Signpost

This is a signpost to let you know that the active version of amo vitam, or "Life, the Universe, and a Few-Odd Other Things", resides over here: www.amovitam.ca. Has done so for a number of years now. Just in case you're wondering, and have stumbled on this page in search of erudition from a writer and her stuffed bear.
Meanwhile, here's a photo of Steve reading Shakespeare.

Moving House

Steve pointing you at the new page

So it's official: amo vitam is moving house. From today on, Steve and I will be found over at Wordpress, at amovitampress.wordpress.com. However, I hope that I'll succeed in pointing www.amovitam.ca at the new site, so you can just get at it with that address. But all the old content will stay around over here; so if you feel you really can't do without the borscht recipe that's posted here or another reading of one of our poems, they're not going anywhere.

If you've had a subscription to amo vitam via email, you can continue getting the blog posts into your inbox by hopping over to the new site, simply clicking the nice little button in the top right corner of the "Home" page and putting in your email adress. In fact, please do so right this moment! That way you'll never have to miss any of our oh-so-erudite-and-amazing posts. Especially not the forthcoming announcement!

Life, the Universe, and Moving House. See you on the new page!

Love of Life

It's August 1st today, which means it's our bloggiversary, Steve's and mine. That's right, four years ago we started hanging out in the cyberworld and bestowing our great wit and wisdom on you all. So that's an occasion to celebrate, no? Every year on this date, I archive my blog posts, and start a new file on my computer for the next round. We're up to "blog 5" now by way of a file name.

A few weeks ago, my cousin got me a lovely necklace at the local Farmer's & Crafter's Market. She wanted to give me a gift, and I saw this piece and loved it, so that's what she got me. It's a carnelian necklace, and it goes with a bracelet I've had for, oh, fifteen years or thereabouts. Actually, the latter is a mandala - you can bend it into all kinds of shapes, use it as a bracelet, hair piece, candle holder, crown for your stuffed bear, or just a plain old fidget. One of my favourite pieces of jewellery, and I always get compliments when I wear it. It's made of stainless steel wire, metal beads, and stones of smoky quartz and carnelian agate.

Steve regally modelling the carnelians

Now, there are deep meanings in those stones. They're supposed to do things for you; you know, attract wealth, peace of mind, love and happiness, or something of that kind. I think. I really don't go for that kind of thing, as a rule; I chose that particular mandala because I liked the colour of the stones and they go with almost everything I wear. So I've never been able to remember what carnelian is supposed to do for me, because I didn't really care.

But then the other day, on our holidays, I was in a gift shop, and they were selling stones - and each of them came with a little card that explained precisely what the stone is supposed to do for you. Of course, I promptly forgot most of what it said about carnelian - I think it was supposed to increase clarity of mind and purpose, or whatever. But one thing stuck out: one of the attitudes carnelian is supposed to foster in its wearer is - wait for it! - Love of Life. So that's why I'm drawn to carnelian, eh? It's the Amo Vitam Stone. Amo vitam, in case you've forgotten (or never knew) is Latin for "I love life", and I started using it as my blog title because AMO happens to be my initials, and because I do - love life, that is.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and the Amo Vitam Stone. Happy Bloggiversary!

Stuck in the Stacks

Apologies for the rather lengthy silences on the blogging front these days. My life pretty much looks like this right now:

That's right, I'm stuck in the stacks. Research stacks on fairy tales, "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" for now, "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Frog Prince" hereafter. If you want to hear where I'm rambling my way along the research lane, you can follow me over at quill and qwerty. The last thing I discovered was a really great book by Orson Scott Card, Enchantment, which is a retelling of the "Sleeping Beauty" story, very loosely and very brilliantly. It won't really do much for my paper, but it was very interesting nonetheless. Then again - maybe it will (do something for my paper, that is)? Hmmm...  And there I go, off I go on a rumination rabbit trail again...

Life, the Universe, and Being Stuck in Research Stacks. I'll talk to you when next I surface.

Social Realism

Steve got a book! Well, okay, I got a book. A friend found it for me at a second-hand store, and at first I wondered why - I mean, I love kids' books, but why this particular one? Then I cracked open the cover, and all became clear: it's not for me, it's for Steve. Obviously.

It's called Teddy Edward in the Country, by Patrick and Mollie Matthews (published by Golden Pleasure Books in London in 1962), and it's the story of a stuffed bear, Teddy Edward, on a visit to the country with his human, Sarah (they normally live in London), as chronicled by lots of interesting photos. You don't see much of Sarah in the pictures, but lots of cows, swans, rabbits, and even some hedgehogs. And Teddy Edward, of course.

Steve considers it the best thing in Social Realism he's read in a long time; it's very true to life, he says. At least to life in England in the early 1960s.

It kind of threw him for a loop when I told him that the Sarah-girl in the picture is well over fifty now and probably has grandchildren; a bear's lifespan is very different from a human's - some only make it a few years before their plush is loved off, others last decades. For all we know, Teddy Edward is still alive and kicking somewhere in the home counties, and conversing with calves and kittens every summer. Maybe we should try to look him up if we ever make it to England.


Life, the Universe, and Social Realism for Bears. It's all in how you look at it.

