So that turned out to be some good practice for me, since I have to open the defense with some basic explanation of the dissertation and of my intention for the text. We especially ended up talking over the potential significance of the study, and how both Professors Fahey and Sullivan (my director and my subject) both thought that I could be opening up a third mode of Catholic ecclesiology with this text and the two books that will come out of it. This serious conversation kind of consumed us for a while, but there was lighter talk, too: we sort of geeked out together on computer stuff for awhile, and I was able to show her a few shortcuts or bits of functionality in her laptop that she had been trying to figure out for awhile. I was equally pleased – or a little relieved – by that, since it was no sure thing that I could get her PC to do the same things I knew how to do on my Mac. I also handed off the second season DVD set of Everwood to her, which she was anxious to pick up with after having enjoyed its first season. So we talked over the Colin story arc of the first season, and the way the characters were written, pretty much agreeing on their flaws as well as their obvious strengths. I'm so fond of the story, though, that I'm especially pleased she enjoyed it, too.
A few weeks ago, on Friday 26 February, we had had a dinner party over at the Lloyds' that got interesting in a way I meant to write down. The evening did turn to happier thoughts and talk, but when I arrived, the guys had been sitting out in the living room, and there was some talk going on about movies, with Professors Wriedt and Barnes particularly holding forth. At some point, I mentioned that I had I had just watched The Reader for the first time and had found it a particularly engaging film, although I found it disturbing watching (in the way of Eyes Wide Shut or Leaving Las Vegas, although not so utterly awful an experience as the latter). In fact, it was so striking as a film in its portrayal of damaged and damaging human beings that I immediately watched it a second time. I haven't felt the need to do that with a film since some long-ago Friday night when Beth Hoffner and I watched Fried Green Tomatoes my last year in DeKalb, where we were so tickled by the thing that we looked at each other, and without a word immediately rewound the videotape (yes, back in the day) and settled in for a second go.
I remember him telling me on another occasion that he had almost a sort of iconographic confrontation with these questions every day at work back in Frankfurt. His office on the campus of the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main is in a little building northwest across a quadrangle from the IG Farben Building. In that building, the IG Farben Company took advantage of slave labour in the Nazi regime and developed Zyklon B, the gas used to exterminate the Jews and others in the Nazi concentration camps. If I recall correctly, he thought that his own little outlying building might have been the laboratory in which the poison was developed. For him to now take that space and turn it into a center for theological effort was one small spiritual and symbolic act of rejection, penance and redemption for this wretched piece of his people's history.
As I said, the night then did turn to different, and mostly happier, conversation. I continued to experiment with my new fascination with the "low-tech" photography of my phone's camera.
A small group of us had gone out after the first meeting of the Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Christian Mysticism, back on Monday 22 February, when Andrei has spoken on "Demonic Imitation of the Divine Union: Azael's "Hieros Gamos" in The Apocalypse of Abraham." It ended up only being four of us: me, Mike, Markus and Anthony, and we settled on heading over to Louise's on Cathedral Square, which pleased me as I hadn't been there in the better part of a year, since hitting it too long ago with Meg R. It was a good night out, talking theology and history and assorted fun, and I cannot recall much more detail than that, now. (Although certainly Andrei's topic came up more than once, as the erotic imagery (and sound effects) of cherubim in action were hard to forget.)
We once again found a few of us interested in going out for dinner afterward, basically the same gang, but with Donna and the kids subbing for Anthony. And, rejecting a few other options because of the kids being with us or because of Markus's insistence on a certain level of quality, we ended up going to Louise's again. We also ended up with the same waitress, who I believe was named Dana. And two weeks later, she not only recognized us, she remembered exactly what each of us wanted from the bar.
Now that's a good waitress. That party trick alone (much less her quite fine service) added an extra third to her tip.