Just in time for Super Sunday...

If you're planning to go to a church-sponsored Super Bowl party, beware! Their intentions may not be quite so innocent as they seem.


P.S.--Go Steelers!!!!

As a wise man once said...

So...that happened.

Writer's Rant

I would like to try a little something that, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never tried on my blogs before, and that is a book review. I don’t know that this will become a regular feature, although the books that I’m reading, whether of great literary merit or next to none, always seem to generate lots of thoughts in me that could be worth sharing.

But I am filled with strong feelings about my most recent read, The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris, such strong feelings that I don’t think I could keep them to myself. The ironic thing is that the strong feelings are both strongly positive and strongly negative. Let’s be clear from the beginning, Kathleen Norris is an incredibly gifted writer. I really truly do admire her and her work and think that I should dive into some of her poetry, because it is clear from the way she writes everything that she is, perhaps primarily, a poet. Cloister is the second book of hers I have read, the first one being Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. She has a very distinctive writing style, one of the features of which seems to be that she works primarily through small essays and vignettes that are cobbled together to form truly massive books. Sometimes a massive book is okay, as with fiction that is very surfacy and easy to work through, but her work is so heavy, it’s simply too much to take in such large doses. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

My single biggest critique of Norris’ work is perhaps not even so much a reflection of Norris herself as the editing process that her books appear to have gone through. Each time I have read one of her books, the feeling that I come away with, right along with my awe for her tremendous talent, is WHERE THE HECK WERE HER EDITORS? She writes these massive tomes of work, but the problem is that every time I get the feeling that every single one of those essays did not need to be included in the book. Some of them are simply weaker than others, and some simply don’t seem to meld well with the content of the rest of the book. Why were those just left in there? There is so much material that if the weaker parts were omitted, there would still be plenty of book to go around.

I think relatedly, but to a much lesser extent, some of the stronger essays in the book also seem to show signs of careless editing. As in, I could see minor changes or suggestions that could have been made to make the essay much stronger, but I feel like those suggestions were perhaps not made. Also, I think the overall structure and flow of the books is good, but sometimes one questions the overarching philosophy of why things are placed together. Also, I think from a lack of structural editing, each piece seems to stand so singly on it’s own that there is actually a great deal of repetition, not only of subject matter, but the book goes so far as to give background information for the same event twice; one gets the feeling that it’s because the essays were each originally written to stand on their own, and then just stuck together and published as is. Did anyone read through the entire manuscript together before sending it to the presses? I feel like that should have been the first thing to fix, because without addressing this, the book lacks organic unity.

Let me be as clear as I can be: I say these things not because I regard Norris as a weak writer. I think that her prose is beautiful, stunning really, and her thoughts are deep and lovely. She has so much good to say, not just about monasticism, but about life, writing, faith and doubt. That is why I’m so frustrated that the editing process seems to be so shoddy. I feel like her prose is so dazzling, and the success of her first prose book, Dakota, so phenomenal, that someone, somewhere (and one hopes fervently that it was not Norris herself) believed that this book was fine as is, that her obvious strength as a writer would excuse the need for editorial process. Nothing could be further from the truth! So I guess in reading this I was just left frustrated that the work of a truly gifted writer was not made to come to full fruition.

In case you can’t tell, I’m rather passionate about writing in general, and really, equally as passionate about editing. The two are two halves of the same process! Neither can be omitted without detriment to the other!!! Ahem. Okay, calming down now.

Anyway, if you haven’t read Cloister Walk and are at all interested in monasticism, spirituality, or writing itself I would still recommend this book, particularly if you’re not the kind of person who psychotically edits everything she reads in her head as she’s reading it…

New Day

photo courtesy of magpie-girl.com

Happy Inauguration Day!!!!

(Okay, I know this is now late, but I promise you I wrote this on the day...)

I was excited, amazed and grateful to be able to sit down with my co-workers this afternoon to watch Barak Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. It was neat to be able to think of telling future generations that I remember exactly where I was on this historic day.

I loved the speech because it highlighted for me some things that I have always appreciated about Obama's platform. For one thing, I think that he is able to recognize things that are bad. That sounds small, but I feel like the general tenor of politics has been to deny that there are problems, to deny that they themselves have had any part in them, to just reassure people that everything's fine. I felt like he did a good job stressing the difficulties of the present situation, the darkness of the days. But most impressively, I think he stressed the personal implications for all of his listeners, for all of America. I think it was when he was talking about the economy, there was one moment in particular when he was like, you, regular, work-a-day Americans, also helped to cause this. And the environment thing, yeah, that was you too. But then he also was able to call people to participate in the solution, to work together and not just rely on the work of those at the top. Yay for taking responsibility for our country!

I also loved the way he called the United States, as well as all of the more developed nations of the world, to take a more circumspect look at our stewardship, the way we relate to smaller, poorer countries, and how we can partner with, rather than exploit them. I love the stress placed on social justice as a national and international commitment, not just the concern of hippies and liberal freaks.

