the girl | matching tracksuits

#28 — Chance and Good

Saturday 16 March 2013 | 0 Comments

Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good.

The element of chance in our lives would probably overwhelm us if we knew its extent. A decision not to go with a newly-founded school's students on a field trip to the Baltic might lead to a chance invitation to a bar where one meets a new friend. A chance meeting of one's student with the friend's neighbor might get you both invited to an eventual wedding, where one suddenly discovers that the friend is really someone more wonderful than one imagined.

And from that string of chance -- or is it more? -- comes good. And so beauty.

A chance walk on an uncommonly warm February day might lead to a meeting that leads to a dear friend.

High Heels

Wednesday 13 March 2013 | 0 Comments

L was out with K shopping recently. She found a pair of slightly-high-ish heel shoes that she fell instantly in love with and begged K to buy them. When K didn't consent, L proclaimed, "But all I dream about are high heel shoes. All I see, everywhere I look, are high heel shoes. All I hear are high heel shoes, click! click! click!"

Evening in the Yard

Tuesday 12 March 2013 | 0 Comments

Spring is here?

Fourth Sunday of Lent 2013

Sunday 10 March 2013 | 0 Comments

The Girl was off for the weekend, the house was quiet, and it was tempting to be lazy.

But.

The sun was out, the day warm, and the swing beckoned.

Third Sunday of Lent 2013

Sunday 03 March 2013 | 0 Comments

With the Boy, schedules and perspectives on them change. It was the same with with L, but you forget over time. The Boy reminded us quickly, and the reminders continue daily. Among the things that change of course is the notion of what it means to sleep in. That has changed gradually as we've left behind the carelessness of childhood and adolescence.

These days, sleeping in until half past seven is a luxury indeed, especially for for K. Sunday mornings.

From there, the rituals, old and new, take over. Sundays are days filled with ritual, both sacred and recreational.

Mornings lean toward the former; afternoons edge toward the latter.

#16 — Imagination and Fiction

Saturday 02 March 2013 | 0 Comments

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. Rare indeed are the true contacts with good and evil.

Weil's words read like a quote out of The Matrix or Inception, and it's easy to brush them off as metaphorical theorizing:

And it's easy to pass it onto the "madding crowd" and insist that we ourselves are not imagining things, not asleep. We are fully aware of the reality around us and can separate it from wish and fantasy, but the materialistic hordes around us can't. It's easy to think that way.

Surely, with rarefied reality all around us -- the screams of delight of children at play, the hard crack of a helmet against plexiglass, a blast of cold air when we get out of the car -- we are awake.

VIV_9005 — A visit to the ice next to the Bounce House

Of course Weil doesn't mean anything so cinematic. She's simply pointing out our uncanny ability to deceive ourselves and fall for the farce completely, to create worlds out of our irrational fears and project them on everyone and everything, to believe that the way we see the world is the way everyone sees it and indeed the only true way to perceive it. I see the effects of this every day at school: some students have mastered already the art of fully deceiving themselves, convinced that they can do no wrong and that all the trouble they find themselves in can easily be laid at the doorstep of others (read: adults; read: teachers).

I'm not sure what the kick (to borrow a term from Inception) for this dream might be, especially when we're not even sure we can kick ourselves awake. Perhaps awareness is the first and, paradoxically, last step. An afternoon spent with the Girl at a birthday party followed by a bit of first-time exposure to live hockey should be enough to separate fiction from good, imagination from evil.

That's the secular answer.

I think Weil might not entirely agree, though. Like Inception, we need someone who doesn't share that same reality, someone who's at a level higher (literally in the film and in Catholicism too, I suppose) to help jar us out of the fictions we create for ourselves.

Second Sunday of Lent 2013

Sunday 24 February 2013 | 0 Comments

Sun. It's always there, they say. While living in Poland, I could go weeks, it seemed, without actually seeing it. Hidden behind layers upon layers of clouds, the sun's light was defused throughout the whole sky, a dully gray that made it impossible to tell the time of day. There were two modes: darkness and less darkness.

Lately, it's seemed like that around here. Gray skies. Rainy days. Cold and damp. Damp and cold.

And then, this morning.

Cloudless. Bright sky. Rich blue. And the temperature soars into the fifties, touches the sixties.

Everyone it seems is out. The neighbors' dog, an ever-thrilled, always-excited Spaniel, is out making its rounds. I would say "Everyone loves him," but I can speak only for my family: everyone loves him.

Everyone is out and about, including our dear little friend from up the street. The bareÂ Crape Myrtles in the front beckon, and soon the kids are climbing, laughing, playing.