The Loves of Harry Potter (SPOILER ALERT)

I learned an important lesson about being an author this week; once your book is complete and published, you should really KEEP ANY SECOND THOUGHTS YOU HAVE TO YOURSELF!! 

I’m referring, of course, to J.K. Rowling’s infamous announcement that she regrets pairing Ron and Hermione. Really, what possible purpose could such an announcement serve? It’s not like she can go back and ‘fix’ the books so that Harry and Hermione get together instead. All it does is introduce a disconnect in the minds of the readers, who now will have a harder time getting caught up in the romance because they’ll be thinking “but the authoress thinks it should have been different…maybe I shouldn’t enjoy it so much…” Likewise, if you shipped Harry-Hermione, you’ll be even more focused on how much better that would have been, and so you will also have a harder time enjoying the story, because the criticism you already had will have been sharpened. A little of the readers' enjoyment of the books has been taken away.  

Besides which, I think she’s wrong. I love the Ron-Hermione romance, and I can’t imagine the story without it. Ron in particular would have virtually no character arc at all.

See, Ron’s deal is that he’s always gotten the short end of the stick in pretty much everything; poor, second-youngest while the youngest is the girl his mother always wanted, picked on by his elder brothers, obliged to use second-hand-everything, not especially smart or talented or popular, and so on. He’s always the runner-up: second-best in everything, eternally overshadowed, and it’s a source of constant torment and shame for him, which ironically stops him from making good use of what talents he has. He’s come to expect to fail and be overlooked, and so at the slightest hint that he might be, he panics and becomes defensive or angry, thinking ‘Of course: here we go again.’ In short, he’s nearly lost his capacity to hope.

Then he makes friends with Hermione, and they grow up together, and Hermione, of course, excels and surpasses him, just like almost everyone else he knows. But Ron doesn’t feel overshadowed by Hermione (as he does by Harry) because she’s good at things that he admires, but isn't really interested in. He can tease her about spending so much time on homework or reading or being a ‘know-it-all’ because has no ambitions in that direction himself (he never teases Harry about being good at Quidditch, for instance, and note that when he fights with Harry, it’s out of resentment, but when he fights with Hermione it’s over some specific felt injury). He’s able to enjoy her talents without jealousy, which is something he’s probably never experienced before. Then, as they grow older, Ron slowly realizes that Hermione is becoming a beautiful young woman and that he is falling in love with her.

Now faced with the one thing – or rather one person – that he wants more than anything else in the world, he panics. So he does stupid things and makes rash choices because he is so terrified by the idea that he can’t actually succeed in winning her, which of course makes it all the less likely that he will.

For her part, Hermione is sensitive to criticism and afraid of failure. She takes refuge in her studies and overcompensates on them due to a lack of confidence mixed with a deep desire to succeed. She has a tendency to be overly serious or driven or wrapped up in her own head. Ron helps her counterbalance this tendency by both interjecting a voice of calm and good-humor into her life and, equally importantly, by being a constant source of reassurance to her. He’s always reminding her of how brilliant she is and how hard she works. True, he usually does it in a teasing or mocking manner, but he means it and she knows it (note the scene in the sixth book where Ron launches into a boastful description of how brilliant Hermione was at their apparition lesson). Besides, his treating it humorously helps control her fears and self-doubts. He laughs at her at the same time he compliments her, which is just the combination Hermione needs.

This sort of thing is a sign of something Ron doesn’t show much; he has deep wells of kindness and compassion. They’re often lost in the storm of his darker emotions, but he loves and cares for other people very deeply. This is shown in scenes as disparate as his losing his temper whenever Malfoy taunts his family or friends, his grief when he thinks his pet Scabbers has died, and even his regret over the state his backfiring wand has reduced Gilderoy Lockhart to. Hermione, being sensitive to that sort of thing, recognizes this and loves him for it. It isn’t his sudden, brilliant idea of breaking into the Chamber of Secrets that finally breaks her resistance; it’s his concern for the safety of the House Elves.

