Memories of Home; Things to Do Undone

If you love me you will probably read this. If you don't, you might not bother. I have the idea that though it hasn't been particularly or specially formed, the writing that I did yesterday might give someone an idea about how to access their own memories, their memories of home. I took me all day to write this, in the moments here and there:

I told Michael that I had figured out I was going to have to do some autobiographical writing, and start working with all my hang-ups and insecurities in order to get them out of the way, so that publicly I could begin to write about less personally situated things. Though I have begun thinking more autobiographically, and have started thinking about processing feelings poetically instead of narratively, I have not set about the project as I discussed it with him. Neither have I set about the voice training project that he had devised for me. Yesterday I played an Ella Fitzgerald CD while I folded laundry, but I was unable to listen closely enough to find the three kinds of songs he had described. I also never found a time during the day yesterday to set to work on it, though it would have taken only fifteen minutes according to our current parameters.

I'm sitting here right now, on the sofa in my living room. Isaac is beginning to stir. I've tried to awaken Michael, but he's still in the bed. I can't tell whether or not Parker is still sleeping, but I imagine that he won't be for long. The day is about to begin. There is a pause, and a holding of breath. What will this one be like? Will it be a good day? Will I do well? What sort of work is required of me today, and will I do it or not? Yes, I had a thought that I was holding out for, and since the children came in asking their questions, I don't remember what that thought was.

Will we take a walk together this morning? Will I sketch a meal plan? Will I go to the grocery store? Will laundry be done? What all needs to happen today?

I've been thinking about my grandmother lately. I look up at the tiles in my ceiling and I think of her, that room in the back of her house where the family always sat, barely remembering the day we showed up at her home and the room was new. Every time I make an afternoon cup of coffee I think of her, sitting at the table in her kitchen, with coffee cup and saucer before her, stirring it quickly in small bursts before setting her coffee spoon down to make a point. I remember her avid brown eyes, the way she looked at me when she was enthusiastic about something. I remember what she said the day that she took my new large journal from me and read it without asking permission. She told me my writing reminded her of her. I can pull out that journal in a moment and find out what the date was and what it was she read in my journal that day.

In thinking of her, I remember a woman I used to work with, a woman who reminded me of her. It makes me rather sad that I wasn't able to keep up with her, even though the two of us had many an argument. Her name was Mary too, and the other girls were impressed by the way I held my ground when we each were certain we were right. I visited her house one time, all the way out in Fayette, and it had a ceiling like ours, like my grandmother's.

I've been thinking about my father's mother today, but on Sunday my mother told me that she misses her mother every day. I felt like I smelled her house last night, my mother's mother's, at the house of a friend who has a septic system. There was something about the smell of the water in the bathroom. What a funny thing to associate with my grandmother's house. When I think of her I think of banjos and listening to the police scanner late at night, and thinking how curious it was, how I would watch the lights on the scanner, as though the act of listening weren't enough, as though I were watching tv.

An Uncontextualized or Discontextualized quotation from Eugene Peterson

I collected this quotation from Eugene Peterson several weeks ago, having turned to his essay for insight about reading Dostoevsky:

For most of us, the desire for beauty and the good proves infinitely frustrating, for we are mainly aware of what we are not. When we do things well, we get satisfaction. When we are well (holy) we are unconscious of it and so get no satisfaction, at least not in the sense of ego gratification. And since mostly we are not well (unholy), we live with a deep sense of inadequacy. The only reason we continue to aspire to holiness is that the alternative is so insipid. (Eugene Peterson, “Fyodor Dostoevsky: God and Passion,” his emphasis)

It's from and essay published in a collection titled More Than Words: Contemporary Writers on the Works That Shaped Them, compiled and introduced by Philip Yancey. The book is just the sort of thing that Philip Yancey would do.

By the time I tried to share it with Damon a few days later, I had already forgotten just what it was that struck me about it. I realize that to find out what it means within Peterson's context, I have to go back and re-read that essay, approached so casually on a Tuesday morning but identified as a story that matters to me in some sense if I can only remember how.

Beauty and the good. They are all around us, but they are obscured. What are they obscured by? Sin, violence, death, what we discern about ourselves. But these are not the gifts that God has given us (though indirectly and in some obscure way they are a gift). Read Ephesians if you are one who does believe. I understand that much, or at least I can agree with it, but that's when things get sticky. Why is Peterson talking about satisfaction in relation to holiness? And ego-gratification? Why even bring it up? “We...aspire to holiness” because “the alternative is...insipid.” It sounds like something Walker Percy would say, and while I dearly wish to quote him I cannot figure out how.

