hello, good friend

Bienvenidos, blog devotees. I apologize for the lengthy absence. Recently, my blogging attentions have focused on Godspell-related journaling. You can peer into my current goings-on at our web magazine, The Bridge Online.

But now we’re back in business.

Recent components of my erratically-constructed world:
Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
a well-worn Dell Pocket Crossword Puzzles book
The Union’s cookie dough Microblasts (what does that mean, “microblast”?)
Oprah (admittedly)
orange juice and black beans (odd combo, I’m aware)
apartment shopping
Towson, Maryland
www.verseit.com (guaranteed entertainment, check it out)
“Clap Ya Hands” on repeat. Choreography.
World Magazine
The “Juno” soundtrack (well worth the listen)
Spring Break planning
The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris

Currently, lists are my genre. Thus far in the semester, I’ve read and written more than I have in a while, so lists are about all I can muster. I’m in the midst of composing a 30-page senior thesis on my writing life. Go figure. I wasn’t aware that I led a writing life. (If I didn’t before, I certainly do now. Cranking out several pages a day hasn’t been easy.) So the straining, striving, and overall stressing yields a measly list. Hmph.

In Professor Sam Smith’s class we’ve been discussing character transformation in Spenser’s The Faerie Queen. As in, bad guy Malbecco evolves throughout the third book into jealousy itself. He goes the usual route: first he starts thinking jealous thoughts, then he commits jealous acts, then he becomes consumed by jealous emotions, and, finally, he sheds everything that was formerly himself and transforms into the very essence of jealousy. In the same way, the Redcrosse Knight (ah, hero!) transforms into holiness. He becomes the quintessence of holiness, of purity, of all that is good. Anyway, that’s how the conversation progressed.

Now, I probably missed some sweeping theological insight when my mind started wondering. Nonetheless, my thoughts went something like this: if we were to freeze frame some earlier moment in the story – before Malbecco ever became jealousy and Redcrosse Knight ever became holiness, before they ever reached their fully-embodied manifestations – we would behold a snapshot of some half-formed, in-between identity. A version of a “halfling,” perhaps. Both would appear as some muddled, mid-transformative, virtue-battling-vice characters. Neither jealousy nor its virtuous opposite. Neither true holiness nor true corruption. Mid-transformation. Faded in places, exposing gaps. And probably, if we were to analyze a character according to that single frame, we would determine that he wasn’t much of a “some”thing, more like an “inbetween/any/every”thing. He would seem wishy-washy, inconsistent, unprincipled, unconvincted, hypocritical, and a whole mess of other undesirable characteristics.

So I was thinking, ol’ Spenser sure understood a great deal about the human condition. Our characters, too, evolve in phases. In some phases – moments of triumph – we seem consistent, led by convictions, solid. But until we fully transform, our faded places and gaps oftentimes trump our opacities. Our identities seem flawed when they’ve yet to become…well, any certain thing. The inbetween-ness of our characters collides with the few moments of conviction.

And, ya know, I bet – if I were to delve deeper into the book - I would discover several moments when the Redcrosse Knight was dangerously close to veering in the vice direction and moments when Malbecco had opportunity to develop toward holiness. Likewise, our lives are peppered with moments of downfall, moments of victory. Phases.

No one’s a finished product, that’s what they say. Really compels me to cut myself – and everyone else – some slack for being distinctly phase-ish.