Me, Too

A friend of mine posted this article on Facebook the other day: "Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy". The gist of the article is that GenY people, born between the late 70s and mid-90s, are unhappy because of the expectations they have on life - expectations that they're special, and therefore should be extra-successful, not like everyone else. There's a gap between expectation and reality, and that's what makes for unhappiness. Happiness, the author says, is Reality minus Expectations; if the expectations exceed reality, you end up with a negative balance.

Now, I'm not a GenY person, I'm a GenX'er (that's those of us born in the 60s and 70s, between the Boomers and GenY). But what this article is saying applies just as well to us. See, one of the points it makes is that GenY'ers are set up for overblown expectations because of what they see around them, namely on social media. What they - or rather, we - see is the carefully crafted public image of friends, relations and former classmates, the image that is presented to the world via Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else is out there. And guess what? That image is always a pretty one - a flattering profile picture, stories of success, status updates about what a good time we're having at our resort vacation, and so on. So when we take a look around our virtual reality world, everyone else seems to be doing well - everybody else but us.

So do I do it any differently? Nope, I don't. My status updates are chirpy, funny (well, there are great jokes circulating on Facebook), occasionally sentimental, often trivial, sometimes triumphant. But what I don't tell you is that at 4:30 that morning, I was lying in bed sobbing into my pillow because I woke up early (again) and depression crashed in on my head, making me feel like a failure on all fronts. I don't tell you that I've gained thirty pounds in the last three years and hate it (and I certainly don't post a profile picture showing off that fact). I don't tell you that those thirty pounds are the direct result of my habits - too much sitting, too much eating, too much wine, and too little of whatever else one is supposed to do to counteract the poundage accumulation and be generally healthy. I don't tell you these things because I value my privacy, but mostly because vulnerability of this kind of profoundly scary.

It is for all of us. But if you listen to Brené Brown, she'll tell you that it's that very vulnerability that is the pathway to health (emotional health, anyway). Those two little words, "Me, too!", are immensely powerful. And the realisation that behind it all our friends' glowing public profiles hide a whole lot of mess can go a long ways. Our lives are messy. My house is dirty (no, really, it is. I'm not one of those people who apologise for the state of a house that looks like a picture from Better Homes and Gardens. I've got mould on my window frames, dust bunnies in the corners of the rooms, a rim of grunge around the bottom edges of my cupboards, and, please, let's not even talk about the storage area in the basement.), my children didn't turn out the way I had anticipated back in my idealistic twenties (I thought if I raised them "right", they would become a certain kind of person. They didn't. I can't show them off as products of my superior parenting or homeschooling. They're great people whom I like a lot, but they're not what I thought they would, or should, be.), and I never yet did do that amazing, world-saving thing that I thought I would do with my life (I was never quite sure what it would be, just that there would be one). My whole lifestyle - heck, my whole life - isn't what I had expected, what, twenty-five years ago, I would have thought was the "right" way to be.

And if I've ever given the impression in public that my life is, in any shape or form, perfect, I apologise. Because it isn't. I can't stand people who have it all together, who exude that smugness of "I'm right, and my life is right, and if only you did what I do you wouldn't be such a [insert insulting epithet]". Well, I certainly don't have it all together. Not by a long shot. I'm still working on that balance, the happiness equation from that article - Happiness = Reality - Expectations. We usually can't do much to alter the "Reality" variable of that equation, but the "Expectations" one, that's changeable. Our expectations are shaped, in part, by what we see around us, what we perceive others' reality to be. Admitting to who we really are, what our actual reality is, might help make the answer to that equation into a positive number for each other.

And just by way of illustration, here's a picture of Johnny and Steve (Steve just got a cat tongue wash, that's why he's looking a little exhausted). They never have problems with this issue, even though Johnny, for one, well might have: all other cats have four legs, he's only got three. Talk about a gap between expectation and reality! But he never lets it bother him. Maybe it's because he doesn't go on Facebook much.

Life, the Universe, and Expectations. Me, too, friend, me too.

Ontological

Steve meditating on the ontology of a walnut

I reached a milestone today: I was able to use "ontological" in a sentence. If you're going "Huh? Onto-what?", believe me, I know where you're coming from. That word has been the bane of my grad school existence. I've been telling myself that if I ever learned to use it in a sentence, I'd have arrived - and that day came today.

Then again - maybe not. I still haven't used "ontological" in a word combination of my own choosing, I'm just able to quote something someone else said, and actually understand what they're talking about. But that's a big step in the right direction, isn't it? It represents an ontological shift, for me. There, I did it, I did it! Except I'm not entirely sure that what I just said actually makes sense.

Okay, "ontological". What does it actually mean? The word kept cropping up early in my grad school experience, in philosophy readings and such. I kept looking it up to try to get a handle on it, but it still didn't really make sense. The definitions all say something like "Ontology: the study of being", and some go on much longer about it. And usually, when I encountered that word, that definition didn't really help me make any sense of what I was reading. But then, a while back, I was reading some folktale theory, and the word popped up in a context where I actually understood what they were saying (Score!). And then the other day, I ran across a book review on this blog which was talking about Brian Boyd's book On the Origin of Stories, and what Jenny was saying about it made me rush out (metaphorically - into cyberspace, anyway) to get a hold of this book, which was well worth it (I waffle on about it here).

