reading strengthens the soul

Because they can be consumed in a sitting, we tend to think of short stories as the equivalent of literary bonbons, small bites to satisfy a small craving or to fill a little space in the day. Short they may be, and yet the work of digesting a good story is anything but quick... The best short stories I've read over these years have seemed to require nearly as much of me, the reader, as of the writer, a kind of passionate engagement that challenges not only my intellect but my humanity. Reading, reading actively, strengthens the soul.

-Katrina Kenison, Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2006

places you will not go

After a Back on My Feet run from Skid Row to the Water and Power Building, where we watched the sun rise over Los Angeles. A quick prose-poem of sorts.

Are there places you will not go? Maybe they are places you believe to be off limits to you. Where your type of person doesn't go. So far you wouldn't even know the way.

And so you don't even think about how much you really want to go, you don't bother to wonder whether the sunrise looks different from there or if the breeze is a little cooler, the stars a little brighter. You have never felt the urge to climb the steps that lead there because you question if your legs could carry you the whole way. You don't want to brave feeling alone or out of place, you are afraid of needing to run out, and fast.

But what is the alternative, the overcrowded streets you live along now, where your home is as small and flimsy as a cardboard box?

preparing for Kenya: buying scrubs and fostering fresh eyes, an open heart

My trip to Kenya is just a little over a month away. I'm starting to get more intentional about my preparations - including asking a few experienced friends for input or advice about travel to Africa, writing about Africa, etc.

One friend, who traveled as a photographer with Alabaster Mobile Clinic on this same trip two years ago, responded with this email:

Tips? 

Stay away from elephants

Embrace being smelly

Just love the kids, kids all over the world need love hugs and laughter. It transcends language

Pray

There is a new scrub store on walnut, cross street Catalina. I just bought scrubs there! They all fit funny so don't stress about it :) 

(Yes, I'd confided in her my hesitations about wearing scrubs - required attire as part of the clinics we'll be running. How will I know if my butt looks big without being able to try them on? Glad she recommended a store to check out.)

Another friend, Amber, lives in east Africa (Uganda - a wholly different country than Kenya, but in the same region). She's also in the middle of an MFA program in creative nonfiction and is writing about her transition to life in Uganda as an expat, and about conflicts and issues she and her young family face. Her blog is great, and hopefully soon she'll have more published pieces to read. She passed along this an important essay written by a Kenyan man about writing about Africa. His use of satire is effective. As in, it has made me afraid to write about Africa. Here's an excerpt:

Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

I talked to Amber about this briefly when I got to see her a few weeks ago, and she told me to just write what I see and hear and feel, and worry about the politics of what I've written in the revisions. I'm hoping that I'll be able to see Kenya, and the people we meet, with fresh eyes and an open heart and mind, enough to write about them with due generosity and thoughtfulness.

picking up the pace in the second half

I had been running for a few years before I paid any attention to things like "progressive runs" or "negative splits." These training objectives are based on the idea that finishing faster than you started improves your fitness. So with each mile, you run a little faster. Sometimes the goal can be even simpler: just run the second half of your route faster than the first half.

I don't do these kinds of runs often, because, like I've said before, I'm stronger at starting than finishing. This is true in running, and it's true in a lot of other areas of my life. I start fast and strong but then lose energy and focus, and poop out.

BUT! I am on a quest to change this, in running and in life. Today marks the halfway point of 2014. The first half of my year has been pretty good. There are a few areas of life that I'm trying to focus on, and in a few there has been noticeable movement forward (including in writing!). So I'm not really trying to make up for things I've ignored during these first six months. I just want to finish strong, with my purpose in mind.

When I do the "second half faster than the first half" style of progressive run, I usually plan an out-and-back route. So I'm imagining myself doing the little turn around and picking up the pace. It might hurt a little during this second half, but the pain is what tells me something is happening.

Happy half of 2014!

a night of wedding dancing is the best night of the year

Those who know me should be able to spout off a few basic facts pretty easily: I love coffee, I am an introvert, I talk about Pennsylvania with romantic nostalgia. I also love weddings, especially the dancing. Lucky for me, my friends keep getting married. So not only do I get a few good nights of dancing in each year, but I've also learned a lot about how to navigate the dance floor.

Here are the characters you'll find and how to dance with them:

The two girls who wish they were in the club: These two women are friends and have stuck together the whole evening. Their dresses are a just a little too short and too tight, and they are wearing heels that are just a little too high to be classy. Even though there are available men at the wedding, they have chosen to dance just the two of them. They help each other perfect their club-dancing moves. Song: Fancy by Iggy Azalea. Leave them be, they are enjoying their small world that is revolving around them.

The white man: He is in his element when a classic rock song comes one. At this point shirts are untucked, sleeves are rolled up (if they weren't already), fists are pumped, air guitars are played. Even though I am white, I still don't get it. Song: Don't Stop Believing by Journey or Sweet Child of Mine by Guns and Roses. Sing the lyrics if you know them and try to enjoy it. That's all they really want, is for people to love this music as much as they do.

The young skinny guy who is dancing alone: His moves consist of the robot and making some swirly motions around his head with his hands. His demeanor is self-serious. Nobody else knows who he came with or how he knows the bride and groom. He semi-secretly wants to be the center of any dance circle that forms. Song: Midnight City by M83. This is actually a tricky one. You will either want to steer clear if he is on some kind of substance (or you think he should be), or he may actually be really fun to dance with.