As I said, by the time he realizes he’s in love with her, Ron has almost become afraid to hope for anything that he really wants. The fact that Hermione already has two ostensibly superior possible beaus – Viktor Krum and Harry himself – only exacerbates the situation. It confirms the suspicion in his mind that he really doesn’t have a chance with her (note he always becomes grumpier when Krum is mentioned, and learning that Krum probably kissed her sends him into his worst temper yet: it makes him think again about how much his supposed rivals apparently outclass him).

Basically, Ron needs to learn to hope; to make the effort even though he doesn’t see much chance of succeeding. The key point in his transformation is when he saves Harry’s life in the seventh book and fully understands what Harry has been trying to tell him all these years about that sort of thing being less impressive from the point of view of the person actually doing it. That’s when he realizes that, even though he doesn’t think of himself as being as good a catch as Krum or Harry, Hermione might not see it that way. That’s when he starts to hope again, and he pursues her quietly, but steadily for the rest of the book (in contrast to the fits and starts that characterized his pursuit of her in prior books). It’s this learning to hope that forms the backbone of his character arch. Ron without Hermione, it seems to me, would be a fairly pointless character.

Hermione without Ron, on the other hand, is, well, boring. She needs him to take her down a peg, to needle and tease and hold a light to her flaws. Without him, she’s simply ‘the smart one:’ there to provide exposition and teach Harry what he needs to know. Consider the films, where Ron is constantly sidelined and Hermione emphasized. The result is that Hermione, in the absence of Ron’s affectionate ribbing, becomes utterly insufferable: just a solemn, bossy know-it-all. Picture Mr. Darcy without Elizabeth and you have an image of what Hermione is like without Ron (the catastrophic mishandling of those two is the main reason I don’t like the films).

Besides which, I really can’t picture a romance between Harry and Hermione. They don’t complement one another at all, and their interactions aren’t nearly as fun as Ron and Hermione’s. Note that whenever they’re alone together, they find they really don’t have a whole lot to say to one another. In the two periods where Harry and Ron aren’t speaking, Harry finds life with Hermione as his best friend to be quiet and rather dull. They love each other, but like brother and sister: there’s no fire or spark or merry duel between them, and never could be (judging by the narration, Harry barely even registers that she’s attractive, requiring us to gather it from the reactions of other characters). There’s a level on which they simply don’t connect. It’s almost as though he’s a straight line and she’s a wavy one; there are contours and depressions in her soul that he doesn’t and can’t respond to.

Now, I can imagine the books rewritten so that Harry and Hermione could reasonably get together, or that Ron would have a character arc apart from his romance with Hermione, but that would require a very different story than the one we have. Mrs. Rowling might just as well have said “I wish I had written a different book series than the one I did.” It's her business if she feels that way, but she shouldn't have mentioned it. It has no effect on the stories themselves, and if it has any effect at all on the readers, it can only be an effect for the worse.

And in any case, I respectfully disagree with her.

Credit: maria-abagnale.livejournal.com

Vivat Christus Rex!

Why Men Like Curves

            Have you ever noticed how most of the really great buildings are curved? I mean, domed and pillared and vaulted and all that? Take a look at a few:

 

            It seems we like ‘roundness.’ Why is that, I wonder?

            Now, I know what you’re thinking: as loyal Freudians, you’re thinking “that’s because we’re evolved to be attracted to the opposite sex, which has rounded parts.”

Well, maybe. Though, that raises the question of why the opposite sex should have evolved those rounded parts. I mean, from an evolutionary point of view, wouldn’t there have to be some advantage to the parts being rounded for them to have evolved that way and hence for mankind to develop his love of all things circular?

Besides which, I don’t think anyone has ever been aroused by the Taj Mahal or St. Basil’s Cathedral. No one, unless they’ve been carefully taught, looks at the dome of Hagia Sophia and thinks “breasts!” They think “Oh, how magnificent!” Or “how beautiful!” And, if I may trust my own experience, the pleasure of looking at a grand building, however rounded, is a very different pleasure than that of looking at a woman’s chest. The very rhythm and tempo of the delight is different; as different as listening to Vivaldi is from listening to Brad Paisely. I like them both, but in very different ways. 

