A few quick thoughts while I'm trying to clear my head of all the preferences law that I'm trying to force through it. I shall post these in reverse order of happiness so the post does not end on a downer.

First off, I'm glad my sister and her students are safe. Once again, may the counter-terrorism forces of the United Kingdom have good clean targets and shoot straight. But of course that isn't a real solution. The only real solution to this kind of Muslim extremist neoterrorism has got to be social, political, and economic. Why so few people seem to recognize that the Iraq war is a multigenerational regional engineering project, to create a Middle East which no longer fosters this kind of I'm-a-disgruntled-anachronism-with-a-bomb brand of Islam, I don't know. And, following my sister's example, that's all I'm going to say about that, lest I get ... emotional.

Second, although I have become much more tolerant of alcohol and am expanding the repertoire of wines that I like (another item on the list of gentlemanly skills: How to Drink Wine), I still have essentially zero tolerance for intoxication. I try to be polite about it, but the fact of the matter is that people (and especially friends) getting drunk, tipsy, or even noticeably buzzed in my presence feels like a major betrayal (I have decided, actually, it is probably number 2 or 3 on the list of major betrayals). I understand that I have friends who get drunk, tipsy, and/or buzzed on a regular basis, and while I think it's a stupid activity which I have no real problem condemning in the strongest terms, generally speaking they're polite enough not to do it in my presence. Coworkers, sadly, do not always know me as well. That or they're just not as polite. Probably the former.

Third, the Fourth of July was wonderful. There was good food, the weather was nice, there was a fire started by fireworks very close to my house that the fire department put out before it could burn anyone's house down (stupid stupid people ... the west San Fernando Valley in summer is not a place to be screwing around with incendiaries). And I had a great time in the pool with Twilight, Ayudaren, Kathelia, and Lionell, four squeegees, two mops, and two balls (not to mention the tactopi and tictofish). They just showed up with these cleaning implements and balls and said, "Let's make up a game." So Calvinball-ish. The game ended up being kind of like human foosball and kind of like pool volleyball and kind of like soccer and a little like squash: the pool was divided in half and each team was not allowed to cross over the center line. The goal was for the people in front to get the ball into the goal on the other side of the pool, and each team's goal had a goalie who was allowed to touch the ball with a mop but not with any part of his body. The game was made even more complicated by the fact that the two sides of the pool, while equal in terms of difficulty, were unequal in terms of topography. The deep end had a small goal but was, you know, the deep end, and the shallow end had a wider goal but let people stand up. Quite possibly the best pool game ever. And afterwards we had those glow-tube things, and when Kath started decorating her bathing suit with them Lionell and I decided that clearly we needed to make armor out of them, so we did. Here's to not growing up!

Fourth, yesterday I and three of my aforesaid coworkers (of whom, mind you, I am generally fond) spent our day with Public Counsel. This meant we (and two other summer associates, plus two full-time Public Counsel people) walked around the lobby of a county Department of Public Social Services office talking to the people waiting there and offering our help to clear up any problems that might have arisen with their applications for General Relief (welfare) or food stamps (which are actually on a credit card nowadays, but are still called food stamps). I'm sure you didn't know that sometimes the county is less than helpful to these people, but now you do.

It makes me happy to know that this kind of free public interest work has been the tradition of all lawyers (not just public interest lawyers, though they do it full time) for the past 450 years. I'm not a lawyer yet, of course, but it's amazing what a difference it can make just to have somebody show up who knows a little bit about the law and is willing to take the applicants' side. I spent my whole day with a mostly-blind guy whose benefits had been cut off, and it was amazing what a difference that made for him. We ultimately didn't get his back benefits reinstated (it was technically his fault that they had been cut off, and the rule wasn't even really a stupid one in general, although it was in this specific case), but he was actually okay with that and it really meant a lot to him that we were there to even try. And even having me there in the office with him while he reapplied for benefits made a huge difference, apparently - both in the way he felt about the experience and, apparently, in how helpful the county was. Now, I don't really feel like judging the county's level of service (wow, look at that - I'm not judging somebody who is operating at a mediocre level), since I'm sure that working that kind of job you learn real quick to be cynical about the whole process. Don't really approve of that, but I can't find it in me to condemn them real strongly. But regardless, my presence there made the whole process a dignifying experience for this guy. Pretty cool, huh?

As I've gotten older I've become more philosophical about Independence Day. I used to be pretty cynical about it - particularly around tenth grade, when I found out that the American colonies had the highest per capita standard of living in the world at the time of the revolution. Nowadays I understand a little better the constitutional violations the revolutionaries were concerned about, but mostly I figure that I know of no nation which has an admirable birth and ours is not bad, as national foundings go. It's a sign of the world's brokenness that a place like America (or any nation present or former; take your pick) can be considered great, but it is my nation and my homeland and I pray even so that God bless us and raise us up in all the ways that count.

I am even, I confess, proud of it on occasion. One of the nice things about being more philosophical about Independence Day is that I can be proud of my homeland in spite of our many faults. In my opinion, every person should have the luxury of being proud of his or her homeland.

I doubt any soldiers read this, but I am connected at various removes to soldiers in active service, and for some reason that is important to me. Once upon a time a soldier was considered great because he was brave, or valorous, or fierce. Not so long ago the greatest among nations was the most warlike, and citizen bodies prided themselves on the valor of their warriors and the energy of their warmaking. Greece and Rome were both, in their time, the most civilized and the most warlike nations in their part of the world.

On Independence Day, it seems fitting to me to pray a blessing on our soldiers. We claim to be a different sort of nation than those that have come before - in this one small area of society, may it be so by God's grace. I am not aware of any army which has spent any amount of time on foreign soil without incurring the wrath of the inhabitants. I am not so much concerned for how our soldiers are viewed today (although I am aware that many hold them in high esteem even today) but with how they will be viewed by the grandchildren of the world. May they have good targets, so the innocent are neither under their fire nor victims of collateral damage. May they aim true and hit only what they shoot at. Nevertheless, may our soldiers be remembered not for their ferocity but for their meekness. May their grandchildren, and the grandchildren of those who know them, remember tales not of their bravery but of their compassion. May those who serve with them hold them in awe not because of their terrible skill but because they raise up those around them and teach them how to fight with honor for their children and their homeland. May their enterprise be considered great not for the energy of its warmaking, but for the energy of its building. However the world judges America or the success of its efforts, I pray that the world's grandchildren remember today's soldiers as the best of our people. Even if the name of America becomes a slur in the mouth of history, may our soldiers so conduct themselves that our grandchildren will be ashamed to speak ill of them. And even if we are remembered as one of the great civilizations, may we be remembered because of our soldiers not as the most warlike people of our time but as the most compassionate.

Happy Independence Day.

One of the things that law school has done to me is made me more able to see the other side of things. That's good, inasmuch as that is the avowed goal of the faculty of Stanford Law School. And I have to say that while I might have viewed the ability of lawyers to argue either side of a case sophistic or weasely before, now that I am beginning to acquire this ability for myself it doesn't strike me that way. It strikes me as grown up (don't worry, Esther, I don't mean "grown up" in the Peter Pan sense. May I never grow up in the "stop delighting in things" sense - but in the "stop being immature" sense? Sure, sign me up for adulthood).

One of the unanticipated side effects of this is that I can no longer opine about the law or politics with a lot of people. Not all people; I recently had a fairly long and refreshing discussion (not even a debate, but a real discussion) with some folks about the recent Supreme Court takings case (you can find the discussion here and the case here if you're interested; I'm Nabterayl). There are two basic problems.

First, I have a more faith in the political process now than I did a year ago. A lot more. Second, I have stopped believing in judges blindly following their own personal codes, which makes me suspicious that politicians ever blindly follow their own personal codes. Having read after one year of law school more cases than most Americans would read under threat of death, I am convinced that basically all judges do the best they can of following the law and upholding the constitution. The thing is that this is not always very different from what many people decry as following their own personal codes - but that strikes me as silly. What's really going on is that the judge has a personal code which embodies a certain commitment to follow the law and uphold the constitution and a certain understanding of what that means. Which is a good thing. A judiciary that didn't do precisely that would be an amoral monstrosity, and the fact that one might disagree with a judge's understanding of how to best follow the law and uphold the constitution is really immaterial.

Part of this is that I've read a lot of cases that I thought were rightly decided. I think it would do people's faith in the judicial system a lot of good if they read a decent sample of cases; they might be surprised by how often the supposedly evil judge got it right. I've read a lot of cases by "liberal" judges that I felt did justice, and I've read a lot of cases by "conservative" judges that I felt did the same. I am beginning to suspect, in fact, that "liberal" and "conservative" don't describe judges very well at all.

All of which makes me suspicious of people who prophesy doom and the destruction of liberty, Americanism, justice, constitutionality, and/or the forces of good now that Justice O'Connor has announced her retirement. When asked how she wanted people to remember her, she said she hoped her tombstone reads, "Here lies a good judge." I have a really hard time believing that she is unique in that sentiment among her peers. That's what all judges want, and I defy politicians of all flavors to find a Supreme Court nominee who would rather be remembered as a good liberal or a good conservative than a good judge. The fact that sometimes a person's personal understanding of what it means to be a good judge conflicts with yours does not mean that the sky is falling.

In general I feel like the past twelve months have been very good for my ability to empathize (which is nice, since they've also had their share of horrible). I don't think that has really affected my ability to judge things, though, which I suppose is probably what people really fear about lawyers. I think that's an important combination. Being able to see the other side of things is fairly crucial for being gentle, meek, and humble. But so is being able to say, "I understand where that's coming from, but I'm still not afraid to say that it's bad."

