in the long night season

I'm sitting on my couch. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the blinds lowered over the window. Except that they hang crooked. I can never seem to get them even. Those two strings never hold with the right amount of tension. The side that's higher lifts inches above the window sill. Beyond it, a small, insistent glow from the white Christmas lights I left strung around my porch peers through the dark night and into my window. Drops from the first (late) winter rain sit on the window. They catch its light and sparkle. The condensation blurs the edges. Around it all: night.

This is life right now: dark mornings, dark evenings, couch-sitting, small details, mundane details, crooked details that I still can't seem to get right after all these years. Tension held un-balanced. January is all about starting small, slow, silent, a stark contrast to the bright, fast, full December we just paraded through. Hopefully, it's about noticing, about keeping candles lit and lights glowing even if they're small, about the grace that holds a never balanced life -- still whole, and worth living.

These are the first attempts at creative words I've written in over a month. Of the many things I may have learned about myself over this past year, one is that words are hard-won is transition. The un-balance is weeks and months when my head is wrapping itself around how to live. I haven't yet learned to dig words out until I'm on the other side. Something else I've learned, or am learning, is how darkness creeps in after those large, bright full days are over until night is longer than day. But night seasons are part of how the world moves and spins, how it turns over, part of the creation God called "good" (is what my pastor said yesterday, and I am trying to believe him).

Or maybe this is the way I am supposed to write it: after many long nights, day will always become longer than night, and something brighter than twinkling Christmas lights will announce itself through the cracks in my crooked blinds. I'm sitting here. I'm waiting.

[If you are reading, thanks for joining me here. I may or may not be adding more words in the coming weeks... stay tuned.]

photo: sunrise at griffith park

to be the child still

I sat near Sue on her couch. She had pulled the curtains to keep the room cool on that hot yellow morning in late October and laid out a platter of fruit and crackers on the ottoman in front of us. 

Across from the couch, on the shelf under the tv was a row of children’s books, and in the corner a posterboard decorated with stickers of friendly skulls and witch hats in green, orange and white – indicators of her nearly four-year-old granddaughter.

Sue lives with her daughter's family. Among Sue’s many roles is to take her granddaughter to preschool each morning and pick her up each day at noon. They made those Halloween posterboards together, and I’m guessing they also read those books and play with Sammy, the small brown dog who laid sleepily in the corner of the room while Sue and I talked.

I figured Sue was eager to talk about her granddaughter, and I wanted to know, so I asked. She’s just so creative, Sue said proudly. You should see what she does with legos. She told me how, every time there’s another birthday in the extended family, her granddaughter will bring out her legos and build a cake, complete with characters or figures on top, just like the Dory figurines that sat atop her cake when she turned three.

It wasn’t the details of the story that got me. Lego cakes are not that unusual. I have seen a lot of kids do a lot of things with legos. Instead, it was the way Sue told me, with such conviction that what her granddaughter created was unmatched and delight in how she sees this young one bringing forth what is inside her. In that moment, I became the child again, eager to demonstrate what I can do, eager for a subjective audience who sees me through eyes clouded with love. Maybe this is the way my Father talks about me, I thought, about the things I’m writing and about the ways I tried to love people in Kenya and the new ventures I’m embarking on.

I wanted to sit with this longer, to be the child still, but Sue kept talking, about her granddaughter and all manner of things. I put my childish desires aside but it came back to me later, when I was alone, and now, as I sit and write and build and take very seriously what might be clumsy lego birthday cakes but, to some, seem to change the world.

***

(photo: not Sue's granddaughter)

looking intently (or, trying)

I used to write in places where I was anonymous or alone. Coffee shops or my kitchen table. Now I write in a garden where guests and friends interrupt me, even when I wear my headphones. I write less this way, but most of the time I have more fun.

A man today told me God will bless me with a well-paying job after my time in Kenya. The other week, a guest told me God has a gentleman set aside for me. I wonder if these words are from the Spirit of God; I wonder about the spiritual lives of these bearers of blessings, if I can trust the blessings to bring their fruit. Either way, can't I trust that there is something good and full in the words they have spoken -- a wish for a full life?

I was supposed to teach English at a community center today, but instead I took the day off. Which actually led to deeper work than I probably would have done if I'd carried on with my schedule.

