Apocalyptic Christmas Reading

For long-time readers of this blog, you will not be surprised to find that my Christmas reading was apocalyptic in tone--and yet, the books were oddly hopeful.

Even the nonfiction book that I read, David Browne's Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970, had a somewhat apocalyptic tone.  I enjoyed revisiting the music discussed, and I'm intrigued by the practice of taking a single year and seeing what it shows us.  But it was rather sad to read about these great musical talents having such problems getting along.  However, the last chapter of the book did remind us of how many of those talents have continued to produce great work, even if they never did completely reconcile with former partners.

I read The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller, which has a fairly standard premise:  there's been a terrible disease and much of humanity has died.  How do the survivors carry on, once the need for food and shelter have been met?  How to find meaning in such a world?  And how to deal with memories of what's been lost.  In those lyrical ruminations, I found myself thinking of lessons I could learn from the narrator's experiences. 

The narrator lies in a hammock, which makes him think of a fish in a net: 

"That is what we are, what we do:  nose a net, push push, a net that never exists.  The knots in the mesh as strong as our own believing.  Our own fears.

Ha.  Admit it:  you don't have the slightest idea what you are doing, you never ever did.  With all the nets in the world, real or unreal.  You swam around in a flashing confused school following the tail of the fish in front.  Pretty much.  Nibbling at whatever passed, in whatever current you swam into" (The Dog Stars, page 218).

I also read Justin Cronin's The Twelve, a follow-up to The Passage, a book I enjoyed immensely.  I also enjoyed The Twelve, and it does work as a stand-alone book.  I remember very little about The Passage, yet I had no trouble diving into The Twelve.  It's the kind of book that wakes you up in the morning because you want to find out what happens next.

But the book that has quietly gotten under my skin is Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, a novel about Dellarobia, a woman who had such intellectual potential before she got pregnant and married her high school boyfriend.

But it's about so much more than that:  climate change, habitat loss, clash of values.  Kingsolver does a great job of depicting those who are too poor even to shop at Wal-Mart, showing the desperation of their lives without sentimentalizing them or showing contempt.  In one scene, Dellarobia tries to explain why people of her community, and the country beyond who are like her community, have such trouble rallying around climate change issues:  "Team camo, we get the right to bear arms and John Deer and the canning jars and tough love and taking care of our own. The other side wears I don't know what, something expensive. They get recycling and population control and lattes and as many second chances as anybody wants. Students e-mailing to tell you they deserve their A's." (Page 321).


Kingsolver also does a great job of showing that habitat loss will affect us all.  I found the scene where Dellarobia and her friend shop in a thrift store to be the most powerful in the book.  Kingsolver devotes many pages to this scene, but it's worth it.
"Dellarobia felt bleary again, looking at this unused luggage:  the golden anniversary cruise that  detoured into the ICU, the honeymoon called off for financial reasons.  Every object in this place gave off the howl of someone's canceled hopes" (page 305)
On seeing exercise equipment:  "This place was a museum of people's second thoughts" (page 295)

But other scenes stay with me too, especially the ones where the newscaster appears.  And I've found myself thinking about the ending, which fits so perfectly, many times in the week since I finished it.

I must be honest, as I was reading it, I thought, this will never be my favorite Kingsolver book.  It's not the kind of book that wakes me up in the middle of the night and demands that I return to it.  But it's the most important work of the ones that I read over Christmas.

It's the kind of work that makes me think of my own writing.  What's important?  What's lasting?  If I could only write one more thing before I died, what would demand my attention?

The Feast Day of the Epiphany for Writers and Other Artists

Today is the Feast Day of the Epiphany.  For a more spiritually focused essay, with photos, see this post on my theology blog.  But here, I'd like to think about what this Feast Day has to say to writers and other artists.

First, a bit of background:  the Feast Day of the Epiphany celebrates the ways in which the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus is revealed early in the Christ story.  More specifically, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the wise men from the East to see and bring gifts to the baby Jesus.  Often, the Epiphany season also includes the baptism of Jesus, which in some Gospels, can include a descending dove and God telling us that Jesus is God's son, with whom God is well pleased.