No, the pleasure I find closest to that of admiring a great building is admiring a great landscape; a mountain, or a forest, or a grassy plain with rolling hills. The desert, where the sky seems ten times as big as usual and stretches in a vast dome overhead. Or the sea, with its endless horizon curving away at the edge of eyesight.

Nature is shot through with roundness. The very idea of a right-angle is essentially man-made: you almost never see one in the natural world.

Our love of roundness in architecture, therefore, is based on our love of nature; of the outdoors, the land, the waters, the whole show. The great vaulted roofs of cathedrals are an imitation of the vault of the sky; domes are our copy of rolling hills and tall mountains; pillars are our version of trees and forests; archways of cave-mouths or interlocked branches. All these are the memories of the home and playground and battlefield of our race’s childhood, which we still love to revisit and which have left their impressions on our hearts even all these millennia later. 

Or, to put it another way, man recognizes the superiority of God’s handiwork to his own. God works in circles. The very earth, moon, sun, and stars are spherical and beautiful. Nature, as I already pointed out, is an endless series of curves, with only minimal lines. Men of sensibility, such as Bernini, Wren, Michelangelo, and so on recognize the Master’s hand and seek to imitate it, as beginning art students try to copy the style of great painters. All man’s art is an imitation of God’s, or at least of the desecrated, corrupted version we have at present. So, of course, the imitation that is closest to the Master’s – the curved dome of St. Peter’s, the pillared, vaulted chamber of Notre Dame, or the rounded façade of the White House – appeals to us the most. Curves, you might say, are 'the master touch.' 

Vivat Christus Rex!

7 Quick Takes Vol. 29: Ceratosaur Punching Edition

1.     Writing’s a funny art: things seem to just kind of happen without your intending them to. Some people take this too far and say things like “but that vital plot element just wasn’t there when I wrote the scene!” but certainly the story takes on a life of its own at times.

This week, completely without any planning, my hero ended up punching a ceratosaurus. 

Just in case you didn't catch that: he punches a ceratosaurus!

I briefly considered renaming the book Ceratosaur Punching: a Novel. I now want to have the blurb on the back cover simply read “the hero punches a ceratosaurus at one point.”

Yeah. Writing is fun.

2.     I am officially determined to leave this job whether or not I find a new one in time; I cannot stand one more year of this job! Hell, I’ll be lucky to make it to June without pulling a “Mr. Poppins” and racing out the door in the middle of a work day (though remembering the fact that I’m the kind of person whose go-to illustration is a seventy-five-year-old Frank Capra movie does provide some comfort).

3.     For those who have seen Office Space, do you remember the scene where the three protagonists go postal on the printer? I’m thinking of asking for that same kind of thing as my final request when I leave the company. Our office printer is my nemesis, and I daily fantasize about taking a sledgehammer to it. 

4.     This week I took the plunge and bought a keyboard. It was on clearance, because apparently it had already been bought and returned once and was not very cleanly repackaged. The keys are much too sensitive, so if my fingers twitch I get two notes, but I’m enjoying it a good deal so far, and I’m learning quickly.

5.     Read this:

http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/01/restless-heart-of-darkness-part-two/

Seriously. Read it. Here is laid out the best dissection of the secular left from a Christian perspective that I have read in a long, long time. I almost feel like I should give up blogging, because this guy said pretty much exactly what I’ve been trying to say. I have got to track down some of this guy’s fiction.

6.     Speaking of reading, if I ever do end up becoming a teacher (which I doubt, though anything’s possible), the very first thing I would have my students read each year is My Bondage, My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. Or perhaps one of his other autobiographies, in any case, Frederick Douglass. I’ve been finally retackling it, having begun it in college but fallen off about half-way with other commitments. Lord, what a man! Not only is his story fascinating and important in itself, but he makes one appreciate the power of reading and writing better than anyone I’ve ever read.

