patience

Hi,

I wanted to keep updating two or three times a week. But it may be a while before I get back to that schedule. Life's been rather frustrating lately, involving things I don't really want to post here. So I'm having to be patient until it sorts itself out somewhat, and I ask for your patience on updates. I have photos from previous entries still to upload, and events to talk about. I'll get to it. Or if not, find me when I'm back in the States and hit me up for stories and pictures.

Just in brief, from this weekend: we had the Hubbards over to our apartment for dinner Saturday night. Sarah planned out a spaghetti dinner. On Sunday I tried one of the local couscous restaurants. There are plenty, due to the great number of north Africans in Marseille. I've learned how not to get spines in my hands while handling prickly pears. (I guess that's all food-related. For a bit of math---) Dr. Hubbard and I got back to working on odd cohomology and complex structures. Turns out (and I should have realized this earlier), this is a perfect occasion to actually work in the Grassmannian of something to work something out. Maybe I'll give more details on those "somethings" another time.

Take care, y'all. I'll be back soon.

she and he, sitting in a tree...

I can’t believe I’m about to get into this. This is precisely the sort of thing I thought I’d avoid posting. But occasions arise, thoughts coalesce, so here goes…

Let’s talk about love and dating. These are not topics I approach lightly, as anyone who has spoken with me about them can tell you. Even the times I’ve tried dating just for fun, serious consideration has gone into it. As for love, I’m mostly talking about romantic love here, but such love is incomplete without elements of the more universal agape love. (For those of you who didn’t grow up in the church, or are otherwise unfamiliar with the term agape, it’s one of the Greek words for love, and it’s used consistently throughout the New Testament to describe sacrificial love—the kind of love that is as much doing as feeling; the kind of love God has for the world.) I’m going to leave sex aside for now; it’s probably impossible to explain or understand my opinions on sex without all the background here first, anyway. And I’m going to write entirely from the gentleman’s perspective, because as much as I’d like to think I understand women, I probably don’t have a bloody clue what goes on in their heads and hearts.

I’ve had several girlfriends. More than I expected to, actually. I won’t embarrass them or myself by listing them here. They’ve shaped my life, as all friends do. They have given me some of the most challenging and satisfying relationships I’ve had. I’ve been realizing lately how much I learned from those relationships, how much they helped me mature and learn how to treat people well, to compromise, and to work towards common goals. Most of those romances ended well; at least eventually it became clear to both parties that ending was the right decision.

Now, for the sake of clarity in case anyone reading didn’t yet know, I’ll announce that I’m dating Hannah. She is not in France with me; she’s back at Cornell. We’ll be apart for most of the next eight months. I’ve been through separations before while dating; I’ll get into that more later. And it’s events in our relationship that have prompted me to sort out my thoughts on these matters and write this essay. That doesn’t mean I’ll be talking about us exclusively; most of “us” is definitely more private than I want to post online. In fact, even though I’ll mention her a few times, my musings are much more general. I want to find out what I think about being in love. You get to watch part of it.

There was a time, in college, when I didn’t actually believe the state of “being in love” existed. I was quite certain anyone who thought they were in love were deluding themselves. I’m not the only one to have felt this way, I’m sure. The Monkees even have a song about it, written by Neil Diamond. (My brother and I watched the Monkees avidly when we were younger. I don’t remember the plot of a single episode, but I remember a lot of the songs.)

I thought love was only true in fairy tales,
Meant for someone else but not for me.
Love was out to get me;
That’s the way it seemed.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer.
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer;
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

It took a bit more than seeing someone’s face to convince me I could be in love. It took soul-searching. I said once to Annie back in Peace Corps that, given my propensity towards stoicism and self-reflection, my piling layers upon layers of intellectualization on top of my emotions, it would take some powerful affection to overcome all that and convince me that I had, finally, been caught up in that delusion of love. (I didn’t quite use those words, but that was the sense. I am usually wrapped in principles and convictions, which direct rather than obey more visceral impulses. And the main point is that I would not have to convince myself; something beyond my own reasoning would force me to acknowledge my own enamoring. Besides, what principle is there in love except desiring the happiness of the beloved?) Maybe most people have these kinds of passions more easily than I do. I’m no longer as stoic as I was in high school; I have strong emotions on a number of subjects (music and theology high among them), which I vent with no particular compunction. I am somehow inherently skeptical of eros, however. I can only be convinced it’s real when it is completed with rapture and joy. And those are experiences one does not easily find.

