AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Walked and ran my two miles (usual route) this morning, fruit breakfast, got cleaned up and dressed, went to St Nic’s and prepared for the service, preached and celebrated, drifted home, and have been sitting mostly comatose since then. We were planning to go to Edith Wren’s birthday party, but the willing spirit, flesh, and so on.

In keeping with my new policy, here’s today’s sermon. I think it hasn’t fully matured — a couple of days of living with it would help — but it was well received, so…

My morning run started slow, but I got into a good rhythm on Park Road and thought I would stretch out my run a little bit, maybe draw it close to two and a half miles, so I crossed Stratton Way and ran east to Stert, ran down to St Nic’s, turned down East St Helen’s, and reconnected wtih my usual route at church. When I got home and remembered to look up the exact extra mileage, it turned out to be almost exactly the same distance as my usual route. It was just the unfamiliarity of the route that engendered the intuition that it would be longer. Oh well, two more miles in the book of life.

Margaret and I sat in the sun and took lunch at the Riverside Café, which was lovely; then we meandered back to town, and enjoyed a leisurely round at the King’s Head and Bell. As we were leaving the pub, a gent from another table (Margaret and I both thought he looked like Jason Momoa) stopped me and said, ‘Hey, man, I really like your look!’ So there’s that.

Now to bang away at tomorrow’s sermon…

Stiff all over after shifting books around yesterday (not just loading the three bookshelves, but also moving book boxes out from Margaret’s library and my closet out to get them in position to shelve), so my morning run was slow; I felt as though all my motion was restricted, everything was tight. Still, the weather was pleasant, and I haven’t missed a day since the rain stopped.

Now that I have two time-ambiguous jobs, I notice that one of the big time costs of my work involves the interplay of emails and timetables. If I were a shop clerk, I’d have set hours and fulfil them by arriving at and leaving the shop. Now that I’m somewhat on-call for two posts, I spend a lot of time answering emails, planning this meeting and that, changing plans, and shifting my attention from sermon prep to pastoral news to marking to answering students’ queries, and all this time is invisible to outside auditing, and task-switching leaks time through start-up and wind-down efforts. Hey, I love Oriel and I love the Abingdon Parish, no doubt. I’m just (re-)affirming what part-time workers have known all along, that part-time work costs the worker more tie than just the compensated hours.

This morning, we took delivery of three more bookcases. They went directly to one of the only rooms that doesn’t have a bookshelf in it: we call it ‘O’Hare’, because when we moved in, that room served as the storage point for the luggage we used to help move our clothes, linens, and related matters. I had stacked some book boxes along the back wall there, and these shelves displaced the book boxes.

In fact, not only did they take all the books from those boxes, they’ll fit numerous other boxes of books that currently reside in the library (Margaret’s study) and in the closet of my study. We’re really making progress on getting books unpacked.

In the process, I’ve seen innumerable old friends emerge from their cardboard hostels. Books that touched me profoundly (The Man in the High Castle, 1962 book club edition from Putnam), that changed my mind (Derrida’s Margins of Discourse), books by friends, books I long to have time to read, books I long to reread, books I need to consult for my own writing once I get the time, books I hope some next generation reader will cherish….

Some may have read the interview with Umberto Eco that’s been bouncing around the internet (cited here from Open Culture) — the one wherein he goes hard for having unread books in one’s personal library, constituting what he calls an anti-library. Eco testifies to books’ importance to personal research. He notes that ‘a private library is not an ego-boosting appendages but a research tool.’ Fair enough, and point very well taken; I have numerous books stored up against the day I begin writing out my big book about hermeneutics, more for work on parables, more for liturgical guidance, more for the history of the reception of the Bible in English, and I could go on indefinitely.

But books are also like a network of friends and acquaintances. Some are so close that one can hardly imagine living apart from them. My copy of The Genesis of Secrecy, of Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, of the Philosophical Investigations, of course my Bibles and prayerbooks, The Wind in the Willows, and a few others are as close to being physical expressions of my heart and mind as could be. Others are your close friends, the ones who tell you the truth about yourself and the world while they aren’t part of you. Some are everyday friends, great to see them, have a cup of coffee, refresh the relationship. Others are long-lost BFFs, emerging unexpectedly and reminding you of great times from ages ago. Some are acquaintances, some are strangers who look interesting, who might become friends when you have time to sit with them for a while. But going from in-transit, in-storage, to circulating among this Kings Cross station, this vast cocktail party, this congregation, this city of friends and could-be-friends — that’s one (sometimes the only) redeeming aspect of having to pack up and move homes. Today I had the deep, deep pleasure of meeting some mentors, some buddies, some playmates, some informants, some exotic strangers, and that feels so good.

