My Nemesis, Or Why My Next House Will Be a Tent

My Twitter friends may remember that sometime in September (or was it August?) I began degrouting our shower. The grout is original, which, while a high status in the art and fashion world, here means it's sometimes missing and sometimes moldy. I felt I had to shower after stepping out of my shower.

And my Twitter friends may recall that this project may indeed be the death of me (see--I can pick up a good southern phrase). Classic tweets regarding the project include:

off to de-grout my shower! (2:20 PM Sep 16th)

wow. degrouting so much faster after Chris fixed the tool and showed me I could be rougher with it than I was. This is almost fun now! (10:49 AM Sep 18th)

my hands won't stop vibrating after using Dremel. I feel like a cartoon. (12:47 PM Sep 18th)

they ask me how I knew . . . grout gets in my eyes (1:28 PM Sep 18th)

guess I'm done today's grout work. Dremel not working again. At this rate, I'll finish by New Year's in time for resolution to never do this (2:19 PM Sep 21st)

Dremel bit snapped in half. Then my piano student stood me up. Lovely. (4:59 PM Sep 28th)

Today's Cervantes' b-day (or what they think is his b-day). It's fitting I work on the grout in honor of Quixote. It's my personal windmill. (10:24 AM Sep 29th)

You see the deterioration--from optimism, joking, even song (and, yes, dance) to suspicions of insanity. Yesterday, after over a month of absence (due in part to legitimate reason--travel), I returned to the degrouting project. 

To find the Dremel tool, once again, inoperable.

Okay, I can make lemonade (especially since we recently learned that our lime tree may be, indeed, a lemon tree). I'll work on getting out the caulk with the hand saw.

Uh-huh.

And this is where I met my nemesis.

Some of the caulk--the caulk my husband added to the shower a few years ago, stripped away, no problem. Some of the caulk, which must be decades old, held firm. The saw doesn't cut through it because the caulk is too putty-like. But neither can I peel it out because in that sense the caulk is too petrified (meaning hard, not scared).

You see my dilemna.

Removing the old caulk is harder than containing the blob in a thimble.

Which is why I've decided that I'm moving into a tent.

Indeed, the new earth cannot have mansions. Mansions mean upkeep, and who wants to regrout the showers?

Shades of a Leaf, a poem

The red has been in
the leaf since its conception
waiting
for the bright sun to
dim
for the right amount of
rain.
Waiting.

Then.
Then.
On a certain day
not long before the leaf
will fall
not long before it returns
dust to dust to
mulch.
Then
the green fades
giving way first to yellow
then
to orange.
Then the red
that has always been
there
waiting
emerges along the
veins and the
edges
pushing to the rest of the
leaf.
Pushing and
bleeding
until the whole leaf shines
with waxy
red
brilliance.

Making an Ordinary Jog into a Mary Poppins Afternoon o' Fun (Tactic #48)

For your afternoon jog, create a playlist on your iPod (or other mp3 player) of, say, Jamie Cullum's "I Could Have Danced All Night," "La Vie Boheme" from Rent, Chopin's Etude #5 ("Revolution"), and U2's "Elevation." Human nature demands you incorporate dance steps into your jog.

Sure, you may incur odd looks from parents walking their children home from school (the children will understand, of course), but your heart-rate will double, you'll extend your run for the fun of it, and you'll actually look forward to your next jog.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."

Let me preface this with two statements:

1. Evangelism and social justice are necessary and normative to the Christian life.

2. Art has a place in shining light on and practicing in both these issues.

For years, Christian writers have been decrying the idea that every book by a Christian author must be evangelistic. I don't think anyone means that a book necessarily can't have an evangelistic idea in it. After all, conversion is central to story, whether that conversion be Christian or not (meaning, the conversion could be that someone realizes something about themselves or solves a murder or gets the girl).

As we've been discussing this, I've seen a rise of books addressing social justice issues. These books have been celebrated for their message. And while many of these books are good, and, as I mentioned above, I believe art has historically had (and should have) a connection to social justice and other concerns of its day, I wonder if we are simply substituting one message for another. 

I'm wondering aloud here, mind you.

Art does something--that I'll concede. It draws you to beauty or works through suffering or lets you know you're not alone, for example. 

My question, then, is how much does it need to do? At what point do we subjugate it to utility? At what point does it stand alone?

Small print: Title quote from Woody Allen

Trendy Archaeology

In Israel, I was trendy. I saw some of the latest archaeological digs.

We passed a main street in Jerusalem from Byzantine times, drove by a sanctuary recently unearthed in Magdala, stepped into the believed house of Peter (the apostle of Jesus), peeked into the palace of Queen Helena (from first century AD), and walked through King David's Palace.

In 2005 through 2008, a woman named Eilat Mazar (who happens to be the granddaughter of the archaeologist who unearthed the Temple Mount) excavated the area just south of the Temple Mount. Her team found remains of a foundation wall underneath centuries of buildings. 

The foundation of King David's Palace, she said.

Thence broke out a cage-fight. Some, including archaeologist Cahill, say this is the Jebusite fortress, not King David's palace. They donned brass knuckles and had it out.

Exciting stuff, no?

After wandering through the remains (via guide, Asher, who didn't respond quite so positively to my "As in My Name Is Asher Lev" comment as I would've hoped), I had to have a copy of The Palace of King David: Excavations at the Summit of the City of David, Preliminary Report of Seasons 2005-2007. Who wouldn't?

Side note: This was the second time I almost lost the group. As I pursued my copy of the book, they pursued the bus. Thank goodness for an easy-to-spot group of journalists.

Two interesting things I learned from the digs and further reading in the report (rather, I will limit myself to two things):

First, as we climbed down into a water tunnel, Asher climbed onto a ledge and told us that here archaeologists found artifacts from Hezekiah's time and a much earlier time. In suspense, we walked further down the tunnel as he revealed the mystery: this tunnel had originally been built and used by Melchizedek. Offhandedly, he gestured toward a roped-off area. "Oh, that was discovered a few months ago." And he moved on.

Right.

So here's the thing. The tunnels lead to the Gihon Spring, the major water source for the city. The magnitude of the tunnel system helps us understand the size and significance of Jerusalem as far back as Melchizedek. Jerusalem, which became the religious and political center of Israel, had been an important religious and political center of Canaanites for centuries. When David conquered them, it was no minor feat. And it proved by leaps and bounds God's sovereignty and his choice of Israel as his instrument to reign religiously and politically. (That last part is my interpretation, be ye warned.)

Also, at the Gihon Springs, archaeologists discovered a tower. This helps us understand 1 Kings 1 when David tells Nathan the prophet to take Solomon to Gihon and crown him the king at a time of political upheaval. Why accomplish such a momentous event at a spring? Because that spring and that tower, we can now say, was a hub with political signficance. 

Second, putting together history and the new archaeological digs, we can understand the person of Uriah (from 2 Samuel 11, the man from whom David steals Bathsheba). It appears that Uriah was a successor to Jebusite rulers. "The story of David's defeat of the destitute Uriah (2 Samuel 12) marks the very end of the Jebusite royal dynasty in  the city" (Mazar, Preliminary Report, 2009). This presents a nuance to the story we know so well about David, Bethsheba, and Uriah. More than a story of lust, it has political ramifications. When David killed Uriah and took his wife, it symbolized his ultimate defeat of the Canaanites of Jerusalem.

One last word about Israel: love the food, love the scarves. I may have loved the food more than the sites, but don't tell anyone I said that.