Basia me, Catholica sum

The Last Post.

2007-07-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

Three and a half years is a pretty good run for a blog, I think. Looking through my archives, I'm struck by how much of my life is recorded there. And by how many fascinating and friendly people commented on my posts. I started Basia Me back in high school, and now I can see grad school on the horizon. It seems like a very short time when compressed into the archives of a blog. And yet I managed to do a lot of growing up in those months.

I know that some of you will be sad to see Basia Me end. I'm sad about it too, but I just can't keep up this particular blog anymore. For some time now I've been wanting to write a more focused blog, because all of my inspiration these days is coming from poetry and the discussion of poetry, and I always held myself back from narrowing Basia Me. But now I feel burnt out on this blog. I need a change, irrational as that may sound.

So, without further hemming and hawing, here's my new blog:

For Keats' Sake!

The name isn't just a cute pun. This blog is my crie de cour in defense of beauty and in defiance of 99% of the poetry that has been scribbled these last forty years. Some of you may remember the mouse poem in America and the contest it spawned. Well, this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. I can either start writing about it, or suffer a breakdown of Eliotian proportions. Seriously, there's a reason why normal people find the mass of today's poetry to be about as enjoyable as a sharp stick in the eye, and it's not because all the good poets have been thrown in a gulag by Bush, or because modern poets are brilliant beyond mortal comprehension, or because there's something in the water nowadays that prevents us from writing anything musical, intuitive, or intricately made. Though I recently read an article in Poetry that came close to saying that:

Fifty years on, it may be impossible to write well in the exalted language that intoxicated Sylvia Plath (and me) in the days when poets aspired to rise through the magic of words to a level above ordinary life.

Without uncritically assuming that this is what the author really believes, I will respond by saying that if I believed that proposition were true, I would have to lie down and die. The rich music of verse, from inspired Isaiah to Auden at his most urbane and flippant, is what makes a poem a poem. Keats said that the poetry of earth was never dead, and meant that nature is always full of purpose and music; but I will be a plodder and have it mean that poetry has been with us from the beginning and will only leave us when we leave it.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

The world is wide and poetry surely thrives in many places outside of America, like the grasshoppers singing in one hemisphere when winter has silenced them in the other. But all my hopes and concerns lie in the Anglosphere, and I'm very interested in the fate of that hardy little cricket.

So here goes. Father Hopkins, pray for me!

Blogging from Rome

2007-02-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

It's been two weeks since I arrived in Rome, and it already seems like I've been here longer than that. Though I am still not used to walking across St. Peter's Square to get to class every day. I've been to Mass in St. Peter's, met Cardinal Arinze, celebrated the feast of St. Scholastica at Monte Cassino, and marked the feast of Cyril and Methodius by partying and processing at San Clemente. Tomorrow I'm leaving for Assisi, then for Florence and Siena. The internet is erratic here, and I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'll simply refer my readers to the new blog I've made for my semester in Italy. I've put up a few pictures there.

Belloc's Windmill

2007-01-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

Did you know that Hilaire Belloc's old mill at King's Land is being used as a set for a British detective show?

I didn't, until I found this site, which will tell you all about the windmill and (this is important) when you can visit it. During my semester in Rome I'll have some free weekends, and I intend to make a little trip to England sometime in April.

Shipley Windmill is simply crammed with memories of Belloc. One Christmas, the Belloc children were led out into the wintry dark and up through the trapdoor onto the second floor of the mill, where they found an improbable Christmas tree, covered with candles, and their presents beneath. At other times of the year they used the windmill in their innocent games, which typically involved jumping on the sweeps and riding the mill as if it were a ferris wheel. They were straight out of the Cautionary Tales, those Belloc kids.

A Local March For Life

2007-01-22T22:29:00.000-08:00

Washington was out of the question, so I went to a small march in my hometown. There was a Mass and then a "prayer walk." The Asian priest who said the Mass was named Fr. Noel and I have never heard anyone so passionate in the pulpit. At first he was calmly magisterial and somber. He spoke of the demons of the biblical world, how they were thought to kill children. Then he began to talk about the killing of children today, and his voice filled with anger. I listened in nervous awe as he came close to tears, flared into perfect righteous anger again, and turned his anger into the gentleness of a saint - the kind of gentleness that scares you; it's like a bottomless sea, perfectly still. And he did this multiple times. I kept waiting for him to scream "FIRE!" and summon a bucket brigade by accident, like Edmund Campion did. Fr. Noel, at least, was not inured to the evil we were protesting today.

