This Blog Will be Silent for a Few Days

This blog will be silent for a few days; I'm off to fill my sails with the winds of inspiration!  Yes, it's time for that annual break from blogging, time to spend undistracted time with my friends and family, time for the summer pleasures that will be gone too soon.  I'm off to eat watermelon, to grill good foods, to see the world through different eyes, to read a novel or maybe two!

I expect to return to blogging July 5.

Our Perfect Roses and Our Lost Planets

Today is the birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, most famous to most of us for his work The Little Prince. Would we call him one of the first generation of airline pilots?  Yes, I think I would.  He loved extreme places:  the airplane, the skies where the airplane took him, the desert.

But it's with The Little Prince that he's left a mark on the world.  Ah, the classic tale of a traveler longing to return to his home planet!  I seem to be bumping into that theme frequently these days (Super 8 is the example that stands out most; I could also argue that the political wrangling that goes on in DC these days is about a longing to return to a home of sorts, a time when the world was safer and deficits were smaller and the future looked brighter).

I first read The Little Prince the summer after third grade.  It was the first time I was away from my parents, at Lutheridge.  I'd been to that camp before, but always with my parents.  I didn't really like the camp experience that year.  I remember feeling sad and lonely and not like the other girls--a feeling not unfamiliar to me some days, even now, and I suspect most creative types continue to feel this way throughout life.

My mom had slipped this slim novel into my suitcase as a surprise for me to find.  I loved the book, and I still feel fondness for it because it got me through a rough patch--again, a familiar feeling.

Later, I would read it in French class, both in high school and in college.  If third graders can read it in English, then it's easy enough for first or second year French students!

I seem to recall a film version, with Gene Wilder as the fox.

Ah, that fox that wanted to be tamed, that fox who showed us that the problem with loving is that we are likely to lose the ones we love--except that we've never really lost them, as long as we have our memories.

Here's a nugget of wisdom from the fox:  "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;  what is essential is invisible to the eye" (p. 87).

May you only tame the things/people/characters/symbols for whom you want to be responsible!

Radicals and Theologians, Comics and Politicians

Today is another day when Garrison Keillor has put together an assortment of birthdays and anniversaries in this web posting that made me say, "Hmm.  Interesting how all of these have impacted my life."

Today is the birthday of Henry VIII, long ago.  You might say, "Why on earth would that birth in 1491 affect you?"  To be honest, I've been more affected by the birth of Henry's daughter Elizabeth.  You may remember her as one of the greatest rulers ever, male or female--at least, that's what I was taught long ago.  We could spend a pleasant evening debating who's the best ruler in history--maybe several evenings. 

But I'm most impacted by Elizabeth's support of the arts.  Would we have had a William Shakespeare and all those other great Elizabethan writers without her, without the culture she created that supported the arts?

Or perhaps I've been more impacted by her support of exploration of the New World, although we might give future British rulers, like Charles, more credit.  As a woman who spent much of her teenage years in and around Virginia, it's hard to escape her impact.

Henry VIII has influenced me in other ways.  I think of him as one of the fathers of the Reformation, even if he began as a "defender of the faith"--the Roman Catholic faith, that is.  Still, the man went on to create the Church of England, which has influenced me, and the literature I have loved, in many ways.

Today is also the birthday of John Wesley, another great Protestant figure.  Yes, I know I'm a Lutheran, not an Anglican or a Methodist, but it's impossible to ignore the greatness of these men.  I wrote more about Wesley in today's post on my theology blog.

It's Rousseau's birthday too.  He spent much of his life thinking about issues of inequality, issues that impact us today as much as they did in his lifetime.  His works inspired the leaders of the French Revolution, which inspired so many of the British authors I love, before it all went terribly wrong.

We might even stretch and say that those ideas affected the gay men who decided they were tired of unequal treatment and who stood their ground during the uprising that came to be known as the Stonewall Riots.  I'm a woman who believes that oppression anywhere threatens freedom everywhere, so I would have cheered those men, had I been old enough to know what was going on.