Congratulations to all of the not-long-ago graduates! I hope that your day was full of good memories and closure, once you got past the endless litany of people congratulating you and telling you how special you all are. Not that you aren't. And I shall miss those of you who aren't going to be around anymore. I shall miss you very much. Come back to play with me, talk with me, pray with me, and dance with me.

Congratulations to all of the soon-to-be-graduates. I hope to post about that later, but for now I want to talk about something else.

When I was in high school, Alex Michel gave a sermon whose point was that although there are many good reasons to follow God, in the final analysis, he deserves our loyalty\\allegiance on the bare fact of his existence. Like most of Alex's teachings, it really hit home to me, but this one even more than most has stuck with me. I have recently been getting ... reacquainted with it, let us say.

Perhaps this message stuck with me so because it is contrary to my natural inclination. As Archimedes can attest (because I wrote a short story on this theme for my creative writing minor which occasioned much good discussion between us ... ah, beloved friend, how I miss living with you), by temperament I don't have much use for a God who isn't comprehensibly good, wise, mighty, and loving. I don't precisely require my deities to be mere superhumans, but I do want to require that they have effable virtues.

The trouble with that, as I was recently and somewhat violently reminded, is that if you push that to its logical extreme you aren't really worshipping God anymore - you're worshipping goodness, or wisdom, or might, or love. Or if we require that God does good things for us, we might end up worshipping good things - whether those be comfort, self-esteem, a purpose in life ... and that can easily be an evil whose magnitude is difficult to overstate. But on the other hand, who honestly wants to pledge their unswerving, unquestioning loyalty to a god of death, or even a god as ambiguous as Ares?

I want to distinguish that, parenthetically, from pledging unswerving, unquestioning loyalty to what a god tells you to do or what you think a god tells you to do. I question all the time whether or not I understand what God has actually said to me. I have no religious allegiance to my perceptions or thoughts. But I still have on the books, as it were, an unconditional pledge of loyalty to the being himself.

Anyway, the difficulty for me is that unquestioning loyalty is normally the sort of thing that you warrant in my mind. That is the fundamental nature of pistis as I understand it ("trust" in ancient Greek; it's the New Testament word we translate as "faith" or "belief," as in "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God"). Somebody has a track record, which eventually warrants you backing them to the hilt even if, somewhere down the road, they ask you to do something you don't understand or even disagree with. I have pistis in my family for that reason. I normally think of myself as having pistis in Jesus for the same sort of reason - I know him well enough that I feel confident trusting him, unconditionally (and in case you're wondering, no, there aren't many people I normally say that I "trust").

This understanding of pistis seems somewhat at odds with my old/new understanding of why it is, at bottom, that Jesus deserves my devotion. I cannot devote myself to him for any reason except that he is that he is. But what if he were different? Would I devote myself to Ares because he is that he is?

I think perhaps that the difficulty is that I shouldn't be trying to apply the principle to other religions. Ares never said, "I am that I am." Nor did his devotees believe//trust//have faith in him in the way that Christians believe//trust in their deity. I think perhaps I am beginning to understand why so many generations of commentators have spoken of the Christian religion as fundamentally different from other ancient (at least ancient pagan) religions. Religion in antiquity (oh, Prof. Martin would be so proud of me for remembering this!) turned essentially on the principle of "I give that you give." Christianity turns on the principle of "I am" (or, rather, "You are"). Jesus is good, and wise, and mighty, and compassionate, and in a sense we worship him because of those things. But only in the sense that he could not be other than those things; we worship him, in his own nature, and not as the representative or the pinnacle of lofty ideals which are the real objects of our devotion. It is true that Jesus is the pinnacle of goodness, but I do not worship goodness. I worship him. Yet at the same time, if he were not the pinnacle of goodness, he would not be himself. So that is where the conflict is reconciled. I do not worship gods because they are gods. I worship Jesus because he is Jesus, and that is, at the end of the day, all there is to it.

Boy, you think you understand something, and then ... Praise be to God.

Well, I'm back at home, simultaneously unpacking and preparing to go on vacation to Hawaii. So far I've seen Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind at Ayudaren's behest, which was quite as good as he advertised, and met Lionell's new (well, new to me) girlfriend. I am preparing for further adventures in Phoenix Earth, wherein we will explore further the destiny of the brothers Follakir, and I am preparing for new adventures as Marina Spier, aimless English major. On Saturday the gang and I will see Episode III, and this long arduous episode in the saga of our Star Wars lives will come to a close.

In short, I am home. I realized yesterday as we were packed into Twilight's den watching Nausicaa and talking about what Ms. Spier would bring with her on a road trip around small town USA that we're really only like this when we're all together. I can't help but feel if I were to bring home one of my Stanford friends - especially one of the Stanford friends I met through dance - they'd find me virtually unrecognizable at home.

And speaking of dance, the Big Dance went off smashingly in my opinion. Congratulations to Blue Rose for that, and congratulations to Shanah Van for a highly entertaining and well-received choreography of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." Everyone I could reasonably have expected to be there was there, with the exception of White Jade, and that was satisfying. There were also a few people who I couldn't reasonably expect to be there who were, and that was satisfying too. Of course it would have been nice if a few others had been present as well - Alanna, Chariessa, and Esther Selene, to name a few - but since they'd all have had to travel several thousand miles to get there, I think I can forgive their absences. And it was delightful to see and dance with Terina, whose company I have missed altogether too frequently this year. I also got to dance the Dawn Mazurka again (and in a set with Shanah, Rose, and the Dance Master, no less), which was highly satisfying even if I did make one rather large embarrassing mistake (among several smaller embarrassing mistakes). I think I've got it locked down in my head now, though. Many thanks to my gracious partner, for whom I have no blogname, and to the rest of my set.

Best dance of the night was probably with Anachoron to "Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy." I have to agree with him that while I would die if polkas were played much more frequently than they are, as far as individual dances go they're almost always my favorite. There's such an intense exuberance to flying through the air to a good technopolka, which is why I had to open my lungs and sing to that song. Sorry if I embarrassed anybody, but it was just so much fun (and I was quite pleased to find that I could sing and polk at the same time). We thanked the Dance Master afterwards for playing that song, and that was fun.

Oh, and one more thing. He called it air redowa.

"Then [Moses] said to Him, "If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here." - Exodus 33:15

"No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other." - Luke 16:13

"Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." - Proverbs 4:23

"That which you do, do it from the heart, as to the Lord and not to men." - Colossians 3:23

"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance." - 2 Corinthians 9:8

Why do we things? How do Christians make decisions about what to do and what not to do? This is one of those questions that I always come back to, one of the philosophical issues that I really care about. How is it that we are to serve God with our whole heart, to find him wholly sufficient to meet our needs, and yet do things?

Not too long after she got married, Michelle Tumes recorded a song in which she sang, "You're the one, You're the one, one and only love." In the liner notes she amplifies, "It occurred to me this year that God is the only love." This has always struck me as embodying a fairly deep decision-making principle. The principle is this: Above all, our hearts must be invested completely in God. So perhaps we do things because it would be inconsistent with devoting ourselves wholly to God to not do them.

I am speaking here of doing things, or making decisions, which implicate where you place your heart. On this view, the decision-making principle is essentially to avoid idolatry, and there are some activities which pose no risk of that. Whether to watch a movie, where to eat lunch, what to wear today - those are things that I would say usually don't implicate your heart. Sometimes they do, of course - for instance, during my birthday week I intended to watch a series of movies with emotional significance, and I need to be careful which movies I choose and when I watch them. They were chosen specifically because they do implicate my heart. But there are lots of decisions which odn't ordinarily implicate such matters.

And then there are decisiosn which ordinarily do. Some of the ones on my list are going to college, dating a person, and joining a performing group. Those are activities which I think you must devote yourself to body and soul if you are to do them successfully (there is an exception for non-college age people going to college, as I tried to articulate last night to Duchess and Enika). Consequently, on this view of decision-making, there is a problem if you are undertaking them separately from your calling to the Lord rather than as part of it.

What I love most about theater is when a company comes together as a real company. I don't particularly care about how well the performance went, or how well I did, except insofar as people in the company are depending on me to do my job and it pleases me to not let them down. When all cylinders are firing, a theatrical company is what I hear any good fighting company is like - joined by bonds of loyalty and love, everybody trusting everybody else to do their job and come through in a pinch, able to respond to unexpected emergencies with smooth efficiency as a single organism. In a good company those in charge have the moral authority to really lead, and at every level in the hierarchy people are ennobled both to follow those above them and to serve those below them. All this to say that although the Savoyards are far from perfect, there is a good company spirit about them, and whatever critiques I may have of them, I wish them well.

Particularly now that Neani is probably gone. And because I am fond of the Savoyards, I am feeling somewhat nostalgic that she is leaving as well. Especially since I am so very fond of her. And especially since I have a soft spot for stage managers. It was a good leaving, I thought, and I wanted to mark it in my own way.

The primary purpose of a blogname is to honor the person who has it. And since I've never written Neani's out fully, let me do so now. She is Neanis Kalliplokime, Anassa Pragous Toude Kai Bouleumatos, and she did a good job.