Our march took us through downtown, where a counter-march was waiting for us. On seeing us they began to chant and walk down the other side of the street, while we kept silent. Our numbers were slightly larger than theirs, but they had more support from bystanders and drivers. Anyway, here are the pictures. Click on them to see the full size versions.

My best shot, I think

View of march

Me

Across the street

The church

Saint Nicholas, savior of children

Sanctuary

Peter and Paul

Two Short Stories for January 22

2007-01-22T20:48:00.000-08:00

Hills Like White Elephants
by Ernest Hemingway

I first read this in high school, and I was intrigued by the way it snuck around the ideology of my largely pro-choice classmates and haunted them. They read Hemingway's curt little description, The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain, and saw fertility denied and love imperiled. The story is just a conversation, really - it uses the absolute minimum to achieve its effect. Amy Welborn has a thread about it here.

Why Can't He Be You?
by Eve Tushnet

This story has the same realism as Hemingway's. And by "realism" I mean its honesty about how quotidian and colorless evil can be when you actually see it, in real life, without a lot of adjectives decorating it. Graham Greene said something (I don't have the quote) to the effect that often it's easier to die than to make a scene, as anyone who has ever prayed at an abortion clinic can attest. (The poem below came from that feeling of helplessness.)

Eve's story, though, holds out the stark assurance that these suspended emotions will be purged in the end, "someday, but not today." Today, the narrator's very equanimity reveals a convalescent conscience and a soul still weak from a long illness, the longest illness; but someday she will know the raw happiness of grief. Beati qui lugent. Someday this sensual twilight will be lifted from us, and the music that rules us in the logical kingdom of our principles will sound in the substantial air, self-evident to the ear, so that we can march and dance to it at the same time. And death shall have no dominion.

But it will not be today. Not on this day out of all the year.

Clinic

2007-01-22T20:16:00.000-08:00

Hell has a paved front walk
And a manicured lawn,
A shade tree that must rustle its leaves
In the hours before dawn,
And a street address.

Hell blackens earth with blood,
But in the dark.
Passersby have no idea -
Not a cry, not a mark
Escapes the white rooms of that sanitary place.

Hell's wedged between a preschool and an embassy.
The babbling children playing tag next door
Attract no baleful notice, it would seem;
Unless harm rains silent, as from a reactor core.
You probably expected to see more.

Even the truth-fast criers-out who come
Day after day to pray and plead in very life's defense
Find their minds grown distant and diffuse
When the honeyed light of Sunday afternoons
Warms walls that ooze the blood of innocence.

by Meredith

Prayers

2007-01-19T16:51:00.000-08:00

My grandfather died on September 14, on the feast of the Triumph of the Cross. I know I have been gone for a long time, but I am asking you all for your prayers. My family did not expect this and we have all taken a hard blow.

Returned.

2007-01-18T22:47:00.000-08:00

To the handful of souls still reading this blog: your heroic patience has been rewarded. Sometimes Bonny Prince Charlie really does come back to Scotland; sometimes Numenor rises from the waves; sometimes Firefly goes back on the air for another season. (At least they do so in my peculiar version of reality.) From time to time during my delinquency (hiatus is too dignified a word for it) I would peek at Basia Me and think, "Argh! When is this blogger going to update her site?" After a split second I would realize that I was responsible for all that inactivity, and I would leave, crestfallen.

In two weeks I am going to move to a new blog which will be about my Italian adventures, and hopefully about my English adventures as well. That will last for three months, and afterwards I will decide what I want to do about Basia Me. When I started this blog back in high school, it ranged over plenty of topics but had very little focus or definition. After Rome, I will either redesign it or start a new blog.

I haue hadde it wyth thes cursed by Seynt George snakes on this cursed by Seynt George shippe!

