three or four second hiss of silence. That was their proper order. Some musicians created albums with this in mind. Some people still prefer to listen to music this way. I have to admit, I am not one of them.

That was always the appeal of radio, after all. The fortuitious playing of the song you really liked, or needed at that moment. The juxtaposition: both those songs mentioned pumpkins and it was like totally mind-blowing!!!

I tried listening to an old mix tape I had made (it was in the car and there was nothing but commercials and pledge appeals on the radio) and found myself listening just to hear what the next song was, rather than to enjoy the current song. I realized it then. It's the juxtapositions I like. The connections. The links I make in my own mind, when one song comments on another and turns it upside down. Does that mean I'm just an unreformed modernist, shoring fragments against my ruin? Or too post-modern to bother actually listening to a simple song?

None Dare Call it Islamofascism

But I don't know what else to call it when the threat of violence prevents a book from being published. Censorship in America, pure and simple. I can't really blame the publishers cowering, after all, I stay happily anonymous in my blog. But please, I can blame the Islamic "scholar" who started the fuss.

In an interview, Ms. Spellberg told me the novel is a "very ugly, stupid piece of work." The novel, for example, includes a scene on the night when Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life." Says Ms. Spellberg: "I walked through a metal detector to see 'Last Temptation of Christ,'" the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. "I don't have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography."

Excuse me, how is depicting the marital relationship that everyone agrees occured (and which I presume is in the Koran) playing with history, and depicting a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalen which contradicts the Bible not playing with sacred history? Ms. Spellburg is willing to go through metal detectors to see any film which denigrates any religion EXCEPT her own.

I would probably never read this novel, but I believe it should be published, just like The Last Temptation of Christ, Lady Chatterly's Love, Huckleberry Finn and all the other banned books. This is a very chill wind that blows through American freedom of speech.

Letters from camp 1970

I am still in the arduous but interesting process of sorting through a huge box of letters, mostly written between my mother and her sister, but others to my father during the war (more about that later) and some from and to me. I guess I learned from my mother that what one does with these things is put them in a box and store them in the attic. I found the letters I wrote from camp. They were worth keeping and they revised my recollection. I thought I was miserable from day one until the end. Enduring homesickness, hiding tears, reading Jane Eyre ("how do you pronounce Eyre" I asked in my first letter) and suffering through playing awful sports in searing heat. That is all I remember. But in fact, according to the letters, the homesickness was fleeting and I had fun a lot of the time. My poor parents! They were all set to pick me up early, after they enjoyed their vacation in Lake Placid and Queechy Lake without me. Then I wrote more anxious letters begging them not to come early.

Day 2's is so funny, I'll copy it here:

Dear Mommy and Daddy,
I hate to spoil your vacation but you'll have to come and get me. I'm dyeing of homesickness. It's not the camps fault or the counselors they're both really great. It's just that I can't bear being away from home. It's even worse than last year because its 4 weeks. I am sick to my stomach of homesickness. I feel like killing myself for being mean to you. You could make up some excuse that I could tell the girls I'd be embaressed to tell the truth and they're all so nice. I've started crying, I just can't hold it in. So tell me when you can get me, because you have to, I've tried every method in the book but it is just inevitable. Your homesick and loving daughter, xxxx. (in the margin, with a musical note, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.") Then. P.S. This is later. I reopened the letter. At the moment I'm having a good time. I don't know what to do. Call me up.

Mr. Crackles thought it was hilarious and said I hadn't changed a bit. That is disturbing, because it sounds to me like he is taking my mother's attitude, that I'm "Sandra Bernhardt" a term she always used, which suggests that I'm exaggerating for effect and that is not true. I am deeply feeling what I feel and doing my best to express it so that others may understand. No one ever really does, it is still apparent. Hmph.

Really, we tried

We tried to go to St. Jonah's this past Sunday, really we did. Since the step-daughters are now way too old and sophisticated to be willing to be counselors, we'd forgotten that the prior week had been the week of Going Medieval camp for kiddies. (The eldest is off on her jaunt of Germany and the 15-year-old would rather spend her week on facebook and text messaging and getting ready for her sleep away camp. Can't really say I blame her.) If we remembered about the camp and that the kids would be more than participating in the main service we might have gone to the early service or else to that outpost in a neighboring industrial city that we discovered a couple weeks ago. Both would have required waking up early, but we were up late enjoying Lucinda Williams at the Green River Festival. And we didn't even make it at 10:30 on the dot. I knew we were rather late since I didn't even hear the organ as we walked up the side street by the flower garden. The first lesson was in progress: we could hear a voice speaking. But what we saw was a child placing a ladder beside the altar table. Wha? I recognized the words as telling of Jacob's dream and understood the ladder but Mr. Crackles hovered in the doorway, gesturing to me. Psst, let's go. He'd been worried about the heat in the church anyway, and this was just the last straw. If you don't want to believe the altar is sacred space, then don't tell me it matters if I go to the service or not, sayeth he. Turning it into a jungle gym. He really hates what he calls "child worship." Of course it pervades St. Jonah's since all the up and coming families with potentially large incomes for a good number of years have kiddies. I can see how allowing the children to take over one service in the summer is a useful teaching exercise for them, even if it does subject the adults to listening to their prayers for their pets and their echoings of politically correct oversimplifications about how we shouldn't bomb nice people who are different from us. I can also see how for Mr. Crackles, who is so alienated from his children that worship of them does not reflect his glory the way it does for other parents, it is a painful thing to watch, as it is for me as well. So, we left. We went to the beach and worshipped with our bodies the God who made the vast seas and Leviathan, just for the sport of it.

Not quite getting it

Nothing like a corpse swap to improve neighborly relations. Hey guys, when we said hold a swap meet, this isn't exactly what we meant.

A rough mail day

The mail brought an end to my hopes: my first attempt to get the young adult novel published have failed. Form rejection. I know, do not despair, send it out again. I wasn't really surprised, despite my fervent attempts to visualize success. Failure after all is familiar.

Then, looking at my credit card bill I discovered charges from ValueMax and DealMax which I had never heard of. Calling them up they said that someone at the email address andylander@mac.com had purchased a gas card and membership in these companies. (Yes, you can bombard his email if you like, it probably is a dead letter box by now. I haven't bothered.) The companies acted all innocent and said they'd refund my membership. I think they are in on it with these fictitious people who "sign up" for free gas cards. But how did they get access to my credit card? The credit card company says to wait and see. Of course I feel assaulted and violated. Warning everyone: check your bills frequently. Do not sign up for "free gas" cards.