Aliens in This World

This Mozarabic hymn is apparently sung on Fridays (on even weeks) in the current form of the Liturgy of the Hours. Awesomely enough, it’s a hymn thanking God for the end of the work week and hoping for an eternal payday!

Thanks to Hymnos Debitos Canamus, for bringing the song to my attention and translating it literally. I wonder what the tune is?

Horis Peractis Undecim
Lyrics: Anon. (Mozarabic Trad.)
Singable translation: Maureen S. O’Brien, 7/11/08

Eleven hours’ duty done,
Day heads t’ward ev’ning at a run.
Let’s pay back some of what God’s due,
With willing minds and music, too.

The day work now is gone and past
For which, Christ, you employed us last.
Your gifts of glory are the same
As promised to those who first came.

You call us in now for the pay
You give us toward that future day.
Aid us in labor, and restore
Us when our work is done once more.

This is a more or less literal singable translation. However, the second verse didn’t work very well in the first way I did it, because it didn’t make you think of the scriptural allusion. So a little less literalism this time.

PS — I know it’s Mozarabic because it’s in Volume 27 of the Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevii. This volume was on “Gothic Hymnody: The Mozarabic Hymns of the Old Spanish Rite”. (I don’t know much German, but I can get that part.) And if you’re wondering why “Gothic”, it’s because the Visigoths ruled Spain and Portugal for a while. (They didn’t go away; they melted into the Celt/Iberian/Everybody in the Roman Empire stew.)

At Hymnos Debitos Canamus (”Let us sing fitting hymns”), there’s a blogger putting up literal translations of the Latin hymns used for the Liturgy of the Hours. I don’t want to ignore the nice singable translations out there, but sometimes you wanna know exactly what it says, not just hear a generalized translation.

The anime industry in the US is troubled, since many companies overextended their ventures. In this time, you might think that anime distributors would want to reach out for new, more mainstream audiences. Instead, some are releasing lots more anime about pretty gay men in love — marketed not toward gay men, but teenage girls who like pretty androgynous unthreatening men with long hair. But you can’t be sexist about these things, of course.

So we are about to see the US release of Maria-sama ga Miteru (Mary Is Watching Over Us), an anime about sapphic love among Catholic schoolgirls. With the Virgin Mary in the credits. (Oh, and the show is considered subtle. Yeah huh.)

Did I mention that rosaries are a considerable plot point in this little show about disordered affections? And so is a song about the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

But that wasn’t twisted enough, friends. Throughout the series, the lily, symbol of purity for Catholics, is also used as a reference to yuri, a slang term for lesbian love as well as the Japanese word for “lily”. (Of course, the lily’s use in statues of St. Joseph or St. Anthony of Padua makes this visual metaphor sound really ludicrous.)

Of course, the really really unrealistic thing is the basis of the series — allegedly long-running sisterhoods of students allegedly fostered by administration. Seeing as factionalism and “particular friendships” of any kind were not just against the rules, but were apparently supposed to be hunted down and killed in Catholic girls’ schools of yore, I very much doubt whether international religious orders ran their Catholic schools any differently in Japan. If there was a hint of anything hinky going on in a really traditional Catholic girls’ school, said hinky people would be separated so fast their heads would spin. There would also be lectures and penance and nuns assigning you lots of schoolwork and exhausting extra projects to keep you busy, not flower petals and students eyeing each other soulfully.

And indeed, it turns out that the author of the series really got her ideas on school administration from some Buddhist private school for networking rich girls. *roll eyes* Though I doubt it’s much like that school, either.

And no, I haven’t actually seen the show (except for the credits on YouTube), but I have no reason to believe that information pages about the show (all four seasons of it) are making all this up. I really wish this was just somebody’s fevered fanfic dream, but no. It’s a real shame that these days, nobody is going to make a slice of life anime about Japanese Catholics, or Japanese high school girls for that matter, without including a whole lot of prurient situations to provide “fan service”.

The series is being released by the Right Stuf International, a small anime merchandise and distribution company that specializes in licensing for US release both small charming shows that are fan favorites, and anime porn. Sickeningly fluffy lesbian teenage romance shows are as nothing for them.

You know, I’m really starting to think we shouldn’t have outlawed dueling. Sigh.

In related news, nobody seems to have any plans for any anime about cute gay male students with really, really long hair at an Islamic madrassah, singing cute little songs about waging love jihad while making eyes at each other, as flower petals dance through the air and they’re never in danger of getting hung or beheaded for breaking sharia law.

