zweiter Samstag in Bonn

The main conference of the summer is done. This week, dozens of mathematicians from all over the world gathered to discuss their interest in flat surfaces (think of polygons from high-school geometry on steroids), foliations (think of layers piled on top of each other to fill up space in different ways), mapping classes (think of “how many different ways can I, or my kid, put clothes on, rightly or wrongly?”), expansion constants (think of how much a balloon stretches as it inflates), moduli spaces (think of how many different shapes a single kind of object—say, a rectangle or a person—can have), and many more topics. Believe it or not, these things are all related. And most of the talks were very good. It was well-paced, with only four lectures a day (I've been to some conferences with seven or eight!), and the organizers deserve a great deal of credit.

I would also count “living in Bonn” as a success so far. Let’s talk food for a moment. I’ve had my spargel (twice, once at home with lemon-butter sauce and once at a restaurant with hollandaise), and schnitzel, and pizza with schinken (ham), and currywurst, and… What’s that? You want to know what currywurst is? Well, I definitely plan to have more. It’s a bratwurst sausage served with curry powder and ketchup sauce. Also French fries (here, called “pommes”, as in “pommes frites”). And beer. Because the thing I’ve had more often than anything else, even strawberries, is beer. (I mention the strawberries because they’re my favorite fruit, they’re even more plenteous than spargel right now, and, ironically, they are called “erdbeeren” in German—“beer”, of course, being German for “berry”, since “bier” means “beer”. Now I want to see if I can find, or invent, beerbier.) My favorite beer to get here is weizen, which invariably comes in the largest (half-liter) size, and which I get to myself because Hannah doesn’t like wheat beer.

Anyway, back to the wurst. We made that lunch today after shopping at the Marktplatz, because there’s a popular currywurst stand right there. According to Wikipedia, it’s been around since the late 1940s, when ketchup and curry powder first arrived in Germany. It’s both amusing and yummy. Another import Germans seem to adore is ice cream. Soooo many gelaterias around. I’ve only indulged in that once. And the moment I really realized I was not in France (I know, you’d think the black-red-gold flags painted on everyone’s faces would give it away, wouldn’t you?) was when I tried to buy bread at 8:00 at night and all of the bakeries were closed. I guess at that time of night you should only being eating meat. Or ice cream. With beer in either case.

(Funny how being around another language will affect you. At the end of that last paragraph, I typed “schould” about three times before I got it right.)

One last food comment before moving on: we of course consumed lots of coffee during the conference. So once this morning arrived, the first thing I wanted to do was get coffee. We went to Einstein Kaffee, a coffeehouse I pass each morning on the way to the institute, which had intrigued me. Turns out to be a very American-style coffeehouse, a couple of steps up from Starbucks, not like a French café at all, with lots of seating inside and out, and hip background music. There are two Starbucks nearby, but we’ll probably go to Einstein while we’re here if we want that ambiance. In the meantime, biergartens it is!

In the middle of the week we went on a hike with several of the conference participants. One of the organizers, who has a bit of a reputation for leading people on far lengthier and more strenuous hikes than they expect, clarified that in his terminology this was just a “walk”. We covered about 10 km in all, and reached the top of Löwenburg in the Siebengebirge. This is very nearly the highest point in the area (one of the other peaks in the Siebengebirge is just a few meters higher), and the view was spectacular. Hannah spent most of the hike talking with other opera buffs, and together on top of the mountain they attempted to trace out the geography of Siegfried’s journey from Wagner’s Ring cycle among the valleys and other peaks below. They had hoped to visit the Drachenfels, where Siegfried was supposed to have slain a dragon, but since we didn't make it there they decided that the ruins of the castle we reached was the home of the dwarf Hagen. We could see the Drachenfels from our location, and there was also much discussion as to which mountaintop had held the sleeping Brünnhilde. (If you’ve heard Anna Russell’s summary of the ring cycle, you are probably fighting to withhold laughter by now. If you haven’t, you should. Or perhaps schould.) By the end of the trip, Hannah was lecturing on the sources and symbols of the Lord of the Rings, and getting quite an audience in the process. Male mathematicians, it appears, enjoy discussing culture with an intelligent, pretty woman.

