Poem for Tuesday

From Idylls of the King
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

'So will ye grace me,' answered Lancelot,
Smiling a moment, 'with your fellowship
O'er these waste downs whereon I lost myself,
Then were I glad of you as guide and friend:
And you shall win this diamond,--as I hear
It is a fair large diamond,--if ye may,
And yield it to this maiden, if ye will.'
'A fair large diamond,' added plain Sir Torre,
'Such be for queens, and not for simple maids.'
Then she, who held her eyes upon the ground,
Elaine, and heard her name so tost about,
Flushed slightly at the slight disparagement
Before the stranger knight, who, looking at her,
Full courtly, yet not falsely, thus returned:
'If what is fair be but for what is fair,
And only queens are to be counted so,
Rash were my judgment then, who deem this maid
Might wear as fair a jewel as is on earth,
Not violating the bond of like to like.'

He spoke and ceased: the lily maid Elaine,
Won by the mellow voice before she looked,
Lifted her eyes, and read his lineaments.
The great and guilty love he bare the Queen,
In battle with the love he bare his lord,
Had marred his face, and marked it ere his time.
Another sinning on such heights with one,
The flower of all the west and all the world,
Had been the sleeker for it: but in him
His mood was often like a fiend, and rose
And drove him into wastes and solitudes
For agony, who was yet a living soul.
Marred as he was, he seemed the goodliest man
That ever among ladies ate in hall,
And noblest, when she lifted up her eyes.
However marred, of more than twice her years,
Seamed with an ancient swordcut on the cheek,
And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes
And loved him, with that love which was her doom.

--------

I wish I had a fun update on yesterday but I'm afraid it's all boring. My younger son wasn't feeling well, thus forcing the postponement of my lunch with (hope you enjoyed the soup without me sweetie! I owe you!), and then I had to do a bunch of work before taking the older son to fencing which at least is always entertaining to sit and watch and read during the slow parts. I did finish Post Captain and start H.M.S. Surprise so the day cannot be considered a loss by any accounting.

And I got my $13 and change from the CD price-fixing lawsuit, and so did my husband, so, gee, we have enough to buy two CDs off the bargain rack! Just what we need!

Last night I had a dream so weird that I figured I'd post it, just to see if anyone had any great insight into what it means. Sorry, , it doesn't involve...um, you know. *veg*

My husband and I have gone to Philadelphia for the weekend to go see October Project, which has reunited for one performance only at the Theater of the Living Arts. My parents are watching our kids for the weekend. In this dream TLA is a small venue, not quite a coffeehouse, though there is going to be food beforehand, barebecued stuff at long tables...not theater seating like usual at TLA. The reason October Project has gotten back together is as a benefit for gay marriage, and lots of couples will be getting married before the show. Men and women together can participate as well as same-sex couples as a show of solidarity, so my husband and I decide we'll renew our vows there.

There are also going to be short theatrical performances before the concert, and I have volunteered to do a monologue by Edward Albee that I did in a play in grad school ages ago. (It's from The American Dream, and in point of fact it's not a monologue, but I guess I am going to recite all the parts in the scene.) When we arrive I go to ask the theater manager, who appears to be , where I should go for costuming. She is helpful and friendly, tells me she has seen OP many times before and that she and her boyfriend will be in the first set of seats at the center table dancing on top of the table. I ask her if she'll save us a seats next to her, even though I doubt my husband will dance on the table and she might think he's a drag.

The concert won't be starting for quite awhile as they have only just started setting up for dinner and it appears that the actual cooking will take place outdoors. I wander around, wondering if I should check on my kids who are now apparently staying with my parents in the house next door on South Street. Then I spy Robert Picardo from Star Trek: Voyager, who has come for the concert. He is sitting with my eleventh grade English teacher, and they are both eating enormous cheese sandwiches. When I walk over to say hi, they are both very friendly and gesture me into a seat at their table. We talk about OP and I say it's really a shame they don't have a contract with a record label. Bob points out that Mary Fahl is on a major label and the rest of OP is doing their own stuff, but I say they were so much better together, greater than the sum of their parts, and they both agree. They have both seen my name on the program even though I didn't think the monologues were formal enough to require a program, and I suddenly realize I had better study my lines because I can only remember a handful of them from grad school.