But the other thing that I was impressed with today, not so much from the news coverage, but rather in spite of it, is that Obama cannot solve all of our problems. In some ways, I feel that expectations for his term are impossibly high, that he can't possibly live up to all that's expected of him. I'm okay with that. He is the president, and that's damn important, but at the end of the day, he has four years, or possibly eight, to make changes and get results. We simply can't expect that now that "evil Bush" is out of office and Obama is in, the clouds will part, the sun will shine, the birds will sing, and daisies will pop out of the snow and dance (for the record, I am so tired of all the Bush-bashing that has gone on lately. Six months of being forced to listen to liberal radio will do that to you. Cut the guy a break, for crying out loud!) He is only one person. I think my greatest hope for him is that he seems to realize that, and therefore tries to get everyone on board to better the nation. Really, one person can do so little, but if all of us do our best to help this country thrive? That would be amazing. Look at that...I think I must be becoming patriotic at last...

Here's hoping you share my sense of joy and hope today and that your prayers are with our new leader.

The Past Few Days

Sorry it's been a little quiet around here. It's been kind of a rough and wild time around here for the past few days culminating today in a very blustery and feet-dampening walk through a rough neighborhood to administer surveys...don't ask.

Hopefully I'll be back and chattering again this next week!

Long Cold Night

For those of you not in area, it is really frickin' cold in Buffalo today. Like, "feels like -3 degrees" cold, according to weather.com. Like, waiting on the outdoor for the train today, my hands started to get that stiff feeling where I couldn't bend my fingers. That kind of cold.

Now, this winter, I have tried, as much as a Houstonian transplant can, to accept the coming on winter. To embrace it even. To relax in the grip of an icy wind and just let it be. But, I have to say. This is a little ridiculous. All I have wanted to do, all day long, was just climb under the covers and not come back out until it warms up. And I'm not even talking about spring. I'm just talking about back up to around the 25 degrees that it used to be. I would be so happy with that. But, I shouldn't complain. I should absolutely not complain. My workplace is heated and my home is heated. I can afford to buy warm clothes (including long johns--God bless you, long johns!)

The reason I found myself on the train platform (yes, really, a train in Buffalo! It even goes underground! I forget about it a lot too) this morning was that I was on my way to a meeting of the Homeless Coalition of WNY. Although a lot of the meeting consisted of somewhat dry discussion of new committees that were forming, perhaps the best part of it for me was watching a roomful of people get mobilized to protect the most vulnerable populations from this extreme cold weather. As someone at this meeting said, "If a flood happened, the city would set up shelters. If there was a tornado, they would set up shelters. But, for the homeless population, this kind of cold can be just as lethal." So there was much discussion on how to do an immediate (as in, before tonight) collection of gloves and blankets, emergency teams to go out on the streets and find people and either bring them to shelters or provide for them to stay warmer, how to get onto the news and radio to make people aware of the needs. It was really meaningful to me to be among these people who not only care, but allow their concern to translate into action.

So, props to you, Homeless Coalition of WNY. And, if you're in Buffalo, bundle up, and be thankful for whatever heat you do have.

P.S.-- Can I just mention, since I seem to be building up a series of missed holidays lately, that I missed Epiphany this year? Seriously, this brings it up to, like at least three now. I missed two Jewish holidays, the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and now, Epiphany. I am particularly disappointed because I definitely did not grow up with Epiphany, but had such a tremendous time of it last year, thanks to that amazing Episcopalian church in Kansas City and their ginormous king puppets, that now when I could not observe it, I do feel a true sense of regret. Also, being in Texas, working at the bakery from hell, expanded my understanding to include a king's cake, to be eaten on Twelfth Night, with the little plastic baby in it that tell you who's supposed to host the next party...oh, the groans of regret. I wanted to share the little plastic baby with all my Buffalonian friends. People should start calling me a week before these things are supposed to happen, just to remind me and help me plan what I should do...oh well. Goodbye, little plastic baby. Hopefully I'll see you next year...

Final Thoughts for the New Year: The Big One

Now, after that brief interlude, to reconnect with what I was talking about before, the subject of New Year's Non-Resolutions. Here are a couple more from me. Maybe just one more. One more big one.

You know, you might not be able to tell from what I post on here, but The Grand Plan is always very much on my mind. It's a big plan, an audacious undertaking, and I feel like if I'm not careful, working on it and towards it day by day, it will slip right through my fingers. So clearly, this is the next step, to pursue work in some kind of art therapy kind of area to give me some actual experience. Because, you see, I wonder to myself from time to time if I would actually like living The Grand Plan once I actually get there. And, since it is unthinkable to do all that work and then not enjoy it, I want to be able to find out now if this will work for me. So one of my amorphous directions for 2009 is to pursue work that will get me closer to actual experience in the art therapy/spirituality realm.

But...oh dear. So many things could go wrong. What if I can't actually find such a job. There are very few such jobs in all of Buffalo, and what's to say they would give such a glorious opportunity to an inexperienced little twit like myself? The job market in Buffalo is generally not regarded as a great one, and the economy sucks, who's to say I'll get any job at all? Probably I'll end up working as a waitress at Denny's--getting hit on by trucker's and having chocolate milk thrown at me by bratty little kids. Not to speak of the unlivable wage, so I won't be able to afford my apartment and I'll have no place to live and no food and...