They’re more than just an untapped research resource. They’re relationships waiting to happen.*

---

* Those of you who have been paying attention for a long time may be holding back the urge to say, ‘Wait, aren’t you the guy who resolutely opposes ascribing personhood or agency to inanimate entities, like books and images and tunes and objects?’ Yes, I am, and I do. But note the difference between ascribing autonomous qualities to a text (on one hand) and observing, relishing, the relation between me and a recorded complex of expressions, which expressions may have surprised, or delighted, or instructed, or defeated me, all in different ways at different times in my life. I have a relationship with Questions of Evidence by virtue of its embeddedness in the timeline of my life, and my associations of it with conversations I’ve had, with people who have their own relations to these texts, and with changes and continuities in y perception of it. It’s not that a particular collection of essays has agency, or personhood; it’s that it constitutes a nodal point in the intensely recursive and also exoteric and emergent constellation of meaning that the centre of which you may find… me.

Two miles yesterday, two miles today. The weather has been MISTy in the mornings, but not too cold, and my legs are slowly accommodating themselves to not taking four days off (cos of rain) out of seven. Two sermons this week (Ascension Day and Sunday), and various other obligations at which I’m not keeping adequately up.

My legs were reluctant, my nose was streaming (presumably some pollen issue), but I recorded my two miles this morning. Coffee and fruit breakfast, Morning Prayer, will clean up, go to Mass (not on duty this Sunday), then finishnup marking. I did finish Perdido Street Station yesterday because I got to the point at which I couldn’t stop. I look forward to beginning this week with a clear register, at least with respect to marking.

For a long time, the principal driver of traffic to this otherwise utterly obscure site has been [the wonderful] Jenee Woodard’s The Text This Week resource. As I settle back into parish ministry, it makes sense for me to resume my once-upon-a-time practice of posting my sermons here. I’m not preaching this Sunday, but beginning with an Ascension Day sermon I’ll post my sermons (even as they’re available in audio or video from St Helen’s, and in audio from St Nic’s. (Those include my last few sermons, so if you’re an AKMA completist, you can catch up via those links.)

No run on this rainy morning; coffee and fruit, put the bins out, laundry, Morning Prayer, pastoral care business, then home to catch up on marking, maybe a little Perdido Street Station as a reward if I make progress.

This morning Señora Flora Dora Dinosaura (the Big Burrito) goes in for an op, so we’re concerned about how that works out, and concerned about how that may affect Minke’s anxiety — so it may not be a matter of genocide or the violent suppression of free speech, but we have local cares on our minds.

My April iTunes listening according to last.fm:

1 Billie Holiday 7 scrobbles
2 Bruce Springsteen 7
3 Sleater-Kinney 7
4 The Beatles 7
5 The Style Council 7
6 They Might Be Giants 7
7 Elvis Costello 6
8 Florence + the Machine 6
9 PJ Harvey 6
10 R.E.M. 6

As always, the I’ve bracketed the Mountain Goats, else they would dominate every month’s charts both because I’m a big tMG supporter, and because John Darnielle releases not just a constant torrent of new material, but also an ocean of live recordings. tMG are in a special category of monthly frequency (13 scrobbles this month).

I might add that I almost always listen to iTunes on a semi-random shuffle, because I love so much music, and I want to hear unexpected things mingled with the cuts I know and cherish, so Shuffle is my favoured solution. I wish iTunes offered a better solution for weighted shuffle; my usual playlist involves an arcane combination of nested playlists that give extra prominence to women, to tracks I haven’t heard as recently, and to favourites of mine (since I do actually enjoy listening to my favourites). It would not be rocket science for a music player to offer this functionality — but since Apple will not let go of iTunes (presumably as a feeder to their music store), and alternatives don’t suit me for other reasons, there we are.

Yesterday I ran two good miles, came home for a shower and hot breakfast, then Morning Prayer, then I did some marking, Chapter Meeting, and home for more marking and reading, and even took a nap.

No running this morning, among the rain- and thunderstorms. I’ll have a fruit breakfast, go to Morning Prayer, then on to Oxford for a tutorial and lunch, and home again.

Two lugubrious miles (my legs did not want to stretch and extend), fruit breakfast, clean up, Morning Prayer, appointment with a churchwarden, lunch consultation with other NT teaching staff, phone appointment, and by mid-late afternoon I’ll be done.