Holidays in Gormenghast
Tomorrow's Tuesday. The yoga class now meets at 8:00 AM on Tuesdays, which makes my Tuesday mornings hectic. Though of course then I go to yoga, which balances things out. Though I suppose of course I could skip yoga and get up later and lollygag around the house for a while -- nah. Lollygagging is not as calming and centering as yoga, as yoga is more concentrated.
So, I'll get up early tomorrow, and since it's also Holy Cross Day, I'll put the pesto lasagne in the slow cooker, which will take up more time than usual, which will make the yoga class an even more centering experience when I get there, on account of I'll be so unbalanced. Life is good, sometimes.
So, the pesto. We always have pesto on both St. Helena's day and Holy Cross day, to celebrate (as I've mentioned earlier) that time that St. Helena, Constantine's mom, found the holy cross after having had a vision of where it was, and it was a hill covered with basil, so we eat pesto.
Recently we watched the excellent BBC version of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast; I gather that much of it went over the child's head, but he certainly understood the wicked way in which perfectly dreadful occurrences are made to be hilarious. There you are, laughing at the way the Headmaster went out the window, and then you think, oh wait, he's dead. Gormenghast is not a comforting sort of experience.
It struck me this time, though, that I am in great danger of turning into Secretary Barquentine, who, pretty much every hour of every day in the castle of Gormenghast, can be found overseeing some insanely elaborate ritual, reading out the intricate explanations of What the Ritual is and What it Means, while all the inhabitants of the castle (that'd be the Groan family and its legions of servants) listen, silently, dressed in insanely elaborate costumes.
The problem, of course, is that the Groan family has held the castle for hundreds of years, and every time there's any sort of a ritual -- a christening, a birthday dinner, a nice breakfast -- it goes down in the book, and must be celebrated every year thereafter. Also, every time it's celebrated, all actions which have been done before must be performed, and if any are added, at any time, they go down in the book and must thereafter be performed every year.
It's a very big book. And the rituals are endless.
It's getting like that around here. In fact, tomorrow we're celebrating Holy Cross Day, but we could just as well be commemorating Napoleon's Not So Triumphant Entrance Into Moscow.
Clearly, what I need to do is figure out how to collapse these things. And I need a big book, to write it all down. And what I really need to do is not EVER throw anything away. We commemorate it ALL!
Alas, I bought no beets when we went shopping, so we can't have pesto lasagne and borscht, which, I think, would be Quite Memorable. Maybe with some French bread to round it all out.
And a loooong blessing over the food, wherein we mention the Holy Cross, and the Excellent and Crafty Behaviour of the Citizens of Moscow, and the Astounding Obtuseness of Several People Who Have Led Marches to Moscow, and then we can pray for Many Various Sorts of People, Both Dead and Alive.
And while all this is going on, we'd have Louis Armstrong on the CD player, cause September 14 is also the day he won a Grammy.
And then next year we can figure out how to add in a commemoration of the death of President McKinley. Hmm. Where was he from.....ah. Cleveland. Good. That'll provide dessert.
So, I'll get up early tomorrow, and since it's also Holy Cross Day, I'll put the pesto lasagne in the slow cooker, which will take up more time than usual, which will make the yoga class an even more centering experience when I get there, on account of I'll be so unbalanced. Life is good, sometimes.
So, the pesto. We always have pesto on both St. Helena's day and Holy Cross day, to celebrate (as I've mentioned earlier) that time that St. Helena, Constantine's mom, found the holy cross after having had a vision of where it was, and it was a hill covered with basil, so we eat pesto.
Recently we watched the excellent BBC version of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast; I gather that much of it went over the child's head, but he certainly understood the wicked way in which perfectly dreadful occurrences are made to be hilarious. There you are, laughing at the way the Headmaster went out the window, and then you think, oh wait, he's dead. Gormenghast is not a comforting sort of experience.
It struck me this time, though, that I am in great danger of turning into Secretary Barquentine, who, pretty much every hour of every day in the castle of Gormenghast, can be found overseeing some insanely elaborate ritual, reading out the intricate explanations of What the Ritual is and What it Means, while all the inhabitants of the castle (that'd be the Groan family and its legions of servants) listen, silently, dressed in insanely elaborate costumes.
The problem, of course, is that the Groan family has held the castle for hundreds of years, and every time there's any sort of a ritual -- a christening, a birthday dinner, a nice breakfast -- it goes down in the book, and must be celebrated every year thereafter. Also, every time it's celebrated, all actions which have been done before must be performed, and if any are added, at any time, they go down in the book and must thereafter be performed every year.
It's a very big book. And the rituals are endless.
It's getting like that around here. In fact, tomorrow we're celebrating Holy Cross Day, but we could just as well be commemorating Napoleon's Not So Triumphant Entrance Into Moscow.
Clearly, what I need to do is figure out how to collapse these things. And I need a big book, to write it all down. And what I really need to do is not EVER throw anything away. We commemorate it ALL!
Alas, I bought no beets when we went shopping, so we can't have pesto lasagne and borscht, which, I think, would be Quite Memorable. Maybe with some French bread to round it all out.
And a loooong blessing over the food, wherein we mention the Holy Cross, and the Excellent and Crafty Behaviour of the Citizens of Moscow, and the Astounding Obtuseness of Several People Who Have Led Marches to Moscow, and then we can pray for Many Various Sorts of People, Both Dead and Alive.
And while all this is going on, we'd have Louis Armstrong on the CD player, cause September 14 is also the day he won a Grammy.
And then next year we can figure out how to add in a commemoration of the death of President McKinley. Hmm. Where was he from.....ah. Cleveland. Good. That'll provide dessert.
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