Beautiful Tragedy

There was a summer (well, actually the more part of a year) that I had an unhealthy obsession for deep depressing literature. I must have read every sad book I saw. It was the year of My Name is Asher Lev, the year of The House of Mirth and The Children, of Lord Jim, Beowulf, Frankenstein, Howard's End, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Most of all, that was the year of Thomas Hardy.

While I can't claim to have read everything Thomas Hardy wrote, I believe I have read more than pretty much any other person who counts (meaning I am still sane, but barely). This is because I had the brilliant idea to sign up for the Senior Course--that capstone of the BYU English Major--entitled Thomas Hardy and the Landscape of the Imagination. In my own defense, none of the others sounded all that good, and I really wanted to take a class from Bennion; he was a creative writing prof. Furthermore, at that point I had already read two of the books on the course listing ... although those two books happened to be the happiest ones, so I was misled. Or so I can claim.

To this day I maintain that nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared me, or anyone, for the sort of experience we were in for in reading, all in a matter of about three weeks, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Woodlanders, and Jude the Obscure. It was bad enough that we had just read Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and The Return of the Native. And along with that, for one of my essays I did some additional research on the form and substance of ancient Greek tragedy and how it played in to late Victorian/early Modern British lit. I read Medea and Oedipus. Such cheerful stuff.

Did I mention that in my other class, I was reading James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, along with two other Pollyannas by the names of Katherine Mansfield and Ford Maddox Ford (who subtitled his great novel The Saddest Story--I hated that book)?

Jude the Obscure was hands down the most depressing book I have ever read. Nor can I even come close to imagining a book more depressing. It was so downright hopeless I feel physically ill even remembering it. And Tess isn't even that far behind. Yet, as soon as the semester was over, what did I do? I went to the local library, of course, and checked out the film adaptation--all because it starred Justine Waddell, who was my absolute favorite actress at the time. She sort of has this thing for playing tragic characters. Not only did I watch the entire four hours of misery, I watched it all by myself, in the middle of the night, so that when I woke up from the story there was no person, and no sunshine, to offer the least bit of comfort.

I am very blessed today to have survived that glut of hopelessness and self-inflicted punishment, but every so often I find myself drawn back to Tess--scenes of it on YouTube, little bits of the soundtrack sitting unchecked in my iTunes library, and the yellowing book on my bookshelf, deliberately buried in with all the other literature that I would consider Great, but not The Greatest.

It's a good thing they haven't enabled it on Netflix Instantview.

50 Great Curries from India

You know how excited I was about this cookbook. Absolutely. Well, my dreams of making wonderful, yummy Indian dinners are dashed to pieces. Being a former teacher and having been trained in the necessity of grade-giving, I give this book a FAIL. Okay, I cheated, because I didn't give the author and publisher a rubric ahead of time, and I never sufficiently explained objectives and how to achieve mastery of such, but still, the book does not pass muster.

First it was Cauliflower and Potato Curry. I knew something was amiss when it had me grinding and sautéing three different blends of spices, only to throw them all together into a mixture of ... well, it claimed to be coconut milk, but it was just soaked coconut shreds in water. Ew. I tried to blame the not-so-yummyness of that one on the fact that I had run out of olive oil--because as you know, olive oil is a necessity for a successful kitchen.

But today, it was Goa Beef Vindaloo, which I know is good, because I have had it at restaurants. I had plenty of olive oil, plenty of "plump cloves of garlic" and I even bought a weird-looking plastic can of tamarind. I ground up and blended my spices exactly as directed, coated the meat, sautéed the onions, and tossed it all together with 4 cups of water. 4 cups? What are we making here? Soup?

It turns out it was a good thing it called for so much water, because as it was, I had to add some flour paste to thicken it, which in turn toned down the fire. We do happen to be lovers of wasabi and peppers, so I mean it when I say that if it's too hot for my dad, it shouldn't be attempted. Oh, sad.

On a happy note, dropping a cinnamon stick into your jasmine rice is a nice touch. And I got to wash down the spicy failure with a spoonful of loveliness called "Dark Chocolate Almond Butter."

Virginia Woolf

I love to read literature with a pen in hand--you know, to take notes in the margins and underline striking passages. But I had to hide my pen as I began reading The Waves, because I think I might have tried to underline the entire book. No other author writes prose equal to Virginia Woolf; none of them come close. It's so fluid it's not prose, it's not poetry ... it just is. More like reading a piece of music or an Impressionist painting.

Delightful

I recently read Winnie the Pooh--yes, for the first time. I did not read it as a child, and in fact was not overly fond of any of the Pooh franchise then. Well, unless you count the Disney audiobook Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too.

Yet, as much as the animations and spin-offs have convoluted it, the original stories are adorable. It's quite possible to read them as allegory, what with Owl's obsession with sounding smart and getting a reputation for being wise when really he's just as clueless as the rest of them; and poor little Piglet's amiable cowardice; Pooh and his Very Small Brain and thinly veiled habits of mooching off of anyone who will or won't let him; Kanga, the over-protective mother; Roo, the rambunctious child; Rabbit, the stick in the mud; and finally, the famous Eeyore, who is a determined pessimist.

And then, there is Christopher Robin, bless him, who loves his Bear so very much, in spite of a full knowledge of all of his shortcomings. He reminds me of my oldest nephew, who loves to sleep with a stuffed Anaconda, who can read books with his mom by the hour, and whose worst possible punishment is having his Lightning McQueen and/or Doc put on top of the refrigerator for time out. Little children are delightful, aren't they?

On My Mind ...

I bought some fleece pants at a Gap outlet last October. Normally, I wouldn't have looked at them at all, but I was wearing a pair of jeans that were completely soaked--the result of my having fallen into the river not long before. It's an interesting experience going to lunch and then outlet shopping wearing soaking wet jeans that totally sag. I don't recommend. But I do recommend the fleece pants. They are my favorite, though I think it is a little disturbing that I can wear them so comfortably during August in Texas.

