Yikes

I've put in two 11-hour days at work this week, and am beginning to feel just a bit punchy. The home network was down yesterday morning, and I have to be at work early again today. There are a couple of chicken thighs cooking on my grill, which I'm going to put between a couple of biscuits for breakfast, then head out again.

I hope to be coherent again by Saturday morning.

Be Interested in Interesting Me!

Following after saskia139, whose interesting list of interests includes theosis:

Scan my interest list and pick out the one that seems the most odd to you -- either because you don't know what it is or because you don't know why I would be interested in such a thing. And I'll try to explain myself...

And I'll add my own twist: when you post this in your own journal, include the interest you selected for the person in whose journal you found this.

Stand and Deliver!

Avast!

Which three of ye claimed that I be a Heartthrob Pirate?

Standards of Decency

I just copied my movie meme into email to send to myself at work so if I had any free time today I could work on creating the answer key.

When I pasted it into a new message in Eudora, I was informed that the phrase "getting laid" might be offensive to the recipient and that I should consider changing it. The fact that it appeared twice in a single quote gave me three chili peppers in my warning box.

I deleted the offending words and the peppers went away.

However, the phrase "son of a bitch" did not get marked by the Legion of Email Decency as being offensive.

And I'm just punchy enough to find this interesting enough to post about.

I'd better log off before things get really weird.

Thought for the Day

I'm listening to an audio book by Tessa Bielecki, a Carmelite nun who is an expert on St. Theresa of Avila. The lecture is called "Passion for God: The Path of the Bridal Mystic" and I strongly recommend it to anyone who is involved in a Western mystical path, and/or who love Theresa, John of the Cross, Rumi, Mirabai, or other mystics who celebrate the relationship with the Divine as the Beloved. I started listening to the tapes in the car today during my commute, and have been completely captivated by what she has to say. It certainly speaks directly to where I am now in my life. (I went looking for this particular author because my spiritual director recommended her to me. He was right on target.)

My favorite brief quote is this:

Mysticism is not disguised sex.
Sex is disguised mysticism.

It's 5:00 and I'm home on time, but I'm still so tired that my brain isn't hitting on all cylinders. I'll try to describe more of Bielecki's thoughts and my own responses a little later. In the meantime, I do think many of you who read this journal would enjoy the tapes.

*sigh*

According to the Bright Weavings email list, one of my all-time favorite books, The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay, has been slated for production as a motion picture by Warner Brothers, to be directed by Ed Zwick, who directed The Last Samurai.

The plot is fairly straightforward, and it should be relatively easy to translate to the screen with a minimum of violence to the story. It's the characters I'm worried about: Jehane (one of my very favorite heroines), Ammar and Rodrigo. I don't want to see them reduced to Hollywood ciphers and stereotypes.

I've posted a couple of times that I ache when I watch the behind-the-scenes footage of the LOTR movies. But this. . . I really, really would have loved the privelege of being the screenwriter and director of this movie.

Kay is one of the few authors I buy in hardback (although I didn't enjoy his last book as much as his earlier ones). Lions is a fantasy without magic set in a mythic Spain during the time when the tide of power was shifting from the Arab world back to the Catholic one, with the Jews caught in the center. The three peoples are re-cast, just as their land is, but are recognizable, and the story is one of love and comradeship that overcomes religious-ethnic boundaries. Jehane is Kindath (Jewish) physician who finds herself traveling and falling in love with two men: a Jaddite (Catholic) mercenary officer and an Asharite (Muslim) poet-assasin, who become something like brothers before their loyalties tear them apart.

If your tastes run to more classic fantasy, and you're interested in variations on The Matter of Britain, try his Fionavar Trilogy. (The Arthurian material is only one aspect. It also deals with the consort sacrifice, a variation on the story of Beren and Luthien*, the king sacrifice, doors between worlds, the differences between male and female magic, and all kinds of etceteras.) Start with The Summer Tree.

*Guy Gavriel Kay assisted Christopher Tolkien editing The Silmarillion.