Truth and Lies

The girls and I have been listening to the BBC radio production of the Lord of the Rings on the way home each day (it's 13 CDs in all, so it takes a while to get through it). One line really jumped out at me last night, from the scene where Frodo and Faramir meet. Frodo tells him: "I told no lies, and all the truth that I could."

I've been brooding about that line all day, and I talked with kijjohnson about it when we talked last night. It seems to me that this line rather neatly sums up a quality that I strive for in living my own life in general, and in approaching my writing in particular. No lies, yes--but it's not enough to simply say "I will tell the truth." Sometimes truth is difficult to know, and so you have to take the effort to discover it. Sometimes you need to work hard to work up the courage to say it, and perhaps your courage isn't quite there yet, but keep trying and it will be. Sometimes unfolding the truth is an ongoing process: you keep learning more and more as you go, and you must keep adding to it. And sometimes you can't tell all of it that you know, for other reasons: perhaps it will hurt other people, or perhaps, like Aslan says, it's not your truth (or story, as Aslan put it) to tell.

But, yeah. I will tell no lies, and all the truth that I can.

That's the new subtitle on my LiveJournal

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Here's a very different and decidedly cranky take on the Ice Palace.

Thoughts?

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From today's Writer's Almanac:

Chekhov said, "Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out."

I've booked my helicopter ride!

I'll be going up in the bird 8:00 p.m. next Tuesday.

Now I don't want to listen to any news stories the next several days about helicopter crashes in Iraq. Although I admit that I don't anticipate anyone will be firing rocket launchers at me.

Frank Anderson (the ice palace architect) just called to touch base. I was very pleased and surprised to hear from him, and we chatted about the great success the palace has been having. He's been very pleased about the coverage; Larry Millet's article in the St. Paul paper was particularly welcome (apparently Mr. Millet is the architecture critic for the St. Paul paper, a fact I didn't know, as well as being the author of Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders. Which means that the book is probably even more architecturally centered than I realized, which is making me re-think my decision to not read it, for fear of being contaminated--and yes, serindipoz, I would be grateful to get your copy). He said that the business was the pennies was new, that it hadn't happened with any previous ice palace (must think of a magical reason for it), but that the fish block custom goes way back. He was surprised I wasn't aware of that custom. He told me about some the changes they had to make on the fly in order to complete the project on time: the blocks over the archway, for example, are styrofoam, rather than ice, and they didn't do the herringbone construction they had planned around the entire outer perimeter, but only in one section, at the exit. Not all the ice was cut according to the measurement specification, either, which made fitting the blocks together and mortaring them properly quite challeging. He gave me the name of an ice palace historian (besides Moira Harris) who might know more about the origins of the fish block custom.

Jane Austen, Public Theologian

To call Jane Austen a public theologian is counterintuitive for two reasons: she does not seem much interested in things public, and she does not seem much interested in things theological . . . Austen was not an unthinking defender of traditional social order. Not uncommonly, her heroines are upwardly mobile, particularly through the agency of matrimony. More

Hmm. V. interesting. My thoughts upon first reading this seem particularly scattered, but it seems to getting at, obliquely (from another angle) the issue I posted upon this morning, re: lies and truth, although here it is called acting vs. becoming a role. Consider, for example, this:

. . . every social role has a particular identity attached to it. Some of the roles are fairly trivial and easily changed; others are nearly impossible to alter. But any change in role is a change in "who you are." The ethical imperative is to grow into those roles. At first, the uniform may not fit; we may find ourselves dwarves dressed in the clothing of giants; but we are called to grow into our role.

(Does this mean that if I play the role of a "real writer" long enough, that eventually I'll actually start to feel like one?)

It also reminds me of the long and animated late night conversation I had with Eleanor Arnason at a convention many years ago, which for the first time truly gave me a real appreciation for Mansfield Park.

Unvirtuous comfort food

Tonight, I wasn't in the mood to be virtuous in the kitchen. Maybe it's the brutally cold weather (-20 degrees Farenheit, and we won't even talk about the windchill). Rob was out tonight; for me and the kids I whipped up a dutch oven pancake, about the easiest thing in my repertoire. Eggs, flour, milk--and I also threw in about a half cup of chocolate chips. Put it in a cast iron skillet and place it the oven for ten minutes. I cooked a banana in Kahlua and butter and put that on top.

The girls gobbled it up with nary a complaint. Wonder of wonder: for once, Fiona eats all her dinner. Fiona doled out the kids vitamin pills to herself and Delia ("So we'll at least have something nutrious tonight.")

Fiona asked for dessert after her portion of the pancake was finished.

I fixed her with my best steely-eyed bitch mom look. "You've had dessert."

"Oh. I thought that was dinner."

I sighed. "It was both."

Boy, it tasted good.