A few other random things about this week… The country has had an up and a down thanks to the World Cup. On Sunday night, after their team defeated Australia 4-0, the streets were filled with cars and noise. Everyone became much more subdued yesterday when they lost to Serbia 0-1. But all of the restaurants and biergartens have several flat-screen TVs set up, and when any game is occurring, you can hear how it’s going from anywhere in town.

As we wandered around the market this morning, we were surprised by the activity in the Münsterplatz (just a couple hundred meters from the Marktplatz). Whereas last Saturday we found an artisanal fair full of sculpture and fountains, today there was Bonn’s “Energietag”, with all sorts of companies showcasing their products for conserving and preserving energy and water. There were a solar cooking demonstration, a couple of different kinds of solar panels (the first time I’d seen any up close), a system for funneling sunlight inside using something more like a periscope than a skylight, and that’s just the stuff I could figure out without reading German.

We still need to find some concerts to attend. I thought seeing a play might be another option; however, the nearby theatre is showing Der Fremde (L'Étranger) by Camus, in German, and I realized that apart from that sounding incredibly depressing, we’re not yet ready to see a play performed auf Deutsch. Going to be searching for organ and chamber recitals in the area.

So that’s a little about what’s going on here. I may post another, more mathematically focused entry for anyone interested in some of what went on in the lecture hall.

things you never thought you'd see #2112

Your fiancée’s father’s workplace shows up in a popular comic.

Girl Genius has high production values for a webcomic; in fact, it started as a graphic novel and then moved to the web. Right now they’re in between acts of the main storyline and so they’re running a retelling of Cinderella just for fun (the story starts here). There are of course lots of inside jokes based on the main strip, but just think “mad science” and “fictionalized late 19th century Europe” and you’ll get the gist.

The story of Cinderella has princes. Princes need a castle. The castle should look science-y, to fit with the theme. So the castle appears in the fourth panel of today’s strip. And what did they choose as a model? The high-rise office building of Fermilab, where Hannah’s dad works.

how it happened

Hi, all.

Many readers of this blog already know via other means of communication that Hannah and I became engaged last night. Quite reasonably, it was suggested that I tell the story here in full detail so that it could be easily shared. (I love the information age.)

My main goals in the design of the proposal (obviously, my main goal in the proposal itself was to make official and public our pledge to marry each other) were as follows: surprise Hannah, include a certain piece of music she had requested on a previous occasion, and get it done in time for classes to begin. Clearly the last one was a success by dint of the date; I am happy that the other two worked out just as well.

Let me start with the piece of music, because it came first chronologically in the plan (and essentially at the beginning of the proposal). One day, almost two years ago, we were sitting in Hannah’s apartment listening to Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Symphony. The third movement of this piece is a breathtaking Adagio, starting with a clarinet solo and passing through several swells and some of the loveliest melodies in the orchestral repertoire. While we listened to it, she said “You should play this piece when you’re going to propose.” Thus the kernel was planted. I immediately knew that, when the time came, this piece would have to emerge from somewhere unexpected as a first clue of the event to come. Later, I began thinking of having a band or small ensemble appear as we were walking around campus or out on the Arts Quad. I started thinking about what instruments are played by my friends around here. And I began to converge on a woodwind quintet. As it turned out in the end, I only knew one of the musicians that came to play for us, but she assembled a fine quintet that made the experience a great one.

Last night, at the end of a long day of other activities, we were at Anabel Taylor Hall (for those who don’t know, this building houses the Cornell United Religious Works) for a start-of-year Graduate Christian Fellowship event: the annual ice cream social. I had worked out ahead of time that the social would probably be wrapping up around 8:30, so that’s when I asked the musicians to arrive. Except instead of coming into the meeting space, they set up in the chapel down the hall. I tapped Hannah (who was in the middle of a very interesting theological discussion that normally I would have loved to see continue) and asked her to come check on something with me.