2006-09-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

What is it with all these dead people reviewing movies? Now we have Chaucer reviewing... well... you know. Not only does he review it, he turns it into a Romaunce. And he draws a touching moral from Samuel Jackson's notorious line:

‘What haue ye seyde?’ askede the PRIORESSE then. ‘I did curse the snakes,’ seyde Sir Neville, ‘and therwith the shippe, in the name of Seynt George who ys a patron of valour and chivalrie.’ ‘Ywis,’ seyde the PRIORESSE, ‘yower cursinge hath borne good fruyt, for methinkede whan I herde ye speke thus that the arme of man, eek even of a mighti man swich as yowerself, is but a litel thinge compared to the grete power of God the which is dispensed thorow the mediacioun of the seyntez. And thes serpentes the which do make werre ayeinst us aren figuraciouns of the sinne of ower firste parentes who weren by a serpent deceyved, and thus thei signifien that we sholde seke nat strengthe in knighthede but in prayere and devocioun. For syn we face thes foule serpentes, mesemeth we must seeke succour and aide from the gret seynt who is the enemy ysworn of al maner of serpentes.’

‘Dang, babye,’ seyde Sir Neville, ‘ye speke gret wisdam.’

And alle the crewe prayed to Seynt Patrick and thorow hys mercy the serpentes were slayne every oon of hem and the shippe came safelye to shore.

Good Lord saue us alle yn swich a maner as thou hast saved Danyhel in the liones den and Jonah in the wales bellye and saue us especiallye from Snakes on the See, in the name of Jesu ower Lord and Seynte Patrick

HEERE ENDETH THE BOKE OF SIR NEVILLE DE FLYNN AND THE SERPENTES ON THE SHIPPE

(My thanks to Patrick.)

"Chaucer" has also produced a work titled The Cipher of Leonardo, in which Dan Brown's idiotic prose becomes rather more agreeable verse.

"Multi-storey car park versus Roman wall - who wins?"

2006-09-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

I noted the title of this article with interest. The blogger who relayed the story from a newspaper in Bingen answers the question thus: "As it's Germany, the Roman wall wins."

Important Boppard finds from Roman times feature in a new archaeological park in the town. Dominating the site and the top of Kirchgasse is a massive fortress curtain wall, some 60 metres long and eight metres high. The wall linked two towers of a huge Roman fort that once stood at the side of the Rhine.

Astonishing experts by its excellent preservation, the wall came to light when workmen began digging for a multi-storey car park - a project soon abandoned. Apart from similar remains in the UK, the finds were judged to include the best section of a Roman wall of this period uncovered anywhere north of the Alps.

Other items found included 12 graves made from stone tiles. Cloth fragments indicated that the graves were of Christians buried in the 7th or 8th centuries. Also uncovered was the cellar of a fortress-house, with wall apertures for archers, from the 12th and 13th centuries, and the remains of a horse-mill.

The wall was used at least through the 13th century. I wonder when it got covered up?

That casual opening remark about Germany, though; that suprised me--and then it made me think of something that Belloc said in The Path to Rome:

The German spirit is a marvel. There lay Porrentruy. An odd door with Gothic turrets marked the entry to the town. To the right of this gateway a tower, more enormous than anything I remembered to have seen, even in dreams, flanked the approach to the city. How vast it was, how protected, how high, how eaved, how enduring! I was told later that some part of that great bastion was Roman, and I can believe it. The Germans hate to destroy. It overwhelmed me as visions overwhelm, and I felt in its presence as boys feel when they first see the mountains. Had I not been a Christian, I would have worshipped and propitiated this obsession, this everlasting thing.

Altae Moenia Romae

2006-09-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Outside, the rain falls. I sit here alone in the library. What should I do? For Sheila and Stephanie and lostnoldo are all in Rome, along with John and Charlemagne and half the junior class. The lucky ducks! I wonder where they must be right now. I know that lostnoldo is probably singing "The Rising of the Moon" on the Ponte Sant' Angelo right now, participating in the expat version of Christendom's infamous Friday-night riverside symposium, but the others? I most likely won't hear from them for days, or weeks. When you're in Rome, you have better things to do than sitting in an overpriced internet cafe.

Sarah and I will be going to Rome ourselves in a few months, but I can't help wishing that I were there right now. Instead, I sit in my room translating Virgil and Homer... studying the history of Byzantium... thinking about doing the reading for Moral Theology and Medieval Philosophy...

And really that's exciting enough for the present.