Pants have been on my mind lately, because most of mine are now too big.

This brings to mind the wonderful Wallace and Gromit short--The Wrong Trousers. I do love Wallace and Gromit.

I also love asparagus.

Belated Inception

I purposely didn't write about Inception before, because I can't really add anything to Janeheiress' review, except that I saw it and I liked it.

But I just went to see it again yesterday, and now I really want to talk to someone about it. It doesn't often happen that I don't understand a movie. I think I understand Inception; I'm pretty sure I understand it--yet there's something confusing about it that I am not quite willing to attribute to its having holes in the plot. So here are some of my random thoughts:

I bought the soundtrack because I need new running music, and it will work quite nicely. Nice intensity. Nice integration of plot and theme into the sound. Cool instrumentation ... well, Hans Zimmer's instrumentation is all very similar, but I can't fault him too much for that, because I still believe that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." You can always count on Zimmer to have a fun mix of modern and classical sounds. Once I would have thought it too synthesized, but he achieves the right kind of power with that without overdoing it with the high brass that some composers have.

Just a really quick, stupid thing to say: I'm still reeling from pleasant surprise at how much I liked Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in this movie. In spite of being dubbed the character with no imagination (that's the character I usually can't like), he was really cool. Mostly, I think, because of how sharp he looked in that suit. There's something about a dark-haired man in a suit. I mean, you could practically smell his cologne.

I liked Ellen Page as well. I've heard good things about her but never seen her in anything before. Whoever did her costumes was cool. It makes sense for an architectural student genius to wear scarves all the time. Not sure why, but it worked.

I don't remember his name, but the guy who supplied the sedatives and drove the van. He was good--especially at that part where he did some daring driving moves, then smiled and accidentally asked the back seat full of sleeping people if they had seen that.

The first time I saw the movie, I didn't get what was going on with the forger. As soon as I did, I liked him quite a bit, and one of the scenes in the hotel made so much more sense.

On the contrary, as much as I want to, I can't say a lot about DiCaprio's acting ability. He's always going to be Baz Luhrman's Romeo to me, no matter how many "serious" directors love him. He's not bad, but he's still not great. I want to be fair here. I think some of that has to be attributed to the repetitious, unoriginal nature of the dialogue. I liked the ideas they were expressing, but he, as well as Ellen Page, had some very bad lines that I didn't notice the first time around because I was so engrossed in the action. Bad dialogue rarely gets past me, so it's a big compliment to say that even though some of it is bad, I was completely unaware of it until I saw the movie again. I wonder how much the actors have to say in the course of the filming--regarding their lines, I mean. Surely those two noticed that by the last 20 or so minutes, they were simply repeating everything they had already said? And last about him as an actor--I think it has more to do with his voice than anything else. Even though he's probably in his late 30s now, and he plays these serious characters with serious issues, he still sounds like a young boy. It's very touching.

Now to business. What was going on at the end? Did he go into "limbo" to save Saito, and get stuck there? Why was there absolutely no explanation of what was happening? They showed the scene twice, so it had to mean something. When they woke up on the plane, was it still Dom's dream? The top never stopped spinning, and they left it that way on purpose, obviously, but why? Why do that? Was Nolan just trying to say that what Dom and his projection of Mal were endlessly arguing about has no answer--that you can choose your own reality? In that case, why would he choose his children over his wife? Not that I think that's a bad choice, but is that really what he was doing? And if he really did wake up and go home, why did the kids sound so much older over the telephone? Why was everything about that house so surreal? But then again, there was a beginning to it--and one of the first things he told Ariadne was that your subconscious always jumps into the middle of a dream.

I'm sorry. I love the movie and think it's wonderful, but the ending doesn't work for me. I see holes. Anyone else's opinions are most welcome. I never intended to get so worked up about a movie like this; writing a blog post tends to do that to me.

Okay, I only have 8% of my laptop battery left, so I have to stop writing. Maybe I will amend or delete this post later, I haven't decided.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen

I caved to peer pressure and decided to re-read Mansfield Park as part of a friend's challenge to read the complete works of Jane Austen in a year. I wasn't particularly excited about reading it again, but that is mostly due to the fact that I have so many other things I want to read during the course of this year. If you don't count re-reads, I'm ridiculously far behind myself in terms of the number of books read in a given year. This is what happens, I guess, when one realizes that it has been nearly a decade since reading some of the greatest books of all time. This year's other re-reads include Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, Count Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Jane Austen's Persuasion, and huge chunks of George Eliot's Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. I don't count re-reads in my reading spreadsheet, so these feats will remain undocumented for the time being.

What clinched my decision to go for Mansfield Park was Janeheiress' reminder that the first third of the book is rather boring. When reading it, it seems as if it could go on in that insipid way all the way to the end, and while I don't find Fanny Price an insipid heroine at all, I definitely think the first part of the book is.

And now, my opinion of Fanny. I am convinced that Fanny Price, more than almost any other heroine of great literature, was a daring feat on the part of her author. For someone to succeed so well in writing about someone who lived through so little action or adventure, who had little wit (or none), and whose character was defined by her refusal to fight against anyone who railroaded her, is a mark of genius. Fanny is the quintessential anti-heroine, because her one great heroic act is in remaining consistent to her principles when everyone around her tries to coerce, manipulate, and guilt her into doing things she knows are not right when she has no fair way of explaining herself.

I think that an anti-heroine (or anti-hero) might generally be considered someone like Michael Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge, or Lily Bart in The House of Mirth--people whose lives are defined by the flaws in their characters that make destruction impossible to avoid. In other words, the very opposite of a hero--because a hero is usually someone who learns and triumphs over their own character flaws and misfortunes. Fanny isn't like that. She reminds me a lot of the lovely character Farmer Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd. Both of them, in spite of their misfortunes, their unpopular steadiness of character and affection, their awkward status in their social circles, demand the affection of any honest reader because even though what is right isn't popular, and everyone tends to wish for adventure over moral uprightness, they triumph because they have so little to be ashamed of and so few regrets. And all this in spite of, not because of, the fact that they have not created their own difficulties. Fanny's difficulties are never vanquished; they don't even really disappear. The ending of the book, while satisfactory in every sense, really only confirms that her life was never meant to be remarkable, and that she would probably always suffer being overlooked and undervalued.