7.     Oh, in other reading news I’ve finally (about six hours in) gotten interested in Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester rocks! Not ‘Mr. Darcy’ rocks, but pretty close.

Lots more at Conversion Diary. 

 Vivat Christus Rex!

For the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

(This really should have gone up a few days ago, but better late than never)

 

Vivat Christus Rex!

7 Quick Takes Vol. 28

See Conversion Diary for more.

1.       Well, it’s beginning; I’m starting to look about me for a new job. My lease is up in July, and I don’t plan to renew it. As a matter of fact, I’m strongly determined to quit and move out whether I find another job or not. It’s not that my current job is really hard or unpleasant; it’s just a very bad fit for me. To quote from a great work of literature: “It’s not that I’m lazy; it’s that I don’t care.” And really; I’m twenty-five years old, single, with no debt and a decent bank account: now is not the time for sticking with jobs I don’t care about for the sake of financial security. 

2.       As for what kind of job I’m looking for, that I don’t really know; maybe I’ll start up that rattlesnake-sanctuary I’ve been dreaming about. Or I might just end in retail. The world is my oyster!

3.       I have this odd habit where I’ll conceive of a job – usually an eccentric one, like “street-performing ventriloquist” – and get all excited about it for a week or so, do a lot of research, maybe even start some experimental forays into it…then settle down and realize it’s probably not going to work out. My current ones include “wild animal removal in Texas” (I can see myself wrestling snakes and ‘gators for a living, though I’m not crazy about the ‘killer bees’ aspect) and “lounge musician” (because my mind works that way: “You know, I think I’ll invest in a keyboard so I can learn piano” = “Sing us a song, you’re the piano man!”)

4.        Incidentally, the street ventriloquist thing is not made up: I actually started planning for it at one point before I remembered that I hate cities and have trouble going two sentences in a row without cringing at the incoherent mess that I just said.

5.       I have a new ally in my quest to conquer the world: the almighty Egg-Timer! (I got the idea from my brother, who casually alluded to his employment of the device). With the aid of Egg-Timer, I will no longer wonder “have I been working at this long enough yet?” or “how much longer would be reasonable?” Egg-Timer will tell me; Egg-Timer will dictate when I can or must stop. It’s Egg-Timer and me against the world!

6.       I finally finished Brideshead Revisited, and my conclusions are 1). I enjoyed it a good dead, for the most part 2). I really can’t picture how it could be adapted for the screen at all, and 3). I’ve read that the 2008 film version omits or subverts the Catholic elements. I haven’t seen it, but I really have to wonder how the heck they would manage that, and if so, what was the bloody point of adapting the thing was in the first place? As far as I can tell, the story is pretty much nothing but Catholicism. I mean, that’d be like making a chaste and sexually restrained version of Stranger in a Strange Land: it isn’t just that it’s contrary to the book, it’s that you really can’t see what the story is about with that element removed.

7.       It’s Polar Vortex 2: Electric Boogaloo! ‘Boogaloo’ here meaning “I seriously don’t want to think about what my heating bill is going to look like this month.” And, at work, I still don’t bother putting on my jacket to get the mail at the end of the driveway! I’m hardcore like that.

Vivat Christus Rex!

The Catholicity of Columbo

                  A suave, sophisticated figure of high society has committed a crime; a most ingenious crime, ridding him of some pestering trouble that threatened to upset his cozy little world. The figure is wealthy, well-educated, and intelligent, and he’s confident that no one will even suspect him of the crime.

                  Then, little by little, his elaborately constructed scheme is pulled to ribbons by a chatty, disheveled, cigar-chomping, one-eyed Italian in a dirty raincoat. 

                  That is a summary of both the formula and essential appeal of Columbo: the long-running detective series starring the late Peter Falk as the ultimate unassuming detective. Columbo (no first name is ever given, though sharp-eyed viewers might spot it on his badge) is an expert at employing what is known as “obfuscating stupidity.” That is, he deliberately acts much dumber than he really is. Or rather, he doesn’t bother to bring his personality up to the level of his intellect. He acts pretty much like he looks; a blue-collar cop with little formal education and not much culture. But behind this he has a mind like a steel trap, and though he has only one eye, it’s a sharp one.