Something I’d heard a little bit about, but about which SFFAudio gives us the gen…

Apparently back in the fifties, Jean Shepherd (then a late night radio host) persuaded his listeners to help him pull a practical joke on New York’s bookstores, by having them ask for a book that didn’t exist. His ultimate hope was to get the book on the New York TImes bestseller list without actually existing, just as a friend had managed to get his record on the Billboard top ten without actually having published or sold it.

This prequel to “unleash the power of the blog” worked well. WOR could be heard as far as Alaska, and late, late night listeners are a fun-loving breed. Callers could report back on their experiences, which encouraged others to join in and call in. Esprit de corps was also encouraged by Shepherd’s credo: “We are the night people, and we don’t believe lists. They are the day people, and they do.” (Apparently this was also the first use of the phrases “day person” and “night person”, although used to mean something different.)

However. The great weakness of the joke was that you never knew if anyone else was in on the joke. As the fame of the nonexistent book (I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing) spread, people were increasingly shocked by the barefaced lies of others who claimed to have read the book. However, part of the joke was that one was supposed to go around with a straight face spreading the story of this book.

So if your boss’ wife claimed to have read the book, obviously she was lying, right?

But how did you know that she didn’t listen to Jean Shepherd, too, on those late nights when the kids were sick, or when the boss was away on a business trip and she couldn’t sleep? And how did you know she didn’t tell her husband, disappointedly, about what a great big hypocritical liar you were?

It was explicitly driven by Shepherd’s us against them theory. “We are the night people, and we don’t believe lists. They are the day people, and they do.” But simultaneously, of its very nature, it would drive you to distrust your fellows when you ran into them in real life! Only through the radio at three in the morning were you to receive news you could trust from people you respected. People who were in on it, and not gullible rubes or hypocritical losers. (Note to future jokesters: include a recognition signal.)

In short, it seems like it subverted a large chunk of American society, turning everybody into some kind of proud, paranoid noir guy or secret agent of a cell. Unintentionally, of course.

All cracking of American faultlines aside, it was a pretty funny joke, especially when Theodore Sturgeon got his friend Jean Shepherd to let publisher Ian Ballantine in on it. Theodore Sturgeon wrote most of I, Libertine in one frenzied session at the Ballantines’ house, collapsed on the couch dead asleep, and woke to find that Betty Ballantine had finished it. The book sold like hotcakes after the hoax was revealed, and the proceeds went to charity. (Interestingly, Jean Shepherd claims to have co-written the book with Sturgeon, although that’s not how the sf community remembers it.)

You can listen to a free audiobook reading of I, Libertine over at Uvula Audio.

You can also listen to an interview in which Jean Shepherd describes the joke several years after.

St. Willebald was a real world traveler in the days when travel was not just a little difficult. He got all the way to Jerusalem, and dictated a book called the Hodoeporicon about it — which was apparently the first English travel book. He was arrested by Saracens as a spy; helped restore St. Benedict’s monastery, Monte Cassino; and did a lot of missionary work in Germany.

He was also part of the same energetic Anglo-Saxon family as St. Boniface, St. Walburga, et al.

Apparently the old feasts of the Old Testament prophets St. Haggai and St. Hosea were celebrated on July 4.

I’m not sure if this sounds like a good patriotic theme or a downer. I mean, hey, lots of the overthrow of kings and peoples, and lots of promises of good futures. OTOH, lots of complaints about the sins of we the people. Oops.

For example, here’s Haggai:

“And now thus saith the Lord of hosts: Set your hearts to consider your ways. You have sowed much, and brought in little: you have eaten, but have not had enough…and he that hath earned wages, put them into a bag with holes.”

But here’s also Haggai:

“….take courage, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord of hosts; and perform, for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts. The word that I covenanted with you when you came out of the land of Egypt, and my spirit shall be in the midst of you; fear not. For thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet one little while, and I will move the heaven and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will move all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.”

And here’s our buddy Hosea of the happy marital life:

“Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel, for the Lord shall enter into judgment with the inhabitants of the land: for there is no truth, and there is no mercy, and there is no knowledge of God in the land.
Cursing, and lying, and killing, and theft, and adultery have overflowed, and blood hath touched blood.”

But here he is again:

“I will not execute the fierceness of my wrath: I will not return to destroy Ephraim: because I am God, and not man: the holy one in the midst of thee, and I will not enter into the city… And they shall fly away like a bird out of Egypt, and like a dove out of the land of the Assyrians: and I will place them in their own houses, saith the Lord.”

Sounds like a summer camp, huh?  But it was a Japanese relocation camp.

Pictures of it today are here. A long essay by the same blogger, which includes info on Minidoka, is here.