Christendom on the Big Screen

2006-08-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

Mike Powell and the Mason brothers have produced their second film and their first full-length feature: a drama titled Chorus which will premiere this Sunday. I'll be going to the premiere at the Royal Oak Theater in Front Royal, and I intend to review the movie on this blog. The official site for the film is here, and you can watch the trailer. I've seen their first film, Discretion, and it was a really excellent effort. Chorus will be their first film to have Explicit Catholic Themes (scandalous!), but although I was an extra in it, I still know very little about the plot. So I am intrigued.

A Meeting of Bloggers

2006-08-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I went to Mass at the shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in (where else?) San Francisco, and afterwards I went to Erik's lecture on Fra Angelico, which was excellent. Patrick of Orthonormal Basis and Deirdre of Give Tongue were also there, and I had a great time talking with them.

Something from Erik's lecture that quite shocked me was the revelation that this fresco is not actually by Fra Angelico. Good grief!

This painting is still definitely by Fra Angelico:

I just love that Turkish carpet that everyone is standing on.

Before I go, one more link: St. Anthony of Padua Institute. Erik is encouraging everyone to join, Bay Area Catholics in particular. The Institute's ultimate goal is to found a Catholic liberal arts college in the Bay Area.

People to pray for

2006-08-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

Please pray for my grandfather, who has cancer. We learned of his illness several weeks ago, but recently it has taken a turn for the worse. St. Peregrine, pray for us.

As many of you know, Regina Doman lost her 5-year old son Joshua in a car accident last month. Danielle Bean has stopped collecting donations to help Regina's family buy a new car, but you can still send checks to Regina's brother-in-law:

Mike Schmiedicke
PO BOX 1963
Front Royal VA 22630

On the website that Regina made for Joshua there is now a dream that Regina's daughter, Marygrace, had about Joshua. The whole site is beautiful and I hope you all have the time to read through it. Regina is very strong in the Faith. And even as you pray for the Schmiedicke family, remember that Joshua is now a saint in heaven. We can pray to him now. An astonishing thought.

I read on Kateri's blog that a Christendom alumnus, Will Davulis, was killed in a motorcycle accident as he was riding to visit his brother in the hospital. Please pray for him, his brother and their family. And please pray also for Anthony Smitha (Christendom '05) who lost his father on June 20th.

The Art of Triolets

2006-08-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

Your triolet should glimmer
Like a butterfly;
In golden light, or dimmer,
Your triolet should glimmer,
Tremble, turn, and shimmer,
Flash, and flutter by;
Your triolet should glimmer
Like a butterfly.

-Don Marquis

Sheila has announced the results of her triolet contest. The submissions were fantastic, exhibiting wit, color, and metrical grace (which is VERY important. See above poem.) As I read and wrote more triolets, I began to notice more and more complexities in the form, and I started to write a little triolet primer in my head. These are some of my observations.

As forms go, triolets are peachy: easy to write, but capable of depth; more dignified than limericks, but lighter than sonnets. They are ideal for conveying sweet nothings (or somethings...) to one's beloved, but as Sheila's contest has proved, the triolet is afraid of nothing! Though it may be impossible to write a triolet without any humor in it. Once I did write a ghastly triolet which teetered on the edge of nihilism, but I will spare you the sight. Besides, it wasn't a real triolet. Anyhow, when you start a triolet, you are already half done. If I write

The Berkley sunshine rarely smiles,
But my, it's shining bright today!

then I already have the outline of the poem:

The Berkley sunshine rarely smiles,
But my, it's shining bright today!
*
The Berkeley sunshine rarely smiles
*
*
The Berkley sunshine rarely smiles,
But my, it's shining bright today!

I am left with only three spaces. This requires me to be something of a contortionist. The rhyme scheme tightens things further: The first couplet I make up ends ab--and a and b are all I get for the whole poem; 5 a-rhymes and 3 b-rhymes. The first two lines determine your rhyme scheme, and they form your poem's ending. (This is what T.S. Eliot was talking about when he said, "In my beginning is my end." You know how much he loved to write triolets...) Thus, the first two lines of your triolet are the most important, structurally speaking.

But the real fun is in the remaining three lines. This is where you can introduce your Ogden Nash-style rhymes, your pungency or poignancy, and all the various twists and turns of alliteration and internal rhyme and such. The last line before the repetition of the opening can become the triolet's punchline, or it can do something subtler... it is a useful point to center the triolet around. Look at this one of Chesterton's:

If I were a fish I should
Miss occasional luxury
Such as climbing in the wood
(If I were a fish I should)
Church-going is also good
Mostly I should miss the sea
If I were a fish I should
Miss occasional luxury.

