Friday, October 29, 2010

Faith Trust and Pixie Dust

Henry has learned his memory verse for the month in two days: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid for God is with you.” I must take this to heart. For those of you who actually read this, if there are any—if anyone who ever read this blog is patient enough to check back every month or so when I’m able to put up a post—you must know I’m scared of this blog. Well, not the blog in particular, but I’m scared of imperfection. I’m scared of ever doing anything that isn’t exactly wonderful or amazing. And so you see my dilemma. I often hate that I haven’t written and sit down and write but what comes out is full of halting fearful starts that are doomed to imperfection and therefore doomed to be deleted.

Ironically, the only way that I will ever be able to get to the meat is if I do it everyday. Like exercise. Imagine working out for the first time in awhile and feeling really out of shape (because you are) and therefore deciding it’s not for you because you’re not good at it. That is how I am with writing. And it doesn’t help that I was once very good. It doesn’t help that, much like a person who was once very beautiful and is now getting older, I look back at my old writing from grad school, from creative writing I’ve done, and I stand, mouth agape, wondering who that person was. That person that I can no longer see in the mirror; that voice that I can no longer call forth. I remember a beautiful documentary by an aged French documentarian who, at different times throughout the film, would focus the lens on her hands and wonder whose they were-these elderly things. Surely not her own. This is how my life has become. Whose life is this?

On days like today, as I finally face the white freedom of this page—wanting so badly to run away, avoid it the way I have been—I worry about what my life is. What it has become. Or perhaps I wonder at my inability to reach into my days and pluck out something small and sparkly: a daily wisdom; an inspired thought.

Once upon a time…

Once upon a time, I was a brilliant student. My mind unlocked and unveiled philosophies and my fingers typed across the keyboard purely magical essays in record time. I would reread them later and not understand where they had come from—the insights, the words themselves. It was like a super-power. I would enter a trance like state, brought on by the mix of stress, caffeine, nicotine, too little sleep and too little food. I wouldn’t leave the house for weeks; my neighbors brought me food and cigarettes; did my dishes; listened to me read and reread every word. I never wrote drafts. I sat at the computer and the first paragraph of a 25 pg essay would take 5-6 hours. It was the most important part. It was like the way you throw a pot—the clay must be perfectly balanced and symmetrical on the wheel before you begin, or the pot will fall apart as you pull it up.

Once the first paragraphs were down, which might take 1-2 full days, the rest flowed out. Well, came out slowly. Word by word; brick by brick. It eeked it’s way onto the page. The process was that I had to reread what I had written, and then what came next would just follow, seemingly of it’s own accord. The essay felt as though it was writing itself, and my job was to listen very carefully and find the exact words to help it go in the direction it was meant for.

And yet now, I grab a few minutes to sit on a bar stool in my kitchen and attempt to cull something interesting out of my life to deposit here like it’s a savings account. And I find I’m over-drafted. There’s nothing left for this space sometimes.

But even in these moments, bankrupt as I am, I must remember Henry’s verse: be strong and courageous, do not be afraid for god is with you. And it’s the menial, petty days full of sticky little details that lack meaning that often require the most courage and faith…

a spoon full of sugar


I’ve begun a regiment of Homeschool Preschool. I love the cadence of the description. But what is preschool, really? It is learning artfully disguised as play. And I’m finding ways to incorporate learning into everything—like slipping a dog’s medicine into a hotdog slice.

And one of the easiest tricks I’ve discovered is that Henry’s a sponge. I already knew this—any mother knows that if their child hears a bad word once they’ll repeat it over and over and over. But I’ve used this to my advantage. While buzzing around the kitchen preparing lunch, I will say psalm 23 out loud 3 times in a row. I use every opportunity to sneak in facts about fall or the ways our eyes work (they just send images to the brain which is where they are decoded). Introduce new words. Make jokes about how funny our bodies are—the way that they work. Throw adages or nursery rhymes into everyday conversation and then explain them.