What she said was this: according to Boyd, "people find stories most memorable when the characters of the stories cross ontological boundaries." Huh, you say? Well, here, let me explain, out of my new-found state of enlightenment. The passage in question in Boyd's book analyses Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who. Dr. Seuss constantly messes with our ideas of what's real - specifically, by creating these really weird creatures, with what animals are. We have a quite clear idea of animals' being, and he crosses that boundary and gives fish antlers or puts wheels on some critter. That's ontology - he is saying something about a state of being.

As for finding stories most memorable when the characters "cross ontological boundaries", that's what our fascination with fantasy stories is all about. Think about it: of the blockbuster movies of the last twenty years, probably some 80% (if not more) were fantasies. A neglected boy finds out he's really a wizard. An injured soldier finds himself on a planet of tall blue creatures. A group of small woolly-footed people team up with a wizard and elves to destroy an evil magical ring. (And so on.) We know what things are really like, we have a clear grip on the nature of being - and we love stories that cross those boundaries, that tell of an alternate state of being. Ontological boundaries.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and "Ontological" Used in a Sentence. Oh frabjous day, I have arrived.

Olympic Hockey

Steve ready to cheer Canada in the Olympics

I don't give a rip about hockey. Oops, did I say that out loud? I might have just jeopardised my chances of ever getting Canadian citizenship. Oh, wait! Wait! Before you send me hate mail, delete the link to my blog, unfriend me on Facebook and refuse to ever speak to me again, hear me out.

It's true, I'm afraid - I don't care about hockey, and I really know nothing about it. But one thing I do know, and that's that Canadians care passionately about this game. I found out just how passionately four years ago, this very Sunday, during the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010. The Man and I wanted to go for lunch, and we made the mistake of picking the local pub to get our eats. We got into the pub, and it was crowded - really crowded. Maple leaf motifs everywhere. And there was such a sense of excitement the air was practically crackling with it. We did get a seat, and then we realised that on the big TV screens there were guys on skates, and a big arena - that, in fact, they were winding up for the gold medal game, the final day, the BIG ONE - men's hockey, Canada vs. the USA (which tells you right there where our heads were at; we didn't even know it was on that day). I tell you, it was just a little scary. We were there early enough to be able to get our food and get out of there before the game started - slink out, rather. It would have been more than my life would have been worth to say out loud what I just said up top there; the crowd might have just torn me to pieces and fed me to the nearest coyotes. Besides, we knew our seats would get snapped up the minute we left. So we went home, and the Man and the offspring watched the game on TV - I went and had a nap, I'm afraid. But when I got up from my nap, I found out that Canada had, indeed, got the gold; at overtime, in a very dramatic play, no less.

And you know what? I was thrilled! I was so very, very excited. Not because the game means anything to me, but because the whole country erupted in celebration. All around me, people were ecstatic. The atmosphere of triumph, of victory, was fantastic. And it was EVERYWHERE. To have won the gold medal in Canada's sport on Canadian home soil - there was nothing like it. Canada was one big party zone that day. It was wonderful.

The 2010 Olympic Flame coming through our little town

I might not care about the game, but I care about the people who care about the game - so I guess, in a sense, I do care about hockey, after all. I care because others care. I care because I live in Canada, and Canada cares about hockey. I'm actually quite nervous about the game that is being played as I write this, Canada vs. the US in the semi-finals. I'm not watching it, because, other than the fact that I really don't know what's going on on the ice, I find the tension hard to handle. There are too many people to whom this matters so very much. As for the men's gold medal game on Sunday, I'll be sure to stay out of the pub. I might just stay off the internet, too, until it's over - just tell me who won afterwards, will you? If it's gold for Canada, I'll be very happy.

Canada is terribly passionate about hockey - my boys got to watch yesterday's women's gold medal game in school, one in math class, the other in the school theatre on the big screen while they were supposed to have gym class. I ask you, what other country would put their high school classes on hold so they could watch a sports game? Canucks have their priorities.

Life, the Universe, and Olympic Hockey. I guess I'm a hockey fan by proxy.

Twelfth Night and Story Tropes

It's Twelfth Night today, the Twelfth Day of Christmas (twelve drummers drumming, in case you're wondering), and the eve of Epiphany. On Twelfth Night, Christmas time is really over. Wikipedia informs me that old English traditions have it that on that day, the Christmas decorations get taken down, and anything edible on them, such as fruit hung on the Christmas tree, becomes part of the Twelfth Night feast. One last bash before going back to work. Apparently those old English peasants got quite rowdy for Twelfth Night, and everyone partied rather strenuously.

Wikipedia also says that Twelfth Night, the Shakespeare play, was written somewhere around 1601/02 specifically for one of those parties, hence the title. The play itself has, of course, nothing whatever to do with Twelfth Night, the feast, being one of Shakespeare's gender-identity-mixup stories, not a Christmas party one. It's one of my favourites of his, especially the 1996 film version directed by Trevor Nunn, with Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia and Ben Kingsley as Feste. One piece of sheer genius in this movie is the casting of Imogen Stubbs and Steven Mackintosh as Viola and Sebastian - apart from the height difference between them, they look astonishingly alike, so they are actually believable as the boy-girl set of twins which are mistaken for one another when Viola puts on her brothers' clothes and becomes Cesario.