The long and short of it is, I like this statement Peterson makes, and I think it will be worth the effort to go back and re-read the essay in which he states it to find out what he means by it, if such a thing can be done, and I do expect that such a thing can be done. Maybe not today, but some day soon. In the meantime I think there could be some profit in thinking about it even apart from context, and that too is something I mean to do.

Recovering my (singing) voice

I prefer to get my blog posts to post by 8:00 in the morning. This morning it didn't happen. Friday morning it didn't happen. Friday's issue was a technical one. I scheduled the post the day before, but I forgot to hit the publish button, so all blogger knew was that I had started a draft. It was the reverse of my usual mistake. Over the weekend I simply forgot all about the need to prepare something to post.

Since I don't have anything else prepared, I'll tell you that Michael and I have come up with a plan to embark on my musical re-education. The plan? Study Ella Fitzgerald every day. This will involve picking out recordings of three different types of jazz tunes, a ballad, an up-tempo song with lots of scat, and something in between. I'll take the ballad form at first, listen to it carefully and regularly, and start learning to perform it the way that she does. It's a start. It hasn't started yet.

She's a good example for me I think, because her range, while impressive, isn't beyond my grasp. She isn't a soprano, and I have no worry that I might not be able to go as low as she can, though it will take some practice to get a full and rich tone. At the same time, she was a master of her instrument. I think the last time I described her voice I compared it to a wind instrument, an oboe maybe. The voice in fact is a wind instrument. If I can stick with it, it will be a beginning toward recovering my singing voice.

This probably isn't one of the ones I'll be studying, but it is one of my favorites of hers:

Inspiration from George Herbert's poem, The Collar

I have said before, and probably will so say again, that I have never been much a one for poetry. There is this one poem though, in addition to several penned by e.e. cummings and the occasional Emily Dickenson, that I have always liked: "The Collar" by George Herbert.

For all I know the poem is in the public domain and I could freely reprint it here, but I will not. Instead I will provide the link to someone else's page, and comment on a line here and there.

The first line...How could I help but memorize it? I seem to recall having memorized it the first time I laid my eyes upon it.

I struck the board and cried, "No more;

I will abroad!

Yes, and how many times have I said that very thing, if not in those same words? I've railed against constraints and longed to run away, to hide away, eventually to begin again, perhaps especially when those constraints were petty, or when conflicted relationships began to seem too much. I identify closely with the speaker's frustration. Only problem is, you can't escape your problems. They tend to follow you around as if on a leash. I'll leave it to you to decide which of the actors in that last statement was the one left on the leash. Wine that has been dried by sighs in one place is just as likely to be dried by sighs in another. Not the same wine, of course.

What? Shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free, free as the road,

Loose as the wind, as large as store....

The beat goes on. Read it aloud if you can.

Though I don't understand the contents of the entire poem, there are lines I know all too well, and they inscribe me, especially the end.

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild

At every word,

Methoughts I heard one calling, Child!

And I replied, My Lord.

How I have raved in my lifetime. Just ask my husband. He's been here for some of it. He handles it amazingly well, as though we were made for each other.

Sheila Bender writes, in her book, Writing Personal Poetry, "Personal poems recount lived experience so it is refelt, but with resolution, rising above the tragic." She goes on to say

 A good personal poem is not one that rests with pat ideas of what life is supposed to feel like. It captures a particular life and time. It captures the poet in the process of struggling to find out what this inner experience is. If the struggle is genuinely felt, resolution will be discovered as a result of writing the poem. (4-5)

 It sounds like she's talking about therapy, doesn't it? Although I do not for a moment believe that George Herbert wrote "The Collar" with Bender's sort of introspection in mind, the poem seems to fit her bill rather well, well enough that it sprang to my mind as I struck my own knee in frustration over some petty matter this evening. I like her idea of finding resolution and rising above the tragic. I like the idea of writing words that perhaps someone else needs to hear in order for them to find their own resolution. Herbert's poem certainly does so for me, whatever his original intention.

I knew there was a reason why I liked this poem, but I had forgotten what it was. A big thank you for the existence of this blog as an opportunity to remind me.

Musing; Productivity and limiting your time

What if I limited my time with internet access to an hour a day? How would that change my habits?

I read an article the other day that claimed productivity is highly over-rated...

Of course, what's funny is that I had to go back online to find it...

A Quote About Quotes Makes My Heart Sing (Even Though I Cannot Do It, Myself)

What if I just want to share something I like, without having a whole lot to say about it? I'll start by confessing to you that usually I skip over the long quotations I find on other people's blogs, and by so doing I probably miss out on some good stuff. But I won't fault you if you skip over mine, at least not this week.