Kenyans ask me for things. They see a mzungu and assume I can help. It's not a magic wand they seek, but the advantage of privilege. Money isn't just money; to give is a sign of friendship. I am learning to respect that, and to understand the ways I really am able to help.

Kenyans are also extremely generous. Don't discount the treasure of a smile, a spoken blessing, friendship, English, welcome, tea.

At first, time here seemed long and slow. Just the other day, it turned fast and short. And a lot easier. Now I realize how the struggle of those early days demanded my attention, required intention. I don't want to float through these last few weeks and realize I still wanted to more. (I want to want more now, and go after it.)

I want to see need here the way it is to be seen, not through my own lens of what should be had. I want to see provision and help through the lens of those who will receive it.

what it was about

But when the words mean even more than the writer knew they meant, then the writer has been listening. And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand. 

Mary did not always understand.  But one does not have to understand to be obedient. Instead of understanding -- that intellectual understanding, which we are so fond of -- there is a feeling of rightness, of knowing, knowing things which we are not yet able to understand. 

A young woman said to me, during the question-and-answer period after a lecture, "I read A Wrinkle in Time when I was eight or nine. I didn't understand it, but I knew what it was about." 

As long as we know what it's about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain.

-Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

like a new dance that stirs old feet

Nairobi requires a new set of skills. I have been training at killing the mosquitoes buzzing around my cramped room before I go to bed each night, which requires quick reflexes as well as an ability to spot them, and patience. I am also learning how to tuck my mosquito net and position myself just right under it so that any remaining buzzing pests will not be able to bite my skin. Any failure shows itself in the morning, red dots pocking skin left exposed or (I didn't know this was a liability) touching the net. 

I am learning how to walk. Most roads are wide enough for only two cars. The edges are torn and cracked, like the smoldered edge of a paper set to fire. Pedestrians walk on these craggly edges, but then side step onto the dusty paths when cars hoot their horns and speed past. From what I can tell, there is no right or wrong side, wherever there is room is where you might walk. My feet and shoes are covered in a thin film of brown dust, which I wash off only for it to be replaces by another on my next walk.

I walk to the bus stage and learn to ask the names of the places where I go, learn to crouch down so I can see out the window and discern where I am by the landmarks that are becoming more and more familiar, learn to signal when I need to get off, sense the rhythm of when the conductor (is that what you call him?) will reach over and tap my shoulder to ask for 20, 30, 50 bob (shillings) for the ride.

I walk to the duka and learn to ask for fruit that will be ripe one or two or three days out. I walk past people calling out mzungu on streets where I am still unfamiliar (always in the informal settlements) and learn to look friendly but keep walking. I learn to push past men who try to touch my skin. I learn to give my passport to the policeman asking why I am here, to smile and tell him I'm enjoying my stay in his country.

I am learning that rains come when I am sleeping, that the sun is hot but the shade always offers its relief, that rocks are preferred to mud, mud to the dust that gets stirred up and settles on everything around it. I learn to put more minutes on my phone, to cross a highway of traffic, to bite mango from its skin and let the juice cover my hands as a child would.

When I woke this morning, the sun was shining, bright and glad. I agreed with it. Though learning can be wearisome, I think of all that I didn't know and now I do, like a new dance that stirs old feet, like a candle re-lit on the table of a couple long married.

only rumbling over potholes

I sit in the taxi with Peter. I sit in the passenger's seat on the left side of the car, which still mixes me up. Peter has driven me before, and he has a kind smile, and a lazy eye, which makes him seem more friendly somehow. I try to carry on a conversation, but I run out of things to ask, and I know that in this culture, taxi drivers are not accustomed to being friendly with their customers (even if we are regulars). In the silence, I think about how I wish I had more words -- more things to say to people, more Swahili words to say it in a way that expresses a deeper commitment to their culture. I also think about how I want to write more, but the words are just not there yet. All I hear is rumbling like this van over the potholes in the road we are driving. And then I remember a writer's advice, how the lack (of details or information or whatever) is sometimes what you build the story around.  

***

We had an hour training on language acquisition. It's about culture learning and relationship building, too, not just memorizing a list of words and stringing them together to make sentences. You start by listening and pointing, not even saying a word. The idea is that listening in context, paying attention, finding language in its home and making that home more and more yours will be what shifts your thinking and fire new neurons until you produce new words. This means you will be quiet at first, and maybe for a long while. But when the words come, they may flow.