In our present-day mindset, we usually think that the only way to conquer difficulty is to either destroy circumstances or change them to our liking. We look for that in stories, because in spite of all the motivational speakers and motivational posters we are raised with, most of us know that in most situations, the only thing that will give us a victory is enduring a torturous event, or a torturous situation, as positively and proactively as possible. People who live in a fictional world often spend their entire lives dissatisfied with their lot, constantly on a quest for a cure or a quickfix or a life-altering miracle; mistakenly believing that persistence in dissatisfaction alone will change things. Single girls who wait around for Captain Moroni to ride up in shining armor on a white horse, sweeping them up in his saddle and riding off with her into the sunset; overweight people always latching on to the newest fad diet, or waiting for a pill that will get rid of all their excesses; low-level employees watching their superiors with jealousy, waiting for the next opportunity to make the boss see they're worth a promotion and a raise; poor people spending too much percentage of their salary on lottery tickets. We don't think in terms of the reality that some things just need to be suffered through, and sometimes that miracle fix will never come.

This is what makes Fanny Price remarkable. She recognized that even though she might not particularly relish her lot in life, she had to do her best to be reconciled to it. She didn't waste her energy on things she had no power to change; she never blamed anyone for the discomfort of her circumstances. She didn't conquer--she endured. And in doing so, she did come to a happy end, but it was a happy end consistent with the self-denying desires she had perfected by refusing to become bitter when people, or chance, did not distinguish her as anything special.

More Cooking Experience

Mom makes these heavenly delicious Greek meatballs with cinnamon and mint. I had some mint, so I decided to give them a shot. But I'm trying to cut us back on our consumption of meat--particularly beef, which we had in the form of hamburgers on Sunday. Instead of beef, I used ground turkey. My suspicion is that's why they fell apart so badly. That, and I'm almost out of olive oil. If you want to be a good cook, olive oil is an absolute necessity. As is garlic. The meatballs did taste rather wonderful--they just weren't very pretty. First things first, though. Master good tastes, then move on to aesthetics.

I also tried my hand at glazed carrots, and those turned out excellent in both taste and appearance. I used real carrots rather than the pitiful excuses for baby carrots the supermarkets are pushing. Real carrots are kind of pretty, I think.

And finally, I made a really interesting "salad" that got its start from Tosca Reno's book, The Eat Clean Cookbook. She is rather fond of tomatoes, I've noticed. We do not have that preference in common. So I started with her basic cous-cous thrown into hot chicken broth and orange juice, added the green onions, substituted red pepper in the place of the tomatoes, left out the cucumber completely, and drizzled the dressing (olive oil and lime juice) like she said, then sprinkled feta on top. She was right! It just took a few minutes to throw together, and it was so, so good.

Cooking is very rewarding, I find. What's up for tomorrow? Cauliflower and potato curry! And my stomach is already anticipating that one with pleasure.

Why did no-one tell me

Alice in Wonderland is so stupid??????

I am still reeling from shock at how much I dis-frightfully-liked it! The one and only part I actually thought was close to okay was when the poor bloodhound was re-united with his wife and puppies.

Why did I hate it so much? First of all, it didn't have anything to do with the original Alice. They made up an entirely new backstory for her, packaged with a nice new last name. They dressed her in the sort of dress that a normal Victorian girl might have gotten away with wearing until she was maybe fourteen or fifteen ... but Alice was supposed to be nineteen.

None of the jokes were funny, and it was obvious the actors were only going through the motions. Everyone's makeup was hideous, most notably Anne Hathaway's lipstick and Mia Wasikowska's eyeshadow.

Johnny Depp butchered his recitation of the "Jabberwocky" poem. The least Burton could have done when deciding to make a movie called Alice in Wonderland is to do a little bit of background reading. Lewis Carroll might have made up words, but he was very clear in his explanation of how they should be pronounced.

And this might be a minor quibble for some people, but I thought Alice was unbearably rude. She went around demanding that people (or animals) do things for her, and she never once said thank you. She was a wuss and a ninny and git, endlessly whining about how she could never kill anything and how much her arm was stinging.

And the theme? That theme has been re-treated, re-washed, and re-hung out to dry so many times I couldn't believe anyone who purports to have brains would actually re-use it. Take charge of your own destiny? Make your own decisions? Defy the establishment that says you should wear a corset? Go to China? WHAT???? If that was all he wanted to get across, all he had to do was cast Queen Latifah as Alice.

I could probably go on, but I won't, because I think I've said plenty. But if you're reading this post and you haven't yet seen the scrambled up mess that Tim Burton calls Alice in Wonderland, preserve your brain cells and don't do it.

War and Peace,

Written by Count Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

I finally finished it! Wow. What a difference twelve years makes in one's comprehension of literature. I did read it, back when I was eighteen, but I didn't really follow the story with much interest, and there were huge chunks of it that I either skimmed or outright skipped. All of that, combined with the fact that I was reading the Garnett translation (bad, bad, bad), meant that I really needed to read it again.

Was it worth spending three weeks on? Oh, yes. And one of the beauties of it is that the author is so long dead that I can say what I like without any fear that he'll somehow come upon my blog and take offense. Not that he would, because I don't find myself either intelligent or pretentious enough to criticize a genius like Tolstoy. This is the comfort of reading classic literature. You can lose yourself in the assurance of its merit and just enjoy it--as opposed to the modern, untested stuff, which you must constantly evaluate and judge whether it's good or bad. And lest that statement come across as an indication that I don't like to think for myself, but rest my opinions on long-established trends or traditions, I will say that there are many works of literature that are so-called "classic" that I have no qualms about abusing or even ripping to shreds (namely Bram Stoker, James Fenimore Cooper, and to some extent Wilkie Collins).