The kids: Everyone is secretly jealous of them because they don't need moves, they just run around and have the time of their lives. Parent's pick them up and spin them around. They are up past their bedtime and loving it. Song: They can dance to anything. DANCE WITH THEM.

The single woman in her thirties: She is well-dressed and well-put-together but has a limited number of moves, which includes raising her hands when someone is in the dance circle and bopping back and forth with her palms facing out at her bust line.* Song: Anything by Beyonce. Especially pre-2005. Don't feel sorry for this woman and her dated dance moves, this is one of her best nights of the year.

*If you didn't catch on, this is me.
**Photo via a fellow instagrammer who attended a recent wedding with me. Please don't sue me.

re-reading psalm 84

Happy are those whose strength is in you,
    in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

The last morning of my visit with my sister in North Carolina, I got up while the house was still. Through the cracked door of my sister's room I saw that her side of the bed was just pillows and blankets. The rest of her family was still asleep. I texted my sister, assuming she was running,then drank coffee and laced up my shoes for a run. The roads around her house were long, mostly narrow and meandered through newly constructed housing developments and up and down rolling hills until they met one another. Some had sidewalks bordering the asphalt, but most were lined with just a margin of gravel and then green grass that grew without a human to tame it, not regularly anyway. The land that had managed to avoid being turned into housing grew wild with tall grass and trees, whose branches and leaves covered me from the steamy sun. This feels like home, I thought to myself. Like the roads in Pennsylvania that I ran along in high school, and rode my bike along in elementary school, that my parents drove me along all growing up. It was good to know that my heart can hold the memory, the feel of this place. In whose heart are the highways to ... 

It helped me to know I could always find my way back.

*   *   * 

How lovely is your dwelling place,
    O Lord of hosts! 
    ...
For a day in your courts is better
    than a thousand elsewhere.

I like my sister's house. Where my apartment is small and cut up into pieces to make distinct rooms, hers has lots of open space. The kitchen opens into the eating space opens the living room opens into the dining room. On a few mornings, I sat on her deck with my coffee in the quiet. One morning it was warm and sunny and birds showed off how beautiful they are there. The next morning it was misting, which seemed to muffle everything and keep everyone but the full frogs in bed. But even more than the house or the yard or the neighborhood was the people who filled it. I cut vegetables with my sister in that kitchen; I made friendship bracelets with my niece in the eating space; we played games at the dining room table. I heard my niece laugh time and again, one of the millions of things I love about her. I watched my nephew nap on the couch, hoping he'd feel better than he had the night before, imagining what an incredible young man his sensitivity and intelligence will make him. I could stay here for days, I thought to myself. I could live here. And yet somehow there is a place for which I might trade thousands of days at my sister's house in North Carolina to live in for just one day. 

There is a place that is that full of goodness, that much like a home.

a new breakfast, a small grace

Every once in a while, something enters your life and changes it in small but significant ways. Have you every experienced this? A new idea or way of thinking of rhythm for life comes along and breaks up the monotonous forward motion toward who knows what. Sometimes these small graces are just that - something good and pleasant, like gentle rainfall to cool us in the heat of day, like the kind words that we needed to hear.

The hopeful thing is that though grace is gentle as a light rain, it is also sturdy and powerful, like a jackhammer that breaks up hard stone. It might wreck what's in place, but for something new to grow there. It is both water and weapon.

Maybe that is a rather sentimental introduction to a recipe, but it's true, isn't it, that sometimes we are stuck, and the breaking-in is something that is entirely not of us, and so something that begets gratitude. I have been stuck in some food ruts, and have experienced varying degrees of desire to change them. I eat the same semi-healthy items for breakfast almost every morning, and was mostly ok with that. But the other night, I started reading through a new cookbook I ordered and was newly inspired to buy and eat lots of veggies. One simple dish was a saute of red onions and spinach (which I made for dinner last night). I was inspired again this morning, and had just enough time to saute some more slices of red onion, then add kale and let it simmer slowly until it got nice and soft. I tossed in a few toasted walnuts at the end. And it was hearty and sweet and earthy and wonderful.

I wonder what other small graces might be coming my way. Breakfast reminded me to be open, and to be ready.

Red Onion and Kale Saute with Toasted Walnuts
(inspired by The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone* by Deborah Madison)

• 1/2 red onion, cut into chunky but uniform slices
• two large handfuls of chopped kale (you can include the stems if you want, since it's cooked down quite a bit)
• a handful of toasted walnutes, chopped
• olive oil
• salt & pepper to taste
• lemon (I didn't have this on hand but I imagine just a squeeze would be good)

Let oil heat in skillet. Add red onions and saute, stirring occassionally, about 5 minutes. Onions should be soft but not yet dark. Add kale and cover for a few minutes. Then stir, and add just a little bit of water and cover again until water is evaporated. Repeat this process until kale is at desired softness. When it's done, add salt, pepper, lemon (if using) and walnuts, stir and serve.

*I'm not a vegetarian or planning to become one - especially after visiting North Caroline (the best bbq this mid-atlantic/socal girl has had!) - but am always aiming to eat a more veggie-rich diet. I highly recommend this cookbook for anyone seeking to do the same!