                  Columbo himself denies being especially intelligent; rather, he credits his success to two things. One is that he puts in the time to learn and understand the facts of the case, and to pay attention to every detail. In this he has a kind of philosophy; it’s the little details, the things you pass over, that you don’t think of that hang you. The murderers are usually done in by things they simply didn’t consider, or didn’t think worth noticing: the ink ribbon on a typewriter, the sound of a clock striking the half-hour, or even the way someone’s shoelaces are tied. Just as they didn’t think Columbo himself was worth noticing…until he makes himself impossible to ignore. Columbo works in stages; usually he’ll pick up on some small clue or inconsistency right away that points him to his target. Then the rest of the episode is working this one hole in the story bigger and bigger until the whole thing comes down on the murderer’s head.

                  The other thing? Even simpler: murder is his job. He’s an expert. The murderers are all amateurs, usually on their first or second attempt. Smart as they are, this is his game and they’re out of their league. But since Columbo gives off such a convincing air of befuddlement and unsophistication most don’t realize how out-classed they are until the last moment. In at least one episode Columbo confesses to the murderer that he suspected him the moment they met. When the man protests that this is impossible, Columbo explains: having been told that the man he had just eaten dinner with was poisoned, the murderer came right over to help the police. Any ordinary man would have rushed to the hospital to have himself examined. These are the things the murderers never even consider, but which Columbo sees through immediately.

Columbo’s investigative technique owes quite a lot to Chesterton’s Father Brown, who was one of the inspirations for the character (they also share a dumpy, unassuming appearance and both rely on their extensive professional experience as much as any innate intelligence). The technique involves slipping under the radar and getting into the perpetrator’s head to figure out what kind of person they are, and what sort of person in what frame of mind would do the kinds of things the facts indicate. Columbo focuses as much on the why as on the what and how. In some cases, even more. It’s always a question of why: why wouldn’t someone be relieved to hear he wasn’t the target of an assassination attempt? Why would someone angrily demand to see a subordinate in the morning and then genially brush him off in the afternoon? Why does a man suddenly break a long-standing habit just about the time another man disappears?

To answer these questions, Columbo ingratiates himself with his target by using his own unassuming nature to his advantage: flattering and complimenting the killer, inviting suggestions, often pretending to go along with their version of the events even as he silently collects the clues he’ll use to destroy them.

                  Though Columbo’s persona isn’t completely put on either; he really is a simple blue-collar cop. He likes football and the movies, can’t sing, is a good cook, and he plays a mean game of pool. He makes near-constant references to his never-seen wife and other family members, occasionally calling up the former to ask about dinner or what he should pick up on the way home from work. He drives a beaten-up old car (which Falk himself discovered and brought to the set as suitable for the character) and is sometimes accompanied by his shiftless basset hound, Dog. He served in the Army during Korea, and he estimates his income at $11,000 a year. The point of the series isn’t that a brilliant detective might act like a simple man; it’s that a simple man can also be a brilliant detective. 

                  Meanwhile, his opponents are, almost to a man, wealthy, sophisticated, and well-educated society rollers. They’re the kinds of people who attend black-tie parties, run multi-million-dollar businesses, or have several books in print (Columbo often asks for an autograph). Once he tackled a foreign diplomat, and on another occasion, a Senator. Some were facing exposure for past crimes, others faced the prospect of losing their life’s work, still others wanted to get rid of a rival or an irritant or someone who stood in the way of their growing even richer. Whatever the reason, they all commit murder, and so bring Columbo upon themselves. And all their wealth, power, and influence doesn’t change anything. Indeed, in some of the best episodes the thing that gets the villains is the very cleverness of their schemes; in attempting to divert any suspicion from themselves, they in fact trap themselves. It is the sense of their own superiority and sophistication that finally destroys them. “You tried to contrive the perfect alibi,” Columbo tells one particularly unpleasant murderer with evident relish. “And it’s your perfect alibi that gonna hang you.”