"Mostly I should miss the sea." This line is unexpected and funny, yet somehow also sonorous and wistful. It makes the poem. But notice that Chesterton commits an infelicity that is common in triolets: His opening couplet is constructed so that the first line can't do anything logical when it is repeated in the fourth line, and Chesterton can only put it in parentheses as a sort of echo. To avoid this, you can either make the first line a complete statement, or make it a dependent clause capable of connecting with the lines before or after it. Actually, you should always connect it if you can. Here is a good example:

In the school of coquettes
Madam Rose is a scholar.
They fish with all nets
In the school of coquettes:
When her brooch she forgets
Tis to show a new collar.
In the school of coquettes
Madam Rose is a scholar.

Ah, the Rose triolets! They were the first triolets I ever read. Here are two more:

Rose kissed me to-day.
Will she kiss me tomorrow?
Let it be as it may,
Rose kissed me today.
But the pleasure gives way
To a savour of sorrow;-
Rose kissed me to-day,-
Will she kiss me tomorrow?

I intended an Ode,
And it turned to a Sonnet.
It began à la mode,
I intended an Ode;
But Rose cross'd the road
In her latest new bonnet;
I intended an Ode;
And it turned to a Sonnet.

While I was searching for these triolets, I stumbled onto a little exchange on a U. of Chicago mailing list. It involved communism, molecular theory and triolets, and contained this gem:

I love triolets because they are both pleasant and safe to use. Authors of triolets are responsible for fewer than 15% of this year's violent deaths, and have started fewer wars than authors of odes, rondeaus, sonnets and blank verse combined. Other forms (or lacks thereof) are quite different: to paraphrase Thomas Pynchon, the only thing you feel like doing after hearing something of Wallace Stevens' is going out and invading Poland.

In fact, recent archival research has revealed that no less a figure than the anti-scholastic Sir Francis Bacon himself is believed to have authored over a dozen heretofore anonymous triolets. And Francois Hotman attributes Henry of Navarre's early victories over Guises' armies to a flaming triolet that appeared in the sky above the battlements of La Rochelle. "In haec forma, vinces!" Henry is reputed to have said, in French. So before you go about criticizing the triolet, Matt, you ought to do your homework.

So much for the triolet. But before I go, I want to say that Kevin's "The Latin on the keyboard coded" reminded me of Tantum ergo Sacramentum (terrible I know), and that Charlemagne's "The Buzzard" is practically perfect in every way (and reminiscent of The Bad Child's Book of Beasts), and that I'm still in love with "At ChesterCon I met some friends."

And finally: Sheila, I found a triolet by Sara Teasdale that I think you'll like:

Written in a copy of "The Poems of Sappho":

Beyond the dim Hesperides,
The girl who sang them long ago
Could never dream that over seas,
Beyond the dim Hesperides,
The wind would blow such songs as these --
I wonder now if she can know,
Beyond the dim Hesperides,
The girl who sang them long ago?

Coming Up for Air

2006-06-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

Alright. In two weeks at Berkeley I've learned how to decline nouns, conjugate verbs (in active, passive, AND the elusive middle), put together all manner of Conditional Sentences, Purpose Clauses, and Optatives of Wish ("If only I had less Greek homework!"), and what to do with an Enclitic, or more properly, the word preceding it. Having made it through all of this, I figured I was pretty much set. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, articles, relative/demonstrative pronouns, check. How bad could participles be?

As it turns out, the Greek Participle is like the Big Bad Final Boss of an unusually sadistic videogame - a sneering space robot, decked out with missiles and whirling knives and other assorted nastiness, which taunts you in an alien language before blowing you up.

(Maybe that was slightly hyperbolic. But I've been partial, lately, to personifying grammatical terms - after seeing this.)

I think I'm forgetting how to print the Roman alphabet. Except when writing the language of old Rome. For in spite of the exigencies of intensive Greek, I've managed to write a dram of Latin poetry in the margin of my textbook:

Hodie apparuit
Regina mane Flora;
nunc vidimus maritum,
thalassina hora.

or,

Today at early morn appeared
the Queen of things that flower;
now we see her bridegroom come
at the sea-green hour.

