walkingshadow | i walk along darkened corridors, and i walk along darkened corridors

a. oh man, this is so late, but: a happy and healthy new year to everyone celebrating the new year! in my house we cooked all day for company (only cousin m. and my aunt and uncle this year) for dinner on both nights of rosh hashanah; my aunt had break fast and did it strangely, as we all knew she would but always hope she won't.

my mom and i sat out synagogue this year: she was deeply unhappy with the rabbi and cantor at our old temple and left several years ago; she has yet to find another one that makes her feel satisfied and welcome. my dad tried to guilt me into going with him, but it didn't take. instead i did some navel-gazing of the "i have basically rejected the religion of my childhood, yet at the same time would like not to reject the culture outright or the family traditions entailed therein" variety.

my mom actually asked this year about whether i would have gone if we'd had a synagogue to go to, and i got to pop out with the atheism thing. she wasn't exactly suprised, she took it better than i thought she would; i also don't think that she gets it completely. it's not as big a deal in judaism as it is in, for example, christianity: you can wrestle with god and be jewish—that is, be a good jew. but i don't wrestle; i know. i don't feel abandoned, i don't rail against anything, i don't wonder why bad things happen to good people; it's just that the absence of a god answers so many more questions than the presence of one does. for me, that is; i know several billion people who disagree.

so i don't believe in god, and i have this very anthropological impression of all religion, my own especially (which is not to say that science is my god or anything; i don't necessarily buy into the science vs. religion dichotomy). genesis and greek mythology are just about equal in my mind. and i ask myself, what are my personal lines of hypocrisy? what is the difference between doing something because you think god wants it that way, and doing it because that's what you've done every year; because it engenders good acts and good feelings and is sensible; because it's beautiful. i know a lot of people (personally this time) who have passing, tangential relationships with judaism, centered around a couple of holidays and their trappings; i don't know if these things bother them, but how can i say at seder twice a year, i believe with a perfect faith in the coming of the messiah; and though he tarry, nonetheless do i believe he will come. how can i say, once i was young, now i am old, yet i have never seen the righteous forsaken or his offspring begging for bread. it's beautiful, but it's not true; i don't believe it to be true. yom kippur is the holiest day of the year on the jewish calendar, and there's something deep and resonant in that; all day on thursday i had running through my head, for all these sins, o lord our god, forgive us; pardon us; grant us atonement. i don't want to give up avenu malkeinu, but i choke on every sentence that begins god said.

and oh, i could go on about how all my holocaust education (and every story about the inquisition, and steadfastness throughout the diaspora, etc.) has made me guilty about turning away from judaism, because we were all drilled with if you forget, if you turn away, if you relax your guard, they all will have died IN VAIN—and basically, the terrorists win. i'm sure the vast majority of my cohort came through these classes unscathed, but they weigh on me. at the same time, i resent the burden; the accident of birth. and i know that i've got this nifty free will that means their threats are empty ones and all they can do is shake their heads and be disappointed; but it's different when it's my mother's disappointment.

b. went with cousin m. to the humane society on two separate occasions this past week to pick out cats for her to take home and love forever and ever. it's a good thing i was expressly forbidden to bring home any kittens myself, because KITTENS. cousin m. took a whole lot longer than i would have to make up her mind, but in the end came away with littermates: two male grey tiger kittens, two months old, who are friendly and playful and curious and, you know, adorable. she picked them up yesterday and took today off from work to make sure they wouldn't get lost in her house or anything. she referred to it as maternity leave.

c. the other day my mom asked me about things like application deadlines and whether i really wanted to go to grad school, etc.: it's not her fault that career talk + pms = a one-way ticket to crying jag town.

i've reluctantly agreed that there's no real point in going to grad school if i don't really know what i want to do. i am so, so tempted to write to my cambridge shakespeare professor and ask him if he was really serious when he said he wished i were his student and suggested i consider cambridge for graduate school, or if he was just toying with my fragile emotions. because it was obviously something i was good at and would probably enjoy doing. it would be something to do: reading for a graduate degree in shakespeare. in cambridge. i would explode, you know?

also there is the part where i want a ph.d. JUST BECAUSE. the other day i couldn't figure out how to properly abbreviate and capitalize Ph.D.:

walkingshadow: . . . this probably means i don't deserve one, doesn't it?
silentfire: i'd give you one if you wrote me fic
silentfire: it'd be a Ph.D. in AWESOME

d. my parents keep pushing my to edit the blog i kept in england for the purposes of paper publishing, and have redoubled their efforts since i've been home. i updated almost every day, often more than once a day: the sucker as it stands is 46,611 words. i'm thinking about it; i have absolutely no idea how it would work.

here's the thing: november is national novel-writing month. at the moment i have nothing more to say. i probably won't ever have anything more to say, but i give it a long look every year.

e. cousin m. and i had our last bellydancing class not last thursday but the thursday before, and i am not that sad to see it go. it was fun to do, but ultimately frustrating and unsatisfying: the instructor was a very nice lady and a fine dancer, but a nervous person and a horrible teacher. on the other hand, we've since had our first tai chi lesson and we love both it and the instructor. i'm sure that to call it chinese yoga is reductive and offensive to both the disciplines and their respective cultures of origin, but the similarities kept piling up in my head as he mentioned five principles in our first lesson: relaxation; keeping a straight back; breathing; twisting at the waist; and the circling of the hands. i don't know if he's making up his own list or what, but i can get behind it. also the massaging of the internal organs. class is held in a high-school cafeteria: i have to remember to bundle up for next tuesday. i.e. tomorrow.

