Nancy's Musings

In "Measure for Measure," Shakespeare, as he did with Polonius, put profound words in the mouth of a fool. Lucio begs the soon-to-be-nun Isabella to try to save her brother from beheading. He must convince her, it seems sometimes, simply to open her mouth in behalf of a sinner. Seen from another perspective, he asks her to leave her home, her safety, and her vows, essentially to betray herself and help her brother escape punishment for something she truly believes is wrong. Shakespeare makes this situation, as many others, too complex for simple answers. Lucio, merely another complexity, utters the words: "Our doubts are traitors and makes [sic] us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." The thought is simplicity amid complexity. Our doubts are traitors; they work against the whole, against the greater good of the person. We waffle briefly, and lose time. Doubts undermine our honorable purposes. We never leave the ground when we could be flying. T...

While shelving a row or so of fiction, I discovered a couple who had started nesting in the corner near the graphic novels. They had set up a computer with two monitors, had a huge bag and ripped and crumpled paper scattered everywhere. I informed them in a somewhat disbelieving tone that they really needed to find a desk or a table. People sit back there all the time to read where it's quiet, and that doesn't really bother  me as long as they don't get in the way of my shelving, but when they're starting to camp out like it's their bedroom clear in the back where I can't keep an eye out, it's time to start with the shooing motions, meine meinung nach. I just spoke with an ancient gentleman with incredibly hairy ears and an eye-patch, who wanted books about tractors. All of our books about tractors are in the children's section, according to a cursory subject search. I wish I knew another word for them, but neither of us could figure one out. It's ...

Crossing aisles, I glanced up from my armful of spine labels to see a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. He was missing most of his right leg, but he grinned at me, laughed, maybe, as I smiled back an apology, said "excuse me" and passed by to continue shelving. When I was back at my desk I wondered in utter confusion how he would ever reach anything on the top shelves. I felt a need to offer help, but a reluctance to diminish his independence. I flashed back bemusedly to the extensor arm I played with at Elizabeth's, and how much fun I had had pulling books off her shelf from across the room and then putting them back. He disappeared before I could make any more stupid gaffes. Ten minutes before closing I was making a circuit around the outside wall to count patrons. In the very back, the section on WWII, I found a homeless-looking man (one of many who use the library daily) sitting cross-legged on the floor amid seven or eight over-sized books. He must have heard my f...

People, myself included, seem to be very down on me lately, and I'm sure they've every right to be that way. I'm a bit incoherent at the moment. I haven't said or typed one right thing in several weeks. I'm terse, offensive, ugly, sarcastic, and anxious beyond all hope of sanity. My mother says I make it difficult to be loved. My dad says I'm  illogical (which isn't actually true - I'm just a little obscure), Michael simply won't give me the time of day, and Stephen says we need an intervention. Elizabeth says I have bad taste, Miriam says "why can't you just be nice to people?" (with perfect timing, I might add), my boss wants to fire me, and you really don't want to know what my students say about me. It doesn't help that I think they're probably all totally right. Lest anyone forget, though, I'm wonderful. I'm sorry I'm not good at letting everybody know, but it's totally true. Not only am I a brilliant ...

In real life, I'm a miserable matchmaker. In fiction writing, I'm certain this is a disadvantage. Although people in real life exert their independence constantly while characters generally do whatever you tell them to, characters who are destined to meet in any significant manner must have some point upon which they meet. Filmmakers often still use the "meet-cute," or some slightly more sophisticated variation, but I tend to put more weight on propinquity. A meet-cute depends completely on instant attraction, and in that sense reveals a truly appalling unreality. How many comical moments have you survived which actually put you in any kind of mood to attract a potential mate? How often have you actually developed a lasting relationship with someone whom you have only met by chance briefly? Propinquity seems a more scientific and realistic standard. For two people to form some lasting emotional bond some sense of nearness seems necessary, or at least a consistency a...

We sang a hymn up to speed today, and it was one of my favorite hymns. "How Firm a Foundation" has words that seem to mean very little after a while. It was a street-preach song when I lived in Germany, which means I sang it several times a week.  But it has a few verses that caught my spirit up today. I'm reproducing them here with absolutely no permissions whatsoever. "When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not thee o'erflow. For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress." I'm not sure if my distress is at its deepest, but I feel overwhelmed. I taught my students today about having the strength to ask for forgiveness, and I was threatened again with despair. Perhaps I will be forgiven, but how will I survive the consequences? What kind of wreck will I be when I emerge from the other side? I would never have done otherwise than confess and apologize. I did wrongly, and I ha...

Today's entry again winds downward on the Fantasy vein of Science Fiction Fandom. I am going to expound briefly on the topic of wannabe epics, which were my main literary diet as a young teen. A real epic spans generations, and generally involves some sort of hegemonic quest in man's struggle against a god-like evil. A Wannabe will also do this, except the characters will all resemble your local chess club (wearing elf-ears, naturally), which is why they will never have been filmed. Also, they're generally written on a fifth-grade level, but marketed for late teens, which seems to be the average age (unless he's younger) of the main character as he begins. The questing character is invariably male. David Eddings wrote two seperate wannabe epics which (I think?) take place in the same universe (ie. they follow the same magical rules), but involve totally different sets of characters. The first set follows a budding young sorcerer and his guardians, Polgara and Belgar...