This makes almost no sense. But it's the first bit of Latin verse I've ever written, so I'm proud of it. Still, can someone more experienced in Latin tell me whether "thalassina" is over the top? It looked like such a lovely word when I stumbled across it in a dictionary, and I'd like to keep it for further use.

Poetry. I'm doing this so I can read poetry: Sophocles, Sappho, and Homer. I've decided that this blog needs at least two things (ask me and I'll tell you the rest): more posts, and more posts on poetry. At this moment I will further the cause of poetry by directing you to Sheila's Triolet Contest and John's sonnet sequence, which he wrote in honor of a friend's entrance into a Carmelite convent. When I can, I will review it and try to do it justice, but in the meantime let me say that I am very excited about such lines as "That very tree from which I oft secede," "A Godly embassy with golden frame," and "I do not say the sun must rise again,/Because I stand beneath its setting face."

And now... back to the Participle.

Rancho San Antonio

2006-05-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

Today my mom and I took a walk in the hills. It was warm and bright, and interesting fish scale clouds kept drifting across the sun, and the smell of the bay and eucalyptus and such really took me back to when I was a kid.

Me by an enormous bay tree.

The ruin of a Lourdes grotto that belonged to the old Maryknoll seminary on the edge of Rancho San Antonio. (That facility still stands, but it is now a retirement home. It's built in a combination of Spanish and Chinese architecture, having a green-tiled pagoda-like roof on its bell tower. Once it sent missionaries to China, but now... no more.) This desolate shrine is hidden from the trail and you have to walk on a fallen tree over a creek to get to it. But there is a well-trodden path to it, and sometimes you find candles there.

The herb garden at the little farm in the open space perserve.

Here's looking at you, kid!

A lady came into the barn and fed the goats. Her son was asking questions in a piping little voice, and he ended up helping her push a recalcitrant goat back into the pen. Very cute.

Besides goats, we also saw sheep, wild turkeys, California quail, and a barn cat with black fur and orange eyes. I know it sounds idiotic, but someday I'd like to see one of those fabled mountain lions. I'd also like to live to tell about it with lots of dramatic flourishes. So it's a binary wish.

Going to an East Coast College has made me realize just how improbably wonderful California is. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

A Conspiracy

2006-05-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

One of Mark Shea's commenters (A. Nonymouse) submitted this priceless theory after reading about Mark's anti-DVC adventures in Northern Ireland:

Omigod, omigod, omigod!!!!!!!!!!!!

Take "Dan Brown." Mix up the letters to get "Ban Drown." Do the same to "Mark Shea": "Shark Mea," which is really "shark may."

The Ban is a river in Ireland. So is the Shannon.

The real Dan Brown was eaten by a shark in the Liffy!!!!!!!!

Mark Shea is the DIRECT DESCENDANT OF BRIAN BORU!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where's Mark's sceptre? Does the Merovingian know about this? Ah well, no matter! "And the Angelus bell o'er the Liffy swell / Rang out in the foggy dew." Ladies and gentlemen, goodnight.

Nunc est bibendum!

2006-05-20T03:16:00.000-07:00

The Year in Pictures (sort of)

Stephanie and I work on our Medieval Fest projects.

Sarah B. took this picture outside the chapel on a night in February when the whole campus looked like Narnia.

Sarah F. and me, on the same night, acting out a random scene from LotR. I'm Faramir, Sarah is Denethor. What can I say, we were feeling giddy.

The cool people went to Rome...

...and made a sidetrip to Pigeonopolis.

Penguins like Spring Formal too.

Dramatic Productions

There was a performance of T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party.

It was excellent, in an eccentric, Eliotian way. Can you have a chorus in cocktail dresses? Can you make a libation with gin and vermouth? In the world of TSE I suppose one can...

There was also the Scarlet Pimpernel musical.

Percy, help!

Finally there was the Spring Play - A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sepha was born to play Puck!

The play was staged with a charming 20's theme... there were swing-dancing fairies, which was especially absurd and sweet.

Oberon and Titania.

* * *

It was quite a year, but now it's over. Here's to the new juniors, here's to '07, here's to Rome!

Nunc est scribendum...

2006-05-07T18:09:00.000-07:00

Studying for finals continues furiously here at Christendom. Metaphysics final tommorrow... please pray for us!

