same blog, new site

Dear all,

Something's gone haywire with my formatting on this blog, and since in very postmodern fashion I'm all about surfaces and so little about content, I've created a new blog. The old URL was a little dated, anyway. It's no longer spring, and very soon it will no longer be 2010.

So here's the new site.

While the old URL very quickly expired, my name (though way more arbitrary than the passage of time... I think...) isn't going anywhere.

So follow me, if you like.

Love,

Grace

On fundamentalism

That's a pretty formidable post title for a silly little blog like mine, but I've been having some (albeit loosely connected) thoughts bouncing around lately that seem to point back to fundamentalism.

Another controversial "F-word" among many (fetus, feminism).

The other day, my critical theory professor suggested that fundamentalism follows postmodernism.

Rewind. Let's define postmodernism - or at least attempt to. The word's a slippery one, but basically describes the tendency of contemporary culture to reject absolutes. It's all relative, says postmodernism. A good postmodernist "deconstructs" - breaks down and analyzes - the strict dichotomies that govern us: black/white, male/female, gay/straight. Postmodernism is all about recognizing the pluralities that exist in the world and turning a skeptical eye on anything that claims to be universal, conclusive, or infallible. It's all about exploring nuance and meaning and category. Postmodern works are always quoting from or referencing other works and movements and themes - a postmodern work doesn't claim to be "original," but rather amuses itself by playing with the preexisting world.

Ideologically speaking, that's a pretty difficult world to navigate. We humans are funny creatures. We like to feel that our existence has meaning. We like to believe that we have a solid, core identity. We like to think there are things that are absolutely true, like that democracy means freedom or that someday, justice will be served.

All that is exactly what postmodernism is trying to debunk.

Postmodernism a reaction to this secure, confident, positivistic worldview - a swing of the pendulum that's been a long time coming. Because denying objective, ultimate truth makes us humans feel so puny and insignificant and insecure, I don't think Marc Olivier (yep, that's my critical theory teacher. Props!) is wrong to suggest that a reaction to postmodernism might be a pendular swing back towards a mentality that asserts that the world around us is ultimately knowable, rational - one that makes sense, one where there are ultimate truths. We humans like to institutionalize those knowable truths: religion, government, political parties. Cling a little more tightly to such supposedly literal, ultimately knowable truths and you get fundamentalism.

But hold up. If defining postmodernism gets a whole paragraph, shouldn't we explore the semantics of "fundamentalism" a bit more closely? After all, the term has a wide range of applications. It was first coined to describe a movement in Protestant theology, but over the last few decades has been reappropriated to describe groups of Muslims, Jews, and Mormons. Strictly speaking, "fundamentalism" should describe the groups' adherence to the most fundamental - that is, the most basic and essential - doctrines.

And here's a whole new can of worms.

What the heck is doctrine? What doctrine is "essential" or "fundamental" to a religious group obviously varies between members of that group. Members of the LDS Church don't believe polygamy to be an essential core doctrine, because we don't practice it anymore. Fundamentalist Mormons, however, have adopted the "fundamentalist" modifier, though, to assert their belief that it is. I'm not going to claim to be an expert on the Muslim faith, but it seems what jihad means is up for debate, and we've assigned the modifier "fundamentalist" to the Muslims who interpret jihad as literal war on unbelievers.

[Brief side note: for some interesting ideas on what essential, or for sake of argument "fundamental" Mormon doctrine is, see this 2007 official statement and Valerie Hudson's close reading of it]

However "fundamentalism" gets applied, it does mean uncompromising adherence to a set of beliefs. Quite the opposite of the postmodern refusal to decide anything for certain. That refusal is unsettling. It's a lot more comfortable to unquestioningly believe in the existence of God than it is to have to explore how and why you believe that - to thrust faith under a microscope.

That said, I'd like to close with this quote from Hugh B. Brown:

"One of the most important things in the world is freedom of the mind; from this all other freedoms spring. Such freedom is necessarily dangerous, for one cannot think right without running the risk of thinking wrong, but generally more thinking is the antidote for the evils that spring from wrong thinking."


That's no resolution at all of the conflict, but I think it's the start of one. More to come in the future, I hope.

Two weeks later

Dear reader(s),

I am on hiatus. I know I haven't made a new post for two weeks, but I am so busy trying to figure out how to get all my school work and grading done, eat and sleep, and study for the GRE (which I'm taking Saturday) that coherence isn't at the top of the list of functions I perform lately. I'll write some well reasoned and carefully crafted post when I get my brain back. See you on the other side of Saturday.

Big love,

Grace

p.s. It's been awhile since I've posted any nice pictures for your edification. Here's one I really like of the RER station at what must be Étoile in Paris. Right now it's the background on my computer for reasons I might explain at some point in the near future.p.p.s. I just came across this video from Paris this spring of my dear friend Ryan and I dancing outside the Musée d'Orsay. Our theme song was "Through Heaven's Eyes" from The Prince of Egypt, and sometimes we had random fits of dancing and singing in the streets. Here's one.

more memory, this time wearing footie pajamas

Right now I'm thinking a lot about memory, familiarity, and nostalgia.

I am still processing all the theory going on behind this, but here are a couple memories that have resurfaced in the last couple days, for a myriad of reasons.

(1) When I was a petite gamine, my dad created a cycle of stories he used to tell about two little girls, Gracie and Grossy. Anyone read "William Wilson" by Poe lately? This set of stories my dad told were of a similar sort: one obedient, happy, intelligent little girl named Gracie and her evil twin Grossy. I couldn't repeat a single story today if you asked me to, but I remember my dad teaching, through narrative, lessons as diverse as that when your friends are mean, it's probably because they're insecure, or that when you do what Mommy says, everything goes a lot more smoothly. Maybe this is where my love for stories was born...

(2) Little phrases. My dad used to start the stories he told me about his childhood, "Back when I was a little girl..." He inherited this from my mom's father, who has five daughters (and a son at the very tail end of the family) and a really great sense of humor. But this line frustrated me to no end, just like it frustrated my aunts and mother before me. "Dad! You were never a little girl! Duh!"