***

I am making lists of words I learn in their context, which stick more easily that the ones on my flashcards. Mtoto, child, who were invited up for prayer during church. Bwana asifiwe, praise the Lord, a refrain in worship songs. Hatari, danger, the name of the security company whose name is posted on all of the surrounding compounds. Lipa, pay, on my M Pesa account. I brainstorm ways to be around Swahili more just to hear it and put life to words and words to life. I am not ready to speak yet. When the staff speak to me to help me learn, I look back at them blankly, and then we laugh.

I'm hoping the language acquisition training was right, that the words will soon flow.

to catch words one day

I want to catch words one day. I want to hold them
then blow gently,
watch them float
right out of my hands.

from Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

***
(photo: sunset at Griffith Park)

reading bad feminist

I know nothing about cars. When I take my car to the mechanic, they are speaking a foreign language. A mechanic asks what wrong with my car, and I stutter things like, "Well, there's a sound I try to drown out with my radio."... I don't want to be good at cars. Good feminists, I assume, are independent enough to address vehicular crises on their own; they are independent enough to care.

-Roxanne Gay, Bad Feminist

This is one confession in a list at the end of Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay. It made me laugh, the part about turning up the radio to cover up the sound. It also made me nod in agreement, the part about not caring, and yet wondering if I should (to be an independent woman, i.e. a good feminist).

And that's probably a good way to sum up the book. There was some laughing, some nodding. In the middle there was some skimming because I got a little impatient with some of the essays. (And, I'd chalk that up to an editing choice. Some of these sections felt like a bunch of blog posts plopped there, instead of a more thoughtfully edited collection of essays - some previous writing that was expanded or combined or re-written.) In the middle of said essays, I also started to wonder if the author had anything positive to say. Where was the joy or the positivity? It was just critique of one bad movie after another (the section was on culture, gender and race). But then I felt caught - maybe it's because there's not much joy to be found, not much positive to say when it comes to how African Americans and other minorities are represented in film. Ok, keep reading...  

What I appreciated most in this book was the author's flavor of vulnerability. She wasn't confessional, but she did reveal a lot about what makes her human. That made her critique more credible. She's telling us that she's not a perfect feminist, that she's nuanced and complex and that she fails. So when she calls out others for ways they, too, have failed their art or their brothers and sisters, I can swallow it. We can be imperfect, yes. And, let's all try to be better. Yes.

***
(photo: coffee, reading, of course)

thoughts on writing as one being re-made

I heard a writer, speaking of the transition from being a writer who wrote for herself to one who was read by many people, say that she understood the experience of putting her thoughts and heart in words for people to read as being a living sacrifice. I know the passage of scripture where that phrase - living sacrifice - is mentioned. It is one that's been popularized by Christian culture, put on t-shirts and greeting cards and wall hangings. And yet when she said that, it was like I understood in a new way what the words mean. What she meant is that her writing is a way she gives her life back to God. It feels like sacrifice - letting go, surrender, maybe even being burned. A living sacrifice, though, isn't burned up to ashes but has a heart that still beats, limbs that move and eyes that continue to see. It is in the living, in the writing, in the figuring things out and then allowing my mind and heart to be re-made, that I sacrifice. That I live as one given over to another.

***

We don't need to make the gospel new; the gospel makes us new.

I heard this a few months ago and thought, yes. There are so many Christian books out there that try to give a new spin to the gospel. A catchy phrase and a trendy cover design, a format that reflects the kind of thing that people read now. I read a lot of these when I was in high school and working at a Christian bookstore, but at some point realized the authors weren't able to tell me anything new. I've come back to these kinds of books now, curious about what's being written and how my writing fits (or doesn't) and find that, once again, a lot of the same kinds of things are being said over and over again, and yet not much is really being said.

But then there are times when I hear a word and, even though it's a word I've heard many times before, it's like new, because it's making me new. How is it that the Word that was written so many centuries ago is like new each time I come to it? It must be something of the life of God in it, is all I can conclude, the same life that makes the day new, gives mercies that are new, renews me from the inside to re-make my heart, my sight, my love.

I wonder, then, how being made new then drives me to speak or write the gospel in a way that does, indeed, make it new for others. This is how it starts: a seed of a word that grows and makes a shady place for others to find rest for their souls, makes branches that birds can find a home in. The kind of work that lays foundations for many generations and brings peace to places that have been ruined.