Essentia tamen materiae non diversificatur sub diversis formis sicut ratio sua: ratio enim materiae non est una et communis sicut sua essentia est: ratio enim formae in diversis materiis est una, licet secundum esse sit diversa...

Aaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!

I wanna go home...

I have returned!

2006-04-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter to you all. Did everyone have a most lenten Lent? I know I did. I'm still wobbly from it, actually, which means that it was good. So many things happened during the time Basia Me was closed: I turned 20 (on March 28), I decided to major in Classics instead of English, and I figured out how get caught up on the Greek requirement for said major. I also got ahold of a signed copy of Hilaire Belloc's Belinda and participated in a Tridentine Triduum for the first time ever. In fact, I (and my intrepid friend Sarah) were conscripted into the choir! It was amazing...

About the Greek thing. I've been taking Latin for the past two years, but I always thought I would be an English major, so I never bothered to start Greek. But a few weeks ago I realized that I wanted to be a Classics major. So I'm going to do this.

Live at Berzerkly for ten weeks learning Attic Greek?! We'll see if I survive. If I do, I'll have a head full of Greek and tons of weird stories to tell.

Christus resurrexit!

2006-04-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Exultet iam angelica turba caelorum:
exultent divina mysteria:
et pro tanti Regis victoria tuba insonet salutaris.

Gaudeat et tellus tantis irradiata fulgoribus:
et, aeterni Regis splendore illustrata,
totius orbis se sentiat amisisse caliginem.

Laetetur et mater Ecclesia,
tanti luminis adornata fulgoribus:
et magnis populorum vocibus haec aula resultet.

Quapropter astantes vos, fratres carissimi,
ad tam miram huius sancti luminis claritatem,
una mecum, quaeso,
Dei omnipotentis misericordiam invocate.
Ut, qui me non meis meritis
intra Levitarum numerum dignatus est aggregare,
luminis sui claritatem infundens,
cerei huius laudem implere perficiat.

Vers. Dominus vobiscum.
Resp. Et cum spiritu tuo.
Vers. Sursum corda.
Resp. Habemus ad Dominum.
Vers. Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro.
Resp. Dignum et iustum est.

Vere dignum et iustum est,
invisibilem Deum Patrem omnipotentem
Filiumque eius unigenitum,
Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum,
toto cordis ac mentis affectu et vocis ministerio personare.

Qui pro nobis aeterno Patri Adae debitum solvit,
et veteris piaculi cautionem pio cruore detersit.

Haec sunt enim festa paschalia,
in quibus verus ille Agnus occiditur,
cuius sanguine postes fidelium consecrantur.

Haec nox est,
in qua primum patres nostros, filios Israel
eductos de Aegypto,
Mare Rubrum sicco vestigio transire fecisti.

Haec igitur nox est,
quae peccatorum tenebras columnae illuminatione purgavit.

Haec nox est,
quae hodie per universum mundum in Christo credentes,
a vitiis saeculi et caligine peccatorum segregatos,
reddit gratiae, sociat sanctitati.

Haec nox est,
in qua, destructis vinculis mortis,
Christus ab inferis victor ascendit.

Nihil enim nobis nasci profuit,
nisi redimi profuisset.
O mira circa nos tuae pietatis dignatio!
O inaestimabilis dilectio caritatis:
ut servum redimeres, Filium tradidisti!

O certe necessarium Adae peccatum,
quod Christi morte deletum est!
O felix culpa,
quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!

O vere beata nox,
quae sola meruit scire tempus et horam,
in qua Christus ab inferis resurrexit!

Haec nox est, de qua scriptum est:
Et nox sicut dies illuminabitur:
et nox illuminatio mea in deliciis meis.

Huius igitur sanctificatio noctis fugat scelera, culpas lavat:
et reddit innocentiam lapsis
et maestis laetitiam.
Fugat odia, concordiam parat
et curvat imperia.

O vere beata nox,
in qua terrenis caelestia, humanis divina iunguntur!¹

In huius igitur noctis gratia, suscipe, sancte Pater,
laudis huius sacrificium vespertinum,
quod tibi in hac cerei oblatione sollemni,
per ministrorum manus
de operibus apum, sacrosancta reddit Ecclesia.