And that's not the only line my dad got from Grandpa Dale. When his girls would tell him his breath stank, he replied, "Well, it's better than no breath at all!" My dad still uses that one.

(3) My family's first house in Kansas. This is the house tied to most of my memories from childhood. I learned to roller blade on the street in front of the house. I used to yell, "I like Parker!" or "I like Michael!" or "I like Cody!" (depending on the week, ha) from the swing set in the back yard, telling my secrets to the soybean field behind the property. We used to see deer in that field on Sunday mornings and say, "Look! The deer are going to church!"

I drive by that house every time I visit home. We moved out of that house when I was twelve, but it still has this strange attractive force on me. It's really an uncanny experience to visit it - and I mean "uncanny" in the sense of German "unheimlich": that which is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. Though that house holds so many familiar memories, the place itself is alienating to me. A new family has moved in, changed the landscaping, and painted the house - it's no longer the place of my childhood in spite of the familiar elements: the outline of the house, the number of lamps on the street, the shape of the cul-de-sac.

In spite of the changes, the unfamiliarity I'm confronted with every time I visit, the place has some strange pull. There's something at once comforting and disorienting about the experience. And I think I relish that. Maybe it's because though there's a sense that "there's no going back," the memories of my child are somehow immortalized in that place, or in my idea of that place, and being at that specific geographical location triggers those memories.

I think this plays into what Chase mentioned on my last post - Pierre Nora's writings on national history and "realms of memory" with which I am shamefully underacquainted. (I think I just invented that word. Run with it.) As I understand it, Nora links communal cultural memory to the objects and physical locations where we commemorate and enact these abstract memories. The same has to be true for an individual's own narrative of his life: certain places are wrapped up in certain abstract memories.

But more reading required on this one.

on memory, wearing heavy boots

Have you ever had a memory come flying out of nowhere and hit you with almost physical force? No obvious trigger to set it off. Totally non sequitur by all conscious counts. One second you're alive and well in the present, and the next you're reliving 1997.

Just had one of those.

I was washing my face, getting ready for bed, when a memory from my childhood crash-landed into my superficial thoughts about my new lipstain and tomorrow's outfit.

I can't have been more than 8. I was visiting my grandparents and overheard a conversation about a neighbor's son who, I was able to gather, had killed himself. It was the first suicide I had ever heard of. I asked the sort of questions I think any curious child would: how did he do it? Why? Don't you get in trouble for doing that?

At my tender age, the only answer I could get was that "he had drunk too much coffee." Now, I was not the brightest child, but I was world-wizened enough to know that coffee did not drive a person to take his own life.

And that's where the memory ends: "he had drunk too much coffee" and my childlike skepticism.

And now it's here, stored in The Cloud.

We sometimes like to think of the Internet as replacing human memory, obviating it, making it obsolete. We no longer need to remember trivia we can find two clicks away on Wikipedia. I can search classics like Brothers Karamazov on Project Gutenberg, meaning I don't have to actually memorize my favorite quotes - they're always accessible. I don't have to remember your birthday - Facebook notifies me in a convenient little box on the side of my screen.

But memory's not going anywhere. It just might work a little differently it did ten or fifty or a hundred years ago. I find that my memory works a bit like a text full of hyperlinks. One idea leads me to another before I've even finished my first thought. This is exactly why my blog posts are usually riddled with parenthetical text. I think memory works on a system of tags. One event in the present tags back to another in the past. I remember a literature professor my very first semester explaining Anna Karenina using this device. All the events in our lives are interconnected, or, perhaps, we weave a network of meaning by subconsciously connecting events.

So wherever that memory of my first encounter with suicide came from, it is somehow connected to whatever I was thinking or feeling or experiencing 42 minutes ago, and is acquiring even more meaning as the basis for this blog post.

Hm. Maybe I should try writing when my mind is functioning at full capacity, and not in the middle of the night.

bones

Dear World,

I've got a couple bones to pick with you. I'm going to preface this post by saying that I almost always regret decisions I make in the middle of the night, and deciding to create this post might end up as one of them, but maybe the ideas I want to get out have less sting than I estimate in my insomnia.

Hope I can stay lucid long enough to get these out.

Here are my issues. On the surface they seem to be pretty disparate, but at the end I'm going to try to link them all together, thus preserving The World of My Mind as a place where at least some logic happens.

(1) Gender.

That's pretty broad. And I don't have an issue with the concept of the existence of gender. Rather, I have been thinking a lot about what it means for me to be A (short-haired, strong-willed, sometimes caustic) Woman and even more what it means to be A Woman in respect to what it means to be A Man, and what it means to be A Human.

I'm part of a group that meets once a week to talk about gender issues, especially in Mormon culture, and we've come to some interesting conclusions about ideas like what it means to be "equally-yoked" in a marriage relationship and some even more open-ended speculations about things like why women don't have the priesthood.

But this week, my friend Will made a couple comments that are reshaping the way I look at gender issues. Will's point is basically that beyond being men and women with a distinct gender, we are all people. It can be easy (and fun!) to generalize about gender traits: women are more nurturing and likable, men seek risk and leave the toilet seat up, etc. But even if those are the statistical tendencies, there are so many exceptions to the "rule" that I don't know if I want to keep calling it one. Why not just say, "Some people are nurturing" and "Some people are averse to risks, while some people thrive on them"?

Why do we care so much about gender differences?

This question is really pertinent to another concept I'm trying to work out: human relationships. For this week's meeting of the infamous Feminist Support Group (though we probably shouldn't call it that - we'll be black-listed on BYU campus), we read this talk by Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State. He's got a really provocative and really pertinent argument that I'm going to unjustly sum up thus: for biological reasons, men are more competitive, risk-seeking, and tend towards extremes, while women are more are more risk-averse and tend towards the statistical middle of society. That, says Baumeister, is why while you see men "on top" of society - as CEOs, major literary figures, politicians - you also see them "on the bottom" - in prison, homeless, repairing your septic tank. He also claims this explains why men "specialize in" ephemeral, shallower relationships and women "specialize in" intimate ones.

