That one is courtesy of Ellen and is a must-watch. It was so painful but it ravaged and then resurrected my faith in humanity in a matter of minutes.
http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200911-omag-susan-klebold-columbine/
This is for anyone who has read Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, and even for anyone else who has not. And if you've not, go and get the book!
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Yossarian decided to change the subject. "Now you're changing the subject," he pointed out diplomatically. "I'll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for."
"Be thankful you've got me," she insisted.
"I am, honey. But I'm also goddam good and miserable that I can't have Dori Duz again, too. Or the hundreds of other girls and women I'll see and want in my short lifetime and won't be able to go to bed with even once."
"Be thankful you're healthy."
"Be bitter you're not going to stay that way."
"Be glad you're even alive."
"Be furious you're going to die."
"Things could be much worse," she cried.
"They could be one hell of a lot better," he answered heatedly.
"You're naming only one thing," she protested. "You said you could name two."
"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else he's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about-- a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation?What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"
"Pain?" Lieutenant Schiesskopf's wife pounced on the word victoriously. "Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers."
"And who created the dangers?" Yossarian demanded. He laughed caustically. "Oh, He was really being charitable when He gave us pain! Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of red-and-blue tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He?"
"People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads."
"They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or stupefied with morphine, don't they? What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the power and opportunity He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess he made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering."
-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
But it takes just 20 seconds of walking down a windy leaf-strewn path to make me believe there's got to be something more. Something has to explain the ordinary miracles of trees knowing when to shed their leaves, knowing when to turn the world on fire. Something speaks in the smattering of chill droplets in the air upon my skin, like the firmament's own Braille pressed against my lips. Everything logical speaks of a God which cannot exist, but something in me believes-- oh, not in God God, but certainly in a higher power.
Today was my third or fourth visit to Uppsala's Domkyrka, but again I discovered things I never ever saw. Today I walked to the back of the cathedral (it's 118.7m long and 118.7m high, was previously gutted by fire, took 300 years to build) and found another chamber I'd never seen before:
Behind the cross-- the blue, starry-roofed chamber.I wanted to take a proper picture of it immediately but there was a lady standing right in front of the chamber staring at it very intently and I didn't want to disturb, so I looked around instead. I saw a bunch of fliers in a holder on the wall and picked them up but they were all in Swedish; there was another holder directly opposite it so I walked over as quietly as I could, ducking my head apologetically to the woman as I passed in front of her because I was blocking her view. I picked one up-- these were in English, and said:
(sorry, picasa is screwing up on me and i can't rotate it!)I started looking about for the sculpture-- was it in the chamber ahead? On one of the pillars adjoining the vaulting ceiling? I looked for about a minute or so-- fully a minute or so-- and was ready to give up and wondering irritably why the woman was still there because I couldn't take my picture unless she left-- and then--
I froze, and turned around very, very, very, very slowly.
Presenting Mary (the Return), aka the woman whom I'd thought was staring so intently at the chamber:
I truly got shivers up and down my spine. It's not as ludicrous as it sounds, she really had presence. Like what nette said on fb, some churches/cathedrals just have a certain aura-- and this cathedral does, enough to make even a quasi-agnostic like me throw kroners and kroners and kroners away on lighting candles for others and sit in the pews and just... breathe.
I took 65 photos in all but I'm not going to upload them here. But it was a lovely middle-of-the-day respite after the morning's essay opposition, which started at 8 am and was especially ungodly for me because I slept at 3am and woke at 6 to try and finish the evaluation.
And presenting today's culinary creation-- an attempt at creating a veggie wrap (or a vegetarian Swedish version of a Turkish tunnsbrodrulle):
of course, wrapping failed and in a while everything exploded outwards.
not bad, though! :)i have yet to make curry oatmeal with caramelised onions (the onions will take FULLY an hour to caramelise properly. I cannot even begin to imagine how I'll make pseudo-sundried tomatoes which will take 6 hours in a low oven). Argh. Maybe next week.
on a sidenote I dreamt that I got up in the middle of the night, unpacked my guzheng from my wardrobe, unfolded it and played it on an autumn night here in Uppsala. And there was something about having to find the right kind of wood for it as well. ???