We began walking down the hall, and I stopped by the office, where I had stashed some flowers earlier in the day. When I brought them out, she began looking at me suspiciously, and the musicians (whom we couldn’t yet see) began to play.

Now, Hannah knew I was going to ask her at some point—indeed, I already had and had just warned her that I wanted a chance to make it “official” in a special way. In her mind, however, that point was still some weeks off. I had a “deadline” of Fall Break, which takes place in the middle of October. However, she also mentioned recently that, when we first began dating the day before classes started two summers ago, she delighted in the sudden change in our relationship at a time already so full of change; she appreciates liminal times in life, as she put it. And although the calendar date of our anniversary was last Sunday, the “day before classes” seems more intimately related to the start of our relationship than August 24.

The music drifted towards us as I pushed Hannah (with her increasingly pursed lips) towards the chapel. We walked through the doorway, first halting just a few steps in, then proceeding to the middle of the room. We said only a few small things as the music was playing. (Did I mention I wrote the arrangement for the quintet? The original movement is about 20 minutes long, and I don’t think it had been arranged at all for a small ensemble. I took about a four minute selection and spent several mornings pulling parts together.) After it ended, I spoke with Hannah for a few minutes, talking about the last two years and how just in the last few months we really seemed ready to commit. I got down on my knee, as she deserves, and presented her with a ring. People have asked what exactly she said. Mostly I remember there were at least four “Yes”s. (As she reads this, she says her answer was “Yes, yes, forever yes.”)

After I had stood up again, the quintet began playing a waltz I had written for her a long time ago. We danced, and applauded when they were done. The musicians all seemed glad to have been able to help, particularly since it seems to be a rare opportunity for wind players to be part of an engagement proposal.

And that’s how it went, as I remember it. Since then, we’ve been happy and gleeful and tired and making plans and basking in each other.

who in the lord's name comest

It is now less than a week until Easter dawn. Six days until the bells ring and rejoicing begins afresh. All the world waited expectantly over the ages for the birth of Jesus; it did not even know to hope for his resurrection. Yet in that morning is all of our hope for more renewal, more glory, more joy and peace.

These past few days I’ve been spending time playing hymns in the evening rather than writing. There are so many depths to plunge in meditation, but as I found the ordinary work days more and more tiring, I needed to spend time in simpler, more prayerful worship—music revives me, while writing draws a lot of energy out of me. It has been a good week.

This week Hannah and I are in Kentucky, visiting Mammoth Cave National Park with both sets of parents. It is Cornell’s spring break, and a good chance for us all to come together. I will try to write at least briefly each evening; it is Holy Week, after all, and holiness comes from devotion.

question of the day

Hannah, while sorting laundry: “Do you think socks go to heaven? Do they find their mates there?”

cum sancto spiritu, part 1

This past weekend was my first stay at a convent (community? ecclesiastical farm? it’s a little hard to describe succinctly). Hannah and I went with a couple of friends to the Community of the Holy Spirit in Brewster, NY, where we spent two very restful days and nights, in part to visit Suzanne, a priest we knew through Cornell. The Melrose Convent is an outgrowth of St. Hilda’s House in NYC and comprises six or eight women who work, farm, pray, and occasionally teach in a lovely, somewhat secluded spot. There is a school, the Melrose School, on the grounds, but no classes were going on, even on Monday because of Columbus Day. We very much enjoyed our time there, and over a few posts I plan to give a relatively thorough account of the weekend.