Thomas M. Disch just committed suicide on the Fourth of July. He is far from the first sf writer to commit suicide; and as usual, his problems were terrible and sad but nothing worth killing himself. And as usual, said writer didn’t ask for help directly when it was needed. Sometimes we geeks are too proud for our own good. (Apparently he was partially disabled and living in real poverty for his art, which is more fun for a young author than an old one.)

Disch was known primarily as a writer of the New Wave, and was acclaimed both for his short stories and for novels like Camp Concentration. In later years, he concentrated more on poetry and literary criticism. He also wrote the flavor text and plot for the pioneering computer game Amnesia, which was set in a real area of New York and first allowed players to visit non-plot-related areas. But perhaps the work of his which will be best known to posterity was The Brave Little Toaster.

He was a lapsed Catholic. Recently, he had been promoting an upcoming humorous book of God’s memoirs, and eliciting people to write him their questions for God.

May God’s divine mercy and grace have met him in the hour of death. May all his questions have been answered with love. And I really hope he asked for help when he really needed it.

———————————————————————

Some of Disch’s poetry is on his Livejournal. Other poems are here, like:

How to Behave when Dead

A notorious tease, he may pretend
not to be aware of you.
Just wait.
He must speak first. Then
you may begin to praise him.

Yes, my children, there probably are enough of these books to make a category in a bookstore. (Okay, a small bookstore.) I picked up The Reign of Wizardry by Jack Williamson in just such a small bookstore — The Armadillo’s Pillow, a few blocks from Loyola up in Chicago. (Rogers Park or something, actually.) It’s laid out like a very cozy bookstore in which one might easily spend hours browsing, and it has a very interesting selection.

Unfortunately, the owners also apparently do a brisk business in incense and incense products. So yes, if you’re allergic to certain incense ingredients, breathing is gonna be a challenge, and the books will still be heavily scented with what ails you after you get home. Several days after you get home.

However, it’s been more than a week, so I was able to read The Reign of Wizardry without fighting the urge to sneeze or throw up. This is good, because it was a very brisk and entertaining little title originally written for the magazines in 1940.  (This was a paperback with a Sixties cover that had art almost totally unindicative of its content, of course. Though actually, once you’ve read the book, you can see that it’s an illustration of Williamson’s super-creepy version of the Labyrinth.)

Theseus of Athens — you know him, right? This Theseus ran off from home to become a pirate — the infamous Captain Firebrand, who takes goods and spares men’s lives if he can. Theseus’ goal in life is to defeat the Cretans who defeated his father. Preferably by bringing down their entire Mediterranean empire.

Of course, this is easier said than done. But what if you weren’t just resourceful and skilled with your father’s magic sword? What if you had a wizard of your own to fight the Cretan ones?

It’s a good fastmoving story with lots of twists, which manages to incorporate both the old myth of the Minotaur with most of what was known archaeologically in the Sixties about Minoan Crete. Not a great book, but a very good one. Also, writing for the sf/fantasy market allowed Williamson to portray some fairly fantastic events actually occurring and play with why such things would happen, which the Mary Renaults of the world have a bit less freedom to do. But to be honest, I enjoyed Theseus himself the most. He was likeable, decisive, ingenious, fierce… A good Greek hero.

The dude not only was a prince of the Wends, had a very back and forth kind of life, and then ended up a missionary — he also got martyred at the altar (along with 29 companions) by his brother-in-law’s hitmen! Go, St. Gotteschalk!

Ah, high summer. Tons of martyrs’ feastdays. I guess summer was just an attractive time for pagans to persecute people….

Here’s a delightful seasonal blogpost by an expatriate lady living in Japan. Ume are in season, and so she’s got a few things you can do with them.

Ume is usually translated as “plum”, but apparently they’re really some kind of Japanese apricot. I did not know that.

So really, umeboshi are not pickled plums, but pickled apricots. (Okay, that explains a little bit about their taste, although really I only tasted salt when I ate one….)

And that bottle in the grocery store labeled “plum wine” is really umeshu, and thus an apricot liqueur.

Well. I did not know that.

You can get ume trees in America, but most people are told that they are “flowering apricot” and that the wi fruit is toxic. Which it apparently is, if eaten raw and without processing. (I did not know that!) Scary!)

So you definitely want to process it first, but it would be a shame to let a tree full of ume go to waste.

When the ume on your tree (or in the supermarket in some places) are still green, you use them to make umeshu or green ume jam.  And with the riper ones, you make ume jam or jelly or other yummy ume stuff.

This just came to mind over at Father Z’s, where they’ve been having (among other things) a discussion of girl servers.