There I go again. The wretched little voice inside me that's constantly prattling on (what beloved guru Anne Lamott would refer to as K-FKD) telling me that I'll never get what I want; just because I want it, it will elude me. That nothing will ever work out for me, so why should I even try to pursue my dreams? And then, there are those quieter, more sinister voices, the fears beneath the fears. Not that I won't be able to find opportunities, but that even if opportunities should come, once I'm in them, I'm sure to fail. I'm not good at actually working with people. I have nothing of value to say. People won't respect me or listen to me. I don't actually care in an empathetic way about other people's problems. And I'm too afraid of the kind of people that need help (former drug addicts, homeless or inner city youth, etc.) to actually be any good to them. Talky, talk talk.

So what I want in the New Year, what I really want to pursue, what I really want to do in the next year (or, more realistically, through the rest of my lifetime) is to silence the voices of fear. The voices of not being good enough, the voices that stop me from pursuing things before I even begin. Or, if I can't silence them, I'll live my life in spite of them. Perhaps that is the best thing we can do, to just work around the little gremlins until they die off from never being fed. Or, here's an idea. Give them a crash pad of their own, somewhere else they can hang out so they don't just rattle around in my head.

So, this is me, manifesting in hope. Yes, world, yes printed word, hold me accountable. This is the direction in which I intend to walk in the new year.

So...uhh...anyone want to give me a job?

You Too?!?!

Really?!?!

First Things reads xkcd too?

Bestill my heart...the internet makes fast friends of us all.

Thoughts for a New Year

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about New Year's Resolutions. Generally, in the past, I have hated the idea of making resolutions at New Year's. People always seem to resolve to do things like lose weight, which is really rather absurd, for a weight-obsessed culture like ours to do anything that makes us focus even more of our attention on something so shallow. What I object to is New Year's resolutions set with the aim of "self-improvement." These seem to be so burdensome to people who spend all their time and energy focusing on this idealized version of themselves that they're trying to get to, rather than the person that they are and the life that is going on all-around them. I know from experience that that kind of goal setting will only lead to self-castigation and self-disappointment if I try to pursue it.

However, this is not to say that I am necessarily against people trying to better themselves. The way that I am trying to think about it this year is more amorphous, like what directions do I want to pursue in 2009? What paths should I head down in a more intentional way, where would I like to see myself having moved towards at the end of this year? I don't want to set any agendas, make any graphs or charts, detail any daily checklists. But I do want to be intentional about the kind of person I am becoming.

So, with that end in mind, one of the things I would like to pursue more this year is to become a more intentional writer. I think that I have always had a really hard time with making art and writing a part of my identity. The terms always seem to encompass so much that I have been afraid to apply them to myself. I have been afraid to make the switch from "Yes, I write stuff sometimes," to "Yes, I am a writer." But beacause of my self-doubt, I think I have actually tried to distance myself from the craft since graduation. As though, yes, that was something I indulged in in my foolish youth, but now I've moved on to more productive hobbies. But the fact of the matter is that I am writing all the time, and I think I just need to commit to doing it in an intentional way, with an eye to the craft of it. Along with that, I am hoping, hoping being an operative word, to be able to post more to this blog this year. I think we have all taken note that posting once a month really doesn't cut the mustard. I had hoped to be able to post at least once a week, and that just wasn't happening, in part because I think I set such exceptionally high standards for myself, that the content much be deep and the language beautiful before anything could be posted, so I ended up with these epic treatises that I could only get around to writing about every month. I of course want to respect the time of anyone reading this and keep an eye on quality, but maybe not to such an extent that I paralyze myself. And I think friends would appreciate hearing from me a little more often, for the sake of keeping in touch.

Another facet of this writing thing is that I would like to start using my degree in a lucrative manner. I am not really sure what this would look like, but I have been thinking about this a lot lately because my friend Dan has a degree in choral conducting, and so he goes around and conducts choirs. Seems pretty simple, but this has been striking me as a revolutionary idea because how many of my other friends have jobs that actually relate in any way to their degree. I am not saying this in the sense that the degree is the important thing, but most of us chose our degrees because we thought we'd enjoy jobs working in those fields. So why aren't we in those fields now that we have those degrees? Well, there are actually a number of reasons that that is probably the case, but I think in my case it also has a lot to do with that distancing thing I was just talking about. I don't know if a job as a "writer" (whatever that could mean) is necessarily in the future, but perhaps, publishing? I just have this strong conviction that I shouldn't hold myself back just because I feel unqualified. I'll let someone else tell me I'm unqualified. I want to believe that I could do it until I find out differently.

So, any ideas where I could go with this writing thing? Or, do you have any New-Year's-amorphous-non-resolutions to share? Do tell!

I have a couple more thoughts about directions for the new year, but in the spirit of posting more frequently and briefly, I'll stop here for today...