I'm listening to Gretchen Wilson's "Homewrecker" and "Redneck Woman" a lot lately, courtesy of Duchess' music loan. Gretchen Wilson apparently strikes some sort of redneck/honky-tonk chord in me, which is pretty funny considering it's not at all clear why I have such a chord at all. But I feel more at home at the Saddlerack than any other club or even non-social dance that I've been to, and I'm pretty sure I would have felt that way even before Esther Selene. There's something admirable about the whole "I'm countrified, deal with it" identity that these songs kind of trumpet. Partly because there are some values that are affirmed here which I approve: the woman in question is healthy, frankly sexy without being lascivious, hard-working, fun-loving, devoted to one man. Reminds me a lot of Mayxm, if I can say so (finally came up with blognames for Vonsus and Mayxm - points if you can remember where the name Vonsus originally comes from; extra points for remembering who Mayxm is). And partly it's just the brazen, counter-cultural, "I don't need you to approve my identity" aspect to it all.

In that way I suppose what I'm saying is that the redneck identity is like the geek identity in that critical counter-cultural respect. Or instead of counter-cultural, we might say insular: a sense of us vs. them. That insularity is an integral (and, I believe, pernicious) part of the geek identity.

I've been thinking about this since the Duelist's live-action roleplaying game (LARP) last night, which was an inordinate amount of fun despite the reservations I had about live-action roleplaying on a theoretical level (perhaps I'll talk about that later). It reminded me of how very fond of geeks I am, and of gamers in particular. I still think of them as my people ... much to the surprise of people like Nari, who apparently see me as some sort of suave, put-together, vaguely ladies' man type (I wonder how Princess or Thea would react to that? Surprise? Or, "I knew it all along?"). But as Archimedes so cogently put it, I'm really just a geek who's learned to cope well.

Anyway, I was thinking about the geek identity again, which is a subject that frequently makes me vaguely sad. We are a curious population. On the one hand we are a deeply insular community, one that is firmly convinced that the outside world is baffled by our defining hobbies at the least, and probably despises us for them. All you need to shut up an authentic geek conversation is for someone from the Outside to walk up, radiating his unconscious, "I am baffled by and despise you" aura. We are, by self definition, the underdog and the liminal - no matter how populous or mainstream we actually are. In private we are convinced of our eventual triumph and inherent superiority over the outsiders, and yet deeply wounded by our liminal status (never mind that we assume that status voluntarily as well). Perhaps closest to my own heart, we are convinced on a deep level that we are unattractive and will never be able to find a good and lasting romantic relationship - and certainly not with anybody from the outside! We suffer both from insufferable arrogance and the most fragile self-esteem. Yet we long for heroism, moral fortitude, maturity of character, and the triumph of right over wrong at any cost. We are, I believe, a people who believes that mankind can be more than it is, and I further believe that it is one of the deepest, least-questioned precepts of our creed that there is a universal imperative to be more than we are. To grow. To transcend. To become what we were meant to be - heroes and heroines - no matter what we are.

I am painting with broad strokes here because I wish to talk about us as a population, and I think those are accurate enough on a populational level particularly if we're talking about gaming geeks (Duelist? Neani? Would you agree?). And I wish to talk about us as a population because I think that society in general, and the church in particular, does a very bad job of dealing with us. We're taught to be sensitive to persons with disabilities, to women, to homosexuals, to those whose creeds are different than our own. We know, because it's in the air, how to modulate our diction, tone, and body posture so as to radiate acceptance of those groups. The same is not true of geeks. How many outsiders do you know who know how to approach a truly geeky conversation about roleplaying without shutting the conversation down by their very presence? I don't know many - and I'm not counting the instances where the geeks themselves brazen it out because they've learned to adopt a "this is me, deal with it" mentality. That solves the immediate problem but doesn't get at the underlying view of the world as a fundamentally hostile place.

And does the church really do a better job? Our youth groups and fellowships go camping, we go on ski trips, we go on missions trips, we have pick-up games of basketball and ultimate frisbee ... but when was the last pick-up game of Smash Bros., or the last LAN party, or the last roleplaying session? Or when was the last time a Bible study or small group addressed the lie that there's nobody out there who will ever love us and be willing to join themselves to us in a great romantic adventure? (It is not, of course, that we are all deeply attractive people. Many of us have deep wounds and flaws which are frankly romantically repulsive. The lie is not that we're small, shriveled people - the lie is that there is no grace to address that fact) It isn't, of course, that anybody means to exclude us. And of course many of us enjoy the outdoors and athletics, and many of us have managed to claw our way past the lies about our own attractiveness. But the point is that so far as my experience has shown, we simply don't occur to people as a population that needs ministering to. We don't exist to the church as a population.

Which I think is a real shame. Because there's a lot of good stuff about being a geek, but the fact of the matter is that there's a lot of hurt that goes into that identity, too.

Every year about this time I start thinking about my birthday. I try to make a few plans of my own every year, because that way if my friends don't throw me a party (and I mean, really, they've got to stop sometime) I won't feel like my birthday went uncelebrated, and I usually don't feel like going to the hassle of planning a party for myself. This time though I might have to do a bit of planning.

One of my favorite birthday memories is of worship in Mirrielees with Archimedes, Blue Rose, and Archimedes. I guess that would have been my twenty-second birthday. This year I'd like to do something like that, but instead I'd like to do a kind of prayer and dance thing. There are all these Christian dances I've got on my computer, and I think it would be good to get together with a few loved ones who like to worship God, to come before him as friends and then to dance (and maybe sing) before him as well. I hope that doesn't sound blasphemous to anybody. I know that I technically come from one of those silly non-dancing denominations, but I don't see why a couples dance can't be worship. After all, standing around ska dancing can be worship. Is there really a functional difference? I don't think so. Of course putting this plan into practice would require me to get access to space, and since there aren't any danceable lounges in Crothers that may prove somewhat difficult. I'll see what I can do. Shanah got Roble once for her birthday and of course that'd be perfect, but I doubt that I have the same standing with The Powers That Be as she does. It'd be even more perfect because then once we were done with with the prayer and the worship we could have a great big space for dancing and there would actually be room to technopolka. Life does not have enough technopolka in it, and there is nothing to do but to take matters into my own hands (I have 38 songs on my technopolka playlist, most of which I have never danced to but would like to). I'd really like for my public birthday dance (assuming there's a birthday dance at Big Dance, which presumably there will be) to be a technopolka to Gina G's "Ooh, Ahh ... Just A Little Bit," but that seems unlikely because Big Dance is generally better suited to birthday dances with more general appeal, such as lindy or cross-step or something like that. So it would be cool if I got to have it as my private birthday dance, but perhaps that is not to be.

I discovered the other day what I mean by technopolka. It really has nothing to do with techno, and most of my technopolkas are really too fast to hustle to as well (well okay, they're very fast hustles). But for that matter, many of my technopolkas (such as the Celtic rock stuff) don't really lend themselves to hustle, and some of them (such as the bluegrass technopolkas) certainly can't be hustled to. They aren't all fast, and some of them are so slow that I think a regular polka step would be painful. The unifying feature, I've discovered, is that musically they all strike me as having the redowa as their basic step. That can be done to very fast music, or to very slow, as Anachoron and I proved last Jammix. You just have to fly laterally far enough, and get enough air. But there's a certain energy independent of tempo which makes something a "technopolka" in my mind.

The whole worship and dance thing is something I've had cause to think about lately. Until I actually looked up the meaning of the word "psalm" I assumed that most of the Christian justification for worship practices comes from the Old Testament. Turns out that a psalmos is the motion of playing a stringed instrument (translate as plucking, twanging, or even strumming, if you will), and it comes to mean "a song sung to a stringed instrument" (usually a harp, I believe) so I actually think that there's a good textual argument that the earliest Christians used instruments in their worship, whatever the Duelist thinks. But so far as I know other worship practices, such as the raising of hands, clapping, and dancing, find their textual support in the Old Testament, and particularly in the psalms. When worship leaders and pastors talk about that I hear them talk a lot about the posture of surrender, about how we clap for temporal things and a fortiori ought to clap for God, and lots of things along those lines, but it occurs to me that they probably have intrinsic value as well. That is to say, they're Jewish (or at least they were in the Dark Age) worship practices, and by adopting//adapting them we implicitly celebrate how God's glory was shown through the chosen people and all the history that surrounds them. And, to be a little more controversial about it, we're claiming to be the children of Israel (controversial not because there are many Jews today who can claim to be familial descendants of Israel; everybody agrees that "children of Israel" is a metaphorical\\spiritual term. The fight would be over the criteria for properly applying that label to a person). It seems to me that we value them in large part simply because they appear in David's kingdom. I wonder why nobody ever talks about that in church.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I take online quizzes fairly regularly and I even consider how I would answer people's surveys, memes, and the like (though after that one time with Shanah I no longer actually fill them out). I rarely post them, but this one is just too good to pass up. How would I do in a zombie infestation scenario?

Armed and Dangerous Congratulations! You scored 87%!

You made it out, alive and well supplied. You probably even kept most of your party alive too. You know what to look for, what to take, and when to just run. You even feel a strange inkling to go back. If you did, you'd probably do just fine.

According to the quiz, I did better than 95% of the people my age and gender. Mom and Dad would be proud.

On that note, I feel it's high time I posted about Republic Commando, because it's fantastic and I just finished the middle third of the game again so it's on my mind. It's been a while since I reviewed a game, so here's my digest of the highlights:

1). The animations are great. The way people move, the hand signals, they conspire to create a wonderful feeling of realism. Well, it's not realism exactly, it's a war movie. This is what Star Wars would look like if someone were to make it a war movie. And of course the hand-to-hand animations. Sure, sometimes your commandos just kick that droid over, or smash it perfunctorily with the butt of their weapon. And that has its own, "You're just a droid, out of my way" charm to it. But there's also watching your pod brother grapple with a big beefy Trandoshan wielding a pair of scimitars, disarm him with his bare hands, and stab one of his own scimitars through the lizard's head.