I found this while wandering around in Robert Scholes's book The Rise and Fall of English:

My title, "So Happy a Skill," is a borrowed expression, a quotation. And that is appropriate, for I mean to take up the topic of how texts are made out of other texts.... (89)

The moment? The presenting of a paper on teaching writing in the University classroom. While I haven't recently gone through the entire essay to make sure I understand the details of Scholes's argument (or matter for that matter), I can tell you that he starts by speaking about the necessary intertextuality of academic writing, citing an example of intertextuality in a book from a different discipline, Michael Baxandall's Patterns of Intention, on the "interpretation of artworks." But here's the part I want to share this morning:

Part of what interested me in Baxandall's book was the fact that he used the model of a utilitarian work with some aesthetic dimension--the building of a bridge--as a way of getting a clearer look at the production of more fully aesthetic visual texts. It was this way of connecting the practical and the aesthetic, I now understand, that made Baxandall's book memorable for me, because it was connected by analogy to problems of reading and writing that I regularly face as a writer and a teacher. For my citation of Baxandall to be justified in the present circumstance, however, I shall have to work with it, do something with it to make it productive in terms of my particular brief on this occasion. I will go further and say that if I couldn't find anything to do with it other than cite or mention it, that it would be an error to bring it into my text. We academic writers must learn both that we have no choice but to be intertextual and also that we are obliged to add our own labor to these intertexts in order to make them do productive work in helping us with our own textual problems. We need them. We cannot do without them. But we must use them, work them, in order to get beyond mere quotation. In the case of my use of some words of Baxandall's, my effort takes the form of adapting his terminology to my rather different context. Often, in academic writing, borrowings from a field just beyond our own are most productive, precisely because they must be adapted and cannot simply be taken over unchanged. (91-92)

Quotation can be a thorny problem in the non-academic context as well, and though I have sometimes noted the poor use of quotation in texts I have read, I have failed to develop "so happy a skill" in the use of them myself. It's something I need to learn. Take for example this very same passage from Scholes. Ideally, I thought, I should have been able to condense the paragraph since you readers don't know about Baxendall, most probably don't care about Baxendall. Though I find Scholes's transparency about his writing process enchanting (I'm weird that way), the point for me in this paragraph was his commentary on the right way to use quotations in academic writing. It's true that this is what the entire paragraph is about, but not in a form that I could use for my own project.  I tried at one point to use ellipses to shorten it. I tried using brackets to fill in the necessary details. My conclusion is that developing the skill is going to require some dedicated practice.

Note-Taking: A Plea for Advice

I'm trying to learn. To become a better reader. A better studier. A better writer. This you already know. Ben gave us an article to read as homework for Sunday School this week. I read the article yesterday at the library. This morning I sat down to set to work on studying it, or outlining it at least. I ran into difficulty immediately.

There are skills I might have learned in high school. I had an excellent teacher my ninth grace year at Clear Lake High School Annex. She was structured and thorough and she taught us these things. But I never practiced. Never had any cause. I was smart; I had a good memory; my private school back home in Alabama was less well structured, and there was no need to practice or even try very hard. Which is ironic because I have always valued study, and I always claimed that my teachers were good, though looking back I have my doubts. They were good people. Some but not all of them were skilled practical teachers I suppose.

Yeah, like my friend Damon says, “Education: Epic Fail.”

Now I'm in my thirties and it matters. But I don't have the skills in place to do what I am wanting to. I have to learn and relearn those skills. I have resources available to me, but as Adler and Van Doren point out in a passage I reviewed this morning, study is a solitary activity.

Ben, my brother-in-law, is teaching a class this semester in Sunday School on how to read and teach the Bible. He has committed to giving us homework each week, and he depends on us to help him figure out what is an appropriate level of reading and homework to require. This weeks homework was an article from the New Bible Commentary: 21^st Century Edition on basic hermeneutics by D.A. Carson.

I read the article yesterday at the library, knowing that I would probably have to do some outlining before feeling that I had mastered the content, or at least mastered it enough for the purposes of talking about it on Sunday. I had a little time left over after my other reading this morning so I set out to start outlining the article.

I got held up at the first sign of trouble, the trouble being that this would be my first actual experience with outlining, and I don't know what to do. The first paragraph of the article is an introduction. It quotes a bit of scripture that D.A. Carson thinks sets forth the difficulties associated with interpretation, the idea that it is possible to handle the scriptures incorrectly. He goes on to describe three different hermeneutical (Is that a word?) strategies or theories that have been used, arranged chronologically. The question I come up against immediately is: how do I arrange my outline. You might think this is a small matter to get hung up on, and you might be right. Nevertheless I am hung up.

