Simon?

I should make an extensive post to celebrate my one-year LJ anniversary (November 27). Instead, I am trying frantically to finish enough of the current paper to present it in class tomorrow. I'm only posting right now to make one frustrated shriek:

Why, oh WHY, can't families think of more than three names to give to their children? Also, if one must repeat a family name, can one at least keep track of how many people have had that family name? Yes, Simon de Montfort, I'm looking at you. Also at your father, Simon de Montfort, and your son, Simon de Montfort, and about two or three other unidentified Simons de Montfort. One of these Simons I have found identified as Simon III in one source and Simon IV in another.

There are also several people named Amaury de Montfort and several more named Guy de Montfort to add to the fun.

"The world is quiet here"

is the motto of an organization in Lemony Snicket's Unfortunate Events books.

It isn't a neutral statement of fact, this motto. It's a prophecy, or perhaps a possibility; it's a goal that the people of the organization dream of bringing about. The dream: to make the universe into a library, full of people reading beautiful words, lucid, xenial, in the thunderous silence of marble. In the world where the Baudelaire children live, quiet is rare. Libraries burn. Injustice is constant, unreason governs the universe, and there are no happy endings, ever. And yet a few dream and work, that the world may someday be quiet.

I am full of rage, today, at our country, at our world, at the choices we have made and that others have made for us. I would like to put on a silly mustache and fake glasses (to hide the real ones, of course), and slink about muttering mysterious things in codes inspired by Galway Kinnell's poetry. I would like to think that could help someone, somehow.

I don't know anything I can do that would work, that would be enough to fix this universe.

I remember, after September 11th, being sure that suddenly, the world was unified -- that one person could help another merely by expressing sympathy, that all griefs could be shared and divided and thus lessened.

I remember when I learned that I could never truly understand what another human being suffered. I remember retreating to my books and my work. I, at least, had and have a quiet place. Not everyone is so lucky.

The world is quiet here. May it be so.