Steve unrecognisable in a cross-dressing disguise

That's one of Shakespeare's favourite tropes, the girl-dressed-up-as-boy who becomes instantly unrecognisable and extremely attractive to other girls who proceed to fall in love with him/her. Cross-dressing, in Shakespeare's day, seems to have been a most effective disguise - or, if not in his day, in his playwright's conventions, anyway. Elizabethan audiences apparently had no problem accepting that idea, which to us today seems rather silly. Put on a pair of trousers, and hey presto, your own mother won't know you! Uh, yeah, sure. How could the viewers be so gullible?

But then, we've got any number of silly story tropes today ourselves, and we're so used to accepting them as fact that we don't blink when yet another book or movie trots them out as a plot device. The "character with amnesia" is one example: how many stories have you read or watched where a character gets a thump on the head, forgets everything including their own name (which leads to all kinds of mix-ups and difficulties) and then gets another smack on the head which instantly unscrambles their brain and brings back all their memories? I know I've seen it done multiple times in fiction. But from what I understand, that's actually not at all the way real amnesia works (especially where the curative second thump is concerned). But writers can get away with using this plot device because we all accept it as "fact". In storytelling, it doesn't matter so much what's real, but what the audience is willing to believe, and that, after all, is what fiction is all about.

Life, the Universe, the Bard and Story Tropes. Happy Twelfth Night!

The Best-Laid Plans

I had planned to spend New Year's Eve eating copious junk food and partying with friends. But my body begged to differ with that plan. No, it demanded to differ, the finicky so-and-so. An upset stomach and a headache does not for cheerful parties make. So I spent the evening on the couch, watching Harry Potter in company of the offspring and the cats, nibbling on chips and periodically having my toes nibbled on by Johnnie Tripod (for some reason, feet wiggling under a blanket seem to be irresistible to cats). And then I went to bed earlier than I would have otherwise, and feel better for it this morning. It was, all things considered, an enjoyable evening, even though my plans did not work out.

Plans. I don't usually go in for New Year's resolutions, planning on all the positive changes I'm going to make in my life, because I'm fully aware that I'm only setting myself up for failure if I do. The best-laid plans of mice and men, and all that sort of thing. This year I'm especially aware of that issue. I keep thinking of what it was like, a hundred years ago on New Year's 1914. What resolutions did people make then, what plans did they form, what expectations did they have for that year? And then, not seven months later, in Sarajevo a shot was fired on an Austrian archduke, and all hell broke loose. For the next four years the world was plunged into a bloody war that completely changed the face of life as it had been known so far.

What are we gearing up for this year? There is absolutely no knowing. And making resolutions about what we're going to do or not do is not going to make one smidgen of a difference. Perhaps the only thing worth resolving is to keep living our lives to the best of our abilities, love our loved ones, enjoy what we have while we have it, and make what changes are needed at the moment they are necessary (rather than on an arbitrary Wednesday in the middle of winter just because the calendar says 01.01. on that day). Carpe diem - die on the carpet? Ah, no, don't keep carping on dying, I think that's what it comes down to. Grab hold of the day, and live it.

And once again, I'm preaching to myself.

New Year's Greetings from the Tigers and Bears

Incidentally, Steve informs me that stuffed bears don't have an issue with any of this. They don't make plans. Bears, like cats, are content to simply Be. So Steve intends to keep doing what he always does, which is sitting on my bedside table, discussing poetry with Horatio - and if he has any other resolutions for this coming year, he isn't telling me. And that's just as well.

Life, the Universe, and Best-Laid Plans. May your New Year be a string of Todays.

Snow White and Rose Red

from Wikimedia Commons

Steve thinks I'm studying the wrong Snow White story. Oh, didn't I say? This semester, one of my courses is a reading course on fairy tales, and I'm focusing on "Snow White". The one with the seven dwarfs. But Steve, being of the ursine persuasion, thinks I should do the one with the bear in it. His argument is that there's a dwarf in that one, too, so if I'm stuck on dwarfs, it'll do just as well. But sorry, Steve, "Snow White and Rose Red" just isn't well-enough known in English-speaking countries for there to be much scope for a whole course of study. No Disney or other movie adaptations, no cheesy YA novels, and nary a picture book to be had, unlike the Seven-Dwarfs version. Which makes me wonder if the dwarfs had a hand in disseminating the latter tale; it sure makes dwarfkind look good, while the other story - well... But you've probably never heard of "Snow White and Rose Red", have you? Well, here it is - my version. (If you want to read the proper Grimms' one, #161 in the Children's and Household Tales, you can find it here.)