This gets into some problems that I have with note-taking, the main problem being that I never came up with a useful system for note-taking. In fact, I never persisted in note-taking long enough in any single instance to develop a method for note-taking at all. In the past I found it boring, non-productive, and felt that if I were going to make notes this way, I might as well copy the entire book in full.

So what about you? What are your note-taking strategies? How did you develop them? What sort of advice would you give to someone who doesn't know what they are doing, but wants to learn?

Music

Listening to music, listening to the dishwasher, listening to Michael and Jim talk. Stream of consciousness. What kind of instrument is Levi Weaver playing on a song called "String Theory?" This isn't the first time, while listening to Levi Weaver, I have thought "What an amazing title." Now I realize that I have to find out what string theory is, because this is the first time I have ever heard this song, but I can hear that he is talking about time. What was that line I heard only moments ago? "What if the past was not past; the future was here all along..."

And I'm trying to figure out whether I like this guy or not, because once again, I am listening to him on less than adequate speakers, and I don't know what sort of label to put on his music or his voice, and I don't know exactly what it is I am listening to. I think... I think I like it. I think I'll like it more if I listen to it some more, and I hope I'll get the opportunity to hear him when he comes.

So I'm on music. And I want to be on music, more than I am these days. You've seen it, I've shown you, the way I want to listen, to make it a part of my life again as it once was. And I am greedy for lyrics, and tunes. And someday, maybe someday, I might even want to be able to sing again. I used to sing a lot. I used to have potential. At thirty-something years old, I don't think I have potential anymore. The time for that, I fear, has passed.

Jim took us to the Gillian Welch concert in Birmingham Friday night a week ago, and it was wonderful. Wonderful to see them, to hear them, to laugh at their jokes, to marvel at the fact that Dave Rawlins stood on stage for two and a half hours in a dark gray suit and cowboy hat, playing guitar under the lights, and that Gillian Welch could sing like that for that length of time and play three separate encores. Someone in our group said that you could tell it was really over when they took the box off the stage with them.

Jim has loaned us several Gillian Welch CDs recently, and of them I think the latest, "The Harrow & The Harvest," is my favorite, and I wonder if that's because I had already been exposed to these songs before I heard them for the first time.

Writing; Reading; Politics

Yesterday was a bad day and I didn't write anything. Wednesday was a regular day and I didn't write anything, except for a response to Tuesday's post. Tuesday I wrote plenty, but nothing that was suitable for publication. I don't remember what Monday was like. You know, I'd like to be able to promise more consistency in the future, but I can't. I'd like to be able to tell you when to expect posts, or how many to expect, but I can't. And right now, that's just gonna have to be okay.

There are two books I am reading right now in addition to The Brothers Karamazov. They are When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Charles Kimball, and Validity in Interpretation by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. The Hirsch I've been wanting to read for some time. Modes of interpretation, theories of reading, and the ways rhetoric is used by authors as they present their cases are a passion of mine. If I can say that. I mean, I don't get all excited about this stuff, but I want to learn everything I can about them. As usual, I'm reading Hirsch now with the understanding that it will probably take a second reading before I get much of anything out of him, so I'm not reading it very slowly.

The Kimball looks interesting, but I can't say that I'm excited about reading it. I've been putting it off, in fact. I've been reading politics, and discussing politics with my husband, a lot lately, with plans to read even more in coming months, but I don't actually enjoy reading about politics. Especially since I had such a negative response to Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. I've promised a write up of Jesus for President to a couple of people, but I've been putting that off too. It makes me nervous even mentioning these books here, because when it comes to politics and the relationship between politics and religion, I am way out of my depth and less than enthusiastic. I started to draft something earlier this week or late last week positioning myself in relation to the subject in the abstract, and if I can ever finish it, I will probably publish the results here.

In the meantime I am satisfied to leave it at that. If I am going to make any kind of declaration, I have to make sure that I agree with what I am saying, and that gets tricky sometimes. Reminds me of something I read yesterday in Hirsch. I'm gonna have to remember to look that up later.

Reviewing Adler and Van Doren; This is a quick review, not an exhaustive one

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Note that this is a revision of the original review posted in Goodreads.


