Nancy's Musings

As an undergraduate I made a study of kindnesses of all kinds in many different media. I found that kindness takes many different forms, and is received in many different ways. I analyzed the way writers treat their characters, how audiences treated performers (and vice versa), how people treated strangers, friends, animals, children, superiors socially economically and intellectually. I think I know now that kindness is a thing of the heart. It is a risk that one takes because one cares in some measure. The real wager of true kindness is not that the kindness will be rejected, or that the giver will be hurt, but that the kindness will cause hurt. Sensible people, and caring people know that they cannot help giving unintentional offense, and sensible and strong-willed people know that they will likely lose their tempers. I learned something else. I began to notice that I treated others in the same way I treated myself. My habits and feelings grew from the inside. I was a cold person, a...

I wish I were fishing with my little sister's bra in the bathtub for rubber duckies (sort out THOSE modifiers!). I wish someone would fall in while I was thus fishing. I wish my imaginary friend would be unimaginary just long enough for a good conversation. I wish stationary bicycles grew on trees: pine trees. I wish my life were more Coleridge than Dorothy Parker. I wish Coleridge were more Dorothy Parker. I wish I had Jedi powers rather than my more mundane (and rather rusty) feminine wiles. I wish my potent glare could frighten all of my students into instant honesty. I wish I had my own desk with a weighted tape dispenser. I wish there were a place in academia for hopeless romantics (don't say it. All Romantic Academics are hopeless. Thanks). I wish my elbows would stay smooth and supple. I wish I could use my psychic abilities for something more than figuring out what my little brother has been doing all weekend. I wish pens were edible - or at least flavored. I wish remot...

There is a day that begins with the smooth breath of clouded light. It follows a night of imaginative dreams saturated with colors, sounds, and sensations like an eight-hour winter. This day stretches briefly, eats lightly, bounces gleefully from chore to chore until dusk brings the list of accomplishments to a close. The day pauses, shifts, and falls back into a winter sleep. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow. There is only this day folded neatly between warm dreams. Perhaps if I stay up late enough I'll catch a glimpse. Sarah watches the light play fuzzily on the wall, shifting through the pines outside her window. Birthday today. She reaches a hand above her head and stretches shakily, then slowly closes her eyes again. She hears voices somewhere and other, shorter sounds that aren't voices. They are all as fuzzy as the light, and she cries helplessly. Sarah wakes again and watches the light through the shifting pines play much lower now, on her bedspread. Birthday today. A...

The black at the windows, the silent ravens tapping and the fluttering of invisible wings, like oily fingers scrabbling for warmth. The hours wait, restless, ahead in the shadows of a winter evening. Shuffling, shifting, the week's decline echoing hollowly. A lonely Friday paces along the grout-line of the kitchen tiles, hungry.

I'm supposed to be seriously intellectual. I'm supposed to be intensely emotional. I'm supposed to be the coldest gorram fish ever to swim the Mojave. But when I'm in my closet, when I read by lamplight, it isn't always Shakespeare or Dickens. Sometimes, instead of suffering and dreading death and insanity, I embrace them, figuratively speaking. Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are the single most delightful series I have ever enjoyed. With a wit sharper than a scythe, he lays a bed of broken glass. I walk over it and giggle endlessly, reading sections aloud to unsuspecting relatives. The books are funny! The characters are desperate and heroic, and the prose sometimes both ironic and poignant but always absolutely insane, following the internal logic patterns of insanity with an admirable and breathtaking determination. And the single most frustrating perfection of them, is the way Pratchett often balances whole novels delicately onto a single, well-worded pu...

There are two Rs in February. Two. I understand the linguistic mechanics that causes the elision of the first "r" sound, and some of the mechanics that cause the inclusion of the "y" sound. I do NOT condone either of these sloppy forms of speaking, and as someone who hears the name of this month spoken fairly often, I beg of you to practice this simple alternative. Please attempt to elide either the vowel sounds between the two Rs, or the second "r" sound. It would make me inexpressibly happy. Please also consider these alternatives when pronouncing the word "library." (count 'em. Two Rs. What a delightful abundance! Let us take advantage) It's my birthday month. Say it once for me.

The well-fed gentleman walked stiffly, his stick held under his left arm, his left hand resting on the worn, brass head. His blue-velvet coat was the only color among the somber shadows that clasped the All-Alone's even now in the late morning. He flinched under their oppressive leanings, and walked the more briskly until he arrived at a doorway near a cross-alley. He rapped once solidly with his cane-head and glanced over one shoulder. Only the rats glanced back. He was let indoors by a slouching young man who immediately slunk off to complete some other chore and left the gentleman standing in the crowded room. Most of the furniture hadn't been made up from the night's repose. He deduced awkwardly that at least three children slept in this windowless space, and had for some time, by the smell. He tugged out a handkerchief and held it delicately over his peppery moustache. The woman's dresses made nary a sound as she rounded the corner and called his name brightly. He ...