There once was a poor widow who lived in a little cottage in the woods. In the garden in front there were two rose trees, one white, one red. Inside the cottage, there were two little girls, one called Snow White, the other Rose Red. (Creative, eh? You gotta wonder if the kids were named after the trees, or the trees planted for the kids.) Those two little girls were the poor widow's daughters, and they were so good and sweet, it's downright nauseating. (The Grimms go on for more than a page about just how good these kids were. I'll spare you the recital.) So one bitterly cold winter's night, they were snugly sitting by the fireside, mother reading out of a fat old book while the girls were spinning (yup. With a spinning wheel.) when a heavy knock fell on the door. "Go open the door, girls," says mama, "it'll be a poor woodsmen needing shelter from the cold!" (Apparently they hadn't heard of not letting strangers in the house.) So the girls opened the door, and outside stood - a big, black bear. Now, it seems they had heard that black bears are dangerous, so they let out a shriek and tried to slam the door, but the bear got his foot in the crack first (well, okay, that's not what the Grimms say, but it's the gist of it), and said, "Kind ladies, don't be afraid! I only seek to warm myself by your fire." Now the mother figured that a talking bear must be less of an issue than the ordinary growly kind, so she let him in and talked the girls into coming out from behind the sofa, where they'd been hiding. He stretched himself out by the fire, got the kids to brush the snow out of his fur, and once they figured out that he was really quite tame (besides being able to talk), they made right pests of themselves, petting and poking and rolling all over him, using him as a sort of live hearth rug or oversized puppy dog. The bear put up with it quite good-humouredly; in fact, they had such a good time that the mother asked him to stay the night. When he left in the morning, he snagged his fur on the door latch, and Rose Red thought she saw a little bit of gold underneath - but she wasn't quite sure, so she didn't say anything. Mama invited him back the following evening, and so all winter long, the bear spent his nights at the cottage, sleeping in front of the fire and being plagued by the little girls.
 Now, come spring, bear said, "I can no longer spend my nights in your charming company, for I must go and protect my treasure from the wicked dwarfs which come out of their caves now that it is warmer. Farewell, my friends!" (or something equally sonorous; he talked kind of posh) and took himself off into the woods.
So then one day the girls were out picking flowers or something, when they made a new acquaintance. By a log, they saw something hopping up and down, and when they got closer, they noticed it was a dwarf, with the end of his long beard caught in a slit in the log. He'd been trying to split the log for firewood, and got caught. He was an extremely rude and self-absorbed dwarf, yelling at the girls and calling them names, but nevertheless, they helped him out. Snow White had her sewing scissors in her pocket (being that sort of girl), and she cut the end off the dwarf's beard and set him free. He swore at her for mutilating his beard, collected a bag of jewels he had stashed nearby, and scampered off. This being a fairy tale, the same thing happened twice more: once they cut the dwarf's beard free from a fishing line he was caught in (the fish was trying to pull him under), and the other time they pulled him out of the talons of an eagle who wanted to lunch on the crabby little fellow. Even when the dwarf yelled at them for tearing his clothes in the rescue attempt, they didn't regret what they had done, which shows you just how sweet, good, and slightly dimwitted they were.
But the last time they met the dwarf, the outcome was just a little different. They were coming back from town, and there in a clearing was the dwarf. He'd spread a big bag of jewels all over the ground, and was gloating over his hoard, when he noticed the girls. He started screaming and yelling at them, but then suddenly, with a growl, a big black bear jumped out of the bushes. (You know where this is going, don't you?) He attacked the dwarf, who started whimpering and whining, begging the bear to spare his life: "Here, eat those two little girls instead, they'll be much tastier than me!" Of course, wicked ungratefulness of this kind must be punished, and the bear did the honours: one swipe of his paw, and the bad little dwarf was no more.
The girls were running for it - they weren't sure if the bear wouldn't take the dwarf's advice and have them for dessert - when they heard the bear's voice: "Snow White, Rose Red, do not be afraid! It is I, your friend!" They stopped to wait for him, but when the bear caught up with them his black bearskin fell off him, and there before them stood a most handsome young man, dressed from head to foot in cloth-of-gold. (Being good-looking doesn't mean he had fashion sense.) "I am a king's son," he proclaimed (to the surprise of no one except Snow White and Rose Red), "and the evil dwarf had me under an enchantment, so I had to live as a bear until I was freed by his death." (Which means that if the girls hadn't been so polite to the rude dwarf and kept saving his life, the prince would have been freed from his enchantment much sooner. I guess the moral of that is that you really should let rude people get what's coming to them.)
So Snow White married the prince, and Rose Red married his brother (which sounds like cradle-snatching to me, as the girls are described as quite young for most of the story), and with the dwarf's treasure, which they divided between them, they all lived quite a cushy life. Mama came to live in the palace with them, of course, and she brought along the two rose trees, which continued to  bloom happily ever after, each summer, one white and one red.

There, now you know the story of "Snow White and Rose Red". Isn't it fun? It was always one of my favourites (not just Steve's).

Life, the Universe, Snow White and Rose Red. And if they haven't died by now, they still live on today.

Bloggiversary

It was our third bloggiversary yesterday, Steve's and mine. Meaning we've been blogging for three years now. So in honour of the occasion, here is Steve sitting on a wood stack on the campsite where we were last weekend. I didn't share my scrambled eggs with him, though - he's picky about them, and I hate people being picky about food. Even if they're furry bears.

Apart from that, I really have nothing much to say today. So this was Life, the Universe, and a Bloggiversary. Happy August from me and Steve!

Greetings

Steve waving at you

I was driving home today along our little country road, about one kilometer from the highway to my house. It's a popular road with people going for walks - not that it's a particularly interesting road, just sort of straightish and flattish, wending its way through orchards and houses on largish lots, some pretty, some not-so-pretty (I'll give you three guesses which category my yard falls under. No, not that one.). Actually, looking to your right, as you walk northwards, you see the lake. I guess that's pretty spectacular, all right, so it probably accounts for the popularity of the road.