As for my analysis of War and Peace, I will say in the beginning that it is such a massive work, and sets out to accomplish so many things, that I have very little to say. I struggled a lot with the seemingly random historical commentary sections that always brought the narrative to a screeching halt. I found them confusing, because they always prefaced the events they were analyzing in the story. Again, I can't say that's a shortcoming. Knowing some of what was going on did tend to clarify the big picture of those action scenes.

The characters, above all, were the fascinating factor. With a book so long, there were many, many characters. It is a wonder to me how Tolstoy was able, so simply, to draw people who seemed absolutely alive. In the vitality of the characters, his writing ability is reminiscent of writers like George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. But the difference with Tolstoy's is that he made the people real while giving them only a sentence or a phrase of page-time.

The book's central characters were Prince Andrei Nicolaievitch Bolkonsky, Count Pyotr Kyrillitch Bezukhov, and Countess Natasha Rostov. Other people of importance were Andrei's sister, Princess Marya; and Natasha's family, the Rostovs, most notably her brother, Nikolai. And of course, a whole troupe of intriguing "bad guys". Although I have to issue the obligatory spoiler alert for anyone who plans on reading the book, I have tried hard to keep things vague and will not mention anything specific about the plot.

Andrei was interesting to me mostly because he tried so hard to convince himself that he was a cold intellectual, but everything he did was the proof of his emotional vulnerability and passion. He thought he joined the army initially because he was bored with the superficiality of society life in Moscow and Petersburg, and he despised his sweet, charming little wife because she couldn't live without the things that he thought didn't matter at all. But it turned out that this was all just his own vanity--his desire to join the army was to earn (or prove) his courageousness, to have people's admiration and love. He wanted and needed that adoration and it was driving him crazy. A brush with death, and it seemed everything became clear, but then the subsequent tragedy showed that he was still completely clueless about what his life's purpose actually was. It's hard to say why a reader would like him so much--he was often abrupt and unkind, and endlessly fixated upon his own unhappiness. I think it was because all of his exterior was just a defense against his own fears of being vulnerable. He actually resembles some people I know.

Pierre, Count Bezukhov, was probably my favorite character. I liked him because he was just a big teddy bear, walking around in confusion, trying not to offend people but doing it anyway, trying to care about what other people cared about and failing abysmally. The coolest part of the book was Pierre's climax, when he was finally able to get out of the cloud of confusion and aimless wandering, and figure out what it was that fulfilled him. I liked that he was not handsome or dashing, but fat and clumsy, always overeating and saying the wrong things--but you always liked him anyway, for reasons that are really hard to explain.

The entire book was centered around Natasha and the progress of her maturing from a charming, precocious, spoiled, and vivacious twelve-year-old, in love with her distant cousin Boris; to a woman with a family to take care of. She was also easy to like, even though she did and said stupid things and seemed a bit too simple and selfish. I read somewhere that Natasha was a symbol of Russia, and it's easy to see that in most of the major events of the book.

The ending was perfect, and unlike some other very long and involved works of fiction with epilogues, this had a fabulous epilogue. At least part one. Part two of the epilogue was a very long, very intellectual discussion about history and power, and though I understand and admire it, I didn't enjoy it as much as maybe I should have. But part one was a very fitting end to a series of stories that needed it.

Again, I feel like this analysis, or any analysis I try to make of War and Peace, somehow cheapens it. I'm debating within myself whether I should even post this--but I think it would be even more of a slight not to post anything. So here is my best attempt at commentary on having read Count Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Cooking

Cooking is a very unique pursuit. It is both useful and artistic. If you think about it, there are very few skills you can have that sustain life and, at the very same time, serve as an outlet for creative expression. I guess there are a few others. But who doesn't enjoy good food?

I won't lie. I'm a good cook--at least as far as ordinary people go. How do I know? People like it when I cook. They tell me so all the time. All I have to do is ask them if they like it, and they tell me straight-up that they do. That's the most concrete proof I need. No-one ever fibs in order to spare my feelings, especially since they know how easily crushed I am. And they would never suspect the possibility of having a plate or a fork flung at their head if they somehow let it slip that what I just made is not the greatest dish of its kind ever to enter their mouth and stomach. I'm just not touchy that way, so I know I'm a good cook.

So this may be a little cliché, but after seeing Babette's Feast, Mostly Martha, Ratatouille and Julie and Julia, I decided it was time to seriously learn how to cook, rather than continuing with my preferred method of preparing a meal--just going into the kitchen and throwing together whatever smells good.

I own five cookbooks--one is your standard Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. It's a nice collection of general, bandwagon good stuff. The second is my Family cookbook. My mom compiled it a few years ago for our Christmas presents, and it's a big hit. People especially like the famous food quotations she inserted on section-breaks. The third is called 50 Great Curries of India. I have yet to use it, but this week I'm planning a trip to a better grocery store in order to buy the stuff I need to make these great curries. And four and five I got in the mail today. The Eat Clean Cookbook, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking (of course).

The odd thing is I never expected to be this excited about cooking. But with the odd situation I find myself in this summer with my family, refining and defining my cooking ability seems like a logical thing to get excited about. I think they're getting tired of hearing me talk about all the great things I'm going to make, but they definitely don't get tired of the things I put on their plates every day.

This is not the start of another cook-your-way-through-Julia Child blog, nor is it one of those do-something-odd-so-you-can-feel-good-about-yourself blogs. I don't feel that cooking, or blogging, is necessary to help me regain my sense of self. However, I do like to eat good food, and what better way to make sure I can always have good food than to learn to make it myself?

On Turning Thirty

I am 30 today. It’s kind of a relief to finally be here after dreading it so long. My family and I had just a little celebration on Sunday that included some lovely cheesecake, lots of smiles, and a fun game.

Now that I’m to this particular life milestone (anyone know why it’s a milestone exactly, other than that it’s the entry into a new decade?), I’m finding myself a little reflective. Have I done everything that I should have done in my 20s?

