I have this unproductive habit of sending myself links to articles I've read that I want to be able to reread or access later. It makes for a cluttered inbox, and often I forget about them anyway. Though we now spend hours curating visuals on Pinterest, I've wondered about practical ways to curate writing or written information. For now, this may be the best place to keep track of things like this. And maybe I'm not the only one who will enjoy them. Let me know if you do!
So anyway. Here's some things I've been reading as of late.
Men v. Women and Literary Fiction
...and a response to the above piece on The Rumpus.
Beautiful piece about Jonathan Safran Foer, on the occasion of his 35th birthday in March.
Advice from Jack Kerouac.
The mainstream seems to be finally into 20-something females telling their own stories.
...like this one, on our relationships with people and our bodies.
On waiting during Holy Week, and otherwise.
Another of the very many reasons why reading is important.
What have you been reading online lately?
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Watching: Blue Like Jazz the Movie
When I was working at Pura Vida Missions in Costa Rica, during the summer of 2005, I picked up a book that was being passed around the staff house. I read as much as I could in about an hour and a half, and didn't have time to read it again until I got back to the States and received a gift certificate to a local Christian bookstore from my church as a graduation gift. It was the only book in the bookstore that I wanted.
I don't remember how long it took me to finish it, but I'm sure it was quick.
I picked up a book in Costa Rica in 2005, and it changed how I think. It helped me forge a more sustainable faith outside of my beautiful, rural little valley*, where, for the most part, if you followed the rules, God and your family were happy. (This is clearly not a sustainable worldview; but truth be told, I often still live like I believe it.)
When I found out it was going to be made into a movie, I was ecstatic. When I found out there wasn't enough money to finish, I was upset. When I found out about the Kickstarter campaign to save it, I donated.
And now it is here. I was lucky enough to be invited to an early screening party in March, and honestly, I can't wait to see it again when it opens near Philadelphia on April 20. It's opening in many other cities this weekend. If you have the chance, please go see it as soon as you possibly can.
If you're worried about it being a dishonest, tacky, cheesy, unrealistic movie, don't be. Really. It doesn't focus on what is "right." It focuses on what is real, true. Maybe that is what is "right" after all. It tells the truth. "Christian art," (whatever that means) like any art, needs to tell the truth, regardless of what it looks like. Sufjan Stevens is quoted in a Paste mPlayer article: "If you are an artist of faith, then you have the responsibility to manage the principles of your faith wisely lest they be reduced to stereotype, which is patronizing to the church and to the word, and, perhaps, to God." Donald Miller and Steve Taylor do not patronize. They tell the truth.
Honestly, I wasn't sure how Blue Like Jazz the book could or would become Blue Like Jazz the movie. If you've read it, you probably know what I mean. It's hard to make a movie out of a book of personal essays. But, I really do think that the movie does capture the heart of the book. For me, they are two distinct works, but flow out of each other seamlessly.
*I do want to note, mostly because I care what people think, that I did not grow up in a place anything like where Movie Don comes from in Texas. My beautiful, rural little valley is isolated (and can be an isolating place) and consists of cornfields, cows, Mennonite farmers, and women who bake very delicious pies and show up at your doorstep with supper when you're going through something hard. I am glad I grew up there, and I think very highly of it.
I don't remember how long it took me to finish it, but I'm sure it was quick.
I picked up a book in Costa Rica in 2005, and it changed how I think. It helped me forge a more sustainable faith outside of my beautiful, rural little valley*, where, for the most part, if you followed the rules, God and your family were happy. (This is clearly not a sustainable worldview; but truth be told, I often still live like I believe it.)
When I found out it was going to be made into a movie, I was ecstatic. When I found out there wasn't enough money to finish, I was upset. When I found out about the Kickstarter campaign to save it, I donated.
And now it is here. I was lucky enough to be invited to an early screening party in March, and honestly, I can't wait to see it again when it opens near Philadelphia on April 20. It's opening in many other cities this weekend. If you have the chance, please go see it as soon as you possibly can.
If you're worried about it being a dishonest, tacky, cheesy, unrealistic movie, don't be. Really. It doesn't focus on what is "right." It focuses on what is real, true. Maybe that is what is "right" after all. It tells the truth. "Christian art," (whatever that means) like any art, needs to tell the truth, regardless of what it looks like. Sufjan Stevens is quoted in a Paste mPlayer article: "If you are an artist of faith, then you have the responsibility to manage the principles of your faith wisely lest they be reduced to stereotype, which is patronizing to the church and to the word, and, perhaps, to God." Donald Miller and Steve Taylor do not patronize. They tell the truth.
Honestly, I wasn't sure how Blue Like Jazz the book could or would become Blue Like Jazz the movie. If you've read it, you probably know what I mean. It's hard to make a movie out of a book of personal essays. But, I really do think that the movie does capture the heart of the book. For me, they are two distinct works, but flow out of each other seamlessly.
