Futility
By Wilfred Owen
Move him into the sun-
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds-
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
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My younger son's school is apparently trying to drive me insane. Either that or someone there has a huge grudge against my family, but I can't imagine who. I got a letter (snail mail, in this era of phone calls and e-mails) from one of the magnet programs telling me that they had never received any of my son's recommendations -- not from his teachers, not from his guidance counselor. I know that his classroom teacher and guidance counselor at least filled out the forms, because the guidance counselor had lost hers and called to ask whether we had another and we had printed it out and rushed it over the day it was due. Somehow it never actually got sent, though. Now I must have everything sent again on Monday, assuming that all the recommendations are in the online database where they're supposed to be (they need the teachers' passwords to retrieve them and god help us if the science teacher has time to revise hers). And of course they'll be nearly a month late.
Yeah, it was not a terrific Friday. I ended up with a migraine, though I couldn't say how much is stress, how much is from having too much fatty, salty food quite possibly containing MSG yesterday and how much is weather and cycle related (I also didn't sleep well...whenever the heat is on round the clock, as it was yesterday because it was so cold, my skin gets very dry and itches and since I'm allergic to ingredients even in products marketed for sensitive skin, putting anything on it often makes it worse). I wrote a mediocre review of the worse-than-mediocre "The Savage Curtain", plus site columns saying goodbye to our book reviewer, and had dinner with my parents, homemade crab cakes which went a long way to restoring my mood. My mother had also found a watch pillow for younger son, so at least we had no hysteria at bedtime over this all-important issue.
1. How did you feel yesterday? Lucky!
2. What kind of obstacles do you face? Sloth. Well, and the feeling that it's not worth working my ass off when it's so hard to change anything.
3. Who is a good friend? The people who are there for you on your most whiny, self-indulgent days. Most friends are there for the really awful days and for the really good ones, but the ones that are just kind of cranky, frustrating and enervating are harder to get through without good friends.
4. What is your fondest memory? I don't know if I can pick one fondest memory! Younger son's naming ceremony, which was at my parents' house with lots of their friends and my friends in attendance, is a good one.
5. Does time always kill pain? There are losses that no amount of time can heal.
1. Would you rather have a fun job that doesn't pay well or a boring job that does? Have been making this choice since college and have always gone for fun job that doesn't pay well.
2. Would you sacrifice your morals for a job? No way. No job is worth that.
3. Would you ever take a job that requires you to be in costume? Hell yes! Though I'm allergic to a lot of makeup, so a job that requires a lot of makeup for a lot of hours is probably out of the question.
4. What is your fantasy job? Editing the Great American Novel.
5. Would you like fries with that? I'd prefer baked potato or mashed redskin potatoes.
I don't really have any...I'm not really nitpicky that way, characterization matters a lot more to me than whether they're calling Trelawney Sibyll or Sybill and which side of Hogsmeade the lake is on. And don't even get me started on Tolkien fans who insist that one should be able to recite the details of The Silmarillion before one has any business writing LOTR fic, or O'Brian fans who think one has to have memorized nautical tactics of the 1800s before one can write M&C fic.
In the evening we put on Man of La Mancha, which is on On Demand till the end of the month. It's not a very good adaptation of the stage musical, but Peter O'Toole is very enjoyable despite not being the singer Richard Kiley is on the Broadway cast album, and Sophia Loren is quite moving as Aldonza even though they cut "What Do You Want of Me?" ("Why do you batter at walls that won't break?/Why do you give when it's natural to take?/Where do you see all the good that you see,/And what do you want of me?") and her voice can't compare to Joan Diener's.
The Kansas Chapel at the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters, adjacent to the museum, based on the Sargent Chapel at the Central Congregational Church in Topeka with sunflower windows (in honor of the Kansas state flower) constructed from stained glass panels removed during a renovation of Wichita's Carnegie Library.
We're such wimps, we aren't going to the anti-war protest downtown because by the time older son is back from working at Hebrew school, the Metro will be crazy and we don't want to get stuck in the cold. I did send in my petition though!
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