what i love tonight:

Good sound (like what’s in my car) - see infinity speakers, kicker subs, mtx amp, rockford fosgate amp, 700 watts of power, music to match

Good beer (like what’s in my fridge) - see Bohemia, Rahr and Sons Blonde, Shiner Oktoberfest

Good burgers (like what’s in my hood, and now my stomach) - see Flaming Burger

Good tv shows (like what’s on my tv) - see X-Files

Good books (like what’s on my nightstand) - see The Children of Hurin, Home Economics, Barefoot Running Step by Step

Good baseball (like what’s on my radio) - see Tigers vs Yankees, game 3 of the American League Division Series

hero

After the calamity that was last week, I’m treating myself to a morning of coffee and open windows and reading— Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson.

Oh my heart. Y’all, she is my hero. Really. You know that feeling when you find a book that you feel was written just for you, written with only you in mind? It’s the loveliest of deceptions. Every one of her novels feels that way to me. If I could write one thing so pure, so mysterious, so assured, so quiet and beautiful, I think I’d be perfectly happy. 

Posted 5 months ago

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read this summer

• Arcadia, by Lauren Groff
• The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
• Brief Encounters with Che Guevera, by Ben Fountain
• Gilead, by Marilyn Robinson
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Mark Pollan
• Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
• The Night Swimmer, by Matt Bondurant
• When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynn Robinson
• The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain
• Eventide, by Kent Haruf
• The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
• 1984, by George Orwell
• Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather

Circe 2012 - Reading List

Last weekend we went to Louisville Kentucky for the 2012 Circe Conference.

It was extraordinary. A soul expanding experience. And Friday night, I saw Mr. Wendell Berry live, in the flesh, and wept.

What is Circe (and how do you pronounce it)? Why was it extraordinary? Who the heck is Wendell Berry and why does he matter to you?

As a cheap answer to question number one, I give you this convenient link http://circeinstitute.org/conference/

As for the rest - all excellent questions, which I plan to answer soon, but not now, because:
1. The thoughts that were presented to and provoked in me over the weekend are still too rich, too deep, and too many to give them form just yet.
2. Wendell Berry and his profound influence on my mind and my convictions deserves a better introduction than I can give at the moment.
3. I really just got on here to share my book list from the conference.

I fully intend to read these all.

Circe 2012 Reading List

to live by, pt. 5

"I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

--rainer maria rilke,

from 'letters to a young poet'

. . . makes me want to cry with relief every time i read it.

to live by, pt. 4

"Francie stood on tiptoe and stretched her arms wide. "Oh, I want to hold it all!" she cried. "I want to hold the way the night is-- cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, 'Let me go! Let me go!'""

"Dear God," she prayed,"let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry . . . have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-- be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

--from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

(which I just finished for the third time. Oh, I love this book with so much of me. It's one of those that's a friend. One of those that the first time I read it, I would turn the page and find a new piece of myself I hadn't known about before. If you haven't read it, you should pick it up in October, on a cool morning so new and full that it reminds you of a dozen other October mornings you can't quite remember, and it gathers until the unmemory is like a strong fragrance coming from the trees. Because that's the kind of book it is.)

neruda on poetry

"I have always wanted the hands of people to be seen in poetry. . . I have always preferred a poetry where the fingerprints show. A poetry of loam, where water can sing. A poetry of bread, where everyone may eat."

"Poetry is song and fertility. . . it emerged from its secret womb and flows, fertilizing and singing, It kindles with its swelling waters, it works at milling flour, tanning hides, cutting wood, giving light to cities."

Small Big Things

I've been thinking today about the Small Big things in my life. Not the Big Big things-- hearbreaks, proposals, plot twists-- but the little details or objects or moments that ever-so-quietly created a shift in my life, like a rock thrown into a small stream. I thought I'd share some.

1. A thick, green, hardback book I pulled at random off my parent's bookshelves when I was 11. Anne of Green Gables. Reading that book was one of the great epiphanies of my life-- all of a sudden I knew who I was, and I knew that I had never really known who I was until then.

2. This shirt, bought when I was 15. It was the first piece of clothing I ever bought that I would still wear now, and for years it was my benchmark-- I compared all clothes to it, and only bought them if they had the same 'feel.'