But do we? That's the gender stereotype: men struggle to express their feelings and so have more superficial relationships, while women crave a soul sister with whom they can share their every hope and dream and fear.

But wait! Don't all humans want and need both kinds of relationships? I guess I can stomach Baumeister's argument with language like "specializes in," but my basic point is this: human beings - men and women - need close, intimate friendships as well as a shallower network of acquaintances. How can you split that on gender lines?

My friend Adam suggested to me that perhaps rather than "preferring" shallow relationships, some guys (and I would say people in general) just don't know how to go about forming intimate ones. But that's just a basic human need, right? And I know several of men who express their emotions better than I do, who are better at forming intimate friendships.

Maybe I'm overstating my point, and I probably shouldn't tackle Baumeister on this issue, but there is a part of me that wants to simply talk about the way human beings are. Yeah, men and women are different chemically and biologically - just as Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain and The Male Brain. But there is so much that is just essential to human nature that I sometimes wonder if we don't perpetuate gender inequality and stereotypes when we talk so much about gender differences.

Tell me if I'm wrong.

Moving on, though.

(2) The Future and Talking.

What? I'm graduating? You mean, I have to plan my life? I don't know what I'm doing. I can't give you any more information, because frankly, I don't have it. All I know is that I want to keep going with my education. I am finding again and again that I thrive on discussion, conversation, on an exchange of ideas. Though I have loved my time at BYU, I want to add new voices to the dialogue I participate in. At BYU, I share the same foundational beliefs with the vast majority of people I talk with, but I'd like to mix it up a little.

Here's another bone to pick: frankly, the gay-bashing, the reluctance to thrust religious culture under an academic microscope, and the speeches borrowed from Glenn Beck (which are mercifully few - I screen my friends' media consumption) are exhausting. I'd like to switch it up.

(I also realize that when I "screen my friends' media consumption" I'm expressing the very kind of bias I'm trying to escape, just in the opposite direction - wanting to disregard a voice one disagrees with. But seriously, Glenn Beck? Starting your own "university" to program masses of doctrinaires like yourself?)

I would like to hear new opinions, new perspectives. What does that mean for my future? Applying to grad schools outside Utah. Seattle? Madison? New York? Chicago? Philly? New conversations with new people.

(3) Provocation.

I am discovering something perhaps a bit distasteful about myself. I like to provoke a reaction in people. For example, in my office, I have already earned the reputation of being feminist, whatever that means. A brief anecdote: my friend Camille works with the wife of one of my coworkers. In the process of figuring out who I was, the wife said, "Ohhh Grace the feminist!"

I absolutely relish that, and I try to push it as much as I can, evidenced by the questions I pose and the comments I make, my frequent references to castration and my increasingly boyish hair. I walked across campus holding my friend Jourdan (she's a girl)'s hand just to get a reaction. I want to get under people's skin, I want to ruffle their feathers, I almost want them to dislike me for putting my (slightly subversive) ideas out there.

My feelings on this are mixed. The adult in me says, "Now, Grace. You don't need to please everyone, but trying to push their buttons is more than a little disrespectful." The angry adolescent in me says, "Haha! You can't stop me! And these conservative suckers really need to be pinched, prodded, and if worse comes to worse sucker-punched (metaphorically speaking, of course) into seeing that the world still exists outside of Provo and it's a lot more complex and nuanced than they think!" I leave it to you and the future to decide where my ultimate sympathies lie.

ALRIGHT, enough already. If you've made it to here in this post, I applaud you. I'll probably even bake a cake for you because you probably burned all the calories in three and a half slices in this marathon of a rant.

But I did promise I'd tie this all together, which I'll do in just one sentence:
I want to talk (bone #2) about gender issues (bone #1), but careful, I might scare you off just for the fun of it (bone #3, which I'm actually picking with myself and not with The World).

À la prochaine, cher lecteur.

let me explain

A few months ago, I made this post, begging France to take me back soon. At the time, I figured I wouldn't see that beautiful country for at the very least another year or two.

I thought I was kissing my "Carte 12-25"* goodbye, because it expires the 29th of June 2011. I tacked to my wall for purely sentimental reasons. Wrong! I plan to use that thing ASAP to visit my dearest Amandine in Auxerre.

I had tucked my Passe Navigo** away for safekeeping. But that thing will be back in business starting the 22 of January.

You may ask, my dear friends, why?

I've been hired to teach French 102 and 201 on study abroad this winter semester.

Interpretation: I go to France for free. Travel and housing paid for, plus my normal teaching salary.

DISCLAIMER: This is a blessing - not my own doing. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Powers That Be.

*French rail pass for people under 25 travelling
** swipe card for the Paris Metro

i'm going back

so soon, so soon

on why edgar poe is great

I'm in the middle of writing a paper for my class on Edgar Allen Poe class, and found this in a Google search for "Masque of the Red Death." Do you ever find that the more you learn, the more your learning overlaps, and overlaps in the strangest ways imaginable? This article describes what for me is a crossover between a course I took in Cambridge on experimental/avant-garde literature/theatre/art and my current Poe class. In this production, the audience participates (avant-garde!) in the "bacchanal" described in "Red Death."

More entertaining, though, was the author's summaries of a couple different Poe stories:

"tales like “Ligeia” (ghost of gloomy guy’s first wife makes trouble for second), “The Cask of Amontillado” (gloomy guy immures frenemy in wine cellar) and “The Fall of the House of Usher” (super-gloomy guy’s sister is buried alive, and house undergoes extreme makeover)."

Hope I make it through the semester without becoming "gloomy guy" or his wife.

on how i am jean seberg

I apologize for the double post, but I cut my hair today.

