Friday, July 22, 2005
(8:00 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Friday Afternoon Confessional: Mary Magdalene Edition
Today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. She is variously described as a prostitute and as a former demoniac; she is sometimes also identified with the anonymous woman who poured expensive perfume on Jesus's feet, prompting Judas Iscariot's paeon to thrift. Many consider her to be an apostle, and she is certainly one of the most important characters in the gospels (more important than 75% of the "official" apostles) -- in fact, the first to receive the news that Jesus has risen from the dead and to receive the commission to start spreading that news -- but she is honored as a mere "holy woman" according to the Roman calendar. Although none of the New Testament epistles mention her, they do frequently hold up as an example of faith Rahab the prostitute (whose story can be found in the book of Joshua), often as a parallel to Abraham, who plays a very important role in clarifying the role of Christ in New Testament theology. Although my confessions have nothing to do with Mary Magdalene, I do like to highlight her feast each year.
Since the previous paragraph makes this an especially Catholic-feeling confessional, I will organize my confessions by the seven deadly sins:
- Pride: I don't want to seem like a whiner. Throughout my period of cash-flow difficulties, I have had one meta-complaint -- I feel like a whiner, like there are other people who have bigger problems than me and people resent me for complaining to them when I have so much to be grateful for. This is projection on my part; I'm sure my friends don't particularly resent me for telling them about my problems. But the feeling of "other people have bigger problems" might be a cover for an unconscious feeling of "I deserve better than this."
- Wrath: Yesterday I got fed up with a noise the ferrets were making and decided to momentarily remove from their cage the item that was allowing them to make that noise. Whenever the door is open, they eagerly try to escape their cage, and who can blame them? I thought I had managed to push them back in, but one of their hands got caught in the door for a second. They both seem fine now, but I felt really bad, particularly since it might have appeared to Anthony that I was trying to physically punish the ferrets (which, to clarify, I wasn't).
- Envy: Every time I drive Mike Schaefer home, I'm jealous, not so much of his apartment, as of all the people who live closer to the lake. My neighborhood always looks so shabby by comparison. It also bothers me that to get to that area, where there is comparatively a lot more to do, I have to take the bus, due to Chicago's "If you're not going to the Loop, we can't help you" approach to train lines. This wouldn't be as big a problem if the east-west bus nearest our house didn't stop running at 7:30 each evening.
- Avarice: Yesterday I realized that I had $100.18 in my savings account (the minimum balance of $100.00 plus the interest accrued over the past seven years -- by the way, when did banks basically stop paying interest?). I promptly went to my nearest branch and closed the account. I'm lucky I did not become conscious of this before now, because I might have used the money for spending cash! Close call! My vehicle can now remain insured continuously, which is good, and on top of that, I might be able to treat myself to a CTA card and a couple loads of laundry.
- Sloth: In preparation for a torrid, month-long love affair with Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral, I have been doing -- basically nothing. After months of faithfully "doing German" every day for an hour or more, I finally got out of the habit. I did not finish my reader this weekend; in fact, now I will likely never finish it, because who goes from reading Nietzsche in the original to doing vocab exercises? I have done some work this week on getting prepositions and separable verb endings down pat, and I have also re-read through the "reference grammar" at the back of my old exercise book. The problem, however, is that I have shifted from German in the morning to Clement in the morning, such that German is now often the last thing I do in the evening, so by then I'm already exhausted and not in the mood. (Today I go to Hyde Park to pick up the Nietzsche book from the professor who does the German exam; that's what the CTA card above is for.)
- Gluttony: This hasn't been much of a problem, actually. I have been cooking somewhat better food lately. Earlier this week, for instance, I had two eggs over easy, topped with melted swiss cheese, together with sauteed mushrooms, onions, green peppers, and banana peppers, served with toast -- a delightful brunch. This should not be taken to represent an overall increase in healthiness, however -- cardboard pizza is still very much on the menu, especially when it's on sale for only $2 each.
- Lust: Things have been a little slow in this area as well. I have, however, fallen in love with the woman alternately known as "Caroline" and the person "holding the crates" in my French tutorial software. Next week I am going to see two of my favorite women, but I'm not counting on lust playing a significant role in either of those encounters.
UPDATE: If you haven't been keeping up with Adam Robinson's variously titled blog, you should be, particularly his post on modern art and his ambitions on that front.