f. my music purge is complete. the casualty rate was 13.5% (721 of 5,314), though i've added 250 songs just since i've been home from school. one of them was burn, baby, burn by the residents; you can download it there from fluxblog. i like to think of it as judges 11:30-40 (the god digs my daddy remix): jephthah made a vow that if god delivered his (jephthah's) enemies in battle, he would sacrifice the first person who came out of his house to meet him. fast forward to jephthah returning home from victory, when who should rush out to greet him but his daughter, his only child. and he was sad about it, you know, but a promise is a promise. the song is sung from the point of view of the daughter, about to die. it's creepy and cracktastic and i can't stop listening to it, but it's interesting, because the blame falls on god, when it seems like the fault is pretty clearly with the human element in this one.

g. television roundup:

kitchen confidential. i don't remember what i had to say about this one. maybe just that i still love it and am sad it's on hiatus. there's a fic community at

greg_the_fish if you're interested in reading or writing. please be interested in writing, oh please.

grey's anatomy. bailey is totally my favorite, hands-down, and always has been. she reminds me of one of those hard-ass teachers who make it policy never to smile before christmas, you know? she won't take shit from anybody—i adore how utterly unsympathetic she is to shepherd every single time he tries to rally a pity party for himself, it's hilarious. i love how attached she is to her patients (every patient who comes through, not just jeremiah), and she's shown compassion to every intern as they've needed it.

oh hell, christina's my favorite too. everything she's done throughout this arc has been so perfectly in character, up to and especially including somebody sedate me! i liked burke in the end, good for him. i can't tell if burke's jerky moments are anomalies for him or the status quo. i like him too.

meredith still needs more personality, more gravitas, more something. i still don't know why two men are pining after her; and after meeting and spending time with addison, i'm doubly confused. addison is awesome. calling his bluff on the divorce proceedings was genius.

i don't like this thing where sometimes alex is a nice guy and sometimes he's an asshole; i keep waiting for him to come out of the closet. i wish izzy would not go down this path; i keep waiting for her to jump george. i keep waiting for george to grow a spine.

the alice grey arc has been really well done. we've learned an awful lot about her and meredith's father; as cousin m. said, it's way more about her family life growing up than you would ever want your co-workers to know. and really not the way you'd want them to find out.

the west wing. i'm sort of all caught up on the shenanigans of the last four years, though not really. i'm still not sure why cj got bumped up to chief of staff; jimmy smits is not my favorite actor in the world (though i think he's doing a decent job); and it all feels a bit here-and-thereish. josh is still great; annabeth is FANTASTIC, and her new tension ("what tension?") with leo is so cute. there's not nearly enough toby. i miss sam. i miss them.

related. new show on the wb; my mother and i caught the pilot but missed the second episode (which is possibly re-airing?). four sisters, the youngest of whom is in her second (or so) year at nyu; the mother is apparently long-gone, the father is about to get re-married. they're a very, very close family. mostly it makes me wistful that i never had sisters growing up. the second-youngest has great hair, this long, blonde, wavy hair that i could have too if there were three people styling it before i went on camera every day. it's cute, they're cute, it's got the guy who used to be on judging amy and mason from dead like me. it's on tonight, we'll be watching.

h. my dad and i saw wallace and gromit: so, so charming! even my dad was charmed. gromit would be my new boyfriend if he weren't a dog; that kinda makes it weird.

and on saturday

malelia_honu and i saw proof, which we both thought was fantastic and highly recommend. really, everyone did a wonderful job. anthony hopkins was superb. the flashbacks were wonderful and built suspense very nicely, showing you that the work was his, the work was hers, the work was his—no, wait . . . jake gyllenhall is really very cute, and apparently a lot bulkier than he used to be? very cute. i always love gwyneth paltrow, and i'm glad hope davis is floating around, because i wanted to slap her character around, but that's what was supposed to happen. a very talky movie, in a good way; based on the play. and a very pretty movie, great colors and lighting and the house was perfect. it was supposed to be cold, and it obviously was cold, not just actors bundled up in scarves and ski jackets on a backlot in los angeles; i could feel how cold they were.

after the movie we went on a wild-goose chase looking for csi: miami dvds at first blockbuster and then (reluctantly) at wal-mart, but they were nowhere to be found; at least not at one a.m. it's just that rory cochrane's character (where, to me, rory cochrane = LUCAS from empire records—which mal picked up for me on vhs for $2.99!) was already dead by the time i even knew he was on csi: miami. i didn't get in on the ground floor of any of the csis, i'm just going to have to start renting from the beginning. other shows i mean to get in on include arrested development and scrubs (saw the first season and nothing after); along with anything else you all think is worthwhile. my kingdom for a netflix subscription?

i. is for icon meme:

take a look at my icons. comment with the following:

1. one that makes you automatically think of me.
2. one that you think i should TOTALLY use more often.
3. one that you don't get/needs more explanation/you have no idea why the hell i have it.

comment using an icon of yours that you LOVE, and tell me why you picked THAT one too.

i walk along darkened corridors, and i walk along darkened corridors

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