***

So I opened my mouth, and he fed me the scroll. Fill your stomach with this, he said. And when I ate it, it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.  

- Ezekiel 3:2-3

***

(photo: flowers and concrete, griffith park, los angeles)

yes, and

.... Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart.

from Thirst by Mary Oliver

This is a line from one of my favorite poems. The first time I read it, I sat on the floor between shelves of books in Borders, probably looking through a stack of magazines I piled in my arms and lugged with me. The title of the book, which is the title of this poem, stuck out to me from the binding of the thin paperback where it sat on cart of books to be shelved. I picked it up, thumbed through, read a few short poems, and cried when I read this one, stuck in at the very end of the collection. And, when I first read it, and for years after, this line seemed to me to describe a battle. An either/or. You choose the earth or "you" (God) and the author, trying to choose God, gives away a lot of things (we read in the next lines of the poem). 

The poem appealed to something in me, but I struggled with this line because, I realized, I really like the earth. Not just like the geese and ponds that Mary Oliver usually writes about (though sometimtes I like those, too). But I'm talking the way I feel after a run, sweaty and satisfied. Feeding my people with brunch or a really good salad. Tears that are happy or cathartic. Rhythm and dancing. Holding a book in my hand. Finding a piece of clothing or jewelry that I love or that are flattering on me. I like being carnal - of the body, of the earth. But am I supposed to not like these things? What does it feel like to like God more? To let him dominate the conversation? Win the battle?

But the word she uses isn't "battle," but "conversation."

My friend is a comedian and has taken improv classes. She's hosted groups of creatives at her apartment, and as a warm up activity, she leads us in "Yes, And." Two of us sit across from each other, are given a premise, and make a story by affirming what the other says and building on it. "Yes, and." 

The last time I read the poem, that word "conversation" stuck out to me and I realized that  it was this kind of conversation that these loves may want to have in my heart.

Yes, and. The things we love about being in a body, being on an earth, holding and smelling and feeling and being with - all this in conversation, affirming and building on the things we love about being God's, of the spirit, able to sense and intuit mystery and be filled with grace and see how one plus one can equal some crazy number we didn't think possible. 

***

(photo: lights in trees, pasadena nights)

on limitations and creativity

Years ago, when I was beginning to understand creativity as something deeper and more resounding than a playful pastime, a wise person in my life told me that creativity was more about limitations than total freedom. I’d never thought about it that way before, but I realized he was right. I thought of the collages and cards I loved to make from magazine cut-outs throughout high school and saw this dynamic at play. Limited space, images that could only be chosen, and which could be altered only by choosing where to cut and how to place within the frame.

I see the power of the limitation dynamic in non-fiction writing, too. I’ve heard authors talk about what to do when memory fails, or when the details of family or community history that will add depth to your story aren’t available. Not knowing becomes the story, one writer suggests.

I’m thinking about this in part because of the post I wrote yesterday. It was about me, but it was also largely about other people who may or may not want details, identifying or otherwise, on my blog (small readership though I may have). I didn’t want to say too much about my coworker and her relationship. I didn’t want to mention much about my family history of disease. And I didn’t want to mention my visit with my aunt this summer, and how I saw remnants of disease and treatment in her body, and how she told me important information about my other aunt, who passed away years ago.

These details may have made my story more interesting, more compelling. But in writing non-fiction, I want to be mindful of how I give away my life (or rather, how I protect and preserve my life) in my writing. Another writer talks about aspects of this dilemma of disclosure in terms of voice and criticism, which are other issues to consider. In another way, choosing to withhold certain details can be seen as limitations that force more creativity. How can I say this in a different way? What other details or scenes can I share? What is enough but not too much?

an unread library

There's magic in being surrounded by books... Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

- Austin Kleon, Steal Like at Artist

***
(photo: my library and messy bookstacks... only partially read)

friends, here are some books i read

Friends and books: two of my favorite things. I like to read with friends, about friends, talk about reading with friends. Today, as I play catch up on blogging books I've read, I see a theme and I'm going with it. These books reminded me of how good writing will sound to you like a friend's voice, how friendship will inspire our reading choices, how good friends will give good books, and how one of the most enduring stories we will tell is how we found our friends.

