The end of time

When I first read the lyrics to Ewan MacColl's "The First Time", I disliked them.

The first time ever I saw your face
I though the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon & stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark & the empty skies, my love
To the dark and empty skies.

The first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love
That was there at my command.

The first time ever I lay with you
And felt your heart beat over mine
I thought our joy would fill the earth
And last til the end of time, my love
And last til the end of time.

Knowing nothing of the story behind it, the words turned me off. "Sure, you thought your love would last forever, but of course it won't! Let alone sex. You probably got tired of her, if she didn't get tired of you first."

In college I discovered Peggy Seeger's album Songs of Love and Politics. Along with her own "I Want to Be an Engineer" and many other political songs, the most memorable love song is "The First Time", which Ewan wrote for her during a 1956 transatlantic phone call. They didn't get tired of each other - they were married for many decades. But she also sings the heartbreaking "Thoughts of Time", about being married to a much older man and living with the almost certain knowledge that Ewan would die before her.

These days I have marriage on the brain, and her story takes on more significance for me. The worst thing I can currently imagine is losing Jeff too early, though unless we both go in the same car wreck one of us has to die before the other. So this week when I found Peggy Seeger's most recent album Bring Me Home in the library, I was entranced by the last song. She describes the different people who have been home to her over the years - starting with her parents and brothers, then her life with Ewan, her life alone after his death. But the last verses are about her life with her new partner, Irene. I've never met any of these people, but I was happy all day after learning that! It felt like I had heard good news from a friend.

At Pendle Hill it's the end of term, students are leaving, and people are fond of quoting "The sorrow of your leaving lasts only a moment, because the joy of your being here lasts forever." I'm sure anyone who's lost a spouse will tell you the sorrow in fact lasts more than a moment. But at the same time, the world is a better place because Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl were in it. I hope at the end of our life together Jeff and I can know the same thing.

Can we please get over this?

I'm more and more appalled by the monotony of the spam I get at my work email address. A thousand different euphemisms are employed to sell penis enlargement - usually the message is clearly about that. But even ones with subject lines about some other aspect of sex or relationships are inevitably about expanding your love stick. It's strange to see men so objectified, boiled down to one ridiculous measurement.

Someone with no concept of human sexuality would come away from my inbox with the idea that it was all penises, all the time. Nothing about tickling or tongues or words or fingers in each other's hair. Nothing about fun or kindness. Nothing about women, except as rapt admirers of penises. And as for the rest of human interaction, you would think it consisted of mocking men without huge zucchini between their legs. ("Zucchini" is actually a far gentler metaphor than the emails use. If I'm ever approached by an organ that could be described as a "cannon", "anaconda", "monster", or "power drill", I'll run the other way.)

The sad thing is that they wouldn't send so many of these messages if they didn't work. Fear sells.

Idealist

Sometimes I forget how great idealist.org is. This is a reminder to all of you: if you're looking for a job, or something to do, or any other way to improve the world - it's really great.

The bird in the tree on the rock in the void

This morning at breakfast people were talking about moon phases and tides and things. Afterwards I sat in meeting for worship trying to visualize it all. If the sun is here and the Earth is here, the full moon is out there on the other side, so the tide is pulled away from the sun . . . I looked out the window at the wet grass on the hill in front of the meeting room. In the tree next to the building a bird was singing.

Suddenly it seemed miraculous. We are on a globe of rock, flying around in space, orbiting a flaming globe and orbited by another globe of rock. And conditions on our rock are such that there is wet green grass on the hill and a bird singing in the tree. Because I usually don't think of myself as living on a rock flying through space, it's easy to forget how elegant it all is.

Unplugged

I'm amused and disturbed by the way new technology makes people unhappy when they don't get it. A few decades ago people got upset about technological intrusion when Pendle Hill put phone lines in the dorm rooms, but now people get all malcontent if they can't have free wireless. The other night some of us were sharing about how our days had been, and one man said meditatively, "I'm feeling really disconnected from . . ." I expected this sentence to end with "my family" or "the people around me" or some such thing. But no, it was "wireless internet in my room. There are so many things I feel I'm missing out on."

This morning my kitchen helper didn't show up to his job at all, and when I saw him at lunch I asked him what happened. "I'm so sorry," he said, "I slept in until eleven. I was up all night trying to get the wireless in my room to work." Tip: don't tell this to the woman who no longer has a computer of any kind and who got up before dawn to cook the breakfast you didn't eat.

The song of harvest home

At first, working as a cook seemed like a scarier version of what I'd been doing for years. The pans and utensils seemed too big; recipes that started with 40 cloves of garlic or 20 pounds of tuna seemed ridiculous.

Now that I've settled into the proportions, I'm really enjoying it. It felt good to realize that I'd made the house recipe for granola so many times I could just go into the cool storeroom and start scooping out the grain: 10 quarts of oats, 3 of rye flakes, 2 of oat bran . . .

The Icelandic sagas feature women as secondary characters, but I remember being fascinated by the fact that "housewife" was treated as an important job. Back then running a household was indisputably a full-time occupation, partly because Icelanders lived in longhouses with dozens of people. (Think Riders of Rohan type dwelling.) Getting a household through the winter took major preparation and planning. In one saga, a house is thrown into turmoil because of the wife's bad management, and it looks like they may run out of food. A woman's position of honor was once synonymous with her role as a provider of food: our word "lady" is from Old English hlǣfdige, "loaf-kneader".

Well, my job isn't that important. But I do enjoy feeding a lot of people.