Me:
And this is Jean Seberg circa 1960 in Jean-Luc Godard's À Bout de Souffle.
Whaddayathink?

on why grooveshark and npr are good.

I recently got into a conversation with a friend about the respective merits of Grooveshark and Pandora. After some pretty heated debate, we came to this compromise: that Pandora is good for discovering new music, while Grooveshark is good for building playlists of stuff you already like.

But then I realized that Grooveshark is actually great for discovering new music. Case in point, my new love for Ben Sollee. Here's one of my favorite songs, Copper and Malachite. Found on Grooveshark. Though Grooveshark won't spoonfeed you new music the way Pandora does, a bit of quick and painless searching can bring you lots of joy.

But back to Copper and Malachite. Speaks to my soul:

"And I want to show you
This loose board in the floor
This is where I keep my heart
Yes, this is where I keep my heart
Not on my sleeve"

Croon it to me, Ben.

As long as we're on music, let's have a moment for the new Sufjan Stevens album, Age of Adz, slated to come out Wednesday. But lucky us, NPR music did a First Listen special on the album, you can listen to the entire thing online. Isn't NPR hip? And isn't Sufi great?


LATER / UPDATE

on adulthood

today, i had an epiphany, but not one of "a manifestation of a divine being." quite the opposite really.

today, i realized that i am not a grown-up.

this is something i have known cognitively for a long time. i often explain that mentally and emotionally speaking, i'm about 12. in spite of the fact that my body says, "i'm 20!" and my transcript says, "i'm a senior in college!" these exclamations means very little for my ability to function in adult society.

i am a legal adult. for me, that means a few things:
(1) i can vote [which i've done only once, and yes it was for Obama in 2008]
(2) i pay taxes [or rather, i give a piece of paper to the government explaining that my total earnings for the year was a measly three figures, and so uncle sam lets me keep it all]
(3) i don't live at home [though yes, mommy and daddy still pay the rent]
(4) i do my own grocery shopping [lots of milk and yummy chocolate chex]

however, there are lots more reasons why i'm NOT an adult. to name a few:
(1) i want to eat vegetables, i even crave them, but i can't get my act together to keep my fridge stocked with them
(2) i don't make my bed, ever
(3) i forget to pay rent [remember, this is my parents' money. i just can't remember to give that money to my management company]
(4) i've had the oil changed ONCE in my car since i left home three years ago
(5) i find that the state of my bedroom nicely illustrates the law of entropy and chaos theory: tending toward disorder [until half an hour ago, i couldn't see the floor in my room]
(6) orbit peppermint gum and jamba juice are the two largest food groups in my diet, followed closely by chocolate covered cinnamon bears and diet coke
(7) my brain is constantly screaming, "ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME"
(8) everything in [brackets] under "i am a legal adult," except voting for Obama. i know lots of real adults who did that in '08 and who would do it again in a heartbeat, and besides...
(9) i don't understand practical politics, much less care about them

put simply: i'm irresponsible.

if i could have my way, i would spend the rest of my life drifting between good books, good films, good food, good ideas, good conversation and good friends.

no more errands.

no more bills to pay.

no more sheets to change.

no more laundry.

no more paperwork.

i hate when reality hits. all that "no more" stuff? yeah, that's just part of life. but i want my way! humph! if you don't give it to me, i'm going to throw a fit.

[note of caution: these confessions? all true. hope that really turned you off, boys]

to the man i'm pretty sure i just saw take a hot dog out of the trash can

dear stranger,

i caught you. i saw you furtively glance around before fishing that hot dog out of the trash. i watched as you stalked off practically inhaling your prize.

you must be hungry. we're all poor college students, but i'd be happy to buy you a frozen burrito or a lunchable or even a jamba juice - i'm feeling particularly generous today.

i don't know, maybe you're a freegan and eating out of the garbage is a lifestyle choice rather than poverty-induced suffering. in that case, in the words of my dear sassy gay friend, "what, what, what are you doing? ... look at your life, look at your choices." i get that you're trying to make a political statement about capitalism and consumerism... but look, dumpster diving is just plain gross. why not picket at walmart instead? probably a lot more sanitary.

whatever the case, you've been spotted. and the frozen burrito offer still stands.

sincerely,
a concerned onlooker

the new title

So I've changed the title of my blog once again. Go ahead and groan.

The title le passage comes from one of Michel de Montaigne's Essais, "On repentance." Montaigne's project in writing the essays was to paint of picture of himself, and in turn all of mankind, honestly and openly. The essays are wandering and often contradictory and refuse to make final, clear-cut judgments about humans and the world they inhabit.
In "On repentance," Montaigne explains, "Je ne peins pas l'être, je peins le passage" - "I don't paint the being, I paint the path." Rather than talking explicitly about himself ("I'm 6'3, have blue eyes, am witty and charming...") he paints a picture of his thinking - the passage, the movement, the evolution, the route...

And isn't that what we do when we humans write about ourselves? In this blog, I haven't told you very much about myself, my education, my family; the hard facts are pretty absent. But how much is that really worth? The concrete details are far easier to enumerate, but far lest interesting and informative than my thoughts. If you want to know a person, get to know her ideas, passions, feelings... When we give only the facts (age, personality traits, nationality, profession) we miss the path, fallaciously thinking we humans are stable, fixed creatures. Hardly so! Life is a passage, a journey, and to truly know a person, you've got to get into her head, see her thoughts in all their clutter and inconstancy.

If you're disinterested in my thoughts, as you well might (and probably should) be, know that the project is for me more than for you, as I said in my last post.

Adieu, donc.

So I go on blogging spurts

Forgive my inconsistency. But I'm running across all these really interesting ideas that I need to get down somewhere. Honestly, I blog more for myself than for you, dear reader (assuming you exist).

