Second Chance?

Just finished book to the left on the plane home for Christmas yesterday (a little bit of a change from Steinbook, to be sure). Then continued reading My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, a collection of short stories edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. It's a book of slightly off-the-beaten-path love stories from some of the world's most beloved authors (Joyce, DeMaupassant, etc.) and so far they've been really good (granted I have read about 1.5).

On the second flight, I sat next to a girl from Ohio/Indiana who had lived in NY for about three years working for a high-end fashion designer (wedding gowns) and is now opening her own line in Baltimore (just veils, at the moment). Everything seemed normal until she started talking about how she met her husband through parents' friends in NY, and they would go to Bible Fellowship sometimes... She then told me that it was funny; it's nice to marry your high school sweetheart, but sometimes things don't work out that way. Made me wonder whether she had a heartbreaking story about a high school sweetheart... I laughed wryly and told her how my own high school sweetheart went on to marry another girl from our high school, in fact, the next girl that he dated. And that my college sweetheart seemed about to do the same thing with the girl he left me for just after we moved to Cambridge together to go to grad school (me at MIT) and med school (him at Harvard). Guess I just can't compete with those Harvard med school girls. "Looks like I'm cursed to prepare men for their great love," I laughed sardonically to her. She looked at me with something in between pity and understanding and said, "I don't think you're cursed at all!" Oh bother. How many chances do you get in this area? More about going home soon -- Dad just came to the door. I know this because our dog, Lily, a Pekanese-Shih Tsu, just decided to bark like crazy.

Timshel.

Timshel. The final word of the book: "Thou mayest." This book is about the eternal, cyclical struggle between good and evil that is alive in the birth of every human and between which she or he must struggle each day of her or his life. Although one of the characters, Cathy, appears to only encompass evil (and her husband, Adam, the father of the twins Cal and Aron, seems only capable of good), in the end, each of the characters is shown to be capable of both. This is something which the twins must struggle with as they go through the trials and tribulations of life. Aron, who seems disposed to be perfectly good, and Cal, who has all the predispositions of a clever and crafty evil-doer (and knows how to wield these powers), are not always all they seem. Aron seems to go through life as in a dreamland of perfection and is troubled when any event tries to taint his perfect world. Cal, though he struggles to be good, is always thwarted and never recognized for his good deeds, and almost turns toward evil, especially after visiting his mother at the whorehouse she runs in Salinas.

In the end, it is Cal who ends up being able to recognize that in each of us reside good and evil, and he decides to deal with both. As his father lays dying, he is given a blessing: "Thou mayest." Timshel.

Everything will be...

I'd like to take this opportunity to direct you to my tumblr account. Feel free to browse by clicking here or view original art here.

First newspaper publication since middle school

More shameless self-promotion: check out my article, "Electronic Communication and Life Histories," in this Friday's edition of The Tech, MIT's student newspaper. Available online here.

Just heard from my mom that she is playing in the handbell choir again at our old church, St. Luke's UMC in Kokomo. I of course decided that I needed to be a part of this! I am therefore signed up to play F&G (above middle C) or the high bells for the Christmas Eve service. Words cannot express how happy this makes me. I played in the handbell choir there from the age of 8 onward -- over 10 years (jeez). Nancy Slaubaugh, my first music instructor at St. Luke's, will be leading the choir. If you're in the area, come to the 11pm service on December 24 :).