Anyway, point being: I was driving home. And there were people walking on the side of the road. So I waved a greeting at them. It's what we do, us country folk - we greet people who walk on our road. When I was a bike-riding teenager in the countryside of the Bavarian Alps, I used to take fiendish delight in startling poor unsuspecting tourists, hiking along the roadside, by shouting a cheerful "Grüss Gott!" at them as I whizzed past on my bike. You see, being city folk, out in the country on holiday, they weren't used to being greeted by strangers; in the city you stare straight in front of you and avoid eye contact. So being said hello to always made them jump. It was quite amusing.

But around here, people aren't as jumpy, so it's not actually for entertainment value I greet them. I just do it for ordinary country-folk friendliness. So there was one stranger with her dog, and I waved at her as I passed. And then there was another one, stepping out with a brisk exercisey kind of stride, and I gave her the same wave. She waved back at me, and then I recognised her: she was a neighbour, someone I know by name and like to talk to. But by then I had already passed her, and could no longer amend my wave.

Because, you see, there are different kinds of greetings. There's the ordinary for-anyone greeting, a generic wave, just a lift of the hand or, if you're on foot yourself, a "HE-llo!" or "GOOD morning!", called out in a cheerful sort of voice that says you don't know this person, but isn't it a nice day and you hope they're enjoying their walk. Sometimes the from-inside-the-car wave amounts to a kind of Albrecht-Dürer-ish hand signal - I don't even raise my whole hand, just the first two fingers, and the thumb and remaining two fingers form a little ring below them. (Pax vobiscum, my children.)

 And then there's the I-recognize-you-as-my-friend kind of greeting. On foot and verbally, that's a "Oh hi, [insert name of person if you know it]!" said energetically (with a higher pitch on the "hi"). It means "I recognize you and am glad to see you, personally". The from-inside-the-car equivalent is an energetic wave - your hand has to waggle back and forth at least a couple of times, with the express purpose of making sure the other person has seen you and your wave and knows they've been acknowledged. Usually they'll waggle right back

I think my friend today recognized me before I did her; I'm pretty sure I got the more enthusiastic wave from her. But that's okay. Next time I see her, I can wave at her extra-energetically, so it'll be evened out again. Or perhaps a special emphasis on the "HI!" if the encounter is verbal?

Life, the Universe, and the Fine Art of Roadside Greetings. How're you doing today?

Self-Explanatory

Steve modelling my current predicament

The Second Day of Christmas

It's the second day of Christmas. I believe that calls for Two Turtle Doves. And yesterday, it was a Partridge. In a Pear Tree. Why a pear tree, one wonders? (Apart from the alliteration, of course. But then, why isn't it a quetzal in a quince tree, huh?) Partridges. Hmm. There's Mr Partridge in "Tom Jones" (the book, not the singer), who is accused of being Tom's father. He's the sort of chap who'd be quite liable to sit around in pear trees, being an odd sort of bird, and hungry half the time. But I don't think that's the Partridge the song is talking about.

Today also happens to be St Stephen's Day. You know, the one that Good-King-Wenceslas-looked-out-on-the-feast-of. Stephen, as you no doubt are fully aware, was the first Christian martyr; he got stoned to death because he had the temerity to be a do-gooder who handed out food and such-like to poor people on account of his strong faith in something other than what the establishment wanted him to have faith in, which was principally their authority and the bounden duty of everyone to acknowledge said authority as the be-all and end-all of life. Stephen wouldn't have none of it; he insisted on believing what he believed and carrying on with his do-goodery. And the powers-that-be didn't like that. So they decided to do away with him (silly them). St Stephen is rather a cool character, because he wasn't really all that heroic - he was just a kind, gentle man who refused to play ball with the bullies.

So I suppose the Turtle Doves are kind of apt for today's true love's gift, being the usual symbol of innocence and gentleness and so on - just like St Stephen himself.

Next up: Three French Hens, and the feast day of St John the Evangelist (St John the Baptist's Day being, of course, the summer solstice counterpoint to Christmas, celebrated on June 24th. If you listen carefully on that night, you can hear the animals speak in human language. Ditto for Christmas Eve, I think. But seeing as we've missed that opportunity for this year, we'll have to wait for Saint-Jean-Baptiste 2013 - there's always another opportunity, thankfully.).

And none of that has anything to do with Steve, who is named that just because "Steve is a nice name" (as you will know if you've ever watched "Over the Hedge").

Life, the Universe, and the Twelve Days of Christmas. Happy St Stephen's Day!

The Pleasure of Socks

Steve got socks. Christmas socks, at that. A friend just gave them to me for a Christmas tree decoration; they are a lovely red-and-white striped knit with red heels and toes, and they just happen to be a perfect fit for Steve. Sorry, Christmas Tree, stuffed bears get priority.

A nice pair of socks really is a beautiful thing. Nothing says "comfort" like a cozy pair of fluffy socks. And, on the other hand, nothing is as uncomfortable as clammy wet socks. Brrrrr. I hear that keeping your socks dry is absolutely crucial if you're going to survive long marches, say, in the military. I'd better mention it to Steve, just in case he was thinking of enlisting.

My favourite every-day kinds of socks are plain cotton ones, in a medium-weight knit. For really cold weather, or inside hiking or snow boots, thick woolly socks over top of the cotton ones are the best (a red stripe around the cuff is optional). And then for wearing inside nicer shoes, I have thin black socks, probably with a dash of nylon; but those kind are starting to leave the realm of sockishness and move over into stockingland. So I'm not sure they qualify for this post. Anyway, a really good pair of socks is a pleasure (Professor Dumbledore would tell you the same).