One of my homonyms, Joshua Harris, came out with a book a few years ago that quickly rose to great popularity among Christian singles. It may still be popular. I’ve never read it, but I can describe its basic principle. The title is I Kissed Dating Goodbye. As a young man, Harris determined that dating, “just for fun” so to speak, would eventually be detrimental to his marriage. That is, if he spent his pre-married life giving parts of himself and his heart to different women, those parts would come back to haunt him on his wedding day. He sought a real purity in his relationship with his wife (whom, of course, he had not yet met, but when he did and began courting, he wrote another book about it).

I have some sympathy with Harris’s point. Mostly that’s because I don’t think the modern world (probably the world at any point in time, actually) takes marriage seriously enough. I’m not just talking about the appalling divorce rate, or the common belief that somehow a series of hook-ups can lead to finding the “right person”. I’m talking about a lack of awareness of the spiritual component of relationships. All right, I’m something of a mystic, so my language may be a bit far out for some. But something truly significant happens when two people decide (or acknowledge) that each is so important to the other that they will live together throughout their lives, and this significant something happens not just within or between the people involved. I believe almost every encounter or relationship we have on this earth is meant to mirror in some small way our relationship with God. And the utter self-giving of love is certainly a facet we may struggle to understand when we conceive of ourselves before God.

Hannah mentioned one time that she had come across the “controversial” passage about marriage in Ephesians (5:22-33). She said, “It sounds like the husbands got the raw end of the deal.” Here’s a piece of the passage she’s referring to:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

She made a comment along the lines of… submitting is easy when you love someone, but loving your wife as Christ loved the church? How can anyone possibly be expected to do that? The trouble (well, one trouble) with this passage is that people often can’t get past the first part. And in isolation, that first paragraph certainly sounds oppressive. (To be fair, anytime I’ve heard a sermon on this passage, the emphasis has been on the fact that the whole scripture together implies humility for both members of the couple, i.e., mutual service. There’s not really any other interpretation that could be remotely correct.) But Scripture is not intended merely to guide our actions: it directs our desires, as well. What husband, in loving his wife, does not want to make and keep her clean and holy? Those may not be the words he uses, but he should cherish the woman he loves and seek to protect her—not because she is incapable of supporting or protecting herself, but because it is the best gift he knows how to give and the truest expression of his devotion to her.

Somewhere C.S. Lewis describes how one’s love for one’s wife is augmented rather than diminished by encounters with other women. (No, I don’t mean “encounters” to be a euphemism. I mean normal, everyday meetings.) I’m probably badly misrepresenting his position, since I can’t find the citation now, so take this as my own opinion, inspired a bit by Lewis. Also, I should mention, inspired by a sermon I heard once about how marriage is the epitome of human relationships. Therein one finds ultimate commitment combined with some of the broadest gaps to reach across—as the pastor mentioned, the couple has to deal with one of the most basic divisions in humanity: the gender gap. A spouse is a friend, a lover, and a partner, but to some extent she or he is also a representative of the rest of humanity. By learning to love his wife well, a man learns to love others well, and by loving others, he can better love his wife.

So help me, I’m about to make about the most absurd pop culture reference I could at this point. Only because the words of the script are appropriate, well put-together, and in tension with much of what one “learns” about love in the movies. In one scene of Spiderman 2, Peter is visiting Dr. Octavius and his wife. The conversation turns to relationships. They say (I’m not going to bother separating out who said what, because they’re basically speaking with one voice here):

I finally got lucky in love. We both did. But it’s hardly perfect. You have to work at it.

I’ve thought about those lines a lot lately, actually. Not because the scene itself is a great revelation, but because the reality is so pithily described by those words.

Love may have a component of luck. It certainly feels that way sometimes. I was originally planning to argue against this point, but it doesn’t seem worth it. The main thing is that, however you get into love, to stay there takes work. Shall I mention some details? Take the trial of separation. This I have experienced multiple times. It gets harder each time. Particularly as my love grows. This last month and a half has been the most painful ever. Hannah has introduced me to a Portuguese word and song by Lui Collins: saudade. It means a kind of bittersweet longing for one’s beloved who is far distant, mingled with hope for reunion and joy from memories. I think I know what that feeling is now. I’ve just spent the last week in Ithaca to see Hannah. The sense of relief from that trip is immense, because of some challenging moments we’ve had. But I know that it’s good to learn now how to deal with trials, and how to deal with each other through trials. We will continue to push each other and challenge each other, and we are growing together even while we are apart. Work. Love is not all joy, but the moments of joy one reaches, knowing that both people involved have committed to the relationship’s success, are beyond compare.

A refrain that appears several times in the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) is:

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.