It's also the birthday of Gilda Radner, who blazed a different trail, but who made the world a little bit more free.  I'm so grateful to all those 1970's era feminists who showed us a multitude of ways to be a woman.  We think of the 60's as an era that made great strides towards freedom, but I could make an even stronger case that the 70's made us all more free than the 1960's.  I mourned her early death, because she had such creativity and fearlessness.

Yes, I realize there is still much work to do.  Much of the world's women and homosexuals and people who are different in any kind of way are still under increasing threat as they face ever more difficult obstacles.  But I would argue that we've made strides I didn't think we would see in my lifetime:  Nelson Mandela not only released from prison but elected president of South Africa, East Europe shaking off the shackles of Communism, a president of mixed race for our own country, the fact that we're almost at the point where more women get college degrees than men--wow!

Yes, all it takes is the melting of one large enough ice shelf, and our attention will turn to survival of a completely different kind.  The apocalypse that haunts me is very different from those of the past.  But still, humans have shown great dexterity in dealing with those kind of crises--indeed, it is often those very crises, from the political dramas that Henry VIII and Elizabeth handled so deftly to the French Revolution to the human rights demands of the twentieth century, that change our lives so dramatically.

When you're tired of arguing about whether or not Elizabeth I was one of the world's greatest rulers, you can amuse yourselves at dinner parties by wondering what revolutions are changing the world for future generations right now, even as we may not perceive them doing that.  What young theologians are travelling hundreds of miles, like John Wesley?  What other ideas are inspiring those who would overturn our world?  What great characters, comic and otherwise, will young comedians create in response to all these changes?  And will any of it matter, as the seas rise and the continents burn?

Carpe Diem Summer and Beyond!

Bookgirl has a great post about her planned carpe diem summer.  Her post has all sorts of applications, from our individual lives, to a great teaching idea that incorporates the British Romantic poets.  She says, "I’m not going to go fight in a War of Independence in Greece, get a fever, and die. I’m not that ambitious. These are just small moments. I’m starting a list."

Her list contains all sorts of things she'd like to do this summer, things like going to the beach more often, having picnics, going to the zoo, going to a drive-in movie. 

I love the idea of having a list.  I've found that having a list of books I plan to read during the year not only helps me remember some of the books I meant to read, but it keeps me reading more in general.  Maybe I should generate a carpe diem list every so often.

So, what would be on my list this summer?  Let's see . . .

--go to the beach more often (why live here, after all, with all the extra expense, if I'm not going to the beach?).
--go kayaaking in our local park
--swim in my friends' pools
--make homemade ice cream
--grill corn on the cob
--enjoy watermelon
--go to one of the tourist attractions in the area where I haven't gone before, like Vizcaya
--SCUBA or snorkel more
--go to yoga class more regularly
--finish creating the fountain that we started building last year

I'd like to have items from my childhood on the list, like chasing fireflies, but we don't have fireflies down here.  But some of the things on the list are from my childhood, like homemade ice cream and grilled foods and watermelon.

In some ways, my list feels like a bit of a cheat.  I'm likely to do a lot of these things, like eating watermelon and swimming in friends' pools, anyway, list or no list.

One of my colleagues at work told me that I have a rich life, and I felt a bit surprised.  In some respects, I do have a rich life; I have time for creative pursuits, I read widely, I have friends who are willing to meet me for lunch, I have a spouse who's willing to have adventures with me, and I have a bit of extra money and a bit of extra discretionary time.  I'm lucky in many respects.

Now, if I could just hush my inner voice, which says, "No, if I had a truly rich life, I'd be spending the summer in a French vineyard.  I'd be the poet-in-residence at that vineyard.  I'd be paid to sit on a flagstone patio, sip wine, and write blog posts about the whole experience."

Of course, I recognize these tendencies.  I wrote a poem about it.  I won't post the whole thing, because I'm hopeful it will be published elsewhere before I post it here.  But here's a stanza from my poem "Tuscany Dreams":

No one mentions the cost of phone
calls to all the ones left behind in the move
to Tuscany. It’s all sun-drenched
colors and fresh foods, and no one suffers
homesickness in Tuscany.