Note that God is well pleased even before Jesus has done a thing.  For those of us who suffer self-loathing because we feel we're not doing enough and we're not living up to our full potential, perhaps we could take this lesson and back off a little.

Or maybe we want to take a completely different approach.  Perhaps on this Feast Day of the Epiphany, we could move towards having an epiphany of our own about our work.

The word epiphany in literary circles has come to mean a sudden insight (that's the most simplistic definition).  Here's the epiphany I'm hoping for today/this year:  what am I put on this earth to do?  What creative work is most important?  If I didn't have all the time in the world--and we don't--what would I focus upon?

We hear a lot of talk in the world about writer's block, but that is not the reality for the creative folks I know.  Most folks I know have far too many interests to be blocked.  For most people I know, the difficulty comes with having too little time and floundering in terms of not being able to decide what work is most important.  Let this be the year that we determine early what our essential work is, and let this be the year that we commit to that work and bring it to fullness.

But maybe you'd like a more light-hearted approach to the Feast Day of the Epiphany.  The Christmas to Epiphany season is a festival of light.  How can we get more light into our lives?

If you're a scented candle person, Yankee Candle is having a great sale right now, and it's not just their Christmas scents (at least not on their website).  There are candles that are half price and 75% off.  And if your order is under $100, shipping is only $5, which seems like a great deal to me, because those candles are heavy.

Or maybe you need a better desk lamp or better reading light.

Or maybe you need metaphorical light.  What books have brought you joy and inspiration?  Resolve to read them more often, even daily or weekly.  Invite more light of every kind into your life!  Watch your favorite movies.  Seek out the T.V. shows that make you glad to be alive--and avoid the ones that make you anxious (like the local news, for example) or unworthy.

The Feast Day of the Epiphany can also be about gifts, and if you have any extra money, now can be a great time to buy yourself a gift when much of it is on sale.  Buy yourself some new undergarments!  That sweater you've had your eye on is likely on sale, and many of us still have a few months of cooler weather left.  Buy a calendar that makes you happy--it's probably on sale right now.  Stock up on your favorite, seasonal coffees and teas.

We rarely get this feast day on a week-end day, so that fact opens up possibilities.  Why not bake some 3 Kings Bread?  Last year, I wrote a blog post that gives the recipe along with photos.  And for those of you who say "Bread?  I can't possibly bake bread!", I say, "Yes, you can."  This recipe is for a yeasted bread, but it requires no kneading.  And while you could include candied fruit, you don't have to.  For those of you still adhering to your New Year's resolutions to eat better, this recipe can work for you too:  it's somewhat sweet, but also fairly healthy.

For those of us who still have yet to put away our Christmas decorations, today should probably be the day.  Many of us have been on vacation, and tomorrow many of us return to work for the first time.  Today, on the Feast Day of the Epiphany, many of us will need to put our lives back into a certain order to get ready for tomorrow.

But before we let go of Christmas entirely, let's take a bit more time to savor the season.  Have one last cookie or cup of Christmas tea.  Think about how you will continue to infuse sweetness into your post-holiday life.  Think about the twinkly lights and the star that is so central to the Christian Christmas story.  How can you get more light into your life?  What star waits for you to notice and to follow its guidance?  What gifts do you need?  What gifts does the world need from you?

Eliot Inspirations on the Eve of Epiphany

I wrote 3 poems this morning--3!!  Of course, I haven't written much during the month of December:  one that I wrote when I needed it for the academic essay I was writing and one set of haiku for a poetry meeting that I blogged about in this post.

In that post, I also talked about our poetry assignment for our next poetry meeting:  to write something in response to T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."  I had ideas for my poem, "The Hollow Women."  And now I have 3 poems!  Will I keep them as individual poems or will I weave them together?  I'll likely do both.