For my critical theory class we're reading extracts from Bihu Parekh's Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Last night I attended my first meeting of "Group," which is just that: a couple of my friends belong to a group that discusses religious and philosophical questions every other Sunday evening. Someone brought up a really provoking idea that's given me a lot of pause to think:

As a Mormon, I'm taught that I have, as nasty as this sounds, access to all the Truth and Happiness available in this world through the gospel, where other people lack that - they are shut out from some ultimate Meaning. But that's an uncomfortable idea - why should I think that I have a monopoly on those things - Meaning, Truth, Happiness. Can't someone who has never heard of Joseph Smith live a full life, even in the eternal sense? Why do I get to have it all?

Then as I was reading this article today, I came across a couple of really pertinent quotes. Parekh is critical of the writings of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico because although "[h]e appreciated that different ages threw up different kinds of good life" - that people from the ancient Japanese to the contemporary Native Americans to the Africans of medieval times were happy and productive and good - he also insisted that "in any given age only one way of life was truly human, that all others could be graded in terms of it, and that those who had realized or approximated it had a right and a duty to guide and even govern others," treating his own "religion, age and society" as "universal norms" (55).

That last idea is a little complicated, but also, I believe, totally invalid. Let's break it down. Parekh's bone with Vico is that the latter believes:
(1) There is one culture that's 'got it right.'
(2) That culture has a responsibility to teach the 'poor savages' who haven't figured things out what they're missing.


How much does that sound like Mormon doctrine?
(1) We believe we have the "fullness of the restored gospel" and the priesthood to perform "saving ordinances" - if this kind of language isn't familiar to you, you could check this out for a bit of linguistic background.
(2) We send missionaries out to share this message.

Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges - that culture and religion aren't really the same thing. This is a tricky issue. On one hand, I don't believe that there is any ultimately "true" culture - the culture of Zoroastrians in India isn't more or less "true" than that of suburbanites in White America or mestizos in the Philippines. On the other, I do believe in a loving Heavenly Father who sent his son Jesus Christ to atone for the sins of the world - and that's an "ultimate reality," as much as I don't like to phrase it that way.

Further, Parekh also examines Montesquieu's ideas on pluralism in his Persian Letters. Here, Parekh's criticism is that "[h]is thought has ample space for social but not cultural and moral diversity, for a wide variety of customs and practices but not for the view that human existence can be conceptualized and the good life lived in several different and worthy ways" (67).

It is the last part of this quote that I think is the most pertinent to the idea I'm trying to explore. I do believe there are many ways to be happy. I'm not going to fling the door wide open and say that any path can lead to happiness - committing murder, for example, or getting strung out on coke, aren't going to bring you joy. On the other hand, I don't want to treat happiness as a "closed canon" and think that there is one prescribed way to be happy - and I especially don't want to think that I've got the 'insider's guide'! Mormonism brings me happiness, but aren't there plenty of happy agnostics and Jews and Buddhists and Muslims and Catholics in the world?

I'm still working on this question.

Ah, the passion!

This semester, I'm taking a course on cultural and artistic exchanges between the U.S. and France. For this week's seminar we're reading a story called Atala, or the love of two savages in the wilderness by François-René de Chateaubriand, published in 1801. You could check out the Wikipedia page for a summary of the story if you care enough, but the purpose of this post is to share some really great quotes.

Chateaubriand is considered a key figure in French Romanticism and his writing is accordingly passionate. Reading this story made my heart ache and burn and flutter tour à tour. I often claim poor emotive powers, but I guess it just takes the right provocation, like these:

"Qu'ils sont incompréhensibles les mortels agités par les passions!" ("Ah, how incomprehensible are mortals driven by passion!")

"Connaissez-vous le coeur de l'homme, et pourriez-vous compter les inconstances de son désir? Vous calculeriez plutôt le nombre des vagues que la mer roule dans une temptête." ("Do you know the heart of man, and could you count the inconstancies of his desire? It would be easier to count the waves of the sea in a storm.")

This is an idea I've gotten a bit fixated on lately. (1) We do crazy things when driven by our emotions and passions [and look, I don't mean passions in a moralizing way - there is a place for passion in this world. I mean the way MADD are passionate about drunk driving laws, or how a thinker will go into a passionate frenzy of words over a new idea]. (2) Those emotions are always changing [at least mine are!].

I'm also pretty sure these things aren't just symptoms of youth - why else would the cultural phenomenon of Mid-life Crisis exist, or my dear Rosemarie, age 85, still sing with such emotion? Maybe as we get older we learn to better deal with [read: control or maybe even repress] with the emotions "qui nous balancent" - that swing and sway us. I don't want to think passion is something dictated by hormones and that fades with time. I hope I'm just as passionate about Chateaubriand when I'm old and gray.

As a consolation to the germanophones, I'll include that song Rosemarie sings in this very francophilic post:

"Rose-Marie, Rose-Marie
Sieben Jahre mein Herz nach Dir schrie
Rose-Marie, Rose-Marie
Aber du hörtest es nie.

Jedwede Nacht, jedwede Nacht
Hat mir im Traume dein Bild zugelacht
Kam dann der Tag, kam dann der Tag
Wieder alleine ich lag.

Jetzt bin ich alt, jetzt bin ich alt
Aber mein Herz ist noch immer nicht kalt
Schläft's uns schon bald
Schläft's uns schon bald
Doch bis zuletzt es noch hallt.

Rose-Marie, Rose-Marie
Sieben Jahre mein Herz nach Dir schrie
Rose-Marie Rose-Marie
Aber du hörtest es nie."

Ah, my heart!

LATER:

More from Chateaubriand. Wow, this stuff really gets to me - my poor little heart is palpitating.

"Croyez-moi, mon fils, les douleurs ne sont point éternelles; il faut tôt ou tard qu'elles finissent, parce que le coeur de l'homme est fini; c'est une de nos grandes misères: nous ne sommes pas même capables d'être longtemps malheureux." ("Believe me, my son, suffering is in no way eternal; it must end sooner or later, because the heart of man is finite. It is one of our great miseries: we are not even capable of being unhappy for a long time.")

Thank goodness.