Well, that answer is complicated. I actually think that I have. I went to college and had a little fun—the fun was much neglected due to the pursuit of a degree, but I find the more educated I become, the greater is my capacity to have fun, so I don’t feel anymore that I missed too much—I came back to my home state and realized how much I love it; I worked a lot of different (some good, some awful) jobs, including a receptionist in a pool supply warehouse, an assistant editor, a content editor, a bookseller, a substitute teacher, an instructional aide, a loan application call center specialist, a seamstress, and a teacher; I learned how to make friends (unfortunately, I really did have to learn that, because I didn’t know how to during childhood and adolescence); served an LDS mission; got a teaching certificate and taught middle school for four years; had a variety of church responsibilities; almost finished a master’s degree; and I even wrote a novel—never mind that I decided later that I hated it and began to rewrite it—it was finished and it was the child of my very own brain.

So the question now is what comes next? I never thought I would do a lot of the things I have done in the previous decade, and if I had planned my life out, it would have turned out entirely different. But here are some of my hopes and dreams for the decade of my 30s. Maybe they’re more cautious hopes, and maybe they’re more daring. I would like, first, to finish my master’s degree (just 6 more hours!) and get a job in a school library. I do want to continue writing, and I would like to finish a book series I’ve started. I want to become more kind, more thoughtful, more caring, and more faithful. I want to be a diligent scholar of the scriptures. I want to travel to a foreign country again; yeah, I did it once in my teens and once in my twenties, and I want to do it in my 30s as well. And I want to get married. That has always been on my list of things I want to do, of course, but this time I feel … oh, I don’t know. When I was 20, I was confident that some dreamy young man would sail into my life and sweep me off my feet, that we would get married, and I would spend the rest of my life as his wife and the mother of his children. Now, I still think in similar terms, only I’m jaded and my expectations are at the same time simpler and more complicated. I don’t want to have ten children anymore, but I do want children and I want to be the best mother I can be. And I want to be a good wife, including but much beyond being a fantastic cook (it’s true), a good doer of laundry, a smart manager of finances, and all those other homey, wifely skills. I’ll have to do all of those things extremely well to make up for all the trouble I’ll cause him. Hehe.

But all that aside, because it’s not something I can make happen all by myself, there are not as many things I want to do as things I want to become, and the desires of my heart, at the core, have not changed much between 20 and 30. I still want to do everything I can to please the Lord, to become like Him. I still want to be a blessing to the people around me, whether they are the family I was born into, or the family I create with a future spouse. In other words, I feel at 30 a lot like I did at 20, only less stupid. But then, when I was 20 I thought I was pretty wise and smart. Little did I know then … little do I know now.


So, I’ve been there and done the pity party already, and I’ve decided that it’s time for it to be over for good. What’s the point in always looking at what I’ve missed, rather than what I’ve had? Not to sound vain or proud, but my life has been pretty extraordinary, and I’ve been blessed to be able to do a lot of things I never imagined I would. No comparisons with other people are necessary here, because who really cares what other people have done? It really only matters what I have done, and I have done a lot of good things. I can say, with a little confidence and a lot of hope, that the world is a better place for having had three decades of me.

Dreams

I had a dream last night that has launched the idea for a book series. Lest you begin to fear, I will explain right away that it has nothing to do with vampires or other supernatural creations. I am going to write it in a style reminiscent of both J.K. Rowling and William Shakespeare, and it should be a beauty--when I finish it ten years or so from now.

I am coming to grips with the reality that an author's first few books are almost always flawed and immature. Even the greatest authors show this to be true; and in addition to that, the more I think about it, the more I see that many authors sometimes have weak works, even in the prime of their careers.

So, while I can't even claim to have the beginnings of a writing career yet, I have to have a thorough understanding of the fact that these first few books I write are not going to be the ones on which I will look back proudly. It's a little discouraging to know that I have ideas that are much more brilliant than my own ability to execute them, and I feel in a way that I should be committing a sort of reverse triage by taking the ideas that I feel the most urgency for and putting them on the back burner so that I can develop my craft while working on the ones a little less important to me.

With that in mind, I'm going to get to work on a plot sketch of this dream.

Fear

"I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear, I will let it pass through me!"

Fear is an interesting thing. I find I experience it often. Therefore, I am going to make a list of things I'm afraid of, in an effort to face it. I will even make an attempt to rank them.

1. I'm not as good a writer as I've always assumed I am.
2. Living the rest of my life alone.
3. Men. Especially very attractive men.
4. Getting fat and/or ugly (I know, I'm so superficial, it's true).
5. Disappointing people.
6. Being perceived by others as boring.
7. Talking too much.
8. Losing my temper (which probably should be higher on the list, because I do that a lot).
9. That I will never actually read all the books I have on my bookshelf.
10. Extreme heights.

I will now contemplate all the ways I can face my fear and let it pass through me.

Wicked!

I went to see Wicked last weekend, and my newly formed opinion is that it is the second-best musical there is. Yes, I know. I haven't seen them all, and I've never even been to Broadway, but it was so good I found myself grinning practically the entire time.You know those experiences you expect to like and enjoy but end up surprising you by being even more likeable and enjoyable than you ever imagined? Wicked was one of those. I liked it so much I forked over the money to buy a t-shirt, which I never do. I am not going to say how much it cost.

The only show I've seen that I thought was better was Les Miserables. Everyone loves Jean Valjean.

Now that I've started this post, I can't think of any specific thing to say in a review of Wicked, other than it was just, like, you know, really good. I had heard the main songs before (sung by the original cast, who are much better than the tour I went to, but oh, well), and liked them, and I even tried to read the book several years ago (HUGE mistake--it was so dirty I nearly threw it across the room). So I was surprised that there were any surprises in store from actually seeing the show. But there were! That, though, was mostly because someone misinformed me about some of the plot details. Speaking of plot, it was probably the weakest part of it. The reason it was so enjoyable, I think, was the way it portrayed an unlikely friendship. It was all about the weird dynamics between Galinda and Elphaba, and though most of us could probably identify easily with Elphaba--the misunderstood, well-intentioned misfit--I know some Galindas too, and now that I'm older I don't think they're all as bad as I used to believe. In addition, the libretto is really clever, disguised as something silly with all the malapropisms.