Very helpful book, detailed, emphasizing our responsibility as readers to fully understand a text before criticizing it, to represent another person's ideas conscientiously and thoroughly, and to dignify the act of reading by responding to what is being proposed. Response does not imply agreement with the author's proposals. The point is that if you are going to read an expositional book, you should do so with the aim of expanding your understanding. Taking on this responsibility only makes sense if you've taken the time to determine beforehand whether the book is worth your time or not, which is the point of the second stage of reading Adler and Van Doren teach. Because understanding takes work.

While I consider myself an active reader, it has never become my habit to take the time and trouble to understand that Adler and Van Doren require. I've always thought I could get a sense of what an author is saying by getting through the material. I expected revelation to come later, through a sort of unconscious critical process. I've come to realize over the years, however, that this kind of reading is ultimately unproductive. I was unable to remember for more than a month what it was I had read. There are few things as aggravating as wanting to explain an argument to a friend but not quite being able to remember what the argument was. I also find I cannot respond, and cannot incorporate ideas into my own thought process unless I take the time to read things properly. Adler and Van Doren were able to help with this.

It helps, of course, that I already shared a lot of their philosophy. I plan to read the book again at a later date and make myself an outline of all the philosophical statements contained in the book so I will be prepared to compare Adler's and Van Doren's principles with those of other contrasting theories of reading. They clearly expect that truth can be arrived at through debate, which means that the intentions of the author matter, whereas other literary critics privilege the reader over authorial expression. I'm told that Stanley Fish does this. I'm told that this is what "death of the author" means in both Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.

In fact I know that Robert Scholes, in his The Rise and Fall of English, disagrees to some extent with Adler and Van Doren's emphasis on Great Ideas. I look forward to comparing Adler and Van Doren's ideas with those of others operating in the same field.

I have linked above to a review of The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructiong English as a Discipline. I like the review. I think it is a good one. I don't agree with the author's conclusions. James K.A. Smith's book is helping me to see the reason why.



View all my reviews

This is a Test; It is Only a Test

I've been reading this book, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K.A. Smith, and I've sort of fallen in love with it. It's written for the layman, whatever that means, and for the practitioner, so it's written in language that anyone can understand if they feel like making the effort. There is one work he uses over and over again with which I am unfamiliar...

I'm lost for a moment in looking for the word, and of course, because I am looking for it, it is hopeless that I should actually find it, though I know it occurs the or four times per chapter. Which brings me to the subject of this experiment. I was looking for a quotation I read yesterday. It was a brief statement, seeming to me to sum up my heart-felt belief, and also my dilemma, concerning criticism (or should I say, argumentation?).

If we are going to do justice to postmodernism, our engagement with it needs to be characterized by charity--and charity requires time.

James K.A. Smith says this on page 36, just before he begins to examine Derrida's statement that there is "nothing outside the text" in careful detail, which I have understood from other sources is the only way one should ever read Derrida, that is "carefully and in detail."

On a side note, what the heck are inverted commas? (You'll notice I've just linked to a blog that references inverted commas, but the post isn't about inverted commas. I haven't even read the entire post yet, but I made a snap judgment the other day that I like this girl, so I bookmarked her site, and low and behold, this afternoon something she said springs to mind. Don't you find my randomness irresistible? Now, by the way, I am listening to The Civil Wars.) And how does one acquire them--I mean inverted commas?

Getting to the point, I wanted to find this quote, but in flipping through the pages I just couldn't find it, so I went on Google and did a word search. There's no particular reason why I tend to use Google, only that it is the first search engine that ever springs to mind, and there it is right in my web browser. I am in the habit of using Google products--such as Google Books, which is where I found the quote I was looking for, as well as a large portion of this text.

I was thrilled to find exactly the quotation I was looking for, pleased as well that I could see which page the quotation was on and turn to that very page in the library's copy of the book, and then I saw that I could either copy a link and link the the page, or embed something in my text elsewhere. That's when I got the idea that has unaccountably gotten me writing this afternoon.

What would it mean to embed this link into the text of a blog post? It doesn't help that I don't actually know how to use html, and so cannot work on the same page where the embedding is done. This is an experiment.



What will show up when I press the preview button? Better yet, what will show up when I eventually post it to my blog, as I have now decided to do? Would it actually make better sense for me to just put it in as a link considering that would simplify matters so very much? I won't get to find out until you do.

You have been party to an experiment. Thank you for your patience in following the twists and turns of my curious logic. The word I was looking for earlier was "kerygmatic," kerygama being the Greek word used for preaching of the Gospel used in the New Testament, or so one of the more convenient online dictionaries tell me.