We Were Artists Once and Young: "Super 8"

A few nights ago, I went to see Super 8 at the movie theatre.  As I watched the special effects, which made me gasp, I thought about how rarely I see movies on the big screen anymore and how wonderful it can be.  Of course, there was only one other person in the movie theatre besides me and the two friends with me, so we avoided many of the things that annoy me about seeing going to the theatre--like people who can't put their phones away, so we get little glowing screens across the theatre.

What a wonderful movie.  On some level, I agree with Ann Hornaday, who in this review says, "Set in 1979, this is a pop-culture nostalgia trip that feels as if it’s been beamed from a sweeter, more innocent time, when youngsters could tear around on bikes all night without texting home and when the height of technological innovation was a clunky, cassette-playing Sony Walkman."  I wanted to see the movie because I always find it intriguing to see how movies set in the past that I can remember handle that part of the setting.  This movie rewards that kind of viewing.  At one point, the kids bring their film to the shop and ask if it can be developed overnight.  The stoned clerk gives them a dismissive look and says, "Kid, nobody can develop film overnight."  Oh, how things have changed!

I didn't expect the movie to be so much about the artistic process, about creativity, about how children grow up to become artists.  By now, you probably know that the kids in the film are shooting a movie.  I didn't expect them to be approaching it so professionally.  They have costumes and make-up and a variety of special effects.  They rewrite the script to take advantage of some of the background shots that they can use.  Time and time again, I thought, wow, these kids are real artists, devoted to their craft, going to all lengths to make the piece of art they want to make.

But why should that surprise me?  These kids are closer to the age of childhood than adulthood.  It's adults, most of them, who have forgotten how to be creative, adults who have abandoned their artist selves.  Children have a tendency to create, often rather exhaustively.  My nephew who just turned five will create all sorts of things out of paper:  pirate accessories and weapons and creatures and books and clothes.  My nephew has transformed every old blank book my sister has into books of his own.  I love his zest--the same way I love the children in Super 8.

But they're not just making movies.  One of the kids creates explosions of all sorts, which might seem more like a destructive streak than a creative one, but he's more interested in the explosion than in destroying anything.  The main character paints models (trains and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example).  One of the plot points revolves around whether or not he'll let his best friend the filmmaker destroy one of his trains for the sake of the movie.

Ah, the eternal question:  which art form gets to reign supreme?  I've wrestled with this question my whole life, as a creative person who enjoys a wide variety of art forms but who only has so much time in the day.

I love the collaborative process that we see in this movie.  I miss that aspect of my own childhood, where we worked on puppet shows.  I miss that aspect of undergraduate school, where we had the same spirit of camaraderie as we worked on putting together the student newspaper, the literary journal, various plays.

I don't feel that same sense of camaraderie in my current work life, but maybe I'm just looking at it wrong.  In twenty years, maybe I'll look back and say, "Oh how I miss that sense of camaraderie we had while we were working together to create the best school possible for our students."

Or maybe I just need to create some collaborative artistic projects as an adult.  It may not be as easy as it was when I was younger and we went to school together and we didn't have the distractions/obligations that we have now.  But it would be worthwhile.

An update:  I can't leave this movie alone!  For my thoughts on the theological aspects of this movie, go to this post on my theology blog.

"Dark and Like a Web"--Let Yourself Be Caught

Back in April, when some of us wrote a poem a day and others of us committed to ramping up our poetry reading, Nic Sebastian started writing prayers and charms. She posted them to her blog for about a week before she realized she was creating something deep and special. Months later, lucky readers receive this collection of 15 poems in a chapbook Dark And Like A Web: Brief Notes On and To the Divine.

With that subtitle, it should surprise no one that these poems circle around religious themes. I love what she does with prayer beads, for example (“containing prayer beads and Bangkok,” “containing prayer beads and Villa de Leyva,” and “containing prayer beads and Muscat”). Before reading these poems, I’m not sure I realized how many religious traditions use prayer beads. She uses prayer beads not only to explore issues surrounding God, but also to explore romantic relationships and family relationships.

As I discussed yesterday, I approached this collection via many different mediums. When I heard Sebastian read the end of “containing prayer beads and Villa de Leyva,” I saw the poem differently. The last three lines give us the prayer beads around the wrist of the speaker “twisted tight red and beautiful / glint in sinking sun”—it wasn’t until I heard Sebastian read these lines that I saw them as threatening in some way. Her voice made me consider the twisting, the violence that seems inherent in the lines, but only once I heard them.