Another interesting point is the contrast between the oft-chaotic and deviant family and sexual lives of the suspects and Columbo’s own cheerfully unseen domesticity. The detective often relates rueful or humorous anecdotes about his wife, but the idea of his being unfaithful or leaving her is as ridiculous as the ide of his committing a murder himself. We never once doubt that, for all we never see them, Columbo loves his wife and kids and is perfectly happy in his marriage. He also sometimes lists off anecdotes about his broad extended family; his nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters, in-laws, and so on, all of whom he appears to be on perfectly good terms with (he claims that advice from one of his nephews – a botanist – was key to cracking at least one case).

Meanwhile, the killers tend to have unhappy or immoral family habits: most are in the midst of non-marital or extra-marital affairs. Many also have strained or hateful relationships with their siblings or parents or in-laws (this state of affairs supplies many a victim and motive). In short, they live the stereotypical ‘glamorous’ lifestyle of the rich and powerful: no rules, no boundaries. And this is often the exact thing that leads them into murder.

Columbo himself never judges or admonishes them for this kind of behavior, usually acknowledging it with little more than a grimace and an averted eye. But the fact is that the easy-going, blue-collar domesticity we glimpse in Columbo’s anecdotes is really a good deal more attractive than the no-rules, no-boundaries lifestyle of his opponents. As a matter of fact, several of the murderers – most notably Johnny Cash’s Gospel singer – commit their crimes in order to achieve this kind of glamorous life, only to find that it isn’t as glamorous as they thought it would be.

                  Columbo is, really, a wonderfully Catholic character. I don’t just mean that Columbo himself is, presumably, a Catholic (being a thoroughbred Italian). I mean he is universal; he looks at everyone and everything as though it has value, and he can find goodness even in the murderers he hunts. In one episode he has a rather remarkable speech in which he admits (to a bunch of mystery fans) that he admires many of the people he pursues, because they’re often very smart, talented, and even nice people. He quickly clarifies that this doesn’t mean he approves what they do, only he sees that they are not just murderers, but people. He hates the sin, but he often loves the sinner.

                  Indeed, there are a number of episodes where he genuinely bonds with the killer. Among the most poignant are Donald Pleasance’s wine connoisseur, with whom he shares a taste for excellence, Patrick McGoohan’s dignified Army Colonel, who sees in Columbo a kindred spirit, and Theodore Bikel’s Mensa member, who finds in the end that the detective is the only person in his life he can really connect to. Other times, when faced with truly cold-blooded or overly-smug villains, Columbo is quite capable of expressing his disgust with them. “I respect your talents,” he tells one. “But I don’t like anything else about you.”

Columbo is a relatively rare fictional detective who remains firmly aware of his opponents’ humanity, even as he works to have them arrested. The episodes are almost as much character studies of the murderers as they are mysteries. We get to know them very well; their hopes, fears, desires, and generally the things that make them tick. In this it preaches another important Catholic message: that murderers are not inhuman monsters, but just ordinary people; people who, under normal circumstances, would be perfectly pleasant and even virtuous. Murder, we see, is not an identity, as though there were murderers and non-murderers; it’s just a sin like any other, a conscious choice that a man makes. A man doesn’t commit murder because he is a murderer; he’s a murderer because he chooses to commit murder. And a man commits murder for the same reason he commits any other sin: because it would be convenient for him and he thinks he can get away with it. Sometimes a man becomes a murderer because he is already an extremely proud or unpleasant person. Other times he’s as upright or even kind a person as you could hope to meet.

Thus, Columbo studiously avoids the problem that many other police dramas fall into of turning the murderers into gratuitous caricatures. They may be unpleasant, but the villains are never caricatures, nor do they ever feel like the writers had any particular axe to grind. Even the escaped Nazi has a degree of humanity to him. He replies to a reminder about his past with a weary “I was 21; I was merely a boy.” I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time that any movie or TV show ever allowed a Nazi to actually make a plea for himself that, in other contexts, is often held to be a viable excuse.