I wonder if the audience usually connects as much with the show as ours did. The feeling in the room was one of intense joy the entire show, and everyone was obviously having a good time, laughing at the jokes, gasping at the special effects, and feeling all the outrage and suspense right along with the characters.

Fun in San Diego

I am currently vacationing in San Diego, and I came with the expectation of doing lots of outdoor, active things. So far, I have not been disappointed. I'm a little disappointed that my knee got as sore as it did after yesterday, but today's activities have taken care of that.

The trip began with a California burrito from Santana's. While I enjoyed the burrito, I will not be repeating that experience any time soon--this was an intense burrito. Chicken, tomato, and all that stuff--and french fries. Wow. After burritos, raspberry cake, and Cold Stone Birthday Cake ice cream, we played the new version of Balderdash, which is so much better than the old one. I like to think we laughed off all those calories from that heart-attack-inducing burrito right there, what with some people's answers being calculated more to make people laugh than to actually score points. It was great.

Then the next day, we went sailing. I vetoed a second sailing trip for this particular week, but I would be happy to sail again, if I ever vacation near the ocean. It was fun. I especially liked passing the buoy that indicated we were entering open ocean; there was a sea lion just hanging out on the side of it. We passed a lot of Navy stuff, most of which I can't remember specific names for, but one of them was a dolphin pen. I almost avoided getting a sunburn, even. Except for the random spot on the left side of one of my feet, and the little strip on my upper arm where the jacket sorta fell off, I stayed as white as ever.

On Sunday, we walked out near the port in the morning, and then I went to church in the afternoon with a friend from college. It's always good to go to church. Then I went home. J, by the way, is a fantastic cook, and made the best lentil soup I've ever tasted. I'm buying her cookbook as soon as I get home.

Monday was the hard core day. J and I went hiking up a mountain, then back down to the beach, then back up again, then back down to the car. It was a pretty low-impact hike, and most of it was pretty leisurely. But then, after we had some lunch, we went to J's gym to work out. She said she would be my personal trainer. After walking about a mile to get there, we ran for about 20 minutes, stretched, then did muscle work for another hour and a half. I learned a lot of new exercises. Unfortunately, at one point I almost passed out. I think maybe it was lack of water rather than wimpiness. Was I sore this morning? Oh, yeah.

After the gym, I cleaned up and went to dinner with a friend who lives in El Cajon. We walked at least a mile to a place called Ali Baba's, where I ordered Sharwarma, and my friend got Kabobs, Chicken Tekka, and some kind of cream chicken stuff. You eat it all with Arabian flatbread. Yum. Then we walked back to the condo and talked about books.

After all that, I was tired. I slept a good ten hours, and then J and I sat around talking over breakfast, about all the things I should do now that I'm not working full-time. By the time we were finished solving the problems of the universe (or at least my own), it was almost lunch time, so we went to a place called The Living Room for sandwiches (she got eggplant, and I got chicken caesar), followed by a kayaking trip. For anyone who's been kayaking before, you know it can be pretty intense on your arms, especially in the ocean on a windy day. But I absolutely loved it. We made friends with a big, fat sea lion who likes to hang out near the fish market. The fish market people hate him, actually, because he's a nightmare for their health code inspection--he hangs out there and poops all over the place, so it's considered untreated sewage too near the premises, and you can see why they discourage people from feeding or befriending him. We didn't really make friends with him, we just steered the kayak near him and said hi.

Now that my legs are feeling better, the plan is to do some more hiking tomorrow, and Sea World after that! Right now I'm just chillin' while J is making Falafel. I made the Tahini sauce and cleaned up, so there's not much for me to do at the moment. I think I'll go get my book. I'm re-reading Lord Jim.

J and R are really great hosts. I feel very spoiled.

Two Days Later:
Last night I had this dream that we went to the beach and the huge sea lion was there. But he was twice as big as he was in real life, and he dove and ate two other sea lions! It was so scary. Then someone went up to him and made him spit them back out. What an experience.

Yesterday's hike was great. Let's see if I can give a description that gives the whole thing justice. It was a National Park (I'll have to look up the name of it) next to the charming little town of Julian, where apparently they make the best apple pies in the world. I had some of the apple pie later in the afternoon, and it was pretty good. I can't really give a fair assessment, because I ate it while struggling with the beginnings of what turned out to be a really awful headache.

J and I set out bright and early, around 6:30. The drive was supposed to be around an hour, I'm guessing, but it didn't turn out that way. I attribute it to the fact that whenever you go anywhere with J, it's going to be an adventure. It's a good thing R let us take his Subaru, because we went off-roading in a wild attempt to follow the GPS.



After about 5 miles of driving (that took us a good hour), we arrived at our destination: the beginning of the hike around the sides of a few mountains, down to Cedar Falls. We didn't stop and swim because it took us so long to drive there, and anyway, I'm not crazy about swimming most of the time. The waterfall was cool, though. I liked it. And even though it was really hard, we took a "short cut" to get back from the waterfall--a billy goat trail. That was more like rock climbing rather than hiking. I started out more sore than I wanted to admit--mostly because of the lunges and squats we did at the gym on Monday, but I've decided that I like to do hard things.















One day after that:
Went to Sea World today. It's a good thing it was fun, because it costs a lot! The first thing we saw was a dolphin show. I could have done without some of the cheesy music, but I liked the dolphins, and I liked the acrobats dressed as birds. That was cool.

Then we went to the Cirque de la Mer. There were these crazy dudes running around chasing people. It turns out it was all a setup, but it looked like they picked a random dude out of the crowd and forced him to do all kinds of daring things, like doing interpretive dance in front of people, then going in a speed boat to a floating trampoline, then finally getting stuck inside an enormous floating ball and sent out to the ocean.