*I do want to note, mostly because I care what people think, that I did not grow up in a place anything like where Movie Don comes from in Texas. My beautiful, rural little valley is isolated (and can be an isolating place) and consists of cornfields, cows, Mennonite farmers, and women who bake very delicious pies and show up at your doorstep with supper when you're going through something hard. I am glad I grew up there, and I think very highly of it.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Life and Deadlines
I am good at deadlines, as long as they are set by others and those others expect me to meet them. I will meet deadlines; I will meet expectations.
I've never been good at making and keeping my own deadlines, being boring, doing the work. Maybe I don't treat my "work" (or aspirations thereof) seriously enough.
But for the past couple months, I gave myself permission to not even pretend to have deadlines. To live instead. To not be boring. To not do the work. It was easy to excuse this: I started a new job in December and I'm settling into the schedule and commute; the weather has been unseasonably delightful; we've been busy with life, really. But I sense that I'm coming to the end of my excuse rope. Time's up.
I often don't understand how some of the bloggers I read have time to live all the wonderful experiences they blog and photograph and upload all those pictures and deconstruct all those events, even if the event is just a perfectly styled weekend trip to the park. Doesn't all that documenting interrupt the actual living? How do they manage their time and relationships? I mean, really, who has that kind of time? Part of me gets jealous. But just because I'm not obsessively documenting everything doesn't mean I'm not also having delightful experiences of my own.
Anyway, here are a few of the things I've been enjoying lately.
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(Pablo is also envious of my time and is sad when I spend too much of it on the computer!)
Thursday, January 26, 2012
On (Relative) Stability
Feist - Get It Wrong, Get It Right by Interscope Records
This has been the first full year that I have lived in the same space since 2004. I spent college moving from building to building, sometimes for as little as six weeks before moving again. I took very few of my things to Spain for five to six months. After graduating, I moved back in with my parents for a short time, then moved into the fortunate (in some ways) unfortunate (in most ways) basement cave when Chadoh and I got married. Then we moved out, into his parents' house. Two months later, he moved to West Chester, and I moved back in with my parents. I drove six hours roundtrip every weekend for two and half months.
This realization has evoked some unexpected reactions in me. For example, simultaneously wanting to move to San Francisco and wanting desperately, to the point of tantrum, to move back to Central PA. Wanting to run from the work of building a life. Wanting to run back to a place where I've already done it so effortlessly.
We are building a life here. We've been here long enough for me to say that and not doubt it. We've been here long enough for me to say it and not resent the effort it's taken. It takes.
Because it hasn't been easy. For years, I thought that I wanted to move around to so many different places. Different coasts, different continents. I thought it would be easy for me, I would enjoy it. But here, I haven't. It comes as a shock, still.
It might just be West Chester. Chadoh and I aren't suburb people. We have learned this. I have learned this. Though, I'm also learning that maybe it's ok to change. That if maybe I want something different than I thought I did, we can still revise. We can always revise. We can revise, and it will all be ok.
This has been the first full year that I have lived in the same space since 2004. I spent college moving from building to building, sometimes for as little as six weeks before moving again. I took very few of my things to Spain for five to six months. After graduating, I moved back in with my parents for a short time, then moved into the fortunate (in some ways) unfortunate (in most ways) basement cave when Chadoh and I got married. Then we moved out, into his parents' house. Two months later, he moved to West Chester, and I moved back in with my parents. I drove six hours roundtrip every weekend for two and half months.
This realization has evoked some unexpected reactions in me. For example, simultaneously wanting to move to San Francisco and wanting desperately, to the point of tantrum, to move back to Central PA. Wanting to run from the work of building a life. Wanting to run back to a place where I've already done it so effortlessly.
We are building a life here. We've been here long enough for me to say that and not doubt it. We've been here long enough for me to say it and not resent the effort it's taken. It takes.
Because it hasn't been easy. For years, I thought that I wanted to move around to so many different places. Different coasts, different continents. I thought it would be easy for me, I would enjoy it. But here, I haven't. It comes as a shock, still.
It might just be West Chester. Chadoh and I aren't suburb people. We have learned this. I have learned this. Though, I'm also learning that maybe it's ok to change. That if maybe I want something different than I thought I did, we can still revise. We can always revise. We can revise, and it will all be ok.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Debt v. Travel
Chadoh and I have been blessed with parents who lovingly believed that we needed to learn responsibility by paying for our own college. It was hard to be at a super-expensive school with lots of kids from the suburbs ("Where are you from?" "Oh, just outside of Philly." Every. Single. Time.) whose parents felt responsible for paying for everything. But ultimately, we're both grateful for our school debt, in an odd way. Our educations were earned. Not just by studying, but, at least for me, by working from the time I was old enough to carry a bucket, feeding calves, milking cows, working in a plastic bag factory, living at home for a short time before we got married, and then living in a super gross basement apartment with super cheap rent.