We set out from Ithaca late Saturday morning. The first couple of hours in the car we spent singing (what delight!), sharing favorite hymns and songs from our youth. Although Hannah didn’t grow up in the church, the rest of us had very varied backgrounds and could cross-pollinate a lot. Jessie teaches Sunday school and looks for good songs to teach kids. I presented my perennial favorite, “The Fruit of the Spirit”:

The fruit of the spirit’s not a cantaloupe (nope!)
The fruit of the spirit’s not a cantaloupe (nope!),
So if you want to be a cantaloupe,
you might as well hear it,
You can‘t be a fruit of the spirit, ’cause the fruit is:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Jessie was raised Quaker, and taught us a song about Lucretia Mott to the tune of “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic”. Try it:

Thank thee kindly, friend Lucretia, (repeat twice)
Thy light still shines for me!

Did that refrain work O.K. for you? Then try making this scan to the tune of the verse:

Throughout the town of Philadelphia she hid the fleeing slaves;
For the freedom of her sisters she did cross the ocean waves,
And she asked Ulysses S. Grant to grant a pardon for the brave.
Her light still shines for me!

We worked on that over and over, marching around the kitchen as we made meals at the convent.

We stopped twice on the way to the convent. The first was for lunch. There was some debate as to whether we should stop at a familiar fast food outlet or press a little deeper to find a local restaurant. Realize that this was a car full of people who really like eating fresh food and supporting local business, and so the latter option was preferred. We ended up at Last Licks in Liberty (exit 101 off of highway 17). The friendly manager welcomed us and explained that everything was served on sandwiches—subs, hoagies, paninis, and the like. We all had a bottle of one of Boylan’s products (I had my first birch beer, which was a lot like a root beer, but independently very good); I recommend these, when you can’t get hold of Ithaca Sodas. There were quaint posters of olden-days Pepsi advertising (“Worth a dime, costs a nickel!”). The manager told us how he had just flown in from Florida and was just stopping by the store to check how things were going, when he learned that they were understaffed, and so he was working. When we told him we were from Ithaca, he said they had some regular customers from Cornell who would stop by on the way to Yankees games.

The second stop was at a fruit and vegetable stand. Hannah had made the proclamation, “It’s not really fall unless we do something to a pumpkin,” and so we had been watching for pumpkin stands. A hand-written sign on the side of the highway alerted us to the appropriate exit, and we pulled into the driveway of a house with an elderly man sitting under a tarp. He had a piece of corn in his hand, ready for us to sample (I have not been getting nearly enough corn this season), and told us a smattering of dirty jokes. He tried to convince us to buy his book of jokes. We managed to get away with just the pumpkin we were seeking and some corn, carrots, and broccoli (which became dinner the next night).

Once we arrived at the convent, we were promptly greeted with a wealth of treats and an invitation to Vespers. In fact, there wasn’t much time at all before the prayers began. We went into the small round wooden chapel, and we visitors spread ourselves out among the residents who knew what was going on. (We’d all been to evening prayers before, but the peculiarities of the prayer books at the convent required some guidance.) Much of the Vespers service is occupied with reciting psalms on a chant tone. One verse is chanted by the officiant to establish the tone, and thereafter the two sides of the chapel alternate chanting verses. For the first few psalms, I sat quietly, listening and not quite ready to break into the chant myself. There was only one other man there besides myself, and he had decided not to chant along. So my voice would have been the one to break the sound of the women. Now I love the sound of women’s voices (usually in harmony, which chant is not) but that’s not quite what was keeping me from singing. A true unison has a certain kind of purity. Splitting the octaves creates an essentially different sound (and I was not about to try to sing in the women’s range, particular since I’d been sick all week). So just as some people relax by popping in a “Chant” CD to hear the soothing baritone of monks, I was enjoying the piping clarity of women chanting together.

But within a few moments, I developed a strong sense that something was wrong—not just that I was isolating myself from my fellow congregants, or holding back from singing. I’ve studied chant, in the context of music history. I’ve listened to plenty of recordings, made available for the benefit of scholars and consumers. I’ve read about how it tried to strike the balance between emotion (rejoicing, mourning, awe, or penitence as necessary) and removal from the secular realm. About how composers expanded chants to reflect the text (even on the simple word “Alleluia”), then moved them from the meditative to the musical realm. Once I joined in, I realized what had felt wrong. Chant is not meant to be listened to. It has elements of song and elements of speech, but it isn’t either. It’s meditative, certainly, for both those chanting and those “listening”, but it’s nearly meaningless until you participate. It’s deliberate, ancient, immediate (be glad I’m not going off into another Kierkegaard digression here on the immediacy of music), transcendent, spiritual, physical, perplexing, focusing, and holy (in the sense of being set apart from other things in the world).