3. Discovering this blog last winter. It's inspired me to think about what kind of life I want and then make it be that way, and it's been a constant reminder to have Happy Fancy Fun, not just Boring Fun.

4. Going to my first poetry reading at school and feeling so at home.

5. A slim little book called "The Hundred Dresses," by Eleanor Estes. I read it at age 7 all in one sitting at a grown-up party my parents went to, and it rocked my world. It was the first book I ever read that made me think and care and ponder. It changed the way I read. (and, ps, every little girl needs to own this book. it's pretty exceptional; the lesson is wise and timely, and presented so gently and artfully that it feels silly to call it a 'lesson.')

6. Stumbling across my parents' old Michael Feinstein-singing-Gershwin CDs. Oh man. Such a happy day. That was when I fell in love with that kind of music.

7. The day Dr. Rodriguez chewed me out for trying to stay too in control of my voice while I sang. Yeah, it helped my voice, but it also set off a whole chain of realizations about myself that caused me to change in pretty profound ways. I've been happier ever since.

8. The day when I was 16 that I wore red lipstick to the Grace Chapel meeting. I must admit to a certain amount of pride over this-- keep in mind, this was 2005, some of us were still wearing denim skirts, and this look wasn't The Thing at all like it is now. Red lipstick didn't show up on runways for another two or three years at least. A couple of people that day said it was too bright and red, and for the first time I was able to not care and just wear the thing that felt right and made me happy. It was so liberating, and from then on I was willing to look different from other people and develop my own sense of style.

So those are some of mine. Tell me yours?

more gems from faulkner oral reports

verbs were problematic for several classmates this past week:

". . . he hadn't dranken in years."

". . . we learn about his strive for success and prosperity. . ."

and then, there's my personal favorite, one of those that makes you wonder if the person was raised in a cave:

"it's, like, a pree-face to the story"

yes, ladies and gentleman. she was referring to the section of prose that precedes the first chapter of a book. and she did indeed pronounce it 'pree-face.'

yeah.

compendium

I sat with Dan last night during the Duke-Baylor game, doing homework (actually read an entire Faulkner novel from 3:00 to 10:00-- I heart my attention span), and noticed that Baylor has got some of Richard Scary's Best Names Ever on their team. I call your attention to the following gems:

Quincy Acy

LaceDarius Dunn

Tweety Carter

I didn't have time to make a bracket this year, but I was planning to base my predictions on which team had more Exemplary Names. Had I done so, this right here might just have taken Baylor to the top.

Sometimes I love being a writer. Today I went to Cafe Brazil after school to have a mocha and get some writing done, and an overheard speech pattern of the woman at the table behind me triggered a whole set of new ideas and three pages of notes for my next short story. Moments like that are what keep me going.

Got 14 packages of pasta for 3.50 last week. Oh yeah.

Currently Listening: to one of Pottery Barn's ever-beloved jazz compilations. It's just right with the weather and my window down. Plus it's Elwood's favorite kind of music, and puts him in a peppy mood.

"Maybe you got a lot to learn

Don't waste another day!

Maybe you got to lose it all

Before you find your way.

Take a chance, play your part,

Make romance, though it may break your heart. . ."

Recently decided that I kind of love the name Nolan. It's so cool, but in an old-man-cool way, not an "aahh!!-hugh-jackman-named-his-kid-that!!!" way.

E.B. White on starting a Model T Ford

"During my association with Model T's, self-starters were not a prevalent accessory. They were expensive and under suspicion. Your car came equipped with a serviceable crank, and the first thing you learned was how to Get Results. It was a special trick, and until you had learned it (usually from another Ford owner, but sometimes by a period of appalling experimentation) you might as well have been winding up an awning. The trick was to leave the ignition switch off, proceed to the animal's head, pull the choke (which was a little wire protruding through the radiator) and give the crank two or three nonchalant upward lifts. Then, whistling as though thinking about something else, you would saunter back to the driver's cabin, turn the ignition on, return to the crank, and this time, catching it on the down stroke, give it a quick spin with plenty of That. If this procedure was followed, the engine almost always responded - first with a few scattered explosions, then with a tumultuous gunfire, which you checked by racing around to the driver's seat and retarding the throttle. Often, if the emergency brake hadn't been pulled all the way back, the car advanced on you the instant the first explosion occurred and you would hold it back by leaning your weight against it. I can still feel my old Ford nuzzling me at the curb, as though looking for an apple in my pocket."