Big Baby Land

Amy and I had an interesting conversation earlier. In line at Cafe Rio this afternoon, we witnessed a toddler hoisted into the air by his nanny, and a thought struck us.

Amy: "Wow, how horrifying would that be? To just be picked up and manipulated by people four times your size..."
Grace: "Yeah... I sometimes think about how weird it would be if we still had to stand on tiptoe to see over the counter, or jump to reach door handles."
Amy: "Yeah... Hmm..."
Grace: "You know, this could make for a really great amusement park. Make everything giant-sized so we adults can experience the torture adult-sized reality must be for people less than three feet tall."

So then Amy made this drawing as part of a sales pitch to our backer, Tristan:
Giant cookies, counter tops above eye level, chairs you need a step stool to climb up to... And of course funnel cakes and cotton candy, too - essential foods that no good theme park can do without.

I'd also like to point out that giant furniture has made it into the world of high art. In 2003, Robert Thierrien made this really awesome installation piece at the Tate Modern in London. A Google search for "giant table" yields this picture of the piece:

See? Pretty awesome. If giant tables and chairs are worth £125 million in an art museum with no entrance fee, think how much you could charge people to lounge in that giant furniture while eating Dippin' Dots.

Sadly, Tristan isn't sold on the whole Big Baby Land thing, so Amy and I are still looking for funding. Any takers?

I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR!

This is what I woke up to on Wednesday morning. Judith (as my minivan has been baptized) had a flat tire. Very, very flat. So flat that when I kicked it, I made a dent. This is a close approximation of the conversation I had with myself:

"You're totally stuck. Changing tires requires testosterone and technical know-how. You have neither."
"Great, what am I supposed to do? I don't have home teachers yet... no boyfriend... Call Dad? Maybe he can fix it telephonically."

Luckily, she was just parked in the driveway, so Judith's misfortune wasn't a pressing issue. I then proceeded to forget about the problem until Friday night, when I phoned my dad.

"Hi, Dad. I have a flat tire."
"Well, sweetie, you could always try to put on the spare yourself. Just read the owner's manual and follow the directions closely."

What?! Fix it myself? Hardly. Instead, I made a quick Facebook post ("Anyone love me enough to help me change a tire?") and again placed Judith's plight on the metaphorical back burner.

I had a couple volunteers for assistance when I woke up on Saturday morning, but at exactly 11:51am something strange came over me. I snatched camera and keys and went out to the driveway.

"Hmmm... I might as well take a look at the owner's manual to get an idea of how labor intensive this is going to be," I thought, "and by extension how much curry I'm going to have to pay out my helpful manfriend with."

At this point I went into a wrench-jack-and-spare-tire-induced trance, from which I awoke to find this:


I had changed the tire myself.

What?

I then rushed in to the house yelling, "Amy! Amy! Come take a picture of me! I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR!" So yeah. I changed a tire all by myself. And documented it.

Next step: start a soroptimist club.

This moment also fits nicely into this article my friend Alex (ha! Note the gender ambiguity) showed me, called "The End of Men" from the July/August Atlantic.

My new house!

I live in a new house! A real house - not an apartment. I even have my own bedroom. Have a look-see:
I also have this cute little bookshelf, so that now all of my books can see the light of day:Credit goes to my beautiful mom for helping me get moved in and organized. You are the greatest!

I also have a new job teaching French 101. My class is great - I love my students, I love teaching, I love making a fool of myself to pull a good Bonjour, comment ça va? out of a frightened Freshman. The job takes a lot of work, but it's always those things we invest the most in that we get the most out of, right?

Anyway, I get to do all kinds of silly things for my job, like make pictures on Microsoft Paint (which I haven't had any excuse to do since 7th grade...). Last week we learned how to talk about nationalities and professions. Here's the evidence:
"Il est président.""Il est mexicain."

Plus 9 other equally ridiculous images. I had so much fun. Love love love my job.

Newness.

This is the start of something new.

A new semester, a new job, a new house, a new ward, new friends (and of course, lots of good old ones, too!), new shoes and cardigans...

I'm ready for a breath of fresh air - a chance to remake myself, even if it's a little bit at a time.

But before I launch into all this new stuff, let's recap a little bit of the old. Here are two photos I really like:

This one's from the Netherlands, where I traveled with four friends from Cambridge: Alex (the boy), Camille (the girl), Jeff (the boy), and Alex (the girl). We stayed with Alex (the girl)'s family and spent one day walking around the city of Amsterdam. Here are our feet in Amsterdam. I think it's really cute.

This one's from my trip to Paris while I was in Cambridge. My friend Arber took it St. Pancras station, where you take the Eurostar from to cross under the English Channel (or La Manche, as the francophones call it).

I know it's trite to rave about how much my experiences abroad changed me... but they did. And that's that.

On the downside of travel

This summer I have lucked out: travel has been a breeze, especially by plane. No missed flights, connections were neither too long nor too short, my bags always got where I was going. Quite surprising for the quantity of travel I've been doing - by 4:00 pm tomorrow I'll have flown all the way around the world. Train travel was slightly less smooth (a suicide on the tracks from Nice to Paris, a strike or two, and a suspicious suitcase that the French police destroyed with a controlled explosion in Paris Nord station), but that's life.

In short, I had near perfect faith in national and international transportation. Airlines lost luggage, delayed and canceled flights, but none of that ever happened to me. I was blithely indifferent and unaware.

Until today.

I nearly cried (and that's saying something - my emotive powers are poor) when Carlos at the International Transfers desk informed me in his thick Spanish accent that my flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth was canceled, and that there was no possibility of a connecting flight to Salt Lake until tomorrow morning, and further that it was too much of a hassle to get my checked luggage.

... So I'm sitting in an airport hotel room outside London Heathrow with no deodorant or toothbrush to speak of (all checked! So trusting...), alternately napping, reading Life of Pi (which I'm immensely enjoying), and using up the precious battery of my computer (oh, did I mention I left my charger in the Netherlands? No worry, it'll come along sometime later this week in my friend Jeff's luggage).