Now, I wonder if I should make Steve a toque to go with his socks - something in a Santa style, perhaps? But I don't know if I have any red yarn of the required weight available. Or the time to do any knitting right now. Also, his ears look warm enough right now, so he'll probably be okay, don't you think? He doesn't go playing in the snow very often, anyway. For now, he might as well just enjoy his socks.

Life, the Universe, and the Pleasure of Socks. Every bear should have a pair of his own.

The Problem With Stuff

My man and I were talking with some other people today, and the conversation turned, as it sometimes does, to how so often we don't do what we really want to do. So often, we'll say to each other: "We really should get together with (Insert Name Here)," but we never do.

That poor Insert-Name-Here, he's one neglected friend. Well, him and his missus, Mrs Insert-Name-Here. Actually, to be precise, him, his missus, and all the Little Insert-Name-Heres, not to mention their grannies, uncles and aunties. We keep wanting to meet with them, because they're such great friends and we miss talking to them, but then we don't. And for why? Because we're busy. We're busy, and when we're not busy, we're tired from being busy.

Steve the Stuffed Bear buried under Stuff

And it's all because of our stuff. You see, there's six people in our family. Six largish people. And people need food. And they need space to live in, and clothes to wear, and transportation to get from here to there, and roofs over their heads and floors under their feet and windows to look out of and a grassy space out back to bounce on a trampoline on and have boxes full of dirt to grow carrots in. Because they like carrots, which is all to the good. We want them to like carrots.

But all this carrot-growing takes time, and energy. And so does looking after all that other stuff that comes with having roofs and floors and windows and clothes and toys and cars and trampolines. So much stuff. So much time and energy that goes into that stuff. And if it's not looking after the stuff, it's acquiring the stuff, and in order to acquire the stuff, you need money, and that requires enormous amount of time and energy to earn it. And even if you're tired of all this stuff-acquisition-and-maintenance and want to reverse the process by just getting rid of some of the stuff - well, have you ever tried cleaning out a twelve-year-old's bedroom? I rest my case (but not my weary head).

Sometimes, I almost wish something drastic would happen and rid me of all those stuff obligations. Something like, I don't know, a forest fire that wipes out our house so we could collect the insurance money and live on it happily ever after (with no stuff). Well, yeah - of course I know that I'd be horribly traumatised and would have a nervous breakdown long before I'd see a dime of the insurance money; I know this wouldn't be a great solution - so quit intruding common sense on my extremist fantasies, will you? My point is that sometimes I wish all the stuff would just go away. Because I'm tired. I'm tired of looking after stuff, of buying more stuff, of getting rid of broken stuff, of buying and cooking foodstuff and then disposing of uneaten and rotten foodstuff, of cleaning stuff and mending stuff and moving stuff from here to there because it's occupying the space of other stuff. And then, finally, I just hide my head inside a computer screen or a lovely Austen movie to forget about my stuffy obligations. I'm tired, you know?

So if you're one of those friends, a member of the numerous clan of Insert-Name-Heres, please forgive me for not having spent any time with you lately. I really miss you.

Life, the Universe, and the Problem With Stuff. I think I'll have a nap now.

When Your Bear Won't Write Your Post For You

Steve and Horatio being busy

I asked Steve if he'd write another blog post for me, but he says he's busy. Go figure. So much for supportive bearhood. I have no idea what he's busy with - probably composing poetry, or designing a new ultra-light aircraft.

So I guess I have to write my own post again. But the problem is, I've run clean out of inspiration, not to mention energy. And without either inspiration, energy, or, in a pinch, a looming deadline, decent pieces of writing aren't easy to come by. Nor, for that matter, are indecent ones.

I don't know if you, gentle reader, really want to hear about how tired and dragged-out I've been lately. Probably not. I'll spare you the whining, as I know full well that many of you are in far tougher spots that I am in your life. Fact is, I'm not in a tough spot at all; I've got a really great life. And I know it. But that knowledge doesn't change the fact that I go through times when everything is just too much, and there's a slight haze of grey over a lot of things. I'm not talking about the haze that permeates the kitchen after burning the pizza - no, this one doesn't set off the smoke alarms. It's more of a fog that makes the outlines of things blurry, not fumes that burn your eyes and choke your lungs. This haze can settle in all the chinks and crannies, and eventually rust you up like the Tin Man of Oz so you can't move any longer and need to wait for Dorothy and the Scarecrow to give you a hand with the oilcan.

Did you know that the Tin Man was originally a Winkie? It's true, I read it in the book. He was a woodcutter by the name of Nick Chopper who had a bunch of nasty accidents courtesy of one of the Witches, and ended up accidentally chopping off all of his limbs (not all at once, fortunately), until his whole body, head included, was one giant prosthesis. As a matter of fact, he was the original android - move over, Data, you're a copycat! Come to think of it, Data and the Tin Man are rather alike in their quest, too, both of them looking for a heart, or true humanity ("I want to be a real boy!" Oh, wait, different story.). Maybe Data isn't a copycat, but the Tin Man's descendant. The heart the Tin Man got from the Wizard didn't get passed down, that's why Data is still struggling with the same issues in the 24th century.