It's a Traffic Jam

So many thoughts all jammed up in my head, and none of them are ready to come out. In the meantime I have added a widget to my earlier post reviewing Letters in My Head by Fleming & John which will allow you to hear the song in its entirety. If you've got a minute check it out.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to introduce you to another one of my favorite blogs mommyvsarmyof5. Christie always has funny anecdotes to share about life with her family stationed on a military base in Hawaii. She's also recently started a devotional blog that I haven't started to read yet. Take a look. She always makes me giggle. This week she writes about sending her twins to preschool for the first time. Exactly what sort of mischief could two little angels get into?

I Am Taking the Rest of the Week Off!

I'm just not feeling the blog this week, folks. I've been doing some personal writing, and trying to build up some endurance in that area, as I begin to realize that I cannot learn, or understand, or think particularly clearly without writing things down. Errors and misunderstandings that creep in when I'm working things out in my head often become apparent when I take the time to put my thoughts down. They become more objective and clearer somehow when that happens.

Check back on Monday to see if there is anything new. Until then, if you are looking for something to read, check out a couple of my favorite blogs:

Damon has been working on his organic gardening blog at Greenhorn Gardening. If you subscribe you will get an email delivered to your inbox each week, after an initial introductory set of emails each day for the first week. The latest email I received was about creating compost and fertilizer material using worms. Damon also posts a podcast to his blog each week, complete with helpful resources.

Unclutterer by Erin Doland is one of my favorite practical blogs. I haven't read her book by the same name yet, but her posts are always useful and informative. She answers clutter busting questions each week that are submitted by her readers; features an uncluttered workspace each week, also submitted by her readers and complete with full color photos; and her unitasker posts are always amusing. I find her to be a terrific resource for ideas on making changes to streamline your home and routine. Yesterday she shared a practical tool for making fun and exciting vacation plans. I don't know about you, but I was inspired by it.


That's it for this morning. If I get permission from the author in time, I will post another blog suggestion before the end of the week. Again, check back here on Monday to see what sort of inspiration strikes over the weekend.

Depression Confession; Not What I Was Expecting

Written last night:

I thought today was going to be a good day. I was so good this morning.

I took care of my skin, drank plenty of water, decided to forgo that second pot of coffee, used heat and product on my hair (which is against the principles of a certain segment of my generation of which I was a part). I did laundry before my husband was even awake. I washed the dishes I couldn't face the day before. I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, made my grocery list, and coordinated my schedule with Michael so I could go to Walmart. I vacuumed the living room carpet in an attempt to get the dog smell out, again before my husband was awake. I even called the newspaper to find out how to replace my four-year-old son's newsprint roll.  In fact I was on a roll. Oh so productive until 10:00 a.m.

It didn't last. It was over even before my trip to Walmart which happened at mid-day. And tonight I apologized to Michael for not having a more positive attitude like some wives. His response was to thank me for being exactly myself.

But this is why I have never really believed in the power of positive thinking. So often my mother would say to me, why don't you smile? Why don't you expect good things? It has been a point of contention between us for many years.

And of course to some extent she is correct. Sometimes approaching an issue with a correct (and cheerful) state of mind really does make all the difference.  But not always.

Actually, believe it or not, I have started many a project with the necessary enthusiasm. Every job I ever had I thought was the best thing ever for the first month, first six months, maybe even for the first year. I really, really want to look on the bright side.

This morning I expected that today would be a well modulated day. I would work hard, but not too hard. I would set realistic goals. I would take care of my family. I wouldn't waste time on inconsequentials unless it was while taking a reasonable break.  I was going with Dan Miller's idea big changes are easier to make than small ones (No More Mondays). It's true that I was stretching his point a bit, but it seemed a sound idea to me this morning.

Now, at the end of the day, you could easily look at my house and wonder if I had done a thing. I said as much to Michael. It's one of the difficult things about housekeeping. Sometimes hard work really doesn't seem to pay off.

All the same, I will choose not to use a bit of frustration as an excuse to not continue in well doing. Just because the kitchen looks terrible now doens't mean the morning's work was wasted. Just because the babysitting for the weekend didn't work out as I expected doesn't mean my children won't be well cared for. Just because my two-year-old wiped tomato sauce on my bed pillow doesn't make me love him any less. Just because a business development I was hoping for fell through doesn't mean that God doesn't have a plan to take care of us. Whatever the final outcome it will eventually turn out to have been worth the wait.

Listening to Music, Paying Attention to Music, Knowing Music

I found it difficult to write last week and nearly impossible to write today. What is up with that? Yesterday I wrote all kinds of stuff, filling up many, many pages (well, maybe five) but none of it was in any way finished or even finish-able.