Sed iam columnae huius praeconia novimus,
quam in honorem Dei rutilans ignis accendit.
Qui, licet sit divisus in partes,
mutuati tamen luminis detrimenta non novit.

Alitur enim liquantibus ceris,
quas in substantiam pretiosae huius lampadis
apis mater eduxit.²

Oramus ergo te, Domine,
ut cereus iste in honorem tui nominis consecratus,
ad noctis huius caliginem destruendam,
indeficiens perseveret.
Et in odorem suavitatis acceptus,
supernis luminaribus misceatur.

Flammas eius lucifer matutinus inveniat:
Ille, inquam, lucifer, qui nescit occasum:
Christus Filius tuus,
qui, regressus ab inferis, humano generi serenus illuxit,
et vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum.

Resp. Amen.

Closed for Lent

2006-03-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

This poor blog has been shivering out in the cold for the past three weeks or so, and I think it needs to officialy close during Lent. Please say a little prayer for the Christendom sophmores, who are taking a drubbing from the curriculum again... I've been so busy with my studies that I haven't had time to go on the internet. Now that it's Lent, I have even less time for Basia Me.

May you all have a blessed Lent and come to Easter with fresh strength!

The Prayer of a Martyr

2006-02-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

This is a prayer written by Fr. Andrea Santoro, the priest who was killed in Turkey ten days ago. It is one of the most striking Marian prayers I have ever seen. (There is a little information on the prayer here, as well as many links to other stories about Fr. Andrea.)

Meryem anà

Mary, Woman of Jerusalem

Where you offered yourself with Jesus at the foot of the Cross

Mary, Woman of the Last Supper

Where you gathered the breath of the Holy Spirit,

Mary, Woman of Ephesus,

Where you came with John, ‘Your Son’

Sent in mission by the Spirit: Pray for us.

Mary, Mother of the sheep outside the fold,

Mother of those who do not know your son,

Mother of those who know not what they do: Pray for us.

Mary, Mother of lifeless souls,

Mother of lightless minds,

Mother of hopeless hearts,

Mother of sons, who killed your son,

Mother of sinners, Mother of the thief who did not repent,

Mother of the son who did not come back: Pray for us.

Mary, Mother of those who did not follow Him,

Mother of those who repudiated Him,

Mother of those who went back,

Mother of those who were not called: Pray for us.

Mary, Mother of those who like John

Seek the lost children of God,

Mother of those who descend in hell

To announce life to the dead: Pray for us.

Mary, Mother, come and live with me:

Come to the house where I am asked to live,

Come to the land where I am asked to go,

Come among the men I am asked to love,

Come to the divisions that I am asked to heal,

Come into the hearts that I am asked to visit.

Come to my home and be my mother,

Come Mary; give me your heart as mother.

“Meryem anà” “Mary, Mother” of all peoples: Pray for us.

What can I say about these words? They cannot be spoken about... only spoken.

Sacred Art at Christendom College

2006-02-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colours, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery. - John Paul II, Letter to Artists

Christendom College is hosting Contemplating the Sacred: Religious Works of Contemporary Artists through March 17 (St Patrick's day!). It opened on February 5 with a talk by Catholic sculptor H. Reed Armstrong. You can read more about the exhibit here.

H. Reed Armstrong leads a tour of the exhibit

Detail, Descent from the Cross by Roxolana Luczakowsky
(She lives right here in Front Royal!)

My favorite artist in the exhibit is Edmund Sullivan, who is from Gloucester, Massachusetts. I love this Anunnciation:

...and his Madonna and Child with Rose:

(full size and detail)

My camera simply refused to capture the colors in these two paintings. I keep coming back to the library to look at them, and they put one instantly into a sort of prayerful quiet. If you live somewhere in the vicinity of Front Royal or DC, you might consider coming out to see this exhibit. There will be special events on the next four Sundays:

Feb. 12 - H. Reed Armstrong, Talk on Faith, Imagination, and Reason in Art, 7 PM, St. John the Evangelist Library, Ground Level.

Feb. 19 - Madison Brass, Concert of the Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli, 4 PM, library main level.

Feb. 26 - Dramatic Readings from T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, 7 PM, library ground level.

Mar. 12 - Round Table Discussion on Art, 7 PM, library ground level.

Mmmmm... I can't wait to hear that Gabrieli!