This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff

Well-known memoir by a widely-loved writer. I read it on the way to the writing conference I went to back in April because I knew he'd be speaking, and because I found it for five dollars at a used bookstore a few weeks before. The book was good. Here is my favorite quote: All my life I had recognized almost at a glance those who were meant to be my friends, and they have recognized me. Yes.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

About a week after my birthday, I came home to a mystery Amazon package on my doorstep. It looked like books. I got excited. In it was this book and another - both books I'd been wanting to read. They were sent by my sister. The woman gets me, even if she doesn't often understand me (which is probably the case a lot of the time because I can be crazy and text her a string of emojis that I expect her to interpret). That might be my new definition for friendship.

The book sat on my coffee table for two months until I decided I'd pack it for my trip to the east coast and Kenya. I started reading it in a Starbucks with my nephew. He wanted us to close our books and play cards, but I kept telling him to read another chapter so I could keep reading, too. It was good. Then I read it on the plane flying over the Atlantic, and in the van weaving in Nairobi traffic and struggling over the rocky, dusty roads that led to Maasai Mara. I read it while America was arguing with each other about why police were still killing black men and in between long looks out the window traveling around Kenya, trying to understand the country by what I could see.

I don't have the book with me (it is already lent out to a friend). If I did, I might give you a quote. Instead I will say that I loved her writing about Nigeria, and wondered what I could learn about writing about Kenya. I also loved her insights about Africans in America and how they relate to African Americans and to America in general, about what they love and what they find strange, about the ways that language and accent and hair and clothing and weight and food and love and the way air feels on skin all make moving to a different country so disorienting, and coming home, even after so many years, like encountering an old friend.

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward

One thing I love about books of compiled stories or essays is that, if they are well-edited, reading them can feel like sitting around a table with some really smart friends. That's how this book felt. The writers invite us readers around their table to learn from them, to start a dialogue, to acknowledge our shared humanity. Each essay highlights the specific voice and experience of the writer, which makes the books feel like a collective, a community - a gathered group that, together, is something more than just the sum of its parts. My favorite themes were writing to remember and the emphasis on the physical experience of being black in America (and, really, our world).

I can't choose just one quote to share with you. Not one thought or sentiment would sum up what the book made me feel or think about. But I am still thinking about it, which is good, and I hope I will be for a while to come. Mostly, I hope what I read will stay with me and help me be a better friend to some very dear people in my life, and to people I have yet to meet.

***
(photo: books! though not the ones i read)

what do you do with more

Emotional jet lag is for real. I texted this to two of my Kenya-team-sisters and we commiserated about how hard it’s been to muster up the motivation to get back into our normal routines. Work feels dull, regular schedules are burdensome, and – the worst – making small talk about our trip seems impossible. “So how was it?” is a question without an easy answer.

I’ve been hard on myself about all of this, partly because it’s just made life difficult and I wish I could snap out of it and just get on with things. Instead I find myself moving around my apartment without really getting anything done and sitting in front of my work computer staring at open files, not remembering why I opened them. My journal has been mostly untouched over the past week because I can’t find words to put to anything. I need to make time to sit and stare at a wall, is how I followed up that first text to my friends. Ugh, me too, they both texted back. At least I’m not alone.

More than we ask or imagine is a phrase that, leading up to the trip, repeated as I felt prompted to pray and ask for things, and that now I use to describe the trip. I got to do things I never even thought to ask for: interview a young Maasai girl around her boma (homestead) for our documentary, and shape her story and that of another boy we’re featuring into scripts for a monologue and coach them through reading it for our audio. I looked at photos taken by students I’d met just hours before in a school in an informal settlement and felt such intense pride and honor at the opportunity to know them and watch their creativity at work. I sat at a table with my friend and our mentor who leads our partner nonprofit in Kenya and while at this moment I don’t remember her specific words, I remember what peace and power I sensed in her presence and know that I gained something from just being with her. I received a new name: Nosotwa, which in Maasai means peacemaker, and also means that a people with a strong and isolated tribal culture has welcomed this tall white girl to be part of their community. I learned a deeper love, the kind that trumps all the half-good things I was somehow able to pull off and lasts after I leave a place and a people. Yes, is all I could say in response to each of these things. This is what more feels like.