This afternoon I interrogated Damon about music. He listened to three tracks and helped me identify the instruments. He identified one of the song I had been listening to as being composed in a mixolydian mode, which prompted Michael to give me a brief explanation of what musical modes are.

The song was "Letters in My Head" by Fleming and John, the song I tried to write about last week. Michael said a mode is basically a scale that begins and ends on particular notes. He said, "Think about it this way. Have you noticed that Gregorian Chants sound different from other music? That's because home base for a Gregorian Chant is different than home base for the music you are used to hearing." According to what I understood, a mixolydian mode has a difference of only the fifth note, which Damon explained is about as far from home base as you can get, considering the fact that a scale is composed of eight notes repeated over and over again.

If I have failed to explain this clearly its because I don't actually know what I'm talking about yet, and so I doubt I've recounted their words very accurately. Again, accuracy matters when you're relating someone else's ideas, particularly when it comes to matter of fact.

I have a lot to learn about music. Somehow though I've been surrounded by guys who can teach me something about it.

A Tribute upon the Death of my Inkpen

I imagine that most of you may not share my obsession with ink pens. Then again, I imagine that perhaps I may imagine wrongly.

My common grade BIC ball point ran out of ink this morning in the middle of a sentence. I wouldn't have thought much of it except...

I've been using this pen to take notes in my notebook, notes on the books I've been reading mostly, and occasionally notes on ideas that come to me in response to my readings. I've also been using it to take notes in a separate notebook on my Bible reading. I grip the pen too tightly. It bruises my fingers. I press down too hard with its point. It imprints the paper. I realize as I write with it that I actually love the smell of this ink, that part of the pleasure of writing is the pleasure of putting ink down on paper, not just the compositional aspect of writing, but the physical experience of writing. When the ballpoint runs out of ink I have to switch to a Pilot rolling ball pen. It is not the same.

Now here's a curious observation. The two notebooks I've been using for my book notes work better when using a cheap ball point pen. I have a smaller notebook, a more portable one, that I use for meetings and planning and such. It works better with the Pilot roller ball. By works better, I mean the ink looks and feels better going on the page.

I very much dislike using this roller ball in my spiral bound book note notebook. For some reason this causes me to enjoy the writing experience less, my wrist (because I write as though I were a left-handed person even though I write with my right hand) runs into the spirals more, and form fails to follow function.

I may have to find another pen.

Changes, Shifts, How Odd

I've been reading No More Mondays by Dan Miller and trying to take responsibility for my own life. Well, I've been taking responsibility for years. In fact I never haven't. How do you like that grammatical construction? Sometimes you just need a little coaching, and sometimes it's a matter of combining the right word with the right time. I don't understand why that is, but it is.

I've been receiving good advice for years. I've even been able to give myself some of it. What I have a hard time doing is receiving, not assenting. I can hear what you say; I can agree that you're right. That doesn't mean that I can actually implement it. It doesn't matter how practical the advice. It doesn't matter how badly I need it, or how much I agree that the advice is good. I have taken advice very badly over the years, but not in the way you might think.

So again I say, I've been reading No More Mondays by Dan Miller. Is there anything magical about Dan Miller? No. Does he have the answers to all of life's problems? No. Can I hear him better than I can hear anyone else? No.

But yesterday I asked myself, "What do you like about the way things are right now?" and "What don't you like about the way things are right now, today, right here?"

I like that I am writing. I like that I am continually thinking about how I might write something up or what I might talk about next. I like that I am taking it all more seriously--the movies, the television, the music, the conversations, the books, the games with my husband, and more, e.g. the things I do--and thinking about the meaning that all of these activities and experiences hold. I like that I begin to see a way to live more thoughtfully.

I like that my husband is home with me so much of the time. I like that we have gotten into something of a rhythm, where he gets to work on the projects that matter to him, and we spend large quantities of time together when he isn't working on those projects. I like that I have been able to participate in those projects, even if only to a limited extent. I like that we are beginning to be more unified than ever before.

I like that by the occasional happy accident I actually do get a good meal on the table. I like that I am understanding and enjoying more as I read the Old Testament early every morning, sometimes interspersing it with the New.

I don't like my lack of energy, my inability to exercise, the fact that I haven't been blocking out dedicated periods of time to give my full attention to the children. I don't like that my home is disorganized, and that I haven't managed to get on top of things, even though it has been my desire for a long, long time. These are things I can do something about.