With my recent acquisition of a JOB!, we have a plan for our debt. We had been paying on it a bit aggressively before now, but we now have an even more aggressive plan. We should be finished paying for our undergrad debt by the end of 2012, and my teaching certification debt in early 2013.
This is a rather ballsy goal, but it's totally attainable. (If I stay out of the sale rack at the Gap when they have 40% off clearance sales.)
However.
Today I found my passport. I don't recall seeing it since we went to Montreal two summers ago. Throw a move across town in there, and it's a small miracle that I found it at all.
A passport is possibility. Mobility. Potential. Freedom.
Add to that one friend in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso (who desperately wants us to visit her), a student teaching co-op who spent winter break in Madrid, reading missionary blogs (ok, really just one), another friend who has talked about how she just wants to GO, an acquaintance who has "GO" tattooed on the back of her neck (see: The Great Commission), a history of missions trips and study abroad experience, a decent command of a second language, and almost two and a half years of not leaving the country, and I am itching to fly across borders.
But. Buying plane tickets is not congruent with our plan to get out from under our student loan debt in record time. Hopefully I can reconcile this by remembering how much interest we'll save by paying loans back early, and that we'll have more money when we don't have these payments. Delayed gratification of international travel will be hard for me, for sure, but maybe we'll appreciate it more. That way, our travel, our experience, our mobility, like our education, will be appreciated more. Earned.
With my recent acquisition of a JOB!, we have a plan for our debt. We had been paying on it a bit aggressively before now, but we now have an even more aggressive plan. We should be finished paying for our undergrad debt by the end of 2012, and my teaching certification debt in early 2013.
This is a rather ballsy goal, but it's totally attainable. (If I stay out of the sale rack at the Gap when they have 40% off clearance sales.)
However.
Today I found my passport. I don't recall seeing it since we went to Montreal two summers ago. Throw a move across town in there, and it's a small miracle that I found it at all.
A passport is possibility. Mobility. Potential. Freedom.
Add to that one friend in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso (who desperately wants us to visit her), a student teaching co-op who spent winter break in Madrid, reading missionary blogs (ok, really just one), another friend who has talked about how she just wants to GO, an acquaintance who has "GO" tattooed on the back of her neck (see: The Great Commission), a history of missions trips and study abroad experience, a decent command of a second language, and almost two and a half years of not leaving the country, and I am itching to fly across borders.
But. Buying plane tickets is not congruent with our plan to get out from under our student loan debt in record time. Hopefully I can reconcile this by remembering how much interest we'll save by paying loans back early, and that we'll have more money when we don't have these payments. Delayed gratification of international travel will be hard for me, for sure, but maybe we'll appreciate it more. That way, our travel, our experience, our mobility, like our education, will be appreciated more. Earned.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
It is not the bleak midwinter
There is little winter to be seen. This is a moldy off-season, giving allergies, vertigo, and general fuzzy-headedness.
A fuzzy head isn't helpful when starting a new job.
Yes, a new job. A new job reading documents, rearranging words.
Something that has seemed completely unattainable for me for several years. Since I had to quit my job at the newspaper to make more money to support Chadoh and I, almost four years ago.
But now, it all becomes clear. One of the reasons why I spent more time than I would have liked working in a state-run career center, so that we could have health insurance and afford to live in a basement apartment with mold issues of its own.
Life is literature. There is foreshadowing. Sometimes we have to do things that don't make sense so everything can make sense later.
I won't get to spend as much time at home for Christmas this year. But a job is better than a vacation. And I still will get to see my family, go to church with them on Christmas Eve, make mush for breakfast on Christmas morning, and stick around for my mom's birthday the day after.
Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get a festive holiday dusting. Just a bit of snow on the grass. But certainly won't be snow on snow. Not yet, anyway.
A fuzzy head isn't helpful when starting a new job.
Yes, a new job. A new job reading documents, rearranging words.
Something that has seemed completely unattainable for me for several years. Since I had to quit my job at the newspaper to make more money to support Chadoh and I, almost four years ago.
But now, it all becomes clear. One of the reasons why I spent more time than I would have liked working in a state-run career center, so that we could have health insurance and afford to live in a basement apartment with mold issues of its own.
Life is literature. There is foreshadowing. Sometimes we have to do things that don't make sense so everything can make sense later.
I won't get to spend as much time at home for Christmas this year. But a job is better than a vacation. And I still will get to see my family, go to church with them on Christmas Eve, make mush for breakfast on Christmas morning, and stick around for my mom's birthday the day after.
Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get a festive holiday dusting. Just a bit of snow on the grass. But certainly won't be snow on snow. Not yet, anyway.
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