Now, afterwards, more feels like this: disorienting. The ways I learned to move in Kenya don’t fit the paths I know here. Everything is still getting re-routed. Because more than we imagine is a greater good than sometimes we’re ready for. My friend keeps telling me that all she can do in this phase is give thanks. Yes, I think, although there’s so much I don’t know where to start. So much more than I imagined…

***

(photo: writing monologue script with Benson, Kenya 2016)

it just takes a little effort

I am a comfort person... But I don't want to rest on something just because I have in the past. I really enjoy challenging myself, I really enjoy being in new places. It just takes a little effort for me to keep putting myself in those new places.

- musician Sara Watkins via here.

Glad I have some company on this (thinking of this recent blog post...).

PS Sara Watkins has a new album out today! and my earliest Sara Watkins love when Nickel Creek was still a thing (RIP).

***
(photo: city lights from a new-to-me rooftop restaurant.)

never before seen, never before done

My sister and I talk on the phone, a preamble to prayer. I sit on my couch, the light outside swelling slowly into day, while 3,000 miles away she walks around in the full heat of the New Jersey summer mid-morning. Lately, we do this once a month: talk, then pray. Before work (for me), after walking the kids to school (her).

We are talking about my work. I have just finished telling her how my strange tendencies to avoid unknown things had me procrastinating on an important project. I hate doing unfamiliar things, is the subtext of our conversation. Especially publicly, especially high-stakes, especially alone. 

Another story I could have told her is how on Saturday, when I helped set up for my friend’s wedding, the coordinator showed me to two wood planks decorated with words and told me to tie flowers to the top. I looked at the spooled twine and sprays of eucalyptus and dahlias and thought, but I’ve never done this before. As if she should choose a better candidate from the parents and aunts and husbands-of-bridesmaids that had showed up to help and were busily carrying things from one place to another and setting up tables and chairs. For a minute I stood alone, looking from the flowers and back to the planks, unsure how to start. And then I did. I cut stems and twisted twine and held it up to the planks. I prayed while I did this, an act that might seem over-reaching to some, futile to others. But it struck me that the Spirit who searches out the deep things of God might know something about the beauty I sought. Might know something about teaching me to do something I don’t yet know how to do.

And then there are these plans for Kenya, in which I am leading 40 young Maasai people in creative writing, photography, scripture. I have never done this (well, except the scripture part) in America, what makes me think I can do it in rural Kenya, with young people whose experience of the English language and the world around us is so different? This thought arrived in the storm of last week and landed like the heaviest snow of late winter, freezing all that hope that hard started to sprout up. The next thought that came was grace: I won't be alone. The Spirit will be there, will be in me, will do more than I ask or imagine. 

In the middle of encouraging me about work, my sister stops talking suddenly, her thought interrupted by something that catches her vision. I just saw this beautiful yellow bird, she tells me. I never saw one like that around here before. Grace, again. I understand it as a sign.

***

(photo: from wedding, exhibit a)

literary, lately: june edition

Unlike fiction, nonfiction is not a genre. It's a headache. An explanation for why The Sixth Extinction was number one on a list of the top 100 books of English-language nonfiction (chronological, working backwards), this piece also forced me to look up the word vituperative and made me feel, once again, hopelessly under-read -- a feeling I am trying to make a joyful one (so many books to read, yay!).

In the end, the trials of their relationship are worth bearing, because Frog and Toad are most content when they're together. Loved reading more about these beloved stories, though the speculation that they were actually gay lovers felt disappointing and maybe unnecessary. These days, friendship is so easily confused for romance or cheapened by sex. I think the boundary lines of friendship are incredibly sheltering, not restrictive.

One day you will hear a physicist say we are all made from the bodies of dead stars, and it will feel as if you've known it all along. A powerhouse of a story, and short, which is good because you might hold your breath the whole way through.

Like the first man / I was cut so deep by heaven's knife. One of my favorite stories, in song form.

No words, just these photos. Kenya, I'm coming for you.

***
(photo: writing, the view from above)

literary, lately: may version

Irony (or sign?): I am at a coffee shop trying to write a cute little essay about my ambivalence regarding writing friendships. In walk friends from church, who encourage me to reach out to writer-poet acquaintance. Maybe I will share the essay someday soon. Maybe I will email said poet. Who knows.

In the meantime, some links:

Reading this article on men in book clubs. At first I took offense to the idea that these clubs choose only books by men and with male protagonists. Isn't part of the joy of literature, and responsibility of literary citizenship, the act of entering into another's experience through books? But it started to make sense to me when the author of the piece explained that "the monthly meetings provide a space to explore literary depictions of what it means to be a man" and give them a unique space to explore empathy. Ok, maybe I can get behind that.