I don't like that we have so little income. What I do like is how Dan Miller reminds me that this is now. It isn't forever. The fact that my husband is focusing on a project that springs from who he is, who God made him to be...that is a good thing. That's the way it ought to be, and we can wait for a good result. We are free to still wait because God has provided a way for us to do so through the miracle of a savings account that I wouldn't have thought could exist when we spent $6000 to buy a van several years ago. I like that writing is starting to become something I can do, because I'm doing it however imperfectly.

I hate reading self-help books, and as one reviewer of Dan Miller's book shared, the first seven chapters or so of this one are repetitive positive-thinking material that doesn't seem all that productive, but somehow through this coaching that would be oh-so-easy to ignore, my perspective is being subtly altered and cleared.

I think this is a God-thing.

(I hope to review Miller's book in greater detail sometime later, probably after I have finished it.)

An Experiment in Writing About Music

Never having written anything other than the briefest of reviews concerning music, other than a paper written for Introduction to Listening the year before I started college, I am embarking on an experiment in which I hope to learn how to write about music. This is how Diana Gabaldon learned to write, as she explains in her book, The Outlandish Companion. One day she decided she wanted to learn how to write a scene involving a large number of people at a banquet, and so she wrote one. That was the way she began writing the Outlander series, if I remember correctly. It's been years since I last read the Companion.

The experiment: listen to music and write about it, beginning with a song I know well. “Letters in My Head” by Fleming and John. If you've never heard the song before you can find it online.

I thought I'd start this little experiment by listening to the song one time through without interruption. But then a word popped into my head that I wanted to write down: sinuous, to describe the quality of the first few bars of music. And then my cell phone rang. Trying again now, from the beginning.

I notice a couple of things: First of all, it is very difficult to just listen to a song. I find that in this respect I fail utterly. I cannot listen without hitting on some key words, thinking about possibilities for the write- up, going over my history with the song, remembering some of my past associations with the handling of music. Second, I realize that listening to this song using only itunes and the speakers on my laptop was a mistake. This is not a terrific way to listen closely to music. I must get out my ear-buds before I proceed, grateful that a friend of our family's provided these for me, even if they don't work very well with my ipod. The speakers on the earbuds are great. The fact that my ipod requires in-line volume and song selection control is not.

My history in music... Not to go into all of it right now, I may as well share that I used to put together my own little playlist each week, and play music on college radio from six to nine every Sunday morning. I first heard of Fleming and John the afternoon they came to our studio to give an interview, and what I mostly remember from that day was a law student named Lee commenting on how good Fleming's hair smelled. If you've ever seen a photograph or video of Fleming McWilliams, you'll know that she has this terrific, big and curly red hair.

So now I'll give it a second shot, ear buds now in place, after mentioning a couple of things that popped out at me in the music. Drums: the drum-beat caught me up and kept me where it wanted me to be. Guitar: Electric or Bass? I'm not experienced enough to know, an aspect of listening I will really have to work on. What I do know is that John Mark Painter is a gifted musician, and that what I'm hearing is virtuosic and complex, if only I were aware enough to appreciate it. It may be that this practice of listening, and writing about it, will help me become more appreciative of what Painter is doing.

Once when we were listening to the album, Delusions of Grandeur, in the car, I noticed my husband grimacing and doing odd things with his hands. He told me he was imagining that he was the guitarist. For those of you who may not know, my husband is a professionally trained jazz musician with plenty of talent of his own. If he says a player is good, he's good.

Can I clear my mind and actually listen this time? I won't know until I try. In the meantime I have discovered a couple of exciting things. Fleming and John are working on a new recording project, and they have a website at http://web.me.com/johnflem/fj/home.html, with links to IHOF Studio (International House of Fleming) and Dweeb Records.

I have to turn the volume way down now that I'm plugged in, because these earbuds function clear(ly) and loud(ly).

I notice this time what I think are two guitars, both an electric and a bass, if those aren't the same that is, and I take more notice of the background vocals, which I know consist of John Painter, and another female voice, possibly Fleming's. I also noticed that what the drums were doing was more complex that I had first realized. I have to say, I enjoy a good drum performance, a drum solo being one of my favorite instrumental things. I want to find my copy of the CD so I can read the liner notes while I take a break from listening and writing.

I am embarrassed that I don't know more about the instruments, admitting to you that I have historically been much more interested in vocalists and lyrics. The liner notes don't tell me much, other than the usual obligatory information, plus lyrics, and the fact that Fleming McWilliams and John Mark Painter provided all of the vocals.

A third listen: I had forgotten to mention the distortion on the electric guitar, or the distance between the listener and Fleming's voice. I have forgotten to talk about Fleming's voice at all. My itunes account tells me that the genre of