I wrote about the women who work in offices and the women who work in the houses of the women who work in offices.  I had also been reading Jan Richardson's post about the wise men and Epiphany and what if women came too?  She also includes in that post a link to a free download of her Retreat for Women's Christmas, which includes poems and artwork and blessings and writing/thinking prompts--a great resource if you're in the mood for a contemplative treat with a nonobnoxious spiritual theme.

For weeks now (decades really), I've been thinking about the great mass migrations we've seen, people moving from the south to the north in search of better lives.  Something triggered the English major part of my brain, and I thought, didn't T.S. Eliot write a poem about the wise men?

Indeed he did write "Journey of the Magi."  Ah, the joys of the Internet!  I pulled up that poem, and I wrote my 3rd poem, about undocumented immigrants making their way through the desert.

I don't think I've ever referenced T.S. Eliot as much in just one day.  I recognize the importance of Eliot, being the good English major with a Ph.D. that I am, but he's never been one of my touchstone poets.  But I've been having fun with him this morning.

And I'm not done yet!

Friday Delights

Yesterday was full of delightful moments, even though the work day was long:

--I had coffee with a friend and reconnected after the holidays.

--The meeting with my department went well.  We even had lunch, which our school has not always been able to afford.  It would have been great to have taken the faculty to a fancy restaurant, but given the stresses of the past few years, I was profoundly grateful for lovely trays of sandwiches, perfect fruits, and delectable veggies, all delivered on time by a colleague in a different department.  So much could have gone wrong during that meeting and lunch, but nothing did.

--After the meeting, I hung out with my friend who meets with me periodically to exchange short stories.  She told me again how much she likes my work, how happy my work is.  I said, "It's a good thing I never went into an M.F.A. program--they'd have seen my work as light and fluffy."

--I challenged her to write a story with a happy ending, maybe a marriage.  She looked aghast.  She challenged me to write a story in which the narrator realizes she's dead.

--As I spun my way through spin class, I thought about the possibilities. 

And this morning, I started composing!  Will one of the characters be telling the story from the dead?  Or am I simply writing an apocalyptic story like the ones I read over Christmas break?  I'm not sure yet. 

My plan is for the narrative to be broken up with chunks of text like the one below, with which I am well pleased:

I am the pianos abandoned in the early miles of the Oregon Trail, and later, the finer furniture, and later still, all the possessions of any weight at all.  I am the bones of a hungry people moving north, desperate for water, finding only stone.

But it occurs to me that perhaps those chunks are poems that have wandered into my short story.  Or maybe they'll appear in both.  Hmmm.

It makes me happy that I spent some time on fiction this morning, even though I'm not sure where the story is going or how it will fit into my longer manuscript of linked short stories.

What else is making me happy today?  My essay on getting more rest and rejuvenation is up at Her Circle.  Go here to read it.

I'm also happy that my poem "Conserving the Scraps" has just been published in the latest edition of New Plains Review.  What a lovely journal.  If you haven't discovered it yet, you should.

Here's the poem, for your Friday reading pleasure:


Conserving the Scraps



The homeless woman sits in the library
and reads about the art of quilts.
Surrounded by all her worldly possessions, three
grocery bags full, she discovers the history
of this odd art, born
out of desperation
and poverty: the lack of basic supplies, the need
to conserve every scrap.

The homeless woman thinks of her own clothes, patched
so many times that she can’t remember
the original contours of the cloth.
She fingers her garbage bags,
the modern feedsack with multiple uses,
many a rainy night made bearable
by their plastic presence.

The homeless woman reads
the tales of modern quilters and their quest
for quality fabrics.
Unlike them, she appreciates
the durability of polyester, a rugged fabric
well suited for life on the streets.

Later, the homeless woman settles
her garbage bags around her in the shadows
and waits for scurrying sleep to come.
She thinks of cheerful quilt tops,
the differences in batting,
and wishes for warmth to call her own.