I’m making this point a bit strongly. There is real musical merit in, and real “outside” appreciation possible for, the hymns, antiphons, and sequences of the liturgy. But a psalm is mostly just intoned; from a melodic standpoint, it’s almost entirely a single repeated note, with a concluding burble up or down. Listening to it may put you in a trance, but I can’t imagine how it would help you worship. I don’t think I can explain more than that how important it is to join in chanting the mass, or service, or whatever, whenever it is possible to do so in place of just listening.

After dinner, we got set up in the guest house, known there as the “longhouse”. We had our own kitchen, stocked with fresh organic goodies (from eggs to raw milk to cookies), a sunny sitting room (directly adjacent to the school; apparently previous residents could hear homeroom or French class going on), and several private rooms to disperse to. Suzanne provided us with her Eddie Izzard DVD collection (which we didn’t manage to watch, however; as a first inkling of what the community was like, if you’ve never met nuns before, the sister who was showing us around the house also declared herself a big fan of Izzard).

We returned to the main house and looked around as dinner was being prepared. Hanging in the hallway was the following prayer. Now, the deliberate vagueness of the authorship, along with the style of writing makes the purported source of this text somewhat suspect. In fact, I searched the internet once I got back and could get no more information; the prayer was always presented in a vacuum (or list of other inspirational texts), except on a couple of occasions when attention was drawn to some anachronisms in the writing. So I include it as an example of how the nuns at the Melrose Convent see themselves and their calling, not any sort of historical document. It’s also still full of useful things for all of us to think about:

17th Century Nun’s Prayer

Lord, Thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older and will someday be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody: helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but Thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others’ pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessing cocksureness when my memory seems to clack with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a Saint—some of them are so hard to live with—but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.

AMEN

Dinner was a veritable feast. Apparently excited about having us as guests, the nuns had prepared several courses, and had sent out specially for hot dogs (they don’t usually eat meat). Hannah and I were, as expected, exceeding happy about the presence of kale. (Over the summer, as we were picking up vegetables from our CSA farm, we would ask with increasing intensity, “Are we getting kale this week? We really hope we are, because we really like having kale.” The first time we did this, the farmers responded in perplexity, “We’ve never actually had a reaction like that from anyone about getting kale.”) And here before us was a new yummy way to prepare it! (They call it “killer kale”.) We also had homemade ketchup, mustard, and tomatillo salsa; “apple leather”, the real version of what Fruit Roll-Ups always dreamed of being; fresh grape juice and grape jelly made from wild grapes in the area; a mix of beans from the garden; and other courses. Apparently when you make all your food fresh from the garden, living with a vow of poverty isn’t so bad.

Lots more I could share about the humor of the sisters and the stories that came out about convent life (such as tales of mass hysteria, or the three nuns who got in a fist-fight), but this is getting a bit long. Moving on to the evening…

Back at the longhouse, we sat around reading for a while. Hannah was reading poetry by Elizabeth Bishop. I was reading hymns (because there was no piano in the house for me to play them on). For some reason, “Lead On, O King Eternal” was going through my head:

Lead on, O King eternal,
The day of march has come;
Henceforth in fields of conquest
Thy tents shall be our home.
Through days of preparation
Thy grace has made us strong;
And now, O King eternal,
We lift our battle song.

