I awoke today and attended classes despite my upset stomach and bad sinus headache. I figured I should save my absences for later in the semester, and struggle stoically through these first several weeks. That is usually not a terribly difficult process. However, lately I have been sleeping like a dog. And anyone who owns a dog can easily tell you that a dog sleeps half the livelong day. But as Benedict Grouschel asserts, it (sleeping a lot) is quite essential to living a celibate lifestyle.

I have taken him up on that advice to be sure. Some of the guys here feel bad about sleeping in , or about sleeping during the afternoon. In my schedule it is listed as napping. For instance, after mass I may skip lunch and nap while I reflect and meditate upon the readings and the Eucharist.

By some miracle and strange confluence of events my afternoons are currently free. Given half a second at scheduling time, that would honestly be a priority. I'm not lazy (though let's face it, slackers need preists too.) And I am not necessarily a slacker. I actually work fiendishly on just about any project given me as long as it does not have anything to do with balancing my checkbook or writing twenty page research papers.

I think one of the most amazing things about journals is that they in no way begin to account for the vast wealth of human experience which pours itself into any given day.

A classmate here recently mysteriously, quite disturbingly, disappeared ( 'from formation', not 'from the face of the earth' else everyone would have heard about it on the evening news by now.) One can only wonder about such things. What happened? One wonders.

I read some wonderful essays today in American Scholar magazine. Anyone who reads .....(i.e. anyone spending any amount of time on the internet...erm....ahem...) should read it. In the latest issue there is a hilarious, though disturbing work by Merril Joan Gerber, (who preferred to leave her ouevre unresolved,) detailing the recent vacation of herself and her husband in Florence, Italy. Is this a passive-agressive strike at her alleged beloved? Only time will tell. While I doubt her ponderings will become the next soap opera, she is nonetheless publishing a work this Fall: Boticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence, by way of the University of Wisconson Press. I, for one, will certainly be checking it out.

Oh, and about the badmovie, click here ~~~~> Incredibly Bad Movie.com.

There is much to do this weekend. I wonder how my weblog will turn out, and if I will keep up with it. It is so far much easier than keeping a log in a book. I had bought one of those nicely bound journals at Barnes and Noble and have kept up with that on and off, though it is a lot easier to sit at my computer and type my thoughts into a weblog. After all, our beloved pontiff does encourage us to use the internet for good purpose. So..... later.




posted by David Greenleaf at Friday, August 30, 2002