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer. I learned last year to take this attitude towards travel hang-ups: "Hey, wow! Another adventure! This is going to be fun."

So I'll grit my teeth and smile. What's another day's delay after four months away? Also, that rhymes, which makes it even better.

Shame on me.

It has been far too long since I've updated my blog. Seven weeks! And I'm living a dream that deserves to be well-documented.

I'm in Cambridge, England, as I think I've said in earlier posts. And if you didn't already know I was here, we're probably not close enough for you to be reading my blog. Shoo.
Life here is wonderful. The program I am participating in is eight weeks long (meaning I leave in a week and a half... Weird). I am taking two taught courses - Varieties of English and Avant-Garde Literature - and what's called a 'supervision,' which for me means I work one-on-one with a girl who just finished her doctorate (hooded and all! Congrats, Rebekah!), reading and writing about works of (dark and twisty) 19th century literature (the boys are all here! Balzac, Poe, Maupassant, Henry James...).

A most excellent experience which will be sorely missed upon my return to BYU. This supervision has shown me how much progress my writing and reading needs to make but has really shown me my future: academia. Laugh, call me impractical, but this is the stuff I love, while law courts, operation rooms, and office cubicles make me want to wretch.

My supervision has also given me the chance to try my hand at translation. This week I wrote on one of my favorite short stories by Guy de Maupassant called 'Letter from a Madman.' As my ardent supporters (if anyone actually reads this blog at all!) you might want to check it out yourself here! It was a lot of fun to work on, and in spite of how clunky my version is, I'm admittedly proud of my first brush with translation. And in the 20 hours it's been online, it's gotten 20 reads. Quite exciting.

Hm, these are just big blocks of text. Boring! I think it's time to put up some pictures. Since arriving in England I've been lots of cool places, but I think I'll give each of those it's own (potentially brief) blog post. Consolation prize:
A picture of a cheese shop (fromagerie) in Saint-Germain-en-Laye where my dear dad and I went when he came to visit in France.

More to come.

Yet another list of things I love

1. Traveling with my dad. He's so flexible and willing to 'wing it,' which is my favorite way to go.

2. Fenocchio ice cream. Where else are you going to find weird flavors like cactus, vanilla-rose-cracked pepper, ginger, violet, dragibus, avocado, and chili chocolate?Not to mention that they're actually all delicious. Can't go wrong, no matter how weird it sounds.
3. The Mediterranean. Dad and I went to the beach today and swam in its clear, turquoise wonderfulness. It was lovely. If only my skin absorbed color better...

4. Salade chèvre chaud. That's warm goat cheese salad. Sounds weird, but is actually delicious. Of course, no little toasts for me, but I'm always up for some warm chèvre on a bed of mixed greens with fresh tomatoes and vinaigrette. Yum.
5. Joan Miró. This one's called "The Bather." The color's not great here, but I was absolutely struck by the depth of the hue when I saw it in the Pompidou Center. I know, too, that it looks like child's play. Especially looking at 20th century art, we're often tempted to say, "Psht, I could have made that!" Ahh, my good friend, but you didn't think to! Often the meaning of the work lies in its very simplicity.
6. This quote from Chagall:
Un vase debout n'existe pas, il faut qu'il tombe pour prouver qu'il est stable.
That is to say, "An upright vase doesn't existe; only its fall can prove that it is stable." I'm not quite sure what that means, but I sense that, metaphorically speaking, it is true.

Also, it's probably time to change the title of my blog: I've only got another two and a half days in France (what?!) and then I am off to Cambridge for summer study.

Dear France,

You have been so good to me. I have been so extraordinarily well-fed, I have seen so many beautiful places and works of art, I have spoken your beautiful tongue, I have walked your streets at all hours (which are sometimes quite filthy, but for that I forgive you), I have danced in your streets at the Fête de la Musique, I have put my feet in the seas that surround you, I have learned to drive your cars, I have profited from your public transportation (but also been quite maddened by it. Could you stop the strikes and the suicides and the technical problems? I guess that's really out of your control).

In short, I have quite fallen for you all over again. Can I come back, and very soon? I will miss you terribly when I leave.

Yours,
Grace

All I have to say is,

I love this


Musée nationale de Marc Chagall

Do yourself a favor and see this in person. Chartres blue is of vivid renown, but I'm pretty sure this tops it.

"When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is."

Asia, Part II

For a very brief second installment of Grace's Oriental Adventures in France, I have some visual proof of my mad culinary skills.
The process:

The product:

I even made the sauce myself! And it was so good! I am good at life.

Asia! I mean France.

As I get more and more acquainted with French culture, I see more and more of the influence of other cultures in France, especially non-Western ones. In recent posts I've talked about the French ties to Russia (like the Alexander III bridge and the Orthodox church in Nice). Now it's time to push even further east:

Asia!

I began this trip in Hong Kong, and now the voyage comes full circle. Since I have been in France, I'm quite certain that I have eaten more Asian food than French. A sampling:

1. There are a couple of cheap (and good!) little Asian restaurants near the LDS Institute building in Paris where class was held during the Study Abroad. As we had class in the morning, and my fellow-students could only stomach so many sandwiches in a row, we headed "East" for lunch! Bo Bum for Beth and Ryan, and a Vietnamese soup called phô for Judy and me. I actually went back today... all alone, since my comrades are now back stateside. Even with extra sriracha sauce, there was something missing -- food is never as good without someone to share it with!
2. I spent the last few days, from Saturday night to Wednesday, at my dear friend Amandine's house. She's quite a unique blend of cultures -- her mother is from Cambodia, speaks Chinese and Vietnamese (on top of French and blips of English), and her father is very definitely French. Eating at Amandine's is a culinary adventure. Fresh spring rolls for an entrée (very Chinese), followed by shredded green mango with mint (also very Chinese), and then beef-stuffed vegetables (very French!) for the main course. While at Amandine's a few weeks ago, her mother Vana taught me to make soft spring rolls, a talent I am eager to cultivate -- my own mother loves them! Who says an all-American Thanksgiving can't include some rice paper and shrimp!