Our Cold California Christmas

We flew to California on Dec. 22; for those of you who are wondering, I didn't blog whilst away, but in advance, I wrote some blog posts for your reading pleasure.   We flew to Vegas and then on to L.A.  The winds were against us as we flew to Vegas, so the trip took almost 6 hours (on the way back, it was closer to 4).  I kept thinking of the people I know who fly to Vegas for the week-end, and I can't quite fathom it.

Of course, there are people who would say the same about my 10-12 hour car trips to the Carolinas that I make on a regular basis.  But in my car, I can stop as often as I need to, and I'm not crammed in with people whom I'd like to strangle after hearing them talk about shallowness, hour after hour.

Finally, the arduous plane trip ended, we found the rest of the family in the L.A. airport, and we were ready to explore Southern California.

First stop:  Taco Bell!  Yes, we could have eaten more authentic food, but when travelling with a 6 year old, sometimes convenience and familiarity takes precedence.  Oh, who am I kidding?  Half of our travelling team really wanted Taco Bell, and the rest of us could deal with that, so we stopped.

I didn't have my camera with me in the Taco Bell, so I missed my opportunity to capture a SoCal Santa.  He rode up on his 10 speed bike and didn't take off his chunky headphones as he waited in line.  He was African-American, skinny in his Santa suit, with a white (fake) beard hanging off his face.  We talked about this Santa, keeping in mind that we were in the presence of a 6 year old.

My nephew came to my side and with some urgency, whispered in my ear:  "Kris!  Kris!  That's not the real Santa."  It was touching, as if he wanted to spare me the embarrassment of realizing that I'd been duped while at the same time, not wanting to unmask the impostor too publicly.

Ah, the joys of travelling with a 6 year old!  We went places we wouldn't have gone if we'd just been adults travelling, like the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert, in Palm Desert. 

While there, we could do all sorts of cool activities, like testing our balance and flexibility, or dressing up in a variety of costumes, or building any variety of shapes that would get a ping pong ball across the room, or painting an old V.W.

We also went to Legoland:  us and about a bajillion other people.  We didn't ride many rides, since the wait time for every ride was 60-90 minutes, and there are very few activities that I like enough to wait that long to do them.  It was also very cold, so it was good to keep moving.  We saw a show that we wouldn't have seen if it hadn't been so cold and the thought of sitting down out of the wind hadn't been so appealing.  It was great to see so many earnest performers singing about their wish for snow, both at that show and in singing groups throughout the park.

However, the highlight of that trip to Legoland for me was seeing the wide variety of fascinating things, many of them lifesize, built out of Legos:

There's also a whole section of the park called Miniland, where there are villages and cities built out of Legos.  I loved that a lot of the structures were decorated for Christmas:

I found myself wondering about the people who had created this wonderland, whole cities and world attractions built out of Legos.  Did the Lego builders say, "Wow, what a great job I have!  To be paid to construct things out of Legos!"  Or do they say, "I'd rather be making my own original designs, not replicas of New York City.  I can't believe I have to spend another day making Santas out of Legos.  I did not go to art school for this."

We started out our trip headed to Palm Desert, which I wrote about in this post yesterday.  My favorite part of the whole trip was our exploration of a tiny part of Joshua Tree National Park.  Still, it was interesting to explore a different part of Southern California.  We spent the last part of our trip exploring Newport Beach and the surrounding environs.  Below you see a shot I took with Balboa Island to my back.  What the shot doesn't show is how much the area reminded me of pictures of Greece or Italy--not the Southern California of The Brady Bunch.  I never watched Beverly Hills 90210 or The O.C., so I don't have those landscapes in my head.

I hadn't realized how mountainous the southwest is.  I have never so mispacked for a trip.  I thought Southern California/desert=hot.  Ha!  The temps in the day rarely climbed very far into the 60's, and the nights were cold, which I expected.  Oh well.  It won't be the only vacation where I appear in pictures wearing the same clothes, day after day.