The performers came out dressed like amphibians, and I am still reeling from how impressive it was. It's hard to believe anyone can be that strong. They were doing acrobatics on poles and stuff, and sometimes the only thing they were using to stay up was their feet, or one hand. Can you imagine being strong enough to do a one-armed handstand on top of someone else's hand, when he's standing with his arm extended up? I can't do it justice. You just have to see it for yourself.

After that, we saw the Shamu show, which was good, but a little cheesy. J says the whale trainers are all kind of divas. She also said that the whales get really moody sometimes, and when they are, they can be dangerously aggressive. I guess most of us have heard about the one in Florida who killed the trainer. The trainers used to get in the tank with them and swim around, but they don't do that anymore. Sometimes they even have to cancel the shows if the whales aren't being cooperative.

Following the whale show, we went to look at a sea otter. I like those guys. They're cute. Then we went to the sting rays, and I touched one. I expected it to be rubbery, but it was kinda slimy. Not the most pleasant thing to feel, but interesting all the same. Then there were more sea lions, more dolphins, an aquarium (my favorite part of the aquarium was the bullfrogs), then the Arctic Circle, where we rode a fun helicopter simulation and saw beluga whales, polar bears, walruses, and penguins.

So Sea World is a fun place. I liked it. We're having shrimp and rice noodles for dinner (yum!), and tomorrow we're going to the beach so the guys can do some surfing. I'll have to make sure to wear more sunscreen, because today I got a little burnt on my face.


The End:
I am finishing this post about two weeks after I started it. The surfing day was fun. We went to the seal beach afterwards, and that night we went downtown for some really great sushi, some of which I will attempt to duplicate this week.

My Girl 2

Last night I was reading a very dark book and needed something happy before I went to bed, so I got on Netflix to see if there was anything cheerful on Instant View (Netflix Instant View is one of the greatest inventions/services ever). I meant to watch The Sandlot, because I think everyone in the world has seen it but me. But I'd have to get that one in the mail, so I opted instead for My Girl 2.

Yeah, I know. Why would an intelligent young working woman want to see a movie like that? I saw My Girl the original back when I was twelve--we actually rented it for my sleep-over birthday party, and even though I was one of the only ones who hadn't already seen it, I was not the only one who cried when Thomas J died. But a recent blog post I read (Janeheiress) reminded me how much I liked some parts of that movie, and I looked up some reviews. It turns out that no-one ever expected the original film to do as well as it did. My guess is it had something to do with Macaulay Culkin's weird, very brief span of wild popularity among all sorts of folks. But customer reviews on amazon.com confirmed that the sequel is actually the preferred one, at least among die-hard fans. So why not watch it? I thought.

Anna Chlumsky definitely had charm, even though she couldn't cry realistically for the camera. She was just the right kind of cute, and Vada's voice-over narration had a nice blend of wise sarcasm and innocent sentimentality to make the story original enough. This was the sort of movie people could still get away with making back in 1994, before it was impossible to give any innocence and charm to a coming-of-age story.

If I were to watch it again, I would probably cringe at several things, including pretty much every line that came out of the mouth of her new little boy-friend. So even though it's not a keeper, I'm glad I saw it. And the music was good, too.

Ode to my Pilot G2

I saw you in the bookstore
in a crowded plastic bin.
You cost a dollar-sixty
for a puny little pen.
But you make bold, audacious lines
avoiding smudge and smear.
To find a pen to equal you,
I’d be looking for a year.
Quantity or quality—
that neverending question.
I could have bought a 10-pack
at my roommate’s kind suggestion.
But seeing you,
you spoke to me and really made me think,
What is the real significance
of plastic filled with ink?
Images rose before my eyes
of manuscript and note
more clear and neat than all
the other things I ever wrote.
I bought you, used you
you were great.
For weeks my notes were neat.
Yet what was that—a scratch?
It can’t be—
a scratch upon my sheet!
Your ink is lost, your cap is chewed.
You’ve lost your brand-new shine.
Now I must throw away what made
so bold and straight a line.

How to Publish a Book for the Teen Market

It's actually really simple and doesn't take much thought. And I'm sure you don't even need much of a grasp of the mechanics of written English--that's what copyeditors are for, right?

Step 1: Pretend you're really sassy. Getting a sassy haircut and some edgy pictures of yourself always helps. Then put them up on your blog (and your facebook page) and be sure to mention them every hour or so on your twitter account.

Step 2: Immerse yourself in pop culture. The best way to do this is watch a lot of t.v. But make sure you dream about it. Dreams make the best premises for books, because they always seem really brilliant while we're sleeping or groggy.

Step 3: Now it's time to plan your hero. The hero has to have breath-taking good looks and mysterious manners. It's also prerequisite that he has to be or be involved with something supernatural. Don't worry--you can take whatever cliche you want for the supernatural part. Vampires, Werewolves, Fallen Angels, Incubi, Fairies, Alchemists ... they're all up for grabs, and you don't even have to be original. If you want to push the edge just a little bit, reverse the role a little bit and make the hero the "boy next door" while the girl has supernatural powers. But if you do this, make sure that all the characters somehow recognize something special about him that never gets explained. See, if it's apparent to your readers that your lead characters actually are special or different or courageous or strong, they'll find them too intimidating to read about.

Step 4: On to the heroine. First of all, it is absolutely imperative that the heroine has to act really stupid while claiming to be smart. The dumber the better. If you're struggling to find dumb things for her to do, just put her in a bunch of dangerous situations and have her act helpless and/or co-dependent. She might say she's read a bunch of classic literature and has always been ahead in school, but if she actually acts like she has a brain, it proves that she doesn't. Those are the only qualifying characteristics. And you must be absolutely certain you don't give her any personality. It ruins the story. Oh yeah, give her lots of stupid questions to ask, that way the hero can be as evasive as he wants. This will increase her fascination with him, especially if he acts like a jerk about it.

