Category Archives: Humanities

Real Life Fairy Tales

I completed the first writing exercise from Your Life as Story. The author assigned a fairy tale — the writerÂ’s own. She said it could be three sentences or as long as one wanted. It simply needs to contain:

  1. A beginning in which something happened so that a person had a problem and a need.
  2. As the person pursued his or her desire a struggle ensued.
  3. And in the end the person changed with a realization.

She instructed not to overthink these, but to just start with “once upon a time” and to write in third person.

The second part of the exercise was to write a short letter to a grandchild or child sharing what it is I learned from my life. This letter should contain an important insight, vision of reality, or bit of wisdom I wish to pass on.

As I wrote my story, I realized all the details I left out, as well as the different perspectives from which this tale could be told. For example, within this story about my endeavor to get an education await the relationships I had that started and ended; these too had an effect on my goal, but to incorporate them would overwhelm the tale. As I wrote, I also saw other fairy tales I could tell about that time of my life offering other themes and lessons; and, of course, I detected a cache of narratives about other times of my life.

Mostly I had fun writing the story, and this in itself made the endeavor worthwhile.

I see what I created as raw material, pieces of which can be used as source for a poem, or re-worked for an article or essay. This book is amazing. IÂ’ve only just begun, but her premise is to teach how to use story structure in writing autobiography. IÂ’ve never been interested in writing fiction, though IÂ’ve felt as though I should be; I perceived nonfiction as the domain of published novelists — a prerequisite, I suppose. I hesitated to write seriously or consider myself a candidate for publication, because the most natural form is telling my own life stories; being an obscure person among billions, I thought it not worth pursuing. Then I discovered blogging, which provided a means of expression. But itÂ’s too rough — the result is not polished. It is also too immediate; it doesn’t encourage discretion. Others can be harmed in very real ways by self-revelation, especially on the Internet, and this awareness begets self-censorship. IÂ’ve been drawn to reading memoirs in recent years, almost more so than fiction. I think I have found my genre. I may never share what I write, but it now feels real and legitimate.

Thoughts About the New Autobiography

This is a form of note-taking to bookmark tidbits that particularly spoke to me from the book, Your Life as Story, by Tristine Rainer.

We are no longer a tribal people, but we are entering the age of the global village. We now have a technological campfire, the Internet, that allows us to find other members of our tribe — people who share our general mythology about life. We could use our technology to enrich our collecctive wisdom through autobiographic storytelling — but we have lost the skill.

The lie is not in the new popular forms: factions, docudramas, nonfiction novels, personal journalism, dramatic nonfiction, the literature of fact, creative nonfiction, autobiographical novels, nonfiction narrative, and literary memoir. Mixing of fiction and nonfiction has been enjoyed by other cultures for centuries. The art of the earliest Japanese diaries lay in blending the author’s experience with imagination so the reader could not tell where fact ended and fiction began. The lie in our culture is in not recognizing that we are now sophisticated enough to enjoy this kind of writing and entertainment, and that this is what we are doing.

For the curious who might want to see how I’ve created my mini-course — or who just want to see how obsessive and compulsive I can be — you can peruse it at your leisure. Incidentally, I wrote this post as a means of postponing the first exercise in her book; I’m wrung out from last night. Tomorrow!

Another Better Day

Today brought a gift from Kat (thank you, dear), who recently culled her book collection and offered them to whoever was interested. I pinged her for titles that made me curious. Here’s what she sent:

Furthermore, I realize I was being a bit of a dunderhead about all this time on my hands. Years ago I yearned to have this liberty, this privilege, and I’ve been squandering it on the Internet. This is the seduction: I’m an information junkie, a reader, a librarian; as wonderful as it is, the Internet is no longer a resource for me. It is a wellspring for my addiction. I need to stop treating everything I read, see, feel, or think as potential material for the blog. Readers tell me the blog is a source of help, pleasure, and information, and I’m happy about this. I want to continue. However, until recently I devoted way too much time to it and to mindlessly whiling away hours on the web. Thus the feelings of sterility and dissatisfaction.

Until I return to work in October, if there is a position for me, why not enjoy the luxury of devoting time to my interests? This evening I walked myself into the garage where I keep my art supplies, pulled out a small canvas, selected some colors that appealed, and painted it. I’ve no idea where it will lead. I’m not thinking. I’ve laid down one base color and let it dry, and then added two more. It will develop as it develops. I give myself permission not to know.