To end our trip, we went to Huntington Beach.  I have now eaten at Duke's, on Sunday, although not on a beach in Waikiki, to reference a Jimmy Buffett song.  We walked on the pier and watched the surfers in a cold sea.

The next day, it was back into the maw of the airline-industrial complex, back to the tropics, back to a different sea on a different shore.  And now, it's back to work!

Floridians in California: Coral Reef or Cactus?

I've been intrigued by the desert Southwest for many decades.  I have this dream of doing a nuclear road trip:  we'd go to Los Alamos and the Trinity Test Site along with other sites and maybe a pilgrimage to find Terry Tempest Williams. 

My Christmas trip was not that trip, but it was still filled with captivating landscapes.  Even the flight from Ft. Lauderdale to L.A. was revelatory.  I could see the Grand Canyon from the sky.  Amazing.  I always forget that the desert southwest is so mountainous.  Even L.A.:  as we flew on the connecting flight from Las Vegas to L.A., I asked my seatmate, "What's that city down there in the foothills of those mountains?"

She looked at me as if I was crazy and said, "Honey, that's L.A."

I think of L.A. as a Brady Bunch setting, which in my memory is flat and filled with 70's houses, but we didn't do the television side of Southern California.  No, we headed for Palm Desert, a trip filled with many surprises. 

The first was the wind turbines.  Wow.

Can you see the rainbow in the shot below?

Now can you see it?

The shot above gives you a sense of some of the tight clusters of wind turbines.  In some places, it looked like a marching army of robots had taken over the landscape and rooted themselves in row after row.

The highlight of the trip for me was our journey to Joshua Tree National Park.  Amazing landscapes:  those rocks, the scrubby trees, the way you can see how the landscape was formed by plates of the planet crushing together.

As we travelled through the desert, I thought, now I finally understand why someone would major in Geology.  Those rocks and striations were seriously compelling!

As we continued to travel through the desert, I kept feeling haunted by the feeling that I'd seen all this before, up close.  Then it hit me:  the desert looks like the sea floor.  Look at the picture below:  coral reef or cactus?

It's a cactus, of course.  But the pebbles and sand and even some of the plants look so much like the seascapes I've seen when I go scuba diving off the Keys.

It makes sense.  The desert floor was once under water.

Again and again, I was struck by the harshness of the landscape, and how many people have crossed the continent across these landscapes, braving enormous odds, in the hopes of a better life.  I also thought about the poems of mine that have explored these landscapes, even though I hadn't ever been there.  Happily I feel like I got the details right. 

Now for future work.  I've got a poetry due date on Friday:  a response to Eliot's "The Hollow Men," which has some desert imagery in it.  I suspect my poem that I write will have some too.

Tomorrow:  What else we did on our California Christmas vacation.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

I have returned from a big family trip to California to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.  I expect to blog more about the trip later.  But today seems a good day to look back--briefly!--and then to look ahead to 2013.

Goodbye, 2012!

So far, I think that 2012 has been tough enough to make it to the list of worst years of adult life--so far, nothing trumps 2005, and I'm grateful for that.  But no doubt about it, 2012 was rough:

--I had to oversee not one, but two layoffs of faculty during 2012, and in the second one, my job was one of the ones cut.  I applied for a position in the restructuring, and took what was offered.  I'm lucky that my salary remained the same, but the whole experience has led me to reflect on work for pay that will take me to retirement, should I be lucky enough to be financially able to retire.  More on this idea in the next section.

--My husband's health continued to decline as he struggled with pain that comes from not one, but several different disc issues.  Happily, I still have my job which provides our family's health insurance, and the surgery recommended to repair these issues is still covered.  But it does reinforce that we're not getting younger, and this past year has given me a glimpse of a possible future, which I'm hoping we can avoid for at least a few more decades.

--The year began with the funeral of my grandmother, and other signs of mortality abounded.