I go looking for to get a copy of the play and to find out about my costume, which is apparently to be a dress with a big skirt kind of like the one Carrie wore in the last episode of Sex and the City. On the way to look for her, I see that the cooks are making grilled cheese sandwiches, big fat ones like the one Bob was eating, and they look and smell really good and there's no line for the food yet so I grab one. has a copy of the play in her office and is very casual about the whole performance thing -- the weddings and concert are the big deal here, the monologues are just filler -- but I am nervous anyway as I don't want to make a jackass of myself in front of Bob Picardo and my teacher and all these strangers. I study the lines and then realize I will have a lot of time to do so while in the line for the weddings which is already forming. On the way in, I pass a Mary Fahl poster and a guy working there tells me she stayed in Philly to be with her boyfriend which is the real reason the group broke up.

My husband and I get in line and the people already there in front of us are very friendly but the people coming in behind us are very pushy and trying to elbow ahead of us. Two of them are women, both alone, without partners, and I am positive they are just trying to get good seats for the concert rather than participating in the weddings, though it turns out that one of them is there with another woman. I am hoping will remember to save me a seat so my place in line won't matter, and I can't imagine they'll let the general public come take all the good seats, thus relegating all the gay marriage supporters to the very back, anyway.

My reaction: Wow, what a random assortment of things in one dream! ("One Dream" is the name of an October Project song, heh.) I recently got a DVD of OP live at TLA, and my husband and I had talked about going to Philly for my birthday to see Mary Fahl, but at the time I was too distracted waiting for The Return of the King to open to really care whether I went out of town. I suppose the theater where I performed Albee at the University of Chicago must remind me of TLA. The American Dream is an interesting choice anyway as it's all cynicism, which hopefully does not reflect my real sense of whether the gay marriage issue is going anywhere (and I played the world's worst mother). The fact that I'm wearing phoney-baloney Carrie's dress from phoney-baloney Sex and the City cannot be a good sign.

and I are having lunch together tomorrow, and I haven't seen her for a couple of months, though we have been talking on LiveJournal about gay marriage and other political issues. And I will probably have to write up a Bob Picardo interview for Trek Nation today because I saw that one had been posted at TrekWeb last night. Plus I probably read some Albee in eleventh grade, though I don't remember it now; but if I were picking one representative teacher from high school most likely to show up at a performance of mine, though, it'd be the one from this dream.

As for the renewal of vows, I've no idea how that fits in here other than that we went to TLA on one of our very first dates to see Monty Python's Life of Brian so it would be a renewal of sorts if we went there to see OP. I've also no idea what the pushy phony people are doing there -- I suppose that technically I am one of those -- I'm having a straight wedding at a gay marriage ceremony! And the whole business about being nervous about whether my husband would dance on the wooden tabletop in front of the stage with Mary Fahl is odd -- he's not big on public displays but he'll dance at concerts where other people are dancing, though he wouldn't volunteer to perform a monologue. The weirdness of blaming Mary Fahl's boyfriend for OP's breakup is even more odd as I know nothing about her (whether she has a boyfriend, whether she's straight even), and the impression seems to be that she and Emil and Julie had a big falling out over the music itself -- she wanted to write songs, they said no. So there are some weird sexual anxieties underlying all this but damned if I know what.

Gacked from and presented here for nostalgia's sake. It's probably true because I'd cry if I were Carrie and Charlotte's much too much the priss and while I love Samantha, I am SO not her...

You Are Most Like Miranda! While you've had your fair share of romance, men don't come first. Guys are a distant third to your friends and career. And this independence *is* attractive to some men, in measured doses. Remember that if you imagine the best outcome, it might just happen. Romantic prediction: Someone from your past is waiting to reconnect... But you'll have to think of him differently, if you want things to work. Which Sex and the City Vixen Are You Most Like? Take This Quiz Right Now! Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.