There’s apparently some ambiguity in how this passage should be translated or interpreted. It could refer to a personification of Love, that one should not force the matter. Love brooks no spurs. Or it could mean that the beloved himself is sleeping (read “until he pleases” instead of “until it pleases”), and should not be awakened while he rests. The latter is sweet. The former is the interpretation I lean towards. We have so many pressures to drive towards fulfillment in some strange notion of “love”. It is a good thing to seek love, but I don’t think we should be too quick to believe we have found it. Once it’s there, and known, however, it should be cultivated and stimulated, and it should be the passion of one’s life. It’s not part of fairy tales; those stories leave out too much anyway. Love is one of those universal experiences that touch us most intimately. Wake, Love, in each of us and at your pleasure, and teach us to serve, to trust, to work, to uplift, and to become more fully whole and united.

faire du ciel

(Composed Saturday, while in flight)

It’s easy to get jaded about flying, particularly when one decides that all the inconveniences of screening, walking endless hallways, and sitting in cramped coach seats nearly outweigh the tremendous benefits of this mode of transport. I don’t quite do it often enough to get completely numb to the whole process, but I’ve flown a lot in my life—mostly while I was at St. Olaf, going back and forth between Minneapolis and Memphis. But every once in a while you take a beautiful flight, and flying is a treat. My brother and I took such a flight from Malaga to Barcelona a few years ago, when we marveled (we might even have gasped) at the enchanting countryside of eastern Spain. I’ve had a couple nice flights on Air France, whose slogan is “Faire du ciel le plus bel endroit de la terre” (“Make the sky the most beautiful place on earth”).

This morning, my first leg on my way back to Ithaca, with British Airlines from Marseille to London, was such a flight. There were a number of small pleasures. First was the congenial, energetic crew. One of the flight attendants was making her opening remarks about welcome and safety, when the captain completely and exuberantly overrode her (clearly, he didn’t know she was talking). He sounded like he loved what he was doing and who he got to work with; for I think my first time on such a large plane the pilot announced the names of the attendants with what was more and more clearly his characteristic aplomb. At the end of his monologue, the gentleman sitting next to me (who had been reacting to the excitement by singing circus tunes) broke into applause. Something about the British accents (and vocabulary) of the attendants I found delightful. And finally, on our entry into London, I was captivated by the cloudscape. (Of course there were clouds. I don’t think I’ve ever flown over England without it being completely covered in clouds.) I think of how until the 20th century no one could see the textures of the tops of clouds. As we began dipping into the puffs and whiffs I felt a wave of relaxation. It was midmorning. Once we were below the clouds, there was a layer of mist deepening into what I presume had been fog an hour earlier. The sunlight shone through the small chinks in the cover, turning the whole world into a dusty cathedral; but what was most striking was that, as we flew at the level between the clouds and the had-been-fog, one saw the shafts of light were suspended between the two. When we were closer to the ground, the gentleman next to me pointed out to his wife the visible vortex streaming behind the airilon of the wing; it was a constant shape, twisted like a corkscrew, and formed out of concentrated mist.

It’s amazing when technology can bring us new experiences, not just of technology itself, but of the natural world, as well.

chez nous part 3

On Friday night, the night before I left for Ithaca, we hosted our first party in our Marseillais apartment. We invited as many of the the grad students as we currently know. Four showed up, plus the Hubbards, which was about the right number to have in the grande salle for just sitting around chatting. We can have more next time, but this was a nice first number.

True to form, I wasn’t even ready when the first guest arrived (just a titch before 8:00, which was the official starting time); I was still shaving. I had bought a variety of wines earlier in the day (much easier to do affordably in France than in the States, or at least Ithaca; the average price for a good bottle in Marseille is perhaps a third or a fourth that of Ithaca stores), and Sarah got cheeses, bread, and grapes. Two guests—the first arrival, then later the Hubbards—brought more wine, and one brought more grapes. Sarah had purchased a nearly absurd amount of cheese, but a vast amount was consumed. (It reminded me of the snack times before general seminars at Cornell: the cheese is always the first item to go, well before the cookies, perhaps even with the cider.) Once we had two people, we discussed card games. I proposed playing spades (les piques), because I love it; our Marseillais guests described a local game which bears some resemblance. We had gotten about as far as describing the games before another guest arrived, so that shelved the card game idea. We drew maps on the tablecloth of where we’re all from. Most amusing were my attempt to sketch the shape of New York State (it’s much more complicated that the Tennessean parallelogram or Minnesotan rectangle with a wedge removed) and the German’s blocky portrayal of Deutchland (he claimed it was because Germans are always supposed to think in boxes and straight lines). Sarah and I showed off all the work we’d done in the apartment. It really is a nice place to live, even though a few touch-ups remain.