Variations of the color red filter through this collection along with many other colors, among them silver, gold and amber, black and charcoal. With her rich and varied use of color, her work becomes visual.

Sebastian uses a variety of images, some of them religious (like the prayer beads), but many of them not. Even some of the more overtly religious images aren’t used in a way that most of us would find offensive or offputting. For example, in “on escaping your toils,” Sebastian envisions life as a church bell:

I would hang high and be tuned for tenor
to ring birth death danger

and love
quite indifferently

It’s an interesting image, the church bell high above the landscape below, punctuating the lives lived.

As I read through the book, and reread it while listening to Sebastian read, I came away with different meanings. For example, until I heard Sebastian’s interpretation, I didn’t even think about the different ways that these lines could be read:

the girl watches deeply
under constant sun, never feels
she is alone

When I read it, I thought the girl never felt alone. When I heard Sebastian read it, the lines feel foreboding, the girl abandoned.

These poems wrestle with all sorts of issues of abandonment, which again makes sense, considering the subtitle of the collection Our days rush by, our lovers zoom in and out of our lives, yet we continue to be yanked by those we have loved, as if they’re a hook or a moon pulling, pulling, pulling (images found in "on the face of loneliness"). What does it all mean? Does it do any good to light our candles?

The last poem, “when you come to me in the dark of night,” gives a sense of hope, but not definitive answer. This poem promises reunion, and the collection closes this way, “I rise whole from the pool at sunrise / and step onto you as onto a straight road / lined with cypress trees and warbler song.” I like the ambiguity of the lines. Is the speaker talking to a lover? To God? Is the speaker God?

The poem works on all these levels, and makes me want to go back to reread the whole collection some more, even though I’ve read it several times. Will I discover other submerged religious possibilities? Perhaps the hours in “the girl and the hours” refers to the practice of praying on a regular basis? Perhaps the breath in “the names of my breath” has a larger significance than I first thought? My brain whirls with the vision of the God of Christian tradition, the God who creates by breathing, the God who comes in the form of the Holy Spirit through a huge exhale of sorts (the rushing wind of Pentecost).

Am I making too much of these connections? Is my inner English major self winning a battle she shouldn’t be fighting? Is my inner theology student self seeing connections that aren't there?  Happily, there’s plenty in this collection for all sorts of readers. Those of us who like to take analysis to new heights will be richly rewarded. Those of us who like to let the words wash over us will find many delights, especially if we let Sebastian read to us. This collection offers many delights, and since you have so many ways to access it, most of them free if you go here, you shouldn’t miss it.

Does the Delivery System Impact My Reading Experience?

As I thought about the latest book I want to review, Nic Sebastian's Dark and Like a Web, I realized I had an opportunity that I don't often have.  So far, Nic has committed to offering her books in the widest variety of formats possible.  If you go here, you can order a chapbook in traditional book form, download a PDF, download in a format that your portable device will deliver to you, download a sound file, and/or order a CD.  Wow.  And I'm humbled to think that Nic mastered all this technology herself; she gives an overview here, with links to the more technical information.

A brief aside, before we get to my reading experiment.  If you're fascinated by the nanopress experiment that Nic describes here, but the technology scares you, Nic has a special offer here, where she offers to do the tech part for a worthy project.

Another aside:  yes, I realize that my experiment has limitations, because I'm not brand new to the text after the first time.  I'm not sure what to do about that.  But my experiment, simply put, was to try the different formats to see if my reading experience changed.  I could only go so far because I don't have a portable device that can deliver text like that.  I've taken to calling my cell phone "my stupid phone."  I mean that in more ways than one.  But I digress.

My print copy of the chapbook came on Monday night, and I devoured it right away.  I fell in love with the cover:  so apocalyptic, as if Turner, the British Romantic artist, decided to paint the end of the world.  I loved the readability of the print.  At first, the glossiness of the paper felt strange to my fingers, but I quickly got used to it.