2). The squad is spot on. What really makes this game is the squad chatter - listening to how the squad responds to everything that happens. It really doesn't get boring, and that's because they're all interesting people. Every member of Delta Squad (including you) has his own personality, which fits perfectly into the ensemble mold we have come to expect. Thirty-Eight (you) really does feel like The Old Man, but as The Old Man would be if he was actually the same age as his squadmates (you're clones, after all) - his authority comes from his competence, his personal maturity, and his devotion to his squad, since he can't derive it from superior age or experience. Scorch and Sev are the comic relief and comic foil, wihle Fixer gets to play squad mom to these two as they needle each other and disparage each other. Yet there's absolutely no question that they love each other as brothers in arms, and that any of them would die for their squadmates in a heartbeat. But more importantly is the sense that none of them are going to let their squadmates die - that Delta Squad lives and dies as a unit.

3). Along those lines, what makes the squad chatter possible is the revive mechanic. You can see this on the website, but the basic idea is this: when any commando (even you) goes down, any other commando can run over, apply some Star Wars first aid, and get him back on his feet with half health. You can do this in the middle of a firefight, if you dare, or you can wait until the fighting is over and it's safe. Frequently (because you will be wondering) your squad can finish a firefight without you and then revive you afterwards, which is wonderful. This does two things. First, it drives home the no-man-left-behind ethos of the squad. Second, it enables the squad chatter, because the script writers know that you won't get to the third mission with Sev and Fixer dead back on Geonosis. This is a problem that all conventional tactical unit simulations have - the squad mates aren't really interesting people because they might die: you can't write a script which calls for a squadmate to say a line in mission 5 if that squadmate might have died in mission 4, and no studio on Earth has the funds to record enough voiceover to cover every contingency. Consequently squadmates in games are traditionally either uninteresting people or invulnerable. I think that Republic Commando gets around this problem beautifully.

4). The weapon dynamic is good - not fantastic, but close enough. There are basically three problems with the weapons in virtually every first-person shooter that I'm aware of. First is that they have crosshairs painted on the screen. Half the reason aiming is a skill is because it's actually quite difficult to determine where your weapon is truly pointed, and the crosshairs tradition does away with that entirely. Second, nobody is ever injured. Characters are either fully operational or dead, and there are no gradations of functionality in between. Third, all the weapons have to be "balanced." This generally means trading off between damage, rate of fire, accuracy over range, and ammunition count, and ultimately arises out of a belief that if the playing field is not leveled with chess-like precision, the game isn't fun. A fourth issue that many games have is that the character can carry a platoon's worth of weapons and ammunition.

Republic Commando doesn't deal with these issues perfectly, but it does a better job than most games. The aiming issue is handled in two ways. First, while you do have a crosshairs painted on the screen, it's usually some variation on a circle rather than a dot or actual crosshairs - in other words, it doesn't actually paint a dot on the screen which indicates where your fire will inerringly land. That point exists; the game just doesn't tell you where it is. If you want to find out where your weapon is pointing you must press the button which raises it to your eye, which means the reticle disappears and you must instead aim using the weapon's iron or glass sights. A few weapons don't have this option and are correspondingly less accurate. While a weapon is held in this position your peripheral vision is restricted, but it is possible to aim much more precisely. Second, while you can't be injured, your squadmates can, at least a little bit, and at least most entities in the game (including you) can be put down with a second's worth of fire or so, so you don't notice the health bit as much as in more traditional shooters. And finally, the weapons reflect what is in my opinion a more realistic "balancing" than usual. The rapid-fire weapons in this game are not made weak or inaccurate to compensate; in fact your blaster rifle is pretty much the best weapon in the game and you start off with it from the beginning. I really appreciate games that don't see "high-capacity magazine, high rate of fire, high lethality, good effective range" as unbalanced. Military tactics are not about being a good chess player. They're about dealing with unbalanced force mixes and asymmetrical situations.

There's this wonderful back-and-forth between the no-heroics seriousness of it all and the heroic over-the-top moments that characterizes all great war movies. It's not a contradiction - one of the reasons we love war movies is because they study how extraordinary strength of character is drawn out of ordinary people who aren't looking to be heroes. I think that's the inherent appeal of the war movie thing. It's taking one of the most stressful situations we know of and watching people rise to the occasion - and asking ourselves, in some sense, if we could do the same when the rubber met the road (I think the same applies to our endless fascination with love stories, since as Harry Turtledove pointed out love and combat are pretty much the most stressful situations we know of). That's a curious thing, if you think about it - most of us will never be in that sort of situation, so what does it matter if we could rise to the stress of combat or not? We might as well watch movies about raising chinchillas and wonder if we, too, could raise a chinchilla at need.

I think the difference must be that we have an intuition that the fortitude required in combat (or in love) is more general than the fortitude required in raising chinchillas - that it says something deeper about our character. Dad once told me to be sure to pass on the tradition of Sound Tactical Thinking to my kids, and I think he was only half joking for this reason: that the study of combat and the contemplation of what it requires of the human character is the contemplation not just of combat but of things that make a person mature.

So here I am home for spring break, spending time with Xenophon in the ancient and modern worlds, with Twilight and Kathelia and Ayudaren and The DM crafting a new world order, with my sister and her roommates enjoying the Pepperdine life (or at least the version of the Pepperdine life that visitors get to experience). This Saturday I will once more spend time in The Circle as Monica Jasmine, and I read old Honor Harrington novels and remember what it is to be a hero. The weather is unseasonably rainy but it means that the immortal hills of the Valley have donned their green mantles for me, and driving through Malibu Canyon or down Valley Circle I could not help but think, but I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.

Here among proverbial lilies of the field I cannot help but think on how God pours life into my life. It is good to remember the family and its prophetic role in my life, and all that has come to me through it over the years. Driving around this place in Betsy I encounter memories on every street corner, mistakes and successes alike, and it is a good thing to remember the family there through it all, speaking God's truth and God's wisdom to me. It is easy to think, here among the lilies and the memories, that I have found a wellspring of life. To think that there is life to be had in my friends, or in the family, or in peace and rest and quiet. But that is not true, and will only make me sad when those things pass away or their place in my life changes, as inevitably must happen. Life may flow through those things for a season of time, but it always flows from Jesus. Sometimes it seems unconscious, as with Princess or Thea, and sometimes it's deliberate, as with Blue Rose or Esther Selene. The scenery changes, and the cast changes; the life that Jesus has for you means different things at different times. But Jesus remains, and the fact that he has life for you, and I think that is what makes the passage of time bearable.

I discovered the Stone River the other day thanks to a tip from Anachoron, and it's pretty fantastic. Nari gave me the idea a few weeks ago of finding time for God outside of my room, and I have to say that it's been a highly successful practice for me. Although I have suffused my room with things to remind me of things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and well spoken of, my room is just not that much of a sanctuary. Well, it's a sanctuary for some things, but not for this.

My other God spots on campus are MemChu and the Fallen Caryatid, but the trouble with those is that people actually go to them, which means it's hard to do anything other than pray quietly, listen to music, and maybe murmur under your breath. The Fallen Caryatid is also not really appropriate as a general quiet time nexus.

But the Stone River, now, that's something else. Even though it's right next to Cantor, it's practically deserted (not entirely, but I'll take what I can get) and it's beautiful. Not just the river itself, but the whole area around it, replete with squirrels, birds, wild growing flowers, and shade trees. Especially with the weather as beautiful as it's been, it's been a fantastic place to go down in the river to pray (as it were).

I've noticed that over the past couple years I've begun to develop a spiritual appreciation of beauty. It's an interesting thing, since before I wasn't one of those people that feels drawn to God in the presence of beauty. Let me distinguish this from any sort of idea that God is beauty or that God is in some pantheistic sense in the beauty or that God is the feelings I get as a result of beauty. This is remembering the giver because of the gift, or remembering what sort of God it is who delights to delight his children with beautiful things.

Also, I love polkas. I really love polkas, and I think it's a shame there are so few of them at Jammix and at Friday Night Waltz.

I kind of felt like my list of dances I like was more or less fixed, so it's nice to find out that's not so. Turns out I like west coast swing a lot. Of course it's nice to find that out because it's fun to find new fun things (by definition, really), but it's also fun because I'm not really all that good at it yet. I mean I'm not terrible, and I think that my lead is pretty good, but I'm hardly flashy and I'm not 100% comfortable with the movement-music dynamic yet (which is, in my experience, pretty much what makes me flashy), yet I enjoy it a lot anyway. Zydeco once observed that there's a difference between enjoying looking good on the dance floor and dancing because you look good. I think that's an important distinction to make. If you look good, that's fine, but I don't want to be the kind of dancer who dances for the purpose of making people look at me.

Why do I like dancing? Lots of reasons I guess but I think one of the primary (perhaps the primary) reason is the movement-music dynamic. Chariessa observed the other day that she doesn't have the instinct for what to lead when. That instinct - being able to say "the music is telling me to do this" is one of the things I love most about dance. Social dance is a way of experiencing music for me, just like singing is. Both are physical activities that get your body and not just your mind involved in appreciating the music. This is one of the reasons the idea of dancing to Christian music (and particularly worship music) has such a powerful hold on me. On the one hand it might seem strange to worship by dancing west coast to "Blessed Be Your Name," but on the other hand what could be more natural than to share a worship experience in a way that uniquely gets your whole being involved in the music and necessarily requires a two-person rather than one-person unit? Which isn't to say that all dancing to CCM or worship music is directed at God - but when it is, oh, now there's a fantasy.