When the Hubbards arrived, the discussion broke into the life of a mathematician, stories of particular mathematicians, how different sectors in France hire different kinds of scientifically-trained folk (apparently there are some industries that should be hiring mathematicians, but neglect to do so; I wasn’t entirely listening to this section of the conversation), and the curriculum of post-doctoral studies in France and the U.S. All four of the students who came are in Dr. Hubbard’s Teichmüller theory course, and I think he’s the sort of professor that it helps to know outside of class in order to feel more comfortable and get more benefit in class.

Later in the evening, after the Hubbards had left, we began discussing Teichmüller theory (since, if we follow order of the textbook, Teichmüller space won’t be defined for another three or four chapters). I explained a bit about flat surfaces, moduli of surfaces, and how differential geometry comes into play via the Gauss–Bonnet theorem. We talked until a little past midnight. Sarah and I cleaned and talked until 2 or so. Then it was time to make sure everything was packed for my travels this morning. A successful evening. It’s good to be getting to know some of our colleagues better. (There are also the Friday lunches for doing that, which I’ll cover another time.)

context

So, it’s important to know for a while that I’m back in Ithaca for the week. I was going to post something about it earlier, but the entry got a bit long and unwieldy. I may give a summary of it at some point. But this trip to Ithaca is the context for the next few posts.

chez nous part 2

The painting is done. The cleaning is almost done. The unpacking has just begun, but will take hardly any time at all, especially compared to those first two tasks. I’ve just taken my quilt out of my suitcase for the first time since I left Ithaca. It smells rather nice because it’s had soap I bought at the farmers’ market wrapped inside that whole time. We’re actually sleeping in the apartment tonight. This is huge. This is momentous. It finally feels (to me) like we’re not working on someone else’s place. It feels like we have a place to live.

Some of you have heard, via email and other such communication media, about the travails this apartment has entailed. I’ll try to recap.

When last we heard from our intrepid house-hunting students, they had signed a deal with a landlord for a two-bedroom apartment, with kitchen (not equipped at the time), a bathroom, an immense sitting room (grande salle is really the only accurate name for it), and a combination storage closet / WC. The price was right, the location was right. There was only the small matter of preparatory work: simply described, painting.

Some of you may have painted houses before. You know what is involved. Some of you may have painted rooms in houses. You have an idea of how much energy goes into it. We didn’t know, at the outset, how draining this experience would be. Painting six rooms and a hallway seems ideally like a task to complete in 3–4 days. Ha. Don’t forget the cleaning beforehand, the plastering over all the cracks in the walls, the cleanup afterwards, the fact that you’re going to be looking for furniture at the same time, and that once you’ve got the furniture it will get in your way. And once you’ve finished everything but the kitchen—oooooh, the kitchen. Grime caking every surface. Sticky grime, in many cases. This is also the room that’s been storing everything from the old contents of the closets (i.e., all the stuff the previous renters didn’t want) to the paint materials themselves. Fortunately, you’re using oil-based paint in this room so that it’s easier to wipe clean, and that’s sufficiently thick and heavy that you only need to do one coat. (Remember the ceiling of that grande salle and the two coats it absolutely required before it finally looked good? Your neck does.)

Now this experience hasn’t been all hardship. As I mentioned before, many kind people have come together to help us get furnished. In the end, we mainly only had to get stuff for our bedrooms, and a cheap stove and washing machine. (The latter two just arrived this evening. They’re in place, but not quite ready to use yet due to a lack of hoses. But that is easily taken care of.) We also had the trip to Denmark to break up the toil (although we didn’t exactly come back from that trip bubbly and refreshed, despite having some very relaxing periods). And there’s the story of driving around Marseille, which I think I’ll reserve for telling in person. (It may count as hardship, actually. It was certainly an adventure.)

My hands for the last few days have switched by default to scrubbing whenever they’re not doing anything else. I’ve scrubbed the outlet covers for the entire house, the refrigerator, the kitchen sink, the floors of the kitchen and my room, the windows of the doors between the hall and the grande salle, and a few other small things. I think Sarah’s default is painting colors on trim. The door frames, edges of the window bays, and trim are all (except in the kitchen) a bright blue. Most of the window bays are salmon, except in the bathroom, where they are sea-green. I did most of the painting of the walls: white everywhere except the kitchen, which is a bright yellow. Sarah’s trim in the kitchen is framboise (raspberry). It’s all become quite beautiful. The process has been exhausting.

I could also go on a rant about shopping at Ikea, but I think our problems were a special case, and things will go better the next time I go there. The furniture we got there is of good quality, for the price. It’s just been slightly painful trying to get it.

So, we’re moved in, essentially. On Saturday, we’ll go shopping for the small items needed for a house. We already have dishes and silverware. We’re missing things like towels, coffee pot, other miscellany. Oh, and food. We have eggs right now; that’s it.