Ursula

In a conversation about SCA recognition, ayeshadream wrote:

I had a deep discussion with a friend about this the other weekend who was visibly upset about how a competition turned out. I said so long as they do what they're passionate about then nothing else matters.

"Follow your passion" is fairly common advice in the SCA, in any small-liberal-artsy context, in life. I find it mildly alienating. I am never that certain about my emotions, nor that focused in my enthusiasms. Of course there are broad themes (playing into my SCA activities are affinities for grammar, for checking out too many library books, for teaching, writing, repetitive crafts), but I know full well that there are all sorts of ways to satisfy my interests. There's an alternate world where I quilt, run the website for a small literary journal, and study classical Chinese poetry, and I'm perfectly happy there.

I use the SCA like a lens. I'm motivated by conversation, by the gaps in conversation, and sometimes (I admit) by the wish to show off. I enjoy formal competitions, because they provide structure, deadlines, concrete goals. And you know what? I do want to be a Laurel when I grow up. I don't want to be a Laurel to the exclusion of sanity, or a real job, or rereading Jane Austen and petting the cats. But sometimes a little bit of ambition can be useful.

I'm used to the concepts "all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve" and "human ancestors had sex with monkeys" being presented as mutually exclusive. Apparently John Donne didn't think so. "The Progresse of the Soul" is a satire which follows the reincarnations of a soul which begins as the apple in the Garden of Eden:

( from the Progresse of the Soul )

I have an account at Ravelry now, with the same username. Be my friend, if you're over there!

(I do think Ravelry would be most useful for someone making small tweaks to published patterns, or trying to publish knitting patterns herself-- the networking breaks down when all of one's projects were invented from a memorized form and a bit of arithmetic.)

Questions from slysidonia. Comment if you'd like five of your very own.

***

1. Who are your favorite Poets and why?

Horace, for versatility, audacity, lyricism by definition . . . I'm taking a graduate poetry workshop right now, which makes me very aware of how much I don't know about poetry in English. One measure might be whose books are prominent on my shelves: Theodore Roethke, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, John Donne. Another measure of allegiances is the list of poets I am meaning to read, or read more of: Pope, Milton, Louise Glück, Wordsworth, Alcuin, Venantius Fortunatus.

(If you wanted a poem, here's a pretty hilarious example of how *not* to critique poetry: assume that the poet means everything the speaker says, even when the speaker is a flower.)

2. Why did you join the SCA and what keeps you there?

Friends, men with long hair, excuses to make stuff; to which I now add, excuses to get weird books out of the library. I like the worldwide social network. I like being appreciated for my academic bent. I like meeting people who have nothing to do with academia.

3. What is your idea of a perfect evening out?

Good food, good drink, good conversation? And for true perfection, there should be absolutely no fretting about transportation: no people who want to drink but have to drive, no taxis getting lost, no anxiety about buses or trains which stop running at a certain time.

4. Tell us about the Hobbies you have.

Let's start with things that aren't hobbies: reading and cooking. To me the word "hobby" has this aura of extraneousness, a suggestion that, no matter how intensely you may be involved, you could substitute a different activity entirely without any real change in self. The hobbyist's approach to food, in particular, I find both fascinating and disconcerting: why, yes, for dinner last night we did make mushroom-lentil soup with chanterelles and organic carrots and garlic and sage and porcini flour (that powdery gold), deglazing the seared mushrooms with red wine, but then it was wet out & I'm sick & we had to eat something.

So what is engrossing and yet extraneous? Right now, knitting and the SCA, I suppose. In some ways, it's more fun to think of potential hobbies: embroidery and folding paper cranes have taken the same space in my life as knitting in the past, along with a bit of netting. Naalbinding? Sprang? Quilting? (Patchwork Ottoman silk star pillow-covers!) Weaving, if I had the space for a loom (tablet-weaving strikes me as privileging the annoying fiddly parts of the operation). Maybe spinning. At the moment, RPGs are more potential than actual hobby, but a good game with the right people could tip me back into obsessiveness, or I could get semi-serious about writing for games. I could edge further into artsy science-fiction fandom, too.

5. What one luxury item would you buy for yourself if you got an unexpected windfall?

I am actually expecting a windfall, in the sense that a substantial fellowship check ought to come my way sometime this quarter; part of that money is earmarked for a new, lighter laptop. So maybe I'd just buy a nicer laptop. Maybe glasseye and I would have dinner someplace unsuited to a student's budget. Or maybe I would buy a chunk of gold, since suddenly I'm in the market for a ring . . .

I mailed an art meme package to yagowe yesterday.

( picture and comments )

This is the text of a lecture on Boethius' Arithmetic I'm planning to give as a single-entry at Kingdom Bardic. Anyone want to check my translation? The lecture proceeds as a series of glosses on Boethius' text, so you don't need to worry about the statements in italics-- any weirdness in that Latin is his, not mine.

( lectura )

( and in English )

Entry made public January 2008

I now own a purple silk skirt to wear at nobu's wedding. It looks like this, or, if you prefer seeing my face to seeing the colour of the skirt, like this.

It occurs to me that I probably need shoes. My remotely nice shoes are a heavily beaded pair of brown flats, and Dansko sandals of a reddish brown colour. Does looking remotely dressed up require that I not wear brown shoes with a black shirt? And does this skirt require shoes that are not flat?

aelfgyfu and hanksan have just opened The Historic Workshop, an online store selling reproduction Magyar dress ornaments, forged hinges, brass knitting needles, and so on and so forth. In the less-historic recreation category, sablebadger is selling hand-turned wands.

tejolote also asked me to "Talk about visual experience, how that works for you."

I remember things, both real and imagined, in still images with a definite point of view. I can fail to recognize a building or a person because my mental snapshot was taken from a different angle. If I'm thinking slowly, or trying to understand a foreign language, I echo inner monologue and outer dialogue as text. This is visual memory, not visual experience, but anyone who has spoken to me in person has no doubt observed that I'm terrible at separating the two. It's very difficult for me to remain aware of the world around me for any continuous length of time: if I try too hard, I'll start analyzing my own effort, faces or books will float before me, and I'll be lost again. It's possible that those intensely remembered images are simply the moments that I looked where my eyes were pointing . . .

I'm leaving for Istanbul (the long way, via London) in about seven hours. I'll be gone for two weeks.