Those of you who recall the days when Twilight and I would quiz each other on the model numbers of Star Wars starship components may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when I was not a Star Wars fan. Those of you who recall the great TIE Fighter narrative may find it even harder to believe. But it is true. In fact I became a Star Wars fan not as a result of the movies but as a result of X-Wing. That's what sold me on the universe: somebody taking the military aspect of Star Wars seriously. Once I had that to latch onto I could buy into the rest of it.

Now of course X-Wing doesn't take the military aspect of Star Wars as seriously as it could, which is a gripe that I've harped on at length in various contexts and shall not repeat here. The point is that what made Star Wars cool to me was the military treatment. Which is why I have such high hopes for Republic Commando.

I've played the demo backwards and forwards, and I like what I've seen so far. It's not the most serious infantry sim that I know of but as a sim it's about as serious as X-Wing and it seems like it has some really engaging characters. I'm really hoping it will sell me on the late Republic setting just as X-Wing sold me on the Galactic Civil War setting. 'Cause the movies sure haven't done so, and I really doubt that they ever will. I can expound on them at length of course, and I enjoy doing so (best memory I have of Episode I was explaining it to Princess) but at the end of the day they're telling the wrong story and they're telling it badly. And that doesn't sell me on Star Wars.

And, for better or worse, I have to be sold on Star Wars. Because somewhere in that great field of Star Wars dreck there's something magical. Han and Leia. A guy with a lightsaber. Good men stuck between an evil empire and a violent terrorist movement. Good men accepting a losing proposition because it's the right thing to do. Love conquering all obstacles. The courage to believe.

There's something thrilling, something magical, about Star Wars at its best. Only certain Star Wars products have it. Empire Strikes Back had it. TIE Fighter had it. Knights of the Old Republic had it. Hopefully, Republic Commando will too.

It's late and I must sleep so that I can wake and visit the Fallen Caryatid tomorrow to pray before class. But while it's still Valentine's Day I wanted to say a few quick words on the holiday.

I've never really understood why people think this holiday is about romance. I mean I do intellectually, but for me Valentine's has been one of two things. The first was about giving out cards to my classmates, which I never quite got at the time. But it ties into the second thing. As I was saying to Duchess, I think the point of a holiday is that it commemorates a social value. It's society's way of saying, "This is something we consider important." So what is it in this case? Romance? I don't think so, really. I think it's more generally about courtesy, and chivalry (and yes, I know that "chivalry" in the Natalian sense bears little to no resemblance to "chivalry" as a fifteenth century man-of-arms would have understood the term). Romance is a part of that, but romance is powered by chivalry and courtesy (teaching our kids these values is, I think, where the classroom Valentine cards come in).

At any rate that's what the day means to me: Valentine's Day is a declaration that it is a social value to learn chivalry and courtesy, and consequently romance. So let me take a moment to commemorate Thea, Princess, Blue Rose, my Sweatshirt Girl, and Esther Selene, without whom I would know very little about any of that. Happy Valentine's Day, dearest friends.

So tonight was the last class of the Dance Master's Thursday night Viennese Ball dances class, and something rather fun happened. Apparently at the last Jammix he saw Anachoron and I (I finally came up with a blogname for him that I'm happy with) polking together. As you know, he's one of my favorite polka partners ... probably my favorite male polka partner, at any rate, and we were playing around with this thing we'd been working on since the Jammix before that, which was a Viennese step in polka time followed by a redowa. It's step (man's right), heel click, redowa: step, click, redowa, or one-and-click, re-do-wa. Anyway I think it's awfully fun and since the Viennese step is actually pretty easy to lead I think it's a nifty way of getting into redowa.

Well anyway, apparently the Dance Master caught us doing this and decided to show it to the class tonight (though he credited only Anachoron and not me, but oh well). And he said he needed a name for it. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought of that combination of steps, but since it is sort of mine I feel like I should get to name it. My personal vote is for air redowa, since Viennese redowa got rejected (and since in polka time, at least, I prefer to get into it with either a single pivot or, even better, a single air pivot). If you see the Dance Master, I think you should so inform him. I think it's a shame that there's no polka contest at the Viennese Ball. It'd be a blast to enter something like that with Blue Rose, or Anachoron, or Alanna, or ... well, with lots of people. If I'm ever filthy rich I am so buying a house with a dance floor large enough to technopolk upon.

As long as we're on the subject (and as long as "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" is playing ... mmmmmm for good redowing polkas) I suppose now is as good a time as any to talk about performing. Especially since tonight I also had my Iolanthe callbacks (which went much more satisfactorily than the audition, though sadly I will not get to play opposite Phoebe). I think that for me, performing comes down to two things. One is the sense that God did give me certain performing gifts which deserve to be nurtured. I don't mean to say that I'm all that on stage, because I'm certainly not, but I think it's still a part of the me that God had in mind when he first conceived me.

Two is that I'm shy. This itself has two dimensions (you can tell we're Speaking Natalie now because my list has sub-lists). The first I think is that even shy people need a legitimate extroversion outlet. Being outgoing and extrinsic in regular old social situations is not always comfortable. But just because I'm shy (and this goes for a lot of performers I've known) doesn't mean there isn't another side of me inside me waiting to get out. And when you're on stage, behind the fourth wall, it feels a lot safer to let that out. And the second dimension is related to that: the something inside me. I want it to get out for its own sake, I suppose, but more importantly I want it to get out so that people can see it. So that they can know me. This is, of course, a recurring theme in my life: getting the story out, being known. Performing is a way of putting a part of me on display, of saying, "You may not see this in me all the time, but it's part of me all the same." On stage it's frequently the authoritarian or villainous me (I would love love love to play Javert or the Phantom of the Opera one day). Perhaps this time it will be the comical me. On the dance floor it's frequently the flirtatious me.

I think this is also why I am simultaneously flattered and embarrassed when people watch (spectate, I should say) me dancing. On the one hand it seems ridiculous that my mere dancing should entertain anybody so much that they should just watch, as is beginning to happen with alarming frequency at weddings. I mean, I don't want to dance just to show off. But on the other hand I do want people to see how much I love social dance, and I want this piece of performance art (the dance) to communicate that in a visceral way. Getting the story out, being known. I wonder if that's a general model for thinking about shyness.

I wouldn't exactly say that I consider myself an Avalon fan, but when they come out with something good I tend to love it. "You Were There" from their latest album is one such song. I love it when art hits me this way: it's like the shock of a breaking wave, driving me inexorably to my knees. It reaches through me from my crawling skin to my trembling heart. It rips worship from my lips, but it's so gentle - softer than velvet, softer than a girl's touch. It's not a "worship song," but it's a worship song. And it's danceable (two-step). Goes on the list of Songs to Dance with True Love at Wedding Reception.

In other news, I understand it's all over by the time I write this, but God bless Iraq. For those of you who have been hiding from politics, the long-touted (and long-doubted) elections took place in Iraq today. The next step towards setting a nation back on its feet. Now the task of drafting a constitution.

I look forward with some trepidation to the next several days when we will find out what the Sunni turnout was, but for now I dwell on something else. It's hard for me to imagine the courage of a crippled old woman hobbling to vote under the threat of violent men who have promised to turn the polling places into slaughterhouses. I hope that we'd have the courage to do that in our own country. God bless the process of giving their nation back to the children of Iraq (I mean that literally - God help it, because it needs help and will need help) - and God bless the men and women under arms who are willing to die to give that process a fighting chance. To paraphrase the quote from Xenophon's profile, one day men will sleep peacefully in that country, because rough men stood ready to do violence on their behalf. May that day come soon.

Just got back from seeing The Phantom of the Opera with Enika. Still reeling from it. In fact, listening to it as I type this is kind of distracting. I have my critique of it, of course (although overall I actually thought it was good cinema), but all in all I'd say that my sister's recommendation was dead on. I'm going to have to disagree with Twilight ... not necessarily with his critique itself so much as what conclusion to draw from that. Well, I guess I do disagree with him about Christine. I disagree with Kalaraen about Christine too (well, I disagree with the person with whom Kale agrees in that regard, but I haven't come up with a suitable blogname for her yet); I actually liked her performance. And I wholeheartedly agree with Twilight about liking Raoul. The bottom line is that the whole thing made my blood thrill, which is why I loved it.

This goes on my list (along with City of Angels, which I have also been listening to) of shows that I'd really like to do. I discovered on the way home, in the privacy of Meilissa, that this is good singing music. I mean of course it's good music, but it turns out to be music that I can really sing. Music that I can put power behind, that I can perform and pour heart into. In the privacy of my car, of course. Although Blue Rose is quite right that I am a "ham" (ahem ... a performer, if you please), I am a performer because I am shy. Which means I am particularly shy about singing and acting.

I love art. I mean, I don't consider myself artsy. But I love being able to share good cinema with people. Other people are free to be unimpressed by this film; it made my blood thrill and so it goes on the list of special movies I love.

Over the past month or so it seems like I've heard a lot over the past month or so about the sexual backwardness of American Christians (particularly of the small-town and/or Southern variety) and a lot of it struck me as grossly insensitive. Now, mind you, I'm not saying that we can't be grossly insensitive too. We can, and most of the actions I've heard critiqued lately (e.g., decrying a billboard advertising bras in Texas, or objecting to the Olympic Opening Ceremonies) I too think were misguided. Yet however appropriate it may be to critique such complaints and others, I thought that the way they were critiqued betrayed a lack of empathy with where the other side was coming from, so I thought I'd post a general plea for tolerance.