And that's the kind of waffling you get from me when I'm too out of it to write something witty and profound. Blame Steve - I did ask him nicely to fill in. But what can you do when your bear is busy? Drivel on about Tin Men, I suppose. I guess the fog will clear eventually (it usually does) and you'll get wit and profundity again. But, perhaps, it's just as well you knew I'm not always on top of the world. Maybe, if you run across Dorothy and the Scarecrow, could you point them in my direction?

Life, the Universe, Bears and Tin Men. Perhaps Steve isn't too busy to help out with the oilcan.

Sock Puppetry, or: Showing Off and Hiding Out

The Duchess of Parma

There's this lovely term floating around the internet: sock puppetry. In case you haven't run across it, it's when people build themselves fake identities in order to make themselves (in their regular identity) look good. Say, for example, if I created multiple google accounts for myself, and then posted admiring responses to my own blog posts, that would be sock puppetry. (No, Steve made his own account, I had nothing to do with it. Excuse me? Who're you to say that a bear with two-inch-wide fuzzy paws can't type?)

But there's another, subtler form of sock puppetry. Oh, perhaps it's not technically called that. But I think it might well be. It's when we portray one persona on the internet, but behind the scenes, things are really different.

I used to do puppetry in high school. Marionetteering, to be exact (handling marionettes, string puppets). I have some photos from the first show I was part of, a production of Dr. Faustus - not Goethe's classical piece, but one closer to Marlowe's original. My character was the Duchess of Parma (I both handled and voiced her; we recorded the play on tape and then moved the puppets to that soundtrack for the performance). She's a beautiful, elegant noblewoman who does some heavy-duty flirting with Faust, but doesn't really get anywhere with it. But I was also Helen of Troy, a speechless specter which is used by Mephistopheles to seduce Faust away from his impending conversion. And I was a silly-looking demon, who, at the beginning of the play, gets rejected in favour of Mephistopheles (being a much more sophisticated-looking devil, the latter was obviously better suited to Faust's purposes. I mean, he had a silk-lined cloak - how could my sackcloth-clad character compete with that?). But really, literally behind the scenes, where we stood on a little walkway holding the cross bars over the miniature stage on which we made the marionettes dance, hidden behind the backdrop, I was an awkward, naive eighth-grade girl who had a crush on the boy who manned the sound equipment (I think for the most part he was unaware of my existence).

When you're doing puppetry, you can hide behind the backdrop. On the internet, you can be whoever you want to be. You can, all at the same time, show off and hide out. You can tell people in the breeziest of tones about your latest wonderful project, and make yourself sound like you've got it all together. But meanwhile, your world isn't nearly so cheery and bright. You've been fighting fatigue and depression for weeks (or not fighting it, as it were). You've been dumped by a friend whom you were trying to help. Your beloved kitten has vanished; he's almost certainly become coyote bait. Your garden is going to pot (no, not weed. Just weeds. And the plants you liked died of thirst). Your remaining kitty, the neurotic one, has gone and pooped in your bathtub (fortunately, you weren't in it at the time). And so on.

I think it's interesting that the word "person", or "persona", comes from the Latin or Greek word for "mask, character in a drama". We wear masks. We play puppets; whether sock puppets or string puppets, it hardly matters. I don't know if we can get away from it, from presenting one persona in one place, and another one in another; the whole of us just doesn't fit on that little marionette stage.

Internet sock puppetry is offensive because it is meant to deceive. But perhaps it's possible to play our puppet personas without deception. I don't think anyone who watched that production of Dr Faustus, back in 1981, was  really under the impression that any of us were the characters we voiced and acted (well, if they thought that I was, in fact, a ten-inch-high Italian duchess, let's leave them their illusions; they're probably happier that way). Masks don't have to mean deception. Sometimes they can even be protection. Sometimes it's safer to hide behind the scenes, and the dusky lighting backstage can be comforting. So long as, at the end of the play, you step out from behind the curtain, and rejoin your friends and family who have come to watch you do your thing with the puppet on the string. So long as you're not trying to deceive.

Life, the Universe, Showing Off and Hiding Out. Sometimes things are better on that tiny little stage.

Beartales the First

Hi. This is Steve. My human's been a bit out of it lately, so I thought I'd help her out and talk to you people for once. You know, she's been in the kind of mood where she plops herself on the couch and pops in that movie, you know the one where they're all mincing around and talking funny, and the men wear tall tubes on their heads, and every once in a while someone goes "Mister Daaaahcy!" There's not one single bear in sight anywhere in that movie, but she seems to like it anyway. And it's five hours long. That kind of thing. You know?

So, we went on that trip a while ago, you know, we went on an airplane, and then I sat on a bedside table in a hotel for a couple of days. Here's me, in the hotel:

 

I like travelling; it's fun. I tell Horatio all about it when we get home, and he likes listening, but he doesn't want to go anywhere himself. He's a hometiger, I suppose. And then, after I'm done telling him about our trip (sitting in the backpack squished under an airplane seat is loud. And tight. You know?), he tells me about the poetry he's composed while I was gone. He never writes it down, though, which is too bad because it's good poetry. But maybe it's more of a performance art, you know? Writing it down would probably spoil it. I don't know if our human even knows about Horatio's poetry; I should tell her sometime.

Here's me in the backpack on the airplane:

 

Well, that's all I can think of telling you for today. Maybe I'll come back some time and tell you more; you're nice to talk to, you know?
This is Steve the Bear, signing off for today. Woolly Wishes!