I was reading from the Pilgrim Hymnal, of which I have four copies but hadn’t examined too carefully yet. Christian hymnody has plenty of texts with battle imagery (with good Scriptural reason), and many of them are collected, along with other exhortations to fortitude, in the Pilgrim Hymnal’s section on Courage. But I was struck by the end of the second verse, which I’ll use to close this entry (as always, the whole text of the hymn is available at Cyberhymnal). In a way quite consistent with the verses I linked to above (q.v.), it emphasizes the means of winning the battle to be our acting in love:

For not with swords’ loud clashing,
Nor roll of stirring drums;
With deeds of love and mercy
The heavenly kingdom comes.

just finished

Last night, around 11:00, Hannah and I completed reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I won’t give away any “spoilers” here (not that it would matter to anyone reading this). I’m mostly writing this because I’m pleased with my own cleverness in coming up with what would make a good cartoon (say, in the New Yorker) this week in our post-smoking-or-non era: a restaurant divided into “Finished Harry Potter” and “Not Finished Harry Potter” sections. I mean, I know I didn’t want people discussing it while I was around until I’d gotten through it (which took all of four days past the release date).

Finishing the book (which we were reading aloud), along with a nice Japanese dinner, is how Hannah and I celebrated our eleventh mensiversary, by the way.

Addendum: I should clarify that it took about 18 hours of reading time, because we were reading aloud. We certainly could have finished on Sunday or Monday, having purchased the book Saturday around noon, but with church and extra social events, Tuesday evening became a nice time to finish it up.

What HP events did people attend?

pre-4th outdoors trip

Hannah and I have just successfully camped out for the first time. We drove to Treman Park, just a few miles south of Ithaca (we called Taughannock first, but they had no sites left open) and stopped by the office to find out what spots were available. We’d both been picturing (separately to ourselves, and somewhat naïvely) a little isolated spot where we would set up a tent and see no one else all evening, but instead we found a slew of campsites all lined up next to each other. This is actually somewhat different from the camping I used to do as a Boy Scout. But we quickly realized that it’s not so bad to have other folks around; indeed, it creates a small sense of community. Plus, we had a water spigot right in our site, and a bath house a couple hundred feet away. So it was a very nice but not-so-rugged introduction to camping together.

For dinner, we made the finest cuisine I have ever known or experienced anywhere: despite the potential political incorrectness, I generally insist on calling these “hobo meals”. Make a fire, get a good bed of coals going, and lay out a sheet of aluminum foil. Place thereon small pieces of potatoes (tater tots work very well, too), carrots, onions, any other vegetables you’d like (we added some beets that came in last week’s CSA share), and a bit of beef. Season with salt, pepper, perhaps some seasoned salt. Fold up the foil into a package. Now place on the coals, and let your sixth sense kick in to tell you when it’s done. (Seriously; I don’t know how to tell anyone how long to cook these. I just know when it’s ready and perfect.) Remove from the coals with sticks (yay, balancing act!). The odor that emerges upon opening the foil inspires prayers of thanksgiving. And every bit of deliciousness you eat is joy. The only way to properly follow a hobo meal is with s’mores. Most everyone knows how to make those, so I’ll just comment that a few years ago I had the insight to start putting peanut butter on my s’mores. I know some people (like Hannah) just don’t like peanut butter, but for those who do, this is a beautiful addition. Not only does it have a flavor that mixes well with every other ingredient, it holds the chocolate on the graham cracker. I dropped so many pieces of chocolate in my youth trying to get the marshmallow sandwiched in. Peanut butter: the perfect addition to your chocolatey, marshmallowy goodness.

If I ever am about to be executed and am offered a last meal, this would be it. Make a campfire and give me a hobo meal and s’mores. I’ll die happy.