It will be understood I hope that when I say "sex" I mean it in the sense that advertising executives do when they say "sex sells." Somehow over the past several years national rhetoric has shifted to give the impression that Christians are uncomfortable with sex. So, the story goes, we don't like thirty-foot tall women in bras looming over our highways because we're sort of backwards and prudish. I feel a little silly pointing out that this is rhetorical sleight-of-hand, but just so everybody's on the same page let me call it for what it is. To say that we are uncomfortable with sex is not, in my opinion, a very useful way of putting it. As everybody knows, we're fine with sex in certain circumstances (which is true of everybody, in reality). But to say that we're uncomfortable with sex implies that we become progressively more comfortable with it as circumstances slide along some undefined continuum, whereas in reality it's more like a step function. Slot the right circumstances into place and the comfort level jumps rather than slides. So it's really more useful, I think, to say that we're comfortable with some sorts of sex and uncomfortable with others. The question of what we're comfortable with and what we're not has a complicated answer, and that's not what I want to address here. But let me note that we are by no means categorically opposed to pretty people, human beauty, or the human form.

The question is why we're uncomfortable with the things we're uncomfortable with, and here's where I think the secularist cosmopolitist world could afford some sympathy. Listening to what people say, I'm inclined to get the impression that people think we're uncomfortable with the sex we're uncomfortable with because the Bible, or possibly George W. Bush, said we should be - or else we're just perversely bent on imposing our backwater will upon a world which is unable to resist our irresponsibly wielded economic might. All of which is another way of saying people don't have a clue. Let me suggest one reason: we're afraid.

That's right, we're afraid. As a people, we know just as much about sex as any other demographic you care to name, and we don't like what it does to us. We don't like the things it makes us think of, and we don't like the way it makes us think (I am speaking now of those kinds of "sex" which we find uncomfortable, rather than everything which has to do with romantic or erotic attraction) - and we don't think it's good enough for a person to be a perfect gentleman behaviorally, which frankly a lot of people seem willing to settle for as a goal. We want as well gentlemanly (meaning the term as gender-neutral) minds.

Before I go any further let me attempt to anticipate protests to the effect that sex in advertising, sex in broadcast media, sex in pornography, and sex in interpersonal culture are all more or less benign - or at least hardly likely to turn a person into a monster. What precisely are we so afraid of? Answers that reference "sin" or "lust" or one's "Christian walk" tend to obscure the force of the answer. Let me try to be more direct at the risk of sounding crude: Do you know what it's like to want to rape somebody? I know we're not supposed to ask questions like that in these discussions. We're supposed to pretend that because the human body is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing bad could ever come of its contemplation. Well, I don't feel like pretending that, because it is pretending. I agree that the human body is nothing to be ashamed of, but I disagree that it is thereby inherently safe. An honest survey of the prevalence of pornography and the literary/aesthetic theory which underlies pornographics provides valuable insight, I submit, into the dark side of contemplation of the human form. I know we're not supposed to admit that we know about that sort of thing, but I think it's important that everybody understand that we do. So the question stands. If you don't, allow me to humbly suggest to you that you probably don't understand what we're afraid of, and request that you take my word for it that we're afraid of something very bad indeed. If you do, then I trust that the point needs no further elaboration.

Now of course how exactly we go about navigating a world which frequently seems as insensitive to us as a distillery to a recovering alcoholic is a tricky issue. Personally I think that a lot of Christians react to their fears in inappropriate ways, such as this protest of the opening ceremonies. But I think it wouldn't do the public any harm to realize where we're coming from when we protest that something is too sexually explicit for us.

One might protest that to the extent we're afraid that bra advertisements might lead us down the path of the Dark Side of the Force it's because we are approaching the material with a dirty mind. Well, what if we are? I don't mean to suggest that having a dirty mind is okay (indeed, I mean to suggest the exact opposite - that both chivalry and Christianity entail mental as well as behavioral disciplines), but seriously, what do you do with one when you encounter it? Pretend that it isn't there? That seems singularly foolish, and (to us) singularly dangerous. Try to overcome it? Well, we do - but that takes time. What do you do in the meantime? Just blunder ahead like nothing was wrong?

I'm very sorry if I or any of my people seem like we have dirty minds (no more or less than the general mind on average, I wager - though perhaps more likely to admit it, at least amongst ourselves, and to consider it a problem worthy of resisting). We wish we didn't, I assure you. Until we actually don't, however, best let us judge what will and won't be destructive for us to be exposed to. I assure you that we are afraid of something very evil, and not in any lofty eternal sense. What we fear is immediate and terrible in practical life.

Why isn't everybody else afraid of the same thing? First off, let me point out that this is a tangent. Whether or not anybody else is, or whether or not people think we're crazy, we are afraid and what we're afraid of is well worth being afraid of. Tolerance for that fact is all this post is really asking for.

But as for the tangent, I'm sure that's up for debate. My personal experience with chivalry leads me to believe that somewhere out there in the general public the figure of the perfect gentleman in thought and deed still has power. Generally speaking I'd say that girls still like guys who are attracted to them for who they are, regardless of how much they're willing to put out or what they look like. Well, people don't become shallow and obsessed with making out over substantial relationship by accident. This leads me personally to suspect that nobody else is afraid because they gave up a long time ago, probably before most of them even realized there was anything to be afraid of. Like growing up in land that was conquered in your grandparents' generation, or the Matrix.

I just had a thought which I thought was fun enough to post. I'm reading Mr. Clean's Christmas gift to me, The Question of God, which is basically a Harvard course in book form comparing and contrasting the views of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. It's quite entertaining. Anyway, I was reading this book and towards the end we get to the problem of pain, so-called. Personally I'm inclined to agree with Lewis that the capacity for evil is intrinsic in free will, and that only free will "makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having."

But of course I am further of the conviction that at some point evil will be a thing of the past. You see the implication from the above conviction: evidently I believe that at some point in human history (although "history" seems like an odd word to use for the Phoenix Earth) my entire race will be constituted such that it is simply not in our nature to choose to be evil. Instead of fumbling around as we do now, driven by some sort of impulse(s) to be good and finding ourselves only poorly successful only part of the time, I imagine a day when goodness (and all that it implies) is as natural as breathing.

And what about this fumbling about? This is actually what I think about most often when I contemplate the "problem of pain." What about that day when the fairy tale comes true and my race chooses always the same? Sometimes I wonder if that might not be ... well, boring. Now of course if you unpack what is meant by "same" you see that that is nonsense. Boring is, at bottom, a form of unhappiness, of discontentedness, of dissatisfaction. To imagine that such a thing will be present on a planet which is by hypothesis absent those very things and full of their opposites is preposterous, and the sort of thing one shouldn't need a university education to see.

Today as I was reading though I was struck by an image that made the same point more viscerally, and in the hopes that it might do the same for some of you I thought I would share it. A world where goodness is natural would be like riding a fighter plane at the edge of its performance envelope, all the time - always one twitch of the stick from disaster, and never quite going over the edge. To say that the true exhileration comes from the mistakes is foolish; the exhileration comes from finally getting the daring maneuver just right. Or to put it another way, it would be like flying in a perfect redowa all the time. We don't find our redowas exhilerating when we're out of synch with our partner or we stumble. It's exhilerating when you finally get it right, when you can power through free-form hungroise variations and pivots and Viennese steps and back all without effort, knowing that you're really riding the razor's edge and riding it.

I have spent a fair amount of time by now observing and ruminating upon the phenomenon of flirtation. In particular of late it has struck me as intriguing and somewhat amusing the way serious Christians flirt. We do flirt of course, and anybody who imagines that serious Christians are stodgy and unflirtatious has either been scaring them or else doesn't know very many. What intrigues me is the way we flirt. When a boy and a girl meet each other and experience that heady spark of attraction, the conversation can generally be relied upon to turn towards the verbal equivalent of a mating dance. Just as a peacock or a topi will advertising his good genes to a particular mate by showing off his superfluous, calorie-sucking ornamentation, or just as a marmoset will advertise his attractiveness by displaying his ability to gather food or care for small children, so we too try to figure out and display what will impress the object of our attractions.

Generally speaking we all do it, I have observed, though not everybody is conscious of the fact when it happens. It happens like this. One person will ask the other a question: perhaps what they're studying in school, or what they did over the winter break. The other person answers truthfully, but the rhetoric of his or her answer is shaped by an underlying desire to advertise, "I am a kind, caring, or whatever-else-is-important-to-you human being." So we talk about the importance of family to us, or we are sure to bring up the video games we play, or the sports we do, trying to figure out what constitutes "good genes" in the other person's eyes. This is self-interested in two ways. One, it potentially lures a potential mate closer to us. Two, if we are honest about what we advertise, it potentially serves to warn the other person early that "I would not make a good mate for you; don't get too heavily invested."

Christians do this too, and we're generally concerned about the same advertising as everybody else. But we also take care to advertise our Christianity. It's usually not as blatant as just saying it outright, listed among your hobbies say. It might be pointing out that we have to go to church tomorrow (which implies that it's important to us to go to church tomorrow) or remarking upon that as one of the things we did over a weekend or vacation, or it might find its way (if we're feeling really bold) into an explanation of why we are doing what we are doing. If I am merely telling you why I am in law school I will spin you a [true] story about a certain dinner conversation and the things about the practice of law that appeal to me, both intellectual and lifestyle. If I am feeling comfortable with you, or if I feel that it is critical at this stage in our flirtation that you understand that when I say "I'm Christian" I mean it and mean something very serious by it, then I will tell you I am in law school because this is where God called me, which is no less more or less true than the previous answer but more important.