"I could have spread my wings and done a thousand things I've never done before"

It's Sunday morning, and Dan's away at church. I'm home because I seem to have contracted Influenza, the perfect finale for the Great Homework Crisis of '10. Yeah. So. Not exactly how I wanted to spend the break I envisioned for myself, but here we are. It's day 5 now, and even though I'm getting better I still can't get out of bed without feeling unsteady on my feet. I really should get some homework done today, but instead you find me here, posting. And I warn you now, this will likely be one of those rambley self-indulgent posts where the author talks about anything that comes to mind presuming that everyone will be as interested as she is.

Sometimes people are wonderful. It was horridly cold and windy at school Tuesday, and as I was walking from the parking lot to class I saw a couple (both wearing plaid hoodies) walking the other way holding hands. When they got to the parking lot they suddenly looked at each other, grinned, and took off running for their car, still holding hands. It made my day. I love catching people enjoying each other and being sweet.

Dan always laughs fondly at my love for all things picture-book-ish. But sometimes I really do think I'd like most of all to live in that world instead. It's been one of those months. I want to go live in a cabin in the woods with green shutters and a crooked chimney, wearing a kerchief and brightly colored aprons, sweeping with a homeade broom while cheerful little birds bring me the mail. I want inanimate objects to have feelings and faces. I want to save scraps for friendly mice who curtsy politely and leave me seeds for my flower bed in return. I want the woods to have a smooth carpet of grass and little flowers instead of a prickly bramble like real ones do.

While we're at it, let's make this like an old-time Disney movie and an MGM musical too, with very bright colors and swirly clothes, where everybody knows the same choreography and the orchestra swells out of nowhere just when you need it to. Something with Brigadoon's color palette, perhaps, and I'll take Fiona's dress too, pleaseandthankyoueversomuch. Oh, and all of Liesel's clothes from Sound of Music, plus the mixture of sweetness and high spirits and gravity in that movie. And then give me Cinderella's voice, and we have just the right kind of world.

You know what I love about musicals? Yes, ridiculous question I know-- what do I not love about musicals? But I was thinking about it, and I realized that what keeps me returning to them constantly, besides the beautiful colors and the fantastic clothes and the happy endings, is the joy and expansiveness and abandon of the characters when they're singing and dancing-- that moment when you completely forget that the person onscreen is a paid actor who probably has a troubled life and instead they become someone completely human, only better, because for just a few minutes they can express fully and perfectly whatever they feel. You know that incandescent look on Katherine Grayson's face in Anchors Aweigh when she's swirling around the cantina singing? Or Audrey Hepburn/Marni Nixon singing and dancing around the bedroom with the maid in My Fair Lady? That's what I mean. You know right then what it's like to be completely buoyant, you know that Aunt Susie is more real than Kathryn Grayson and that in that world where Aunt Susie is real, people have this amazing thing they can do that captures the feeling you get sometimes, like you're on top of something and at the edge of it all at the same time, but you never understand what. Maybe you could if you lived in that world.

It was Beauty and the Beast that taught me all this first. There are so many moments in that movie where I remember as a child feeling such longing, without any clue for what or why or even knowing what longing was. Maybe that's why I loved it so much.

Alright. I'll go hit the books now.

newly motivated

The realization has been growing in me (as it does from time to time) that I simply must read much, much more often than I do if I want to reach any kind of respectable quota by the time I die. This thought was, ironically enough, prompted by a movie. Claire and I are on a quest to re-watch the Lord of the Rings extended editions. We began Monday night with the first one, which inevitably rekindled my desire to read the books again (I think I've only read them twice through, and it's been a number of years now.) But first I want to read Tolkien's History of Middle Earth, then re-read The Silmarillion - and at this point I realized that at the dismal rate I'm reading now, that will all take me a couple of years, if not more. And four of the five books I've read before. This will not do.

The answer to my quandary is habit. I must make it a more habitual part of my daily life. And I intend to. So I'm off to sit on our cozy couch and spend some quality time with Rebecca.

yes, the book.