On men who look real

I have always appreciated men. I appreciate their minds, strenghts, talents and ideals, when good. I have always been a visual person as well... passionate and intensely visual. This being said, it might come as something of a surprise to my paucity of readers that my romantic ideal, that made me swoon as a twelve-year old, was the Beast from the French fairy tale. I loved his humility and generosity and even his furry hugeness and stumblings of speed had an irresistable charm to me. When I was fifteen, my romantic ideal was Edmond Rostand's creation; Cyrano De Bergerac. I LOVED his chivarly, his rapier-sharp wit, his valor, his humor, his skill, his poetry, his honesty and his white plumb of freedom. Yes, I also loved his nose. My adoration of the character was so complete that when an unaware passerby, ignorant of the text, peered over my shoulder and said, "Who's the guy with the big, ugly nose?" I gasped and cried, "HIS NOSE IS BEAUTIFUL!" Indeed, most of my most beloved characters from books as well as the majority of my real life male friends are not what this current age would consider "classically handsome". It is a good thing that they are not, too! For the elder I grow, the more I am convinced, that what the fashion world presents for us as handsome, is something that very few men can or should achieve. I love men. I think they are marvelous to look at. They are fearfully and wonderfully crafter by God. But particularly when I visit my friends in California, I am accosted left and right from remarks by people appraising this man as "hot" and this man as "not" for the most silly reasons imaginable, mostly by women and sometimes even by the men themselves. When I point out a man as attractive, it is frequently rebutted by somebody who has grown too sophisticated to percieve anything as beautiful anymore. Not even the human eye, which is more wondrous than the ocean, or the human hand, so expressive and so marvellously designed. So I ask the person, "Well, what does a man have to look like in order to be deemed attractive?" There are many possible responses but I will name a few of the replies. "I wish I couls marry a man who looks like Brad Pitt." "Orlando Bloom" "Robert Pattinson" "Taylor Lautner" "Johnny Depp" "George Clooney" "Robert Downey Jr." "Joe Jonas". It makes me sad to encounter attitudes like that because I love men who look real. I do not want to marry a man who looks like any of those people (because what the blazes would a person like that have to do with me? What would somebody that toned, starved, painted, airbrushed, body-doubled, digitally edited and universally admired see in a beauty as humble and genuine as mine? Besides, he would cheat!) They don't look real because they are not. I like men who look real. Real men wear glasses. Real men are not often toned and built up. Real men often wear ugly and ill-matched clothes. Real men have receding hairlines. Real men are more "rotund". Real men are "scrawny". real men are short. Real men have dry patches of skin, blemishes, unshaved faces, scars, broken noses, uneven features, graying hair, or thin hair, wrinkles around their foreheads. Real men do not wear designer clothing. Real men do not drive a ferrari. Real men do not have the incomes to afford your prada bags, gucci shoes and plastic surgeries. Real men are Beautiful. They are all beautiful. Their hands are strong and manly from their work and generous deeds. Their eyes glisten with a vision to see what is just and desire it. Their mouths are beautiful from speaking the truth. Their ears are glorious because they listen and hear.

On Instant Messages

Instant messages save trouble and can be very helpful. I IM my friends when I must ask them a quick question. They usally catch me online though. I do not usually want to mark myself in any chat box forum as unavailable because I think "What if...?"
What if there is an emergency, what if their is good news, etc. Or sometimes I just don't think. I do sometimes neglect to think.

But I wish I would, because they way that random acquaintences in a given social network will seek out a random person to chat is kryptonite to me. I am predominantly melancholic/choleric in temperament. I am more introverted than extroverted. I do not often talk simply for the sake of talking. I speak when I have something to say. Also being a melancholic, being unable to communicate what I am trying to say is frustrating. As everybody knows, it is so easy to misunderstand somebody via texting or IMing. However, the nice thing is that if the conversation starts to go awry, you can say, "g2g bye" or if you are more fastidious " This has been lovely, and thank you so much for the chat. Oh dear, my duties beckon! Be well!"

On Singing Faure's "Requiem" on the Feast of All Souls

Previously I had never sang a requiem Mass in the context for which it was actually written. In a concert, yes, but not during the actual Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Last night, on the Feast of All Souls, I did.

The joy was only heightened by the fact that the Requiem Mass I was to be preforming, with my parish choir and the hired chamber orchestra, was Gabriel Faure's "Petit Requiem Messe".

I shall never forget the thrills of the dramatic Introit; the graceful Kyrie, the sublime Sanctus, and the hopeful In Paradisum.

Someday, I want to sing the Pie Jesu, and I have wanted to ever since I first heard it, some years ago.

Merci, Gabriel Faure. Requiescat in pace.

Schubert

I just finished singing Schubert's Mass no. 2 in G. Splendid! I did not sing alone of course. I am only a soprano. It was so wonderful to sing this Mass as Schubert actually intended it to be sung: As a Mass, not a concert antique!

Oh the raptures of the violins! Oh the cellos and basses! Oh the swift, steady trod of the organ. It was a storm, a fireworks display of color and light and wonder!

This Mass had such a gaiety that was not frivolous. Its mirth is stately. Sometimes you feel as though you are shouting so loudly that a baritone thunder crash and a sopranic pierce of lightening are going to open up the earth beneath you! Other times it is so boistrous you can barely sing without laughter. Other times it is so exquisitely melancholy that you could swear that an angel somewhere in heaven was weeping as Schubert wrote those tender notes.

Thank you, sweet God! You give us music to tell us that you love us, and then you teach us to sing that we love You!

Veils

It is a pity that long lace mantillas are not recognized by the current fashion world. They are very aesthetically appealing.

The stupidities incessant cable tv watching

It is unfathomable to me how many people waste so much time of the valuable, unique adventurous sojourns of their life upon this earth in watching a second or third rate re-dramatisation of life in the form of series dramas or tv shows or soap operas.

This is the only life I have on this earth, my business life is too haphazard and whimsical to want to escape through the artificially preserved tension of a crime-fighting or discovery drama or a what-if-fantasy. My love life is tempestuous and tantalizing enough without trailing after ficticious relationships with air-brushed, painted, died, and self-consciously sensuous men who have unrealisitic and sometimes mindless tensions with unrealistically salon-groomed, manicured, push-up bra clad, gun clutching actresses. My man, my family and friends are dramatic enough and I am a human whirlwind of drama. Do not misunderstand me. I love movies, when well acted out, well executed, well-written, and weighty in consequence. But the series dramas of today have nothing on my life, my real life, as it is.

For that matter, the cheap romance novels have got nothing on my life. Moreover, those darn video games that men seem so entranced with have got nothing on my life, with all of its humor, joy, sorrow, bitterness, sweetness, swiftness, steadiness, unpredictability, adventure and peace. Yes, peace, even in the midst of all this uncertainty. To those of you who spend hours on end doing these things, I can only express my sympathy, because your lives must be dull right now. Either that or you have been blinded to the adventure and beauty and wonder that is right in front of your eyes.

Beautiful views of the sea

The ocean has always been one of the most powerful images of the infinite mercy, power, beauty and majesty of God. Though used as a subject in art constantly through the ages, finding something in art that will capture the wonder of each glistening green and blue, each curlings wave, each foamy pleasure; is as unlikely as being able to scale a star, liquidate a mountain or unravel the mysteries in the human eye.