That is the great thing about Columbo: it’s all about a working-class Joe taking down rich and powerful snobs, but it dares to extend its sympathy to the snobs. Here is a show that never loses sight of the common humanity of the rich and the poor, and even the criminal. No one, not even the most repulsive, is simply dismissed as beneath notice, just as no one, not even the wealthiest and most talented, is above the law.

And one more thing…

Another source of Columbo’s appeal is the sheer caliber of acting talent on display. One of the three distinguishing ‘marks’ of the show’s formula is to have the murderer of the week played by some of the most famous and talented actors of the time (the other two were the ‘reverse-mystery’ style and Falk himself). I already mentioned Donald Pleasance, Patrick McGoohan, and Johnny Cash, but other stars included Vera Miles, Dick van Dyke, Robert Culp, Ricardo Montalban, Jose Ferrer, Leonard Nimoy, and Joyce Van Patten. That’s just off the top of my head. The supporting casts also tend to be strong, and have featured the likes of Ida Lupino, Myrna Loy, Mako, and Vincent Price (who surprisingly enough does not play the murderer). It’s a parade of talent that, more often than not, is very well served by the writers and makes the show a joy to watch just for the sake of the acting talent.

Vivat Christus Rex! 

7 Quick Takes vol. 27

1.     More studying personality types! Masha and I are having an e-mail based conversation about it, and she’s convinced me not to be so coy about my type. So, I can say that I seem to be INFP, though I also have traits of ISTJ. Which, I suppose, is a way of saying that my only really strong trait is introversion; the rest are all a muddle and a morass. But, on the whole, I find INFP descriptions tend to fit me better than ISTJ ones, so I’m fairly confident in claiming that as my type: I’m not particularly ordered or practical, nor am I very insensitive (rather, I’m insensitive in the abstract: I fantasize about being insensitive, but I can’t bring myself to be so when I’m actually dealing with people).

So, my current self-assessment is that I’m an INFP who idealizes and tries to imitate ISTJ traits.

2.     Speaking of which, our esteemed hostess mentioned an advanced personality program called the “Birkman Method.” Unfortunately, it costs $475, so it must remain a mystery to me. 

Though I did consider it anyway. 

3.     When it comes to TV shows, I have a habit of ‘binging’ on one, where I’ll watch two or three episodes a night for a week or so. My current taste is Columbo. I’ll probably do a post on that soon, because I really love that show. It’s a delicious cocktail of humor, puzzle, and good-natured social-commentary. It doesn’t demonize the rich, but it does attack all manner of the snobbery and entitlement that often comes with wealth. There are few things more satisfying in fiction than seeing a smug ‘elite’ type taken down a peg by the common man, and Columbo is pretty much based around that concept.

4.     I reworked the opening of Lost City of the Dimetrodons (LCD) this week, which put me in a quandary as it ended up in such a form that it will require me to basically re-do the entire first act! I just started figuring out somewhat how I’m going to do that, after a few days of working on other things. As a bonus, it’s helping me straighten out the hero’s character a bit. Still, the whole sequence remains a mess, with me unsure of what I ought to try to keep and what I ought to abandon, and how to make the things I keep work without the things abandoned. ‘Tis all a muddle.

5.     More snow and cold up here; couple bad days of roads. I really like snow, but I prefer not to have to drive in it.

6.     Starting to take up drawing again, though my first attempt at ‘upside down’ drawing was rather disastrous. It took me four tries to even get through the darn thing, and even then Stravinsky looked more like some kind of fish-man from the eight underworld than anything else. But a half-drawn picture of a horse and knight and some doodles at work turned out better, so maybe there’s hope for me yet.

7.     Let’s end with a Chesterton quote: 

“To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we know cannot scare us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us, to be defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us – this is the grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.”

Vivat Christus Rex!