New Girl Crush: film director and screenwriter Ava Duvernay after listening to this interview on the power of voice and the making of Selma. I loved their conversation, especially the part about how her own "gaze" (a term she uses a lot) led her to shape scenes in Selma in a particular way. If I'd been interviewing her, I'd follow up with questions about what it's like to follow her instinct when making a film, how she developed her own voice, and what her favorite books are (of course).

Procrastinating on some blog posts about books I've finished. I'm falling behind. It was inevitable. At the same time, feeling inspired/validated in my approach by this short piece on the new Bookmarked series, in which authors write about books that inspired them. (Personal narrative, not criticism or cliff notes.)

This song on repeat.

Last week, I gave my goddaughter some books for her birthday, including Frog and Toad - my favorite. At first she got distracted from the books by a small Hello Kitty bracelet, but then she picked up Frog and Toad, scooched onto my lap and asked me to read to her. Heart melted.

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(photo: blurry palm trees and car lights somewhere along the 110, being sped home after writing conference)

reminder to self: these things count as writing

Last weekend, I sat in circle of students' desks in a college classroom. The other desks were filled with fellow writing conference attendees with whom I share at least one commonality: our paying work is not our writing. We met twice, once over dinner and then two days later over lunch. Our time was limited but we didn't waste any of it because the challenges are obvious. We had a lot to talk about.

In my head, I list off the hardships of this kind of life - often - where they end up cluttering my emotions as excuses or whines or justifications. (so little time, so little energy, writing at night is hard, offices don't cultivate creativity, I need a social life, just one more episode of Gilmore Girls...)

So! Instead of challenges and whining, I present for you a list of all of the many things that feed writing. For me, words on paper are most satisfying, but they are not always the point. The point, I'm beginning to realize (I can be slow, I know) is to build a writing life.

reading
revising
zoning out
reading old journals
googling
making a spreadsheet of publications to submit to
catching up with friends at writing group
listening to podcast interviews with authors and other artists
blogging
writing for my friend's nonprofit
asking questions
going to readings
hanging out at bookstores
praying
journaling
listening to music
making plans for writing
transcribing passages I like
movies (sometimes)

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(photo: book stack from sometime last year)

give this book the attention it deserves

Sometimes, it's hard for me to separate my experience of a book from the circumstances of my life while reading it. If you've read any of my read2016 posts this year, you might have gathered that much already.

So here's the thing with Tinkers: I was prepared to really like it, but I got distracted. I read it when I was tired, I read it on the train, I read it at a coffee shop when I got interrupted by a good looking stranger who asked if he could sit with me and talk (and I said yes), I read it on a Sunday afternoon when I was determined to finish it so I could start another book before travel a few days later. The conditions were not ideal, especially considering the kind of book Tinkers is -- not much plot, sprawling poetic sentences attempting to describe ineffable feelings, strange switches in point of view and time and generation that can disorient the reader if she's not paying enough attention.

Still, I liked it. I dog-eared pages that I am now transcribing into a document of bright passages from books I read. Even as I do this, I find myself drawn in again by the beautiful language -- poetic, and also terribly precise and physical and surprising. I keep reading past the sentence I meant to transcribe, forgetting what's happening in that part of the story but just wanting to follow his trail of words.

One of my favorite passages comes early on:

There was also the ring in Howard Crosby’s ears, a ring that began at a distance and came closer, until it sat in his ears, then burrowed into them. His head thrummed as if it were a clapper in a bell. Cold hopped onto the tips of his toes and rode in the ripples of the ringing throughout his body until his teeth clattered and his knees faltered and he had to hug himself to keep from unraveling. This was his aura, a cold halo of chemical electricity that encircled him immediately before he was struck by a full seizure. Howard had epilepsy. 

The sign of a good book (and perhaps the nerdiness of the person reading it) is that she will bring it up in a conversation with friends over drinks, which is what I did with this passage, with a doctor friend, because it was the most wonderful and felt description of disease in fiction that I think I've ever read. No technical jargon until the very end, when Harding names it: epilepsy. But before he gets there, he wants the reader to feel it as the character does.

I was tempted to make this post a long list of the passages I love, but I leave you with that one, and with the recommendation that if you read this book, give it the attention it deserves. Drink some coffee, take your time, and resist good looking strangers (but only for this book).