I also pulled off my bookshelves, for leisurely perusal, the following:

In the coming weeks, there will be many ways to use my time. Months ago I was interviewed for an article to be published in a national health magazine, which will be printed in the fall sometime; I was contacted today to be photographed next week for it. (I’m keeping the name of the magazine under my hat until I actually see the issue.) My mother-in-law also comes to visit next week, and I’ve been planning activities that will be of interest. I’m focusing on my workout and re-joined a weight management program; with continued effort I’ll enjoy the results. I’m walking in a 5K event August 27 and doing more volunteer work. I may also travel a bit, but this is only in the discussion stage. Amid all this, I can dip into the books I listed, be inspired, and apply my efforts. All this can happen because I will spend less time staring at my navel via my blog. Blogging has revolutionized personal expression, yes. There are positives to it: it builds community, provides an outlet. However, it has become, for me at least, an act of mental masturbation. Even reading other blogs is in some way a narcissistic endeavor. When reading and writing blogs becomes a must instead of a want, when it turns into work despite the fact it was begun for pleasure and doesn’t bring remuneration, it’s time to retreat and refocus.

I’m not certain what this means for my blog. It may be I post once or twice a week. Over at North Coast Cafe Rodrigo listed the blogs he might take to a deserted island; among them was Gut Rumbles. I checked it out, and what struck me (aside from his attitude and politics) was that in the past two days, Acidman wrote 25 posts. Many are interesting, I’ll grant. And he can do whatever he wants, of course. But I would never be able to keep up with this writer’s output; multiply this by all the blogs that catch my interest, and I’d have no life. Likewise, I do not have the time to post every tidbit I come across, nor even half of it — not if I want a vital, creative, joyful life.

So there you have Part Two of my effort to recover from the abyss of my own self-absorption.

The Breathing of Poetry

There is a sense in which poetry is not so much the writing of words as it is the movement of breath itself. To write it, you must pay attention to the breathing of poetry, to all speech as breath, to the relationship of our thoughts and emotions and the actual way they fill our bodies.

–Robert Hass, from The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets by Bill Moyers

Why I Loved Counseling and Miss It So

Though this quote pertains to ministry, the work of psychotherapy was also rooted in what the words below describe.

When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or want,” and whose object can be “someone” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around “I” like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else. But quick, and avid, and resourceful. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Fini!

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this afternoon. All I can say is, “Wow!” She has matured the characters well. I’m also pleased that my hunch about What Happens to a Certain Character is correct. But it’s kind of a let-down to be finished. Ah well, here’s to waiting for book seven.

All Harry, All the Time

You’ve seen here more photos and fewer words, including my own, because I’m deeply ensconced in the world of J.K. Rowling. In the past week I’ve caught up by blazing through books 4 and 5, and I am now a third of the way through book 6. I feel a bit as though I’ve been under the influence of the Imperius curse. I cannot put these books down!

My interest in just about everything else has plummeted as a result. I haven’t cooked dinner in a week. Though the gardens are getting watered. It’s not hard to hold the book in one hand and turn the faucet on. Once I return to reality (though I’m not sure I want to), there may be more stuff here.

I Possess God

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.

–Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

Christian Iron John

According to the article linked below, on any given Sunday women outnumber men 61% to 49% at Christian services.

Murrow, a 1983 Baylor University graduate and author of “Why Men Hate Going to Church,” contends that the modern church is too chatty, too touchy-feely and full of hokey rituals that don’t affirm a guy’s manhood. In short, the faith founded by one man 2,000 years ago needs a testosterone shot.

—Modern Churches Don’t Suit the Macho Man

However, the article also mentions a 1910 YMCA survey found that two-thirds of church attendants were female. So I’d say this problem is more deeply rooted; 1910 isn’t ancient history, but neither does it qualify as modern to my thinking.

As one who belonged to a charismatic, evangelical church for several years, I do concede one point to Murrow. He says, “Praise and worship services are 20-30 minutes of love songs to Jesus Christ in words no man would say to another.” Services are, and while some of the songs are lovely, they may not suit all personalities. However, Murrow also says church services have become “a time and place for mush, emotion and sentimentality.” This has not been the case in all denominations (Roman Catholic comes to mind, as do other churches with more formal, ritualized services). The atmosphere Murrow bemoans is a key trait of the evangelical charismatic style, which aims to heighten a person’s awareness of his unsaved condition by making him aware of his wretchedness and sinfulness, and by then appealing to fear (of damnation) and hope (of salvation) by calling him to “be born again.” It is a highly emotional style that has been a component of evangelicalism for many, many decades. Perhaps less focus on emotional manipulation and more education on what it means to follow Jesus is in order?

Interesting article.

[via MacRaven]

The Perfection of the Disguise

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, “What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

My Own Quiet Little World

I was sitting on the wrong side of the train to look at scenery — outside my window there was nothing but a wall of rock — but a pleasant, bespectacled lady sitting across the aisle saw me straining to see things, and invited me to take the empty seat opposite her. She was Swiss and spoke excellent English. We chatted brightly about the scenery and our modest lives. She was a bank clerk in Zürich, but was visiting her mother in a village near Domodossola and had just spent a day shopping in Locarno. She showed me some flowers she had bought there. It seemed like weeks — it was weeks — since I had held a normal conversation with someone, and it was wonderful. I was so taken with the novel experience of issuing sounds through a hole in my head that I chattered away about any little thing that flitted through my mind, and before long she was fast asleep and I was back once again in my own quiet little world.

–Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

Blog Discoveries & Trivia

I found out about Blogpulse from Euan’s blog. I’ve been trying to wean my ego from paying attention to the number of visitors here or finding who links to me. This program, of course, taps into that vein, but it promises to be an interesting way to track topical trends in blogs. I found myself listed and looked at the blogs considered to be my “neighbors.” A few were appealing, and I shall make a point of visiting more:

  • Pages Turned. A reading journal and commonplace book–a book in which ‘commonplacesÂ’ or passages important for reference are collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement. Offers an impressive booklist and other snippets.
  • Coffee and Varnish: With Enough Coffee I Could Rule the World. DEFINITION – “Jane Smith”, circa 1969: coffee whore, internet junkie, canine lover, devourer of books, movie fiend, creative, flirt, lazy-ass, smart-mouthed, potato-chip-eater. An interesting collection of reflections.
  • Nothing To Do With Arbroath: No real issues. Just stuff and nonsense. Fun links to interesting tidbits. I especially enjoyed the European Geography quiz, although I admit with chagrin I scored only 56%.

I also, lately, have hopped on the silly quiz bandwagon. This blog has not featured many, but every now and then I give in and take some. Results are below:
Continue reading →

A Little Willingness To See

aura

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance — for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. …But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Can’t Talk Now… Reading

Being unemployed provides swaths of time that beg to used, and lately, I’ve been sprawled across the hammock or sofa with my nose in a book. I finished Gilead, a novel written in the form of a letter from elderly father to young son. It was lyrical. I’ve tucked about a dozen quotes away for use on the blog.

I’ve begun dipping into Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There, which has already delivered to my expectations. His chapters are concise and make for pleasant bedtime reading — unless you’re my husband, attempting to fall asleep to occasional spurts of muffled laughter. Bryson really tickles me.

And of course, I’ve hopped onto the Harry Potter bandwagon. We own books one through five, but we stalled out in the middle of book four a couple years ago. (While I enjoy the stories, I’m not bitten that severely by the mania.) Since the fourth movie will come out in November, though, I thought I’d best get up to speed. Besides, I’ve heard so much murmuring about the darkness of the latest volume that my interest is roused.

Being immersed in books has quieted my urge to write. I haven’t posted my own thoughts, because I’ve nothing but very mundane things to say about my very ordinary days. I’m not feeling creative, loquacious, or disciplined. Of course, I would love to write about what I did today — writing is a way I process — but this blog, while somewhat personal, isn’t the place for such run-of-the-mill writing.

I am reading and healing. As soon as my body is ready, we will again attempt to kindle life. Talk about creative! It amazed me, what my body had begun. To make something out of almost nothing, to participate in a complex process that unfolds with such order and precision. How do certain cells know their job is to become eyes, or skin, or nerves, and how do they know in what order to manifest? It made me wonder, and I felt involved in something important, eternal, and magnificent. I feel a bit of fear; I could be unsuccessful again.

To dream, to hope, to strive — all this creates attachment, and attachment carries the risk of loss and pain. But that’s okay. I accept this as part of life. It became clear to me, within a day of confirming that I was pregnant, that there would never again be a time when I could sigh and say, “All done! No more risk!” If anything, having a child increases risk. I was tempted to say, “Once I get past the first trimester, I’m in the clear.” But no, this is not guaranteed. “Once I have the child, and it’s healthy, we’re all set!” Again, no. A debilitating disease might occur, or an intellectual disability, or any number of misfortunes may await. “Once my child graduates college and has a good job, I’m done!” A parent isn’t at liberty, ever, to be “finished with” caring for a child. Even during my abbreviated pregnancy, I grasped this. That scared me too. So to try again, I think, is evidence of true grit, and perhaps a dash of insanity.

Making the decision to have a child — it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

— Elizabeth Stone

In for a penny, in for a pound. As I see it, we can try again, and we might fail. There will be sadness and even anger. We can try again, and we might succeed, and then there will surely be sadness and anger, but also joy and amazement, and laughter and vitality. We can decide, instead, that the risk scares us and continue with life as we have been. A life without one’s own children will also contain sadness, anger, as well as joy, amazement, laughter, and vitality. All three paths are similar in this way. So the driving force is curiosity. Which path most intrigues me? One question I ask myself over the years is: Is the decision I am about to make based on fear? For me, a fear-based decision is the incorrect one. Fear is valid, no dispute there. I give it its due. I just won’t (or try not to) let it shape my life. The risk of being a parent scares me most of all, and this is the very reason I will choose to try again.

Gee, for someone who protested an absence of words, I apparently tapped a hidden spring.