hexamensiversary

Those of you who figured out what enneadecahebdoversary meant, or caught some other clue I’ve given about timing, or know Hannah and me well and have a knack for dates, will realize that today Hannah and I are celebrating six months together. (Yes, I know “hexa” is a Greek prefix which I’ve stuck on a Latin-based neologism. But I decided a while back that the Greek numerical prefixes are almost always cooler and even more natural-sounding than the Latin ones. “Seximensiversary”? Does that work at all? Plus, it has too many overtones in English.) Honestly, I did more for Valentine’s Day than I’m doing for today, partly because I completely lost track of the dates and didn’t realize this was coming up until yesterday when it came up in conversation. (Right now, all time is measured strictly by the number of days remaining until Hannah comes to visit—three weeks from yesterday—rather than by Gregory’s ancient decree of quotidian nomenclature.) If I were in Ithaca, however, it would be different. We would have gone out to dinner on Valentine’s Day, certainly, and I would have brought Hannah flowers. But today, were I there, I would take Hannah on a walk in the snow, perhaps go down to the Carriage House and have a hot drink and a nice brunch. We’d spend the afternoon inside, keeping warm, perhaps working some because we’re students and there’s always work to do, but we’d take time in conversation to remember how lucky we are to have grown so close and to have the promise of so much more. (We had part of this conversation yesterday, as we recalled our histories. We’ve both changed a lot over this time, becoming more and more suited to each other. But in the days before I left Ithaca, before we were dating, we were desperately trying to make sense of our situation. I didn’t think it would be a good idea for us to start dating; I wanted to give her freedom for the year. But as Hannah has pointed out, I still wanted to be the closest man in her life.) I’d sing her a love song…

Moi je t’offrirai
Des perles de pluie
Venues de pays
Où il ne pleut pas
Je creuserai la terre
Jusqu’après ma mort
Pour couvrir ton corps
D’or et de lumière
Je ferai un domaine
Où l’amour sera roi
Où l’amour sera loi
Où tu seras reine

We’d make dinner together. And we’d kiss each other good night, preparing for the morning when we’d go worship together.

Why should this be any different from how we’d spend any other Saturday? I guess in many ways it’s not. Days can be made special by either event or intent. Six months into a relationship is something of a hurdle; a lot has happened by this point, and while things can remain fresh (as they can throughout a lifetime), the relationship isn’t pristine any longer. Many of the complications of depending on another person and having lost some measure of independence have been brought into relief. Six months isn’t a moment to fear, but it is a moment to mark, and maybe marvel. The work has been done, and will continue. The intent of today is to declare that the decision made half a year ago, in such doubt and anxiety and excitement, is now sure. “Happy six months” doesn’t mean that every moment or even every day of those six months has been happy, because that’s simply not true. We have had pain and confusion and sorrow. It means that today I’m happy we’re still together, and I want to remain that way. It means this time has been incredibly wonderful and joyful, despite the hardships. It means, for us, that when I return to the States and a full nine months will have elapsed since the spurt that pushed us into this, the time will not have been lost. It means thank you for being willing to live this experience with me.

Happy six months, Hannah.

enneadecahebdoversary

Hannah and I had our third date tonight. We went to the Memphis Pizza Cafe and got a medium vegetable supreme (olives, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, spinach, broccoli) with pepperoni, then drove down to the riverfront. We looked at the Pyramid with the replica of a Rameses II statue out front and walked through Tom Lee park, named for a levee worker who saved the lives of 32 passengers when a steamboat capsized. There was a superb metal sculpture of him riding out in his dinghy “Zev” and reaching to a man holding to a broken piece of wood. Before heading home to watch an episode of “Firefly”, we stopped by Perkins for some pie. It was a great date, very relaxing, but different in character from our previous dates, which were also lovely but involved dressing up and going out for a nice dinner. Even though it’s only our third time to go out, I think I can affirm that we like each other and this’ll work out. Tonight’s events were pleasant in themselves, but almost more importantly they formed an unobtrusive backdrop to several hours of conversation alternating between light and philosophical, as any good date conversation should. We’re looking forward to the time when we can have dates on more than a bimonthly basis.

got it made

This entry is partly by special request. Hannah’s opinion is that I don’t write enough about her. She has a fair point, since any kind of accurate description of my life here must include the fact that I talk with her and write to her every day. Let me begin by quoting a song of the blues artists Paul Rishell and Annie Raines:

When that girl starts tellin’ you
The things that she wants you to do,
Buddy, you've got it made.

