DIARY
– Called in sick today. Just about to go back to sleep.
– I had a wonderful weekend, and it the highlight was Jessica and Sunday.
On Friday we stayed in, and on Saturday we managed to get a lot of thank-you notes and reading done. On Saturday night, after dinner, we met up with Mattand Peter and a group of NYU grad students at an Alphabet City restaurant, and from there we went to a party in a SoHo apartment that must have rented for 3K a month. I’ve never seen so many hipsters in my life. Jess and I stayed until a little after one, then we left. As it was, we didn’t get home until nearly four. Matt and Peter, those crazy cats, are probably still out partying right now.
Sunday got off to a mundane start: I got up and went to church. I’d discovered a new church, however, the Oratory Church of St. Boniface, and the two masses I’ve attended have been among the most truly beautiful I’ve witnessed. The church is over 150 years old, and the preists belong to the Order of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, which should perhaps mean more to me than it does. (Know anything about them, Damien?) The mass, while in English, was more traditional in feel than what I’m used to, in a number of details, from the presence of incense at every mass through the surprising punctuality of the parishioners. For all this, however, the place doesn’t feel stuffy or over-formal. The interior is wood, painted white, with a rows of marbelized columns running up each side. The shrines at the front are simple, even austere, and the crucifix above the altar is a rough woodcut with blurred features, cut in earthtones. Instead of pews, there are rows of wood chairs with wicker seats. But most outstanding is the music, rich, complex choral music. Many voices blending together in the small space. They also avoid a habit that makes me nuts in some churches, where they’ll sing the entire song except the last one or two verses. The homilies have been short and to the point, but nevertheless poetic. Sunday’s, for example, dealt with the limitation of human choices… and the fact no single life (Jesus, in this case) would allow for a truly difinitive incarnation (the homilist admitted this was “scandalous”). Limited perspective is an essential aspect of human experience that God would have to take on in becoming human. Likewise, our own limitations are valuable, because they give our statements and choices value through particularity. To love someone, you must love them, individually and isolated in time and space, which makes the experience valuable and unique on both ends.
I left church feeling refreshed, and when I got home, set out on a four hour cleaning blitz that included dishes, scrubbing, vacuuming, scraping scum out of the stovetop with steel wool, dusting, rearranging, and as a culmination, Jess and I set up our little Christmas tree. Jess fixed dinner: Macaroni and Cheese and homemade tomato soup, and we decorated the tree. To our first surprise, we discovered that we’d actually accumulated about a hundred ornaments, mainly as gifts from our families. Our second surprise was finding enough room on our little tree for all of them. I stop at the corner deli and bought a star and some Oreo Ice Cream, and when the tree was all decorated, we took a couple pictures (I’ll post one up here) and watched It’s a Wonderful Life, which I’d never seen start-to-finish before.
It was one of the most astonishingly beautiful films I’d ever seen, and probably even makes my Top 5 list. I’d expected something far more simplistic and saccharine, but there’s too much good to say about that film to cover it right now.
After the film, I finished reading my last assignment of the semester, The Emegrants by Sebald, though I’ll now have to go back and time and read the four I missed along the way: Swann’s Way by Proust, Hour of the Star by Lispector, Gold Fools by I-forget-who, and Rails Under My Back by my teacher, Jeff Allen.
– Check out the New of the Week this week. It goes under the category of “things that should have people more pissed off than it does.”
– And now I’m going to bed.
NEWS OF THE WEEK
The New York Times: Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers without Courts.
QUESTION OF THE DAY
When you’re sick and feeling wretched, what kind of soup works most magically for you?
END OF POST.