Next time you have a chance to observe a single Jesus person flirting with people of uncertain religious background, watch and see. I personally find it highly amusing, even when I'm the Jesus person I'm observing. But I wanted to make the observation that beyond its obvious amusement value, this practice of ours is a blessing. For when it meets with a like answer it has all at once established a foundation from which flirting may in good conscience proceed. This is one of the ways in which the magnificent and formidable lady Nari has blessed me in our short interactions. For the difficulty is that when this signal is not recognized as a query as to the flirtee's religious convictions, all that follows is in reality wheel-spinning - but only one party will recognize that. And it is very hard in that circumstance to be knightly, which you must be at all costs. So tip to anybody who is interested in seriously flirting with me: find a way to tell me where you stand on religion and why. We'll have much more fun that way, whatever your answer is.

I'm halfway through my tests, and getting lots of Starsiege 2845 work done since my computer seems to have a fried motherboard (it's been sent into HP already; thankfully it's still under warranty). As a result of this and the fact that the law school's wireless network is shut down during exams, I am reduced to checking the internet in Meyer. As a result of this I will keep this post to two short observations.

Observation the first: I get nervous before exams, but in a sort of weird way. Two or three hours before I go to bed the night before, it hits me that I have a test the following morning. It's quite sudden, like all my nerves are on edge - the same sort of feeling I get immediately before going on stage. It is a good time to pray and confess what is on my heart. The following morning I am not nervous.

Observation the second: my life would be much poorer without my beloved Blue Rose.

Lest my last post before Christmas be on a down note (that note being, specifically, "I missed the last weekend of Fezziwig's and the December Gaskells!"), I decided that I had better take a break from my contracts outlining and post a reminder of God's goodness.

One of the Christian principles which I most love C.S. Lewis' space trilogy for elucidating is the idea that God is working for my good, and if I don't remember that I can bring much evil upon myself by refusing to take the good that he is offering me simply because it isn't the good I had my heart set on. This weekend has borne that principle out.

Last night I saw The Brian Setzer Orchestra with the family, and that was a fantastically good time. It involved no dancing (the pit was way too crowded for that even if my sister and I had felt like venturing down there) but the music was great and the showmanship was just superb. It's hard to see how that really substitutes for the Dickens Faire, but somehow it filled that hole.

Perhaps more obviously, if I had stayed up at Stanford I would have missed seeing Twilight's father playing Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. For those readers who don't know, Twilight's dad is quite the actor, and this was by far the most moving rendition of the tale I have experienced in any medium. But aside from the production's many and obvious merits, the whole experience was enhanced for me by the fact that I was simultaneously remembering my Belle breaking up with my Scrooge, that I was thinking of dear Fanny Scrooge, of whom I was so fond, dead (but living on in the spirit of her son Fred), that I was remembering walking through London myself as Scrooge was conducted through the streets by the spirits. The whole thing was somehow much more mine as a result - and, I suspect, tied into certain ways in which God is growing me (and now Alanna knows what that phrase means!). It's praiseworthy, I think, to remember that I neither chose to go to Dickens in the first place nor chose to leave it in the second - and yet had I resisted those two things I would have missed much that God had for me.

On a slightly related note, I totally sympathize with Shanah's expenditures on pretty things. It may surprise some of my readers to know it, but I like wearing pretty things. It's one of the character traits I have inherited from Alanna the Lioness. This has come about most recently thinking about the February Gaskells, the Viennese Ball (for which I will be assembling a Victorian costume), and of course next year's Faire. And the trouble is that many of the pretty things I want are expensive, like tailcoats and waistcoats\\vests and top hats. Mmmm, top hats. Collapsible silk top hats. And of course then one gets into the world of options, which involves an even greater expenditure of money. And really, I must be careful to use my borrowed money wisely. And after it is my own money, I must still be careful to use it wisely. Sigh. Well, I suppose it wouldn't be fun if I could just buy whatever I wanted, right?

At this point I'm giving up on reviewing Alexander; if you want my thoughts you can ask me. Instead, I'm going to talk about the Dickens Faire.

I'm listening to SHeDAISY's Christmas album, Brand New Year, which I think will become indelibly linked with my memories of the Faire. You might not think SHeDAISY is the right group to be recording a Christmas album, but I really, really like it. Fun. Playful. Not too serious. That's SHeDAISY for you. It's also kind of the Dickens Faire.

I don't normally go to these costume things to play the game, understand. I usually go to dance, and so the costumes seem kind of irrelevant to me. I can participate in the period play to a certain extent - after all, what fun is dancing if you can't be a gentleman? - but when I go to something like Gaskells my objective is to dance.

I went to the Dickens Faire, though, to play. I wanted to be a young apprentice lawyer from New York on a grand adventure in mid-nineteenth century London. Oh, I wanted to dance, too - but San Francisco seemed like an awful long way to go just to dance. No, I decided that if I was going to go to the Faire, I was going to play. I didn't dress up, but I probably could have by raiding the Savoyards' costume store. As I told Miss Bobbi, this was a deliberate choice on my part. If I was there solely to play, I would let imagination carry me the whole way. If I was going to go in further than that for a penny, I wanted in for a dollar.

It's a little hard for me to explain to you why the Faire meant so much to me, and I rather bitterly regret that my travel plans prevent me from attending the last two days. There are so many memories I have from my three days there. The milk shop, and the young fellow who ran it. Dancing with Little Nell. Seeing the delight on the faces of the gentlemen Fezziwiggers when they saw me ("Ah, the infamous Mr. Lowe!" as Mr. Noakes put it). The intimacy of hanging out with cast members in front of Dark Garden to appreciate Lily Fezziwig's window - and being told by Mr. Scully that I was "one of the family." The smiles on the faces of the ladies I danced with. Sending Miss Lily a slightly mischievous telegram. And yes, I admit that it was gratifying to hear from Miss Bobbi that I had created a "stir" among the young ladies.

I have this montage of memories, of thoughts and sensations, and I don't know that they evoke the wonderland of imagination that I found at this place. There's at least three components to the magic. One is, as Blue Rose pointed out, that it's a combination of dancing and roleplaying - what more could I want? And doubtless my dearest Rose has put her finger on something there. But there's more to it than that. Ever since meeting my young vampiress I have felt pushed in the direction of Dickens, feeling the Lord say that there was something special for me there. I feel more certain of that now than ever, though what it is exactly I decline to speculate on at this point. Part of it, I suspect, is the same thing that God had for me among the Chaminade Players: to be a witness in a theatrical company (as I lamented to Alanna the other day, it always seems a shame to me when people find out that I am a Republican Christian and instantly assume that I now fit their stereotypes of what that means, rather than thinking that perhaps I am proof that their stereotype is wrong). No doubt it will become clearer in time.

And the third component is Christmas. The cheer, the effervescent delight, the friends and the family and the warmth. These things do not exist at college, and for the past five years my Christmases have only really begun when I returned home. But this year my Christmas began ... well, when Christmas ought to have begun, and there is someting very special about that. Something deeply touching, which I feel compelled to repay by being a part of it next year. Miss Elliot told me that she can't think of any better way to spend her weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas ... and I don't know if our reasons line up exactly, but right now neither can I. How grand to be allowed to dance, roleplay, and act all at the same time, while simultaneously helping to remind people of the spirit of Christmas - indeed, to create the spirit of Christmas.

The "spirit of Christmas" is not of course what I think Christmas is all about. There is nothing epic about the spirit of Christmas, and Christmas is in my estimation ultimately an epic holiday. It is about the return of the King, the Ancient of Days entering a tragic and broken world to rescue mankind from the human condition and raise us to a new level of creation, one where we have more to look forward to than the tawdry aesthetic beauty of endless tragedy. It is about the drama of Elrash taking form not as an elf but as a man, when it became clear to all creation that the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt. About evil itself being opposed not by mere men and their pitiful efforts to will justice into being, but by God Almighty.

And yet for all that the "spirit of Christmas" is a very worthwhile thing, and I think it is why this season and its very epic holiday has become so popular. Dickens Faire celebrates that like no other event I know of. It's like the magic of Disneyland crossed with the magic of Christmas. Which is why I have to go back.

I don't have time to review Alexander right now, but I haven't talked about dance in any sort of substantive way in a while and I thought I'd do that before going to sleep since I can't further the adventures of Tristan, my sword-wielding Bastila-chasing Jedi-to-be, in the minutes I have before bedtime (which technically was about an hour ago). The last class of History of Waltz was today. It was a good one that had me all jumping up and down: excited for zweifachers with the TD, and for smiles and pivots with White Jade. For my ninth (!) dance essay I turned in a list of things that dance has brought into my life as a thank-you to the Dance Master. It went like this:

Because I dance ...
I am no longer deathly afraid of the dance floor.
I have experienced partners who don’t care how good I am, but how attentive I am.
I have learned that in dance, as in romance, how good you are is largely determined by how attentive you are.
I have walked home at night six inches off the ground.
I know what it’s like to read somebody’s mind.
I know what it feels like to enjoy music with every part of who I am.
I have seen the world dissolve into a spun-sugar halo.
I know what it feels like when the music ends and there’s a breathless girl in my arms.
I know what it feels like when the music ends and I’m the breathless one.
I understand why there’s a place in the heart of every little boy that wants to be a knight in shining armor.
I get to practice being a knight in shining armor.
I experienced my first kiss.
I have come as close to flying as any boy this side of Peter Pan.
I have a new way to tell my loved ones I love them.

That third one, about attentiveness, probably is an over-simplification, but I do think that certain values necessary to a good romance are instantiated in social dance. Instantiated is my new favorite word thanks to Archimedes, whom I miss very much.