Step 4: Okay, let's talk about conflict. It can't be a real problem; it has to be trumped up, because in the end you're just going to resolve it by pretending it didn't exist in the first place.

Step 5: The plot's not too important either, because as long as you give intimate descriptions of the main characters having multiple DTRs, nothing really needs to happen. People only like to read about sexual tension, so if you've done your hero right and he's the mysterious bad boy he should be, the heroine is going to have enough internal dialogue just drooling over him and his expressions and the way he moves his body and the way he tries so hard to protect her from her own stupidity. There's no room for a plot if you set it up properly. If you don't trust me and are really worried about this, just add in some random make-out scenes; setting them in the rain or by the ocean after a swim is a nice touch.

Step 6: Minor characters aren't all that hard. There has to be a girl who is insanely jealous of the heroine, for whatever reason. Plus, there has to be another guy who has the hots for the lead girl, because no-one would believe, given how stupid she's behaving, that the guy isn't stupid for liking her unless there was another guy who felt the same way. Two guys falling for one stupid girl proves that everyone in this situation is really smart. Plus, with another guy on the scene, it makes it easier and more plausible to have all those DTRs that replace the plot. Make sure that if you mention any parents ... well, it might be a good idea to conveniently do away with the parents by having them go out of town or by killing them off in the very beginning. If you can't do that in good conscience, just make them as stupid and clueless as the heroine--that makes sense, because the apple never falls far from the tree. If the hero has parents, which I would advise against, they have to be either mentally ill or sycophants. Siblings? Blood siblings will kill the story completely, so if you want siblings in the story, they have to be adopted. Friends must be the stupidest characters. They have to be unbelievably naive, and they have to get mad at the lead all the time, but they can't ever stay mad, because otherwise they wouldn't want to be involved in all the drama.

Step 7: Finally, it is extremely important to get the right cover art. Flowers, silky fabric, or fruit always works well, but don't go with any background color other than black, and make sure there's lots of red.

There you go. Publishers will love you. Bookstores will love you. And teenage girls will love you ... well, until someone makes a big-budget film of your book. Then they'll move on to something else. Don't take it personally. The new fad won't be any better than yours.

Are You Goin to Scarborough Faire?

I'm not, but that's because I already went! Far out. My weekend, so far, has been full of interesting experiences--some of which I would love to repeat, and some of which I'm heartily glad are over.

First of all, I drove down to Waxahachie, a happenin' little town south of DFW. What was happenin' about it? Well, definitely not food. They had about a Sonic, a Taco Casa, and a Subway. But to their credit, they have a really great community theatre. That's where we went Friday night, to see "Once Upon a Mattress," which had a rocky start, but as soon as the princess came on the scene, I knew it would be a winner. It was! Everyone knows I'm a sucker for fairytale retellings, and this one could go right at the top of my list for those of the comic variety. The songs were cute, the costumes fair to middling, the singing for the most part rather good, and the choreography was, while not stellar, not drawing any negative attention to itself. I might have wished for a less rickety bench, especially considering the price of admission, but you can't have everything. All in all, highly enjoyable. I would do it again.

However, the fun pretty much ended there. We drove to a motel to stay the night, and in spite of a GPS, got lost multiple times. When we finally found it, we entered the back way, and boy, was it a shady place to arrive at nearly 11:00 at night. The room smelt of cat litter and mildew, and when we asked the person at the desk if there was a different room available, he showed us one that smelt of cat litter, mildew, and cigarettes. Ew. We cranked up the air conditioning and opened the window (but not for long), and that seemed to help a little. Things would have been just fine, even with all the noise associated with being located right next to I35E, except for the random banging on our door, accompanied by angry voices, that occurred around 1:30 in the morning. Yikes! D and I were so scared we hardly slept the rest of the night.

It was fun in the morning to have no remorse about jumping on the beds, and we got some seriously chic photos of us flying through the air.

And on to the Faire. The Faire was good. We started by watching a parade, in which the participants ragged on the by-standers for their lack of enthusiasm. I was too busy thinking about the metalwork roses I had just seen in a shop. We then wandered around a little, saw a little too much skin with some people's costumes, and settled ourselves in a little theatre to watch the Knife-throwing show. I think the climax would have been good, but the build-up was a little tedious, and we left early so as not to miss the jousting show. I had been informed, on good authority, that one must not miss the jousting.

I can't say too much about it. I couldn't hear the announcer very well, so a lot of what was going on was confusing. It was good. Medieval Times was better, though.

Then we found the book booth! D and I, being hard-core about books, were delighted with this find. The books, of course, were ridiculously out of our price range, but nice to look at all the same. I really enjoyed playing around with quills and ink. It's surprisingly difficult to do pretty, curvy letters with a quill if you're not used to holding one. I did better with the glass pen.

We passed by all kinds of fun shops and booths. I wanted to try out a hammock, but there was no way I could ever afford one, so I didn't want to put myself forward. We looked at wind chimes, which I loved; I got some inappropriate attention from a pirate who wanted to commit me to come see his show later that day (no, thanks, dude, and stop making lewd noises and getting all up in my face). We saw an acrobatics show involving ladders and tables a very ugly baby doll, as well as lots of jokes (some of which were quite funny).

Then, oh, then! We happened upon the very tail end of the performance of a man who makes music with water glasses! It was so great that if I hadn't left my wallet in the car, I probably would have bought one of his CDs. It's just as well I didn't, because stuff like that doesn't ever seem to be as enjoyable at home as it is when you're sitting outside on a wooden bench on May Day.

We watched a glass-blowing demonstration. That took a while, but he made a vase from start to finish. I liked it a lot. Then we went to the 'Hey, Nunny, nunny" show--which was two "nuns" doing a stand-up comedy routine that involved a lot of crude humor. Didn't stay long at that one.

And then it was over, and we went outside and got Sir Edward to take a picture of us all jumping off a brick wall.

I probably won't go again any time soon, but that sure was fun. I wonder if I'll be sunburned tomorrow.