--We were lucky not to experience hurricanes in South Florida like the ones that made the year 2005 one of my all-time worst years suffered as an adult.  But Hurricane Sandy reminded me that we live in an unsafe place.  I know enough about planetary climate change to believe that no place is safe.

--We sold our condo that we had bought for my husband's mother, who died just as the housing market began its long crash.  In January, we sold it for exactly the amount for which we bought it in 1999.  I feel lucky to have sold it and to be done with the monthly fees and the mortgage.  We didn't buy it as an investment, but I never dreamed it would be such a financial drain.

--Still, it could have been worse.  We didn't have to declare bankruptcy to get out from under that mortgage.  It's been a year of tough finances, which could have been worse:  lots of uncovered medical expenses, lots of car repairs on our aging vehicles.  We have savings and an income.  Still, the unrelenting bills and the inability to save as much as I'd envisioned saving when I made plans for 2012 made this a year full of frustration about finances.

--I try to continue to remember the positives:  I do have a job and companionable colleagues.  I have my health.  I have writing ideas, although never enough time to do all I want.  I have good friends and wonderful family members.  It could all be so much worse.

But hopefully, 2013 will be better!

Hello 2013:

--My experiences at work and my reading and research all leave me convinced that counting on higher ed to take me to retirement is folly.  I'll continue working in higher ed as long as I can, because I do believe in the value of education.  But it's time to make some alternate plans.  I'm still in a period of discernment, and I want to be a bit more focused about that.

--In the meantime, I'll continue saving money and thinking about how to invest that money.


--I suspect that a hundred years from now, historians and scholars of economics will look on this time period that we're living through as the death of the idea that one job should cover all of one's wants and needs.  I have begun the transition to thinking not about a career trajectory, but as creating different income streams.

--By this time next year, I want to have a finished manuscript of my memoir ready, polished, revised, ready for circulating to agents.  One of the visions that I have for the future is to make more money from writing, and ideally, for the writing to take primary place as the way I earn money.  I have a vision of being the Kathleen Norris of my generation.  I have a vision of some other projects that can stem from my memoir that could help me become the Martha Beck or Julia Cameron of my generation.  I know that I am not the only person who struggles with how to integrate her spiritual values with what's expected in today's workplace.  I am not seeing many moderate writers out there who are speaking to those potential readers--lots of Evangelical writers, but not many mainstream ones. 

--I will continue with other artistic projects too.  I'd like to write more poems in 2013.  I want to make a decision about whether or not to weave the different narrative streams of my linked short story project or whether or not I've got 2 manuscripts.  I'd like to write one short story a month, one poem a week, and to work on my manuscript 2-5 days a week.

--And then there's the issue of sending work out into the world.  Could I do a small weekly mailing a week?  That might be too ambitious.  I need to make sure that I send work out into the world at least once a month.  I won't be including my paid blogging for the Living Lutheran site in that target.

--I will lead a retreat for my mom's church group, and I'll continue to help lead the Lutheridge Create in Me retreat.  That work appeals immensely.  In the future, could I fashion some kind of work life that incorporates those activities?

And Beyond:

--I hope that I will look back to the year 2013 as the year that my spouse got rid of his pain and started a trajectory to better health.

--I want to get back to better health habits myself.  I've been eating as if December might have been my last month on earth--lots of high calorie foods.  But I'll likely live to see many more Decembers.  Time to get back to good practices:  exercise, more veggies, less meat, less alcohol, the standard stuff.

--It is time to also think about more effective techniques for dealing with anxiety.  What does that mean?  More rigorous spiritual practices?  Medication?  More journaling offline?  I'm not sure yet.

--If we are to commit to staying in South Florida, is it time to think about a different house in a better neighborhood?  It would cost more per month, but would it pay off as an investment in the long run? 

--Do I need a different kind of training, a different degree?  I don't want to take on much debt to do it.  But I might want to think about getting a certificate to in spiritual direction, something like that.  I could likely get that training while still employed--something my church doesn't have in place (at least not as obviously) for the ordination path.