3. Back in Provo, Phil and I love to eat Thai food. Turns out, it's not too difficult to make! Last night I tried out a recipe for red curried chicken with coconut milk. As usual, I failed to pay very close attention to the recipe (I added the curry paste and the onions in the wrong order, added some fresh-squeezed lime juice just for kicks) and it turned out great! Even the presentation was spectacular -- complements of my host-brother Théo, who is really good at (a) making food look pretty and (b) doing the dishes at the end... the cook was tired. But here's how it turned out:
It was delicious! For an entree, we had an updated version of my curried pork lettuce wraps: curried beef cabbage wraps! Turns out a head of iceberg lettuce is just about impossible to find in France, and the beef was a gift from my host mom Nannick. Still a success! For dessert, we had sliced strawberries with mint.

I can just feel the corners of my eyes creeping slowly towards my temples.

Of public transportation, my host family, and poetry.

Here's one of my favorite anecdotes from my time in Paris because it incorporates two things very dear to my heart:

(1) public transportation and
(2) 19th century Romantic poetry, specifically Mon Rêve familier by Paul Verlaine

A year ago I took French 340, an introduction to French literature, which I then TA'd for last semester. I really loved the class and the material we covered. Some of my favorite works we read were the Romantic poems of Verlaine and the first-class enfant terrible Arthur Rimbaud.

My first run-in with Verlaine in Paris was with my friend Théo, the grandson of Nannick, my host mom. Théo was good enough to recite some French poetry to me after dinner one night, and after a moving rendition of Rimbaud's Le Dormeur du Val, began:

"Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime et qui m'aime..."

It was Mon Rêve familier! If you can speak or read French, just read those lines aloud and let them caress your tongue. Beautiful sonority, delightful to the lips and the ears.

Okay, fast-forward a few days. I'm riding home on the metro, reading some Dostoevsky, when I look up at an advertisement and see:
The entire first stanza of the poem!

How classy are the French? Great Romantic poetry on public transportation.

Orthodoxy in very Catholic France

On Tuesday, I took a day by myself to wander more. My one mission was to wander into the Russian Orthodox church hidden in Nice.

Woah, hold up. A Russian Orthodox church? In France?

Yes. Remember all these evidences of the tie between Russian and France? The Alexander III Bridge in the political heart of Paris, the "Sainte Russie" exposition at the Louvre... Well, here's another one. It turns out there was a sizable migration of quite wealthy Russians to Nice at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution--enough to build a church for them. Quite interesting, no?

The church is quite lovely. It's so colorful, inside and out, which seems to at least fit Nice better than it would fit Paris. Unfortunately, they don't let you take pictures inside. But here's the outside:

Before going in, I just took some time for meditation and wrote for a bit. I like this pace of life.

Old Nice

On Monday, we went downtown to explore Old Nice. As usual, Judy and I dawdled and got separated from the group.

The beautiful old quarter of Nice looks and feels more like Italy than France. The street names are listed in both French and Italian (which is quite ridiculous, really. Place Rossetti and Plassa Rossetti? Definitely near-homophones). The fish fountains? Roman style. The churches, too, look more like what I've seen in photos of Italy than those I visited in Paris.

I feel like I visited Italy without crossing borders or leaning Italian! Quite cool. But really, just not the architectural differences between Old Nice and Paris:

Like night and day!

As we wandered through the old city, enchanted by the terribly romantic Italian feel, we followed the signs up to the hill. We saw the ruins of the old château, which was less-than-exciting, but the view from the top of the hill that overlooks the sea and the city is gorgeous. We also visited the cemetery on the hill. The French-Italian blend of the city was evident here too: people with very French first names (Jean-Baptiste, Claude, Émile) and very Italian last names (Benedetti, Cosetti).

I like Nice, especially that old quarter. Plus, last night we went and got gelato in Old Nice and it was absolutely to die for. There must have been at least fifty flavors to choose from. Beyond the standard Chocolate, Strawberry, Straticelli, and Lemon flavors, there were more exotic things to try like Chocolat piment (chili chocolate), Ginger, Avocado, Lavendar, and Violet.

We're going back tonight.

Nice (rhymes with grease)!

Welcome to paradise.

After our trip through Brittany, Normandy, and the Loire Valley, we flew down to Nice. It is really an ideal beach town. There's a beautiful old quarter, sunny beaches, and the crystal-clear Mediterranean. The weather has been quite perfect, too. My first impression of the city was the perfect weather. Not too humid, not too hot, not too cold. It has been a bit windy the last few days, but beyond that, it's quite wonderful.

On Sunday after church, we visited two museums, the Henri Matisse Museum and the Marc Chagall Museum.

Although the museum was a bit sparse, it was interesting to see the evolution of Matisse's works, from his earliest oil paintings that are quite run-of-the-mill, to his more innovative later painting and sculpture, to the stained glass windows he designed, models of which are in the museum. to his more abstract work, heavily influenced by the time he spent in the Pacific.

Plus, the museum is quite cool, like the Jacquemart-André in Paris, as an architectural work alone. It's quite typical of the buildings in the old quarter of Nice. I love those colors together!
After visiting the Matisse Museum, we went to the Chagall Museum. If the Jacquemart-André was my favorite museum experience in Paris, the Chagall was without question my favorite museum in Nice. There's a large central room with several of Chagall's biblical paintings. Most interesting? Although Chagall was a Russian Jew, he incorporates the cross into his works, like in Chagall's painting of the Creation. Plus, just look at those colors! I'm not going to try to convince you with words--you'll just have to explore Chagall's works for yourself. And if you could get to this museum sometime in your life, it is so infinitely worth the visit. It was perfect for a quiet Sunday afternoon in meditation.