I read the book the way I always do:  I skipped around first, seeing which lines caught my eyes, which titles appealed, which poems pulled me in the first time my eyes saw them.  I looked for themes, which I saw immediately:  prayer beads make their way through several poems, and I saw lots of colors, especially silvers and reds.

It was late, and I was tired after a hard workout (an hour of yoga, followed by an hour of circuit training), so I put the book aside.  To be truthful, it wasn't until the next day that I had my "aha!" moment and developed my plan.

I have long loved Nic Sebastian's voice, and I've said before that I'd listen to her read the phone book.  So, the opportunity to hear her read the book was too good to resist.  But first I wanted to read it silently, from the beginning to the end.  I did.  I loved it; I'll write a proper review tomorrow.

Then, I downloaded the PDF file.  Unlike some PDF files, I found it easy to navigate.  I could move through the pages without that annoying slowdown that PDF files at work seem to have.  When I read a PDF file at work, sometimes I feel like there are hooks behind my monitor and the text gets caught on them, only to be released and go tumbling by too fast (I have that same experience with Facebook, which is why I'm not on Facebook as often as some people).  Happily, I didn't have that problem with Nic's book as PDF file.

I didn't notice a different reading experience with the PDF file.  Next, it was on to the audio file, which I listened to with the print version open.  That experience was my favorite.  For the most part, hearing Nic read enriched my reading.  In some spots, her reading made me view the poem differently.

Let's take the last three lines of "the girl and the hours" as the best example:

the girl watches deeply
under constant sun, never feels
she is alone

Read those lines several times.  How do you interpret them?  I didn't even realize that several interpretations existed until I listened to Nic read.  Then I went back to the lines and said, "Hmm.  Look at what she's done there."  In case you want to replicate my experiment, I'll refrain from saying more until my review tomorrow.  I had a similar experience with the end of "containing prayer beads and Villa de Leyva."

For my final listening experience/experiment, I listened to Nic read without following along.  By now, I had read each poem at least 3 times.  Honestly, I didn't expect to hear anything new.

Yet I did.  The poem "containing prayer beads and Bangkok" ends this way:

a year later in deep Seattle
winter I pull the japa mala
from my prayer bag
and cannot speak

I was listening, and I said, "Wait.  There's a prayer bag?  Not just a purse of some kind?"  Sure enough, a plum detail I had missed.

I'm guessing that reading on a portable device would have yielded similar results, unless there were hyperlinks, and then all bets would be off.  I try not to click on links until I'm done with a reading, but I suspect most readers aren't that disciplined.

Lately, whenever I'm in the company of serious readers, the talk seems to turn to various e-readers and the future of print.  One friend, who was trained as a computer scientist decades ago, rejects all e-readers because she doesn't trust batteries and electric sources.  I'm sympathetic to that view, especially after hearing about the experience of another computer specialist friend who took his brand new Kindle on a cruise, only to have it crash the first hour of the first day, leaving him without his specially selected books during the whole cruise and at the mercy of the ship's library.  My English high school teacher friend adores her Kindle and can't imagine life without it.  The rest of us are somewhat dispassionate.

If someone gave me a Kindle or an iPad, I'd use it.  But plunk down my hard-earned money?  Not yet.  If I had a stint of travel that involved several weeks, I'd be tempted.  Those books do constitute the weight of my luggage.  Books and shoes--my travelling conundrum.

I tend to read individual poems online, and if I like them well enough, I yearn to buy the book, and I want a physical book, not a PDF file.  I want some pennies to go back to the poet.  It's even more thrilling when I've watched a collection emerge.  I remember when Nic started writing these poems, which began as "prayers and charms" that she took on as her National Poetry Month writing project.  I remember reading one of them, but I don't remember which one, and thinking, wow, she is diving deep.

I had a similar experience with Mary Biddinger's Saint Monica poems.  As long ago as 2008, she was working on these poems and blogging about them (for example, this post, where she contemplates how to organize them into a book).  And now, finally, the book arrived yesterday.

Happily, I didn't have to wait that long for Nic's collection, although it's a collection worth the wait.  Tomorrow, I'll post a review.  In the meantime, if you want to read it first, you have many different ways to access the work here.  That instant access is something that paper books haven't mastered.