I was all for girls serving back when I was a girl; but mostly from the standpoint that since boys were so lazy about doing it that girls might as well get in, and that since it was legally possible and had precedents, it could very well be done. But the one time I had a chance to do it, it felt very odd and wasn’t something I really wanted to repeat. It looks odd, too, up in the sanctuary. Not revolting or wrong, but just not right. As if someone has missed the point.

So I periodically put some thought into this subject. The thing that comes to mind is that the Church has traditionally had a hierarchical structure in which, literally, the last shall be first and the one in charge is the one who is the servant of all the rest. To wash feet was degrading and yucky — hard work and detail work. It was the kind of job that, in the ancient world, was usually given to slaves or women. The only well-off people who usually did it for themselves were Jewish priests preparing to go into the Holy Place. For Jesus to wash the feet of his Twelve was to prepare them to go into His sanctuary — to attend the first Mass _in_ that sanctuary, and thus assist not as members of the people but as priests and bishops.

There were some deaconesses appointed at need to enter women’s quarters without scandal, but the usual deacons — servants — of the Church were men. Men to fetch and carry, men to do menial everyday work that would be assigned in a household to slaves or women. Responsible, important work, yes. But also purposefully menial, and purposefully given largely to men.

In another interesting move, vestments are largely adaptations of archaic men’s clothes. Part of what makes them archaic is that, outside of church, their elements would largely be interpreted by modern eyes as being women’s clothing. Again and again, these elements are maintained in vestments long after they have started to seem “girly” on non-clerical men. Why do they not seem girly? Perhaps because of this role reversal. Long robes and lace and big necklaces continued to seem manly, on men doing work that would anywhere else have seemed like work for parlormaids.

The sanctuary — the area immediately around the altar — spends a good part of Mass as the dwelling of God. In the court of Heaven, the rules are different than in the world. So it’s exalted to fetch and carry, and men dress in a different way. It does have a certain logic to it, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, women were largely the philanthropists of the early Church, giving money and space to hold Mass, praying, making vows, and doing all sorts of things — things which were not menial. Lady Bountiful does not fetch and carry. In the rest of the ancient world, women could only have taken the role of Martha in most religions, and it took a rich persuasive woman to be allowed to listen to a philosopher’s lectures. In the Christian world, women were actually encouraged to listen and rest!

So now we come to servers, who stand in for adult men training up to be priests, and do what they’d do. And what they do is menial work, the work of slaves and women. They act as human bookstands, human censers of perfume, human candlesticks and tables. They fetch and carry and stand still without drawing attention. Boys who enter into this world are doing something vastly against their usual natural inclinations. Girls who enter into this world are spending a whole lot of time being submissive and attentive to the wishes of an older man.

So it should be obvious that it’s feminist for boys to serve as acolytes and more feminist for girls not to do so.

Now, I fully acknowledge that it’s not just fetching and carrying, and putting religious significance on an act makes it a lot less servile. But. It’s not a matter of positions of power, either. To be a priest or a deacon is to be at everyone’s beck and call at all hours. To be a server is much the same, but with more limited hours and numbers of persons to serve.

Women already do way too much of this stuff. It’s always tempting to take on more of the stuff we’re good at, or that society encourages us to do; and to serve is not all that far a stretch. So it’s not wrong to be a server and girls can do a good job; but it’s not right, either. It’s counter-productive to this “reversal of gender roles” principle, and thus to part of the intended purpose of serving. Girls should be encouraged to sit back in the pew, prop their Lady Bountiful feet up on the kneeler, and watch the boys scurry about instead of doing it themselves.

And if you think America is so egalitarian that reversals of gender roles are no longer needed –

Do it for the poor Muslim women and those of other oppressive religions; for all the female sex slaves hidden in our society and procured from around the world; and for all the many other oppressed ladies in our world today. They could really use some role reversal, and they aren’t all that few.

Also from “Tidings of Doomsday”, a sermon in Middle Irish translated by Whitley Stokes:

But the Saints and the Righteous, who have fulfilled the commands of the Lord and his teaching, will be called to glory, to honour, to veneration, into the eternal Life on God’s right hand, for ever and ever, to wit, the folk of gentleness and tenderness, of charity and of mercy, and of every fair deed besides, a folk of virginity and penitence, and widows faithful for God’s sake.