The list isn't entirely complete, though. When I say "every part of who I am" I mean that when I dance I can appreciate music with my body (the part of me that dances), with my voice (that part of me that sings), with my mind (the part of me that analyzes the music), but also with my imagination (the part of me that yearns) and with my spirit (the part of me that prays). And along the same lines, I'd add one more thing to the list that I didn't feel comfortable sharing with the Dance Master, for some reason:

Because I dance, I better understand what it means to dance like David danced.

Thank you to everyone who has ever danced with me. Especially thank you to Shanah Van, who ultimately got me into this, and to Blue Rose, who was my first real dance partner.

I’m writing this on the plane back to Stanford after Thanksgiving weekend. Like most holiday weekends, this wasn’t exactly a restful vacation, but it was not for that unrefreshing. I got to see The Incredibles and Finding Neverland with the family, and if I’m lucky then tonight I’ll get to see Alexander. However, Phoebe’s birthday party is tonight, which may interfere with my consumption of yet more bad cinema themed upon the ancient world. I will see Alexander at some point, however, and I may even have a review to post of it. Personally I think what makes Alexander such a compelling figure is that he was a truly terrible man who was nevertheless a truly great leader. As Ian Morris said, one of the prerequisites for being called “the Great” is that you have to be a homicidal sociopath. How favorable my review is will doubtless have a good deal to do with how Oliver Stone chooses to portray one of history’s great butchers.

(edit: I did see Alexander, and I was ... intrigued by it. I'll probably post a review at some later point. Preliminary suggestion, if you intend to see it: read up on the Battle of Gaugamela and the Battle of the Hydaspes River ahead of time. Gaugamela especially is important to understand, and because the portrayal is pretty realistic it helps to already know what's happening.)

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. What I actually wanted to talk about was returning to The Circle after a long absence—one during which I have hardly even thought about Phoenix Earth. Partially that’s because Starsiege: 2845 is tapping into my limited store of creative energy, but mostly it’s because there’s been other stuff on my mind. Like law school. And Nari. And, you know, other fairy-tale related stuff.

But playing Monica again was truly wonderful. Like The DM, I had sort of thought that my playing career had peaked with Danielle. But no, that’s really not true. I don’t know if Monica is better than Danielle, either in terms of how great her character is intrinsically or how well I play her. Different characters for different stages of my life. But she is at least as good as Danielle. (Interesting thought: Danielle was an instantiation of Alanna, and Monica is an instantiation of Keladry.) I mean, I actually broke down crying because Monica broke down crying. Really. You should have been there.

It is ironic that this blog is intended to serve as a soapbox for me to display the parts of me that don’t get displayed otherwise at Stanford, and yet it is incapable of showing one of the great parts of my personality which are hidden at school: my roleplaying side. One of my great regrets is that my Stanford friends have never seen me roleplay. I really can’t translate that into prose unless my audience has seen it firsthand. I mean my Stanford friends have never seen me really roleplay—the kind of roleplaying which is the heart crying itself out into the world. It’s not just that I’m a very different sort of person around the gang than I am up here. Not just that my gamer side really only exists in LA. Never meeting Danielle or Monica … I mean, that’s like never seeing me dance. Never seeing me dance, of course, would hardly make or break a friendship with me. It wouldn’t be all that big a deal really … just a shame. And you really can’t meet Danielle or Monica outside of their respective games. I guess I could have a conversation with you as either woman, but it just wouldn’t be the same.

Of course the real reason that was so wonderful was not simply because it was great art or great self-expression. It was because it was just so good to feel. I have had lots of good things happen to me at law school, and it’s not as if it isn’t fun. And of course there are lots of people who are working harder than me or doing harder things, so I hate to sound like I’m complaining. But I am being stretched all the same, and it does feel a little bit like being a page. Being stretched all the time is not exactly good for just feeling. But playing Monica certainly is.

And so, for that matter, is seeing good movies. Honestly, I love my time period. We have so much art! And sure some of it’s bad, but really, we have so much more good art than any other time period, and we have it in so many media! Like The Incredibles and Finding Neverland. And Christmas music. Speaking of Christmas music, Alanna and I apparently got our wires crossed as to when she was coming out and when I was going to Dickens Fair. Not that there’s anything we could have done about it, but it’s sad that I shall not get to see her at Dickens after all. Still, I shall go to Dickens next week. That should be fun.

So I told the Duelist that I'd post a vitriolic blog post no matter who won the election, and even though I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this I feel like I should go ahead and post. However, in deference to friends like Phoebe and the DM, I think I'll tone down the vitriol.

First off, I might as well admit that I appreciate as much as the next metropolitan Californian Republican an election result which vindicates a lifetime of feeling vaguely persecuted for my voting record. But the truth is that I've only ever felt vaguely persecuted for my voting record, and I've felt much more seriously persecuted for other aspects of my individuality.

Mostly I intended to rant about the people who feel that the fate of the nation hangs on the presidency. I'll concede that it makes a difference, and it's even possible (though I consider it highly unlikely) that it will make a difference that actually affects my personal contentedness in any serious way. But I'd like to suggest a few things.

First, I'd like to suggest that we are Americans regardless of who our chief executive is. While I'm at it, I'd like to suggest that you can vote against somebody, but unless you're willing to renounce your citizenship rights, then you support the result regardless. Americans support the Constitution and the results it decrees whether we like those individual results or not. If the result matters so much to you that you feel you can no longer support the Constitution, well, time to fish or cut bait. Drink hemlock or get out of Athens. I submit to you that it matters that much to very few Americans, and I would appreciate it as a personal favor if nobody pretended that it did in my presence just so they could let off the steam because they became personally invested in the executive race.

Second, I'd like to suggest that the truly important things in life were not at issue here. God help us when the most important things on the American mind are foreign policy, taxes, jobs, abortion, and our precious civil liberties. Oh wait ... they already are. Well, God help America then. Love of one's neighbor, love of God ... those things are important. They certainly bear upon our foreign policy, our taxes, our jobs, our stance on abortion, and they probably imply certain civil liberties. But I'd like to suggest that neither God nor morality (if you're one of those people who think there's a difference) are for or against tax cuts. Reasonable minds can differ as to the best way to love our neighbors. I submit that a man's worth is not determined by his stance on abortion, whether he has a job, or whether his country's constitution enshrines a right to liberty. Do those things matter? Sure, of course they do. Maybe they're even important. But there are more important things in life that are beyond the reach of any election.

P.S. I am continuously bemused by the fact that the DM doesn't appear to consider me a mystic. I mean, I claim to speak in tongues, and when I say I believe in angels I don't mean it in some namby-pamby sort of subjective or metaphorical way. I mean it in the alien intelligence which can mess with your mind, and quite possibly with your brain, hardcore way. I believe that God tells me things, which probably though not necessarily also involves direct manipulation of my physiology. I don't know how much more mystic I can get, but somehow I don't seem to count. But that's probably a post for another time.

God help America. Last time I checked we didn't trust in the president, anyway.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was an unusually satisfying Gaskell's. A Gaskell's of unusual satisfaction. Satisfying, in an unusual way. You know, it's funny that I should have two dance posts in a row up here, given the number of times I've tried to post about Starsiege 2845 (my computer game project, for those of you who don't follow that sort of thing) or the hostage situations in Iraq, or something like that. Don't highlight posts in the Blogger editor with shift+page up. Bad things happen.

But seriously, I just had to post about the Halloween Gaskell's. Lots and lots of fun. Dancing at Gaskell's is always a bit of a challenge, but I really like going for the people. I was thinking of not going tonight, and vaguely worried that I'd find the whole thing disconcerting given what happened at the last Halloween Gaskell's, but I figured it'd be a while before the next dance event so I'd better go, lest I feel deprived later. After getting hideously lost, I made it in halfway through the second set.

And was promptly picked up by a young vampire who said I looked like I wanted to polk. Which I did. This was the beginning of the good night. Even though Gaskell's doesn't have dance cards, I love being in a setting which lets me set my dances up. For one thing it makes me feel wanted. For another it makes me feel dashing. For a third it facilitates flirting, with vampires and others. Oddly enough, I flirt way more at Gaskell's than I do at Friday Night Waltz or Jammix. Maybe it's the faux Victorian air.

Now, ever since my encounter with Zydeco, I've been a little wary of this whole flirting thing. I should reiterate at this point that my definition of "flirting" is a little broad - I'm sure it encompasses your definition of flirting, but your definition may or may not encompass things like smiling charmingly//politely at a young lady or holding a door open. Mine does. Anyway, I'm not about to say that flirting should be avoided at all times in all contexts, but I am beginning to suspect that there's more danger to this flirting for fun business than I had previously thought. Or maybe I was always cognizant of the danger and I'm just more susceptible to it now that I'm older. Who knows. Anyway, I'm very fond of Zydeco and I wish she wasn't in New York so that I could cross-step with her, but she certainly taught me that.

That said, one of the things I love most about dancing is the flirting. Now, mind, I do think I know how to dance without flirting, and I think I know how to dance in that liminal area which I call flirting and most people don't. I spend the vast majority of my dancing time in those areas, and I have a blast doing it. But I really look forward to those few dances where I can really flirt. Dangerous? Well, sometimes. There's flirting, you know, and then there's flirting, and I don't think you need to defraud a girl to dance flirtatiously the way I'm talking about, and here's why.

It's the communication. I love//need to communicate - to share, to project, to put myself out there - but normally I do it with words. Dancing flirtatiously lets me do it with movement, with touch, with looks and expressions, and with music. There's something wonderfully thrilling about feeling two personalities simmering, straining to bridge the space between bodies. There was an awful lot of that tonight.