I’m sowing seeds. I’m dropping bits of information and inspiration ad hoc onto the soil of my son. Hoping they take root—rejoicing over the moments when I see them sprout up on their own.

Friday, October 1, 2010

The Book and its Covers...

I want to delve into the meat of this move—this changing of space and memory. Into the infinite electric white space of this blog and divulge secrets and wonders, the wisdom of moving and the sharp emotions of it. But the emotions are sea-glass: rounded and indistinct. My response to stress is invariably the same: retreat. And, especially when I find myself in the throes of something as monumental as a cross-country move—it is retreat, escape, numbness. Nothing.

And, unfortunately, both for this blog and for my greater self, it is not a retreat into the mind, from which I can sally forth weeks or months later, heavy laden with riches of thought and encouragement. No. I retreat into a fog of numbness. I disappear within a shroud of quiet. And I read. I simply devour books—any books I can lay my hands on.

Well, not any book. It must be a reread. I want familiar territory. I want to be home the way one can only be home within the covers of a favorite, well-worn, oft-read novel. Because when my world is new and sharp and foreign, I long for Jane Austen’s England, Beryl Markham’s East Africa; even Hogwarts or Forks will do. Anything that will fly me out of my discomfort and land me squarely on ground I’ve tread before.

When I was a child, there was a public service announcement encouraging kids to read. In it a cartoon alley cat, wearing an admiral’s jacket, would leap and swing between the far-flung worlds of space and sea and country; proclaiming what an adventure reading could be. I’ve always been a reader, but it wasn’t until fourth grade that I fell madly in love with it. I can’t for the life of me remember my 4th grade English teacher’s name, only that it started with a “Z” and that she was a slightly terrifying, energetic woman of small stature with short grey hair. When I try to picture her I’m left with the impression of short, quick movements that snap like a firecracker, energy spraying out of her fingertips—her eyes wide.

I’m sure she wasn’t this way at all, but I love that, whoever she is, she has become in my mind a tenacious witch of a woman. She was all energy. And we had homework; homework that we needed to do on our own, each week. Each Friday we had to turn in an index card with the title and author and a short summary of a book (of our choosing) that we’d read that week. I hated this assignment. I’m bad at anything that involves time management, and to have a whole week to accomplish it and to necessarily choose it for ourselves—I would invariably wait until Thursday night. But what I owe Ms. Z is perhaps the magic of immersion in a book that I’ve found. The immersion and the finding are both key and neither can out-weigh the other. It must be a book that has *miraculously* found it’s way to me and it is also key that I lose myself in it entirely.

*Some Kind of Sorcery!*

To lose oneself in a book: when the world disappears completely. When you spend your days in a medieval castle or on a Victorian fox hunt; in the trenches of Verdun or in a plane over Mumbai; deep in the Louisiana Bayou or exactly in the center of Shibuya intersection; ancient China, whaling boat, river rafting barefoot and freckled; encountering first love, loving a soul-mate; finding oneself. An alternate universe; a terrifying future; a mansion of Long Island; a tenement in turn-of-the-century New York.

To be able to feel the pebbled path through the soles of leather-bottomed boots; to feel the sure, hard iron of the stirrup across the ball of the foot; to know the stinging, rough pull of the mainsail and wind-whipped hair—spray of sea—and taste salt when you lick your lips; hear the creak of the old wooden stairs as you creep into the forbidden wing of the manor; sink deep into the expensive, expansive sofa on the Upper West Side, letting the designer flats slip off your feet as you sip a cold, bright white wine.

And yet, all the while I am here, in my pajamas, smack dab in the real world—with IKEA furniture and two napping boys—crushed Cheerios on the floor, bright loud plastic toys.

This is miraculous. This is the breadth of landscape and universe that exists in the small space between the covers of a book.

So forgive me for not reappearing from my summer vacation with anything more than this. I’ve been busy revisiting old landscapes dear to my heart. But I’m beginning to emerge into my now. Into the space where I actually exist…

Oh Windy City, City of Broad Shoulders, let me lean on you now…