Then shall there be a great noise and mighty sound of the pure souls stepping on the right hand of their King and their Lord in the heavenly Kingdom, in ranks of the King of heaven and earth and hell. A place wherein is the Light that excels every light, every splendour, without interruption, without darkness. Life eternal without death: clamour of joy without sorrow: health without sickness: youth without old age: peace without quarrel: rest without adversity: freedom without labour, without fatigue, without need of food or raiment or sleep: holiness without age, without decay: radiant unity of angels:

delights of paradise: feasting without interruption among nine ranks of angels and of holy folks of heaven and holy assemblies of the most noble King, and among holy, spiritual hues of heaven and brightness of sun in a kingdom high, noble, admirable, lovable, just, adorned, great, smooth, honeyed, free, restful, radiant: in plains of heaven, in delightful stations, in golden chairs, in glassen beds, in silvern stations wherein everyone shall be placed according to his own honour and right and welldoing.

But indescribable are the amplitude and width of the heavenly kingdom. For the bird that is swiftest of flight upon earth, for him the journey of the kingdom would not end though he flew from the world’s beginning until the end thereof.

Vast, then, are this fruitfulness and the light, the loveableness and the stability of that City: its rest and its sweetness, its security, its preciousness, its smoothness, its dazzlingness, its purity, its lovesomeness, its whiteness, its melodiousness, its holiness, its bright purity, its beauty, its mildness, its height, its splendour, its dignity, its venerableness, its plenteous peace, its plenteous unity. Yea, not fit is any creature to set forth the hundredth part of the description of the goodness of that City, but still it is better to relate this little of them than to be in silence.

From “Tidings of Doomsday”, a sermon in Middle Irish, translated by Whitley Stokes. (It’s a nice one, with lots of Jesus’ talk about those who found Him hungry and gave Him food, etc. In this case, you found Him in need of a guesthouse. Or they found Him in captivity, and they got tidings of Him and loosed Him. Heh! None of this visiting hours stuff for the Irish!)

Anyway, in this Irish writer’s scheme, this is what Hell is like:

Then will be shut the sinners’ three locks, to wit, shutting of Hell for ever on them, and shutting of their eyes on the world to which they gave love, and shutting of the heavenly kingdom on them.

Thereafter they will sit a merciless seat on glowing coals of great fire before the king of evil in the glen of tortures, wherein they shall have heavy punishments, to wit, death without life: dark fire: life woeful, sad, foul, unclean: a place wherein shall be many dogs, keen, greedy, gluttonous, broad-eared, longclawed, sharppawed, beside them. And toads, keen, rough, destroying one another. And adders poisonous, very swift, around the Devil’s city. And lions fierce, rending. And many in their dark mass and in their dark light. A place wherein shall be birds hideous, taloned, fearful, made of iron. And stinking lochs, stormy, cold, hellish. Fires dark, ever burning. Red flags under feet. Swords maiming. Cats scratching and furrowing. Fiends torturing. Wounds without healing. Flame without quenching. Gag on tongues. Strangling on throats. Vexing on heads. Yelling and gagging on voices. Fettering on soles. A place wherein beside every evil shall be the Monster, conspicuous, awful, manyheaded, with crowds of red glowing coals. Somewhat of his description, to wit: a hundred necks upon him and a hundred heads on each neck, and five hundred teeth in each head. A hundred hands upon him, and a hundred palms on each hand, and a hundred nails on every palm.

A place wherein existence is without lovingness, without friendship, in thirst, in hunger, in great cold, in great heat, in want of every good thing and in fulness of every evil thing, in union with the disunion of the fiends and the household of Hell.

Then will be there woe and lamentation, wail and crying, groan and scream of every mouth, and a curse without resting from the sinners on their abbot — to wit, on the Devil, for he it is that puts them in endurance of punishment for every evil they did through his temptation; and a curse, too, from him on monks about him — to wit, on the sinners, since the greater is his own punishment for every evil they did through his seduction of them, inciting every evil.

Awful, in sooth, and hideous is that prison which the Lord has made for the Devil with his fiends, to wit, Hell. Low, now, and deep is its place. For though a millstone were cast into Hell’s mouth, not sooner than at the end of a thousand years would it reach the bottom. The soul’s journey, now, after coming from the body, is for a space of thirty years from top to bottom thereof, as is the opinion of certain persons.

Strong is that prison’s surrounding: it is full of fear, dread, danger, lamentation. Dark, black, hideous is its open mouth. It is a rock for chastening every soul that is tortured. It is a flame for burning. It is a scourge for smiting. It is an edge for maiming. It is a night for blinding. It is a fog for smothering. It is a cross for torturing. It is a sword for vengeance. It is an awful weapon for slaying and for cutting. It is a howling of tortures. It is a crowd of punishments. It is a drowning, it is a plaguing. It is a breaking: it is a bruising, it is a pollution, it is an exhaustion, it is a consuming, it is a hacking, it is a burning, it is a swallowing: it is high, it is low, it is very cold: it is very hot, it is narrow, it is wide: great is the stench of the steam of its stewing flesh.