In that spirit, I fulfill Hannah’s suggestion.

Actually, I wanted to write this anyway to share with you two pictures I really like.



The first is from the gorge at Treman Park outside of Ithaca. It was taken (by Hannah’s mom) the week Hannah was moving back into Cornell at the end of the summer. We were at the time (at the very moment of the picture, I think) discussing how we didn’t think we were going to start dating. So much for that conclusion. I remember distinctly Hannah’s reaction to the falls at the park: coming from a suburban background, she didn’t believe one could actually live so close to such natural beauty.

The second photo was taken at Pangea, one of the nicer restaurants in Ithaca, while I was back visiting Hannah this fall. It is now one of about four pictures taken of the two of us since we’ve been a couple. It’s also currently the background for my computer screen.

(In an attempt to echo the title of a previous entry and to tie this title with the above photos, I considered naming this entry “she and he, hanging out at Tre–man…” or “she and he, eating at Pange–a…” Because, y’know, it’s cute and it uses the “e” sound in each of those words. But it turns out that’s not just cute, it’s far too cutesy for my tastes, and besides I could only have used one. In fact, forget I came up with those names.)

One of the wonderful things about our relationship is that we have lots of overlapping interests, but different specializations. I majored in mathematics and music; she’s studying mathematics and English. She adores poetry, which I like but haven’t taken much time to read on my own, and I like 20th century music, some of which she’s begun appreciating. (It’s essentially entirely due to her that I have any interest in learning more about opera, however. That’s one genre that fell outside of my tastes for a long time. But last spring, after we had discussed Der Ring des Nibelungen for several weeks, she basically handed me the disks and said, “Here. Listen to these at home.” I enjoyed them a great deal, much to my surprise. Let this be a lesson that brief selections of four hours works can’t in general give you a notion of what experiencing the whole thing is like.) We’ve filled up substantial portions of our Gmail accounts with poems and mp3s. (Thank goodness for modern communication.) And, of course, we talk about math. I’m a geometer; she’s leaning towards becoming a topologist, which makes for overlapping but not quite identical interests there, too. It’s marvelous to share things you love with people you love.

Hannah was a student in a class for which I was the teaching assistant last fall. So she developed the habit early on of challenging me to explain mathematical ideas well and to her satisfaction. She’s not easily satisfied: she has very high demands on her level of understanding before she’ll admit that she’s mastered a topic. I, naturally, being a teacher (I’ll always be a teacher, even if it doesn’t stay my profession), am happy to explain, to search for new explanations, to examine an idea from several perspectives until we fall on one that she approves of. In the process, of course, she pushes me like no one else to seriously engage with every single detail, and in the end my understanding has grown nearly as much as hers has. I know she’ll be a stupendous researcher.

Hannah is a dancer. She’s been dancing her whole life, mostly folk dances and almost always with her mom. I like to dance. I aspire to learn all that she’s learned. I was never good at sports growing up, but this sort of coordination I have. This sort of movement makes sense to me. And it’s another way to participate in art. Have I mentioned I’m a liberal arts student at heart?

I’ve said before that’s it’s hard to be so far from her for so long. Of course it is. Who would think it should be otherwise? That, indeed, was one of the frustrations I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Though it hasn’t gotten easier to be apart, recent days have granted us an easier time going about our lives and studies. We look forward to our reunion with great hope and joy. I would never recommend this kind of separation, nor deciding you’re going to start dating someone five days before one of you is about to leave for a long, long time. But I wish this kind of love for everyone. I am completely and totally (and apparently pleonastically, as well) in love with this woman. That’s why we talk for at least an hour per day, and send messages back and forth as often as we can. The above description I’ve given doesn’t begin to explain why I love her, or how wonderful it truly is to have her in my life. These are just the things I imagine you would like to know about her, and special treats we get to enjoy from being together.

And that, I think, is the sappiest essay you’ll get for a while. Unless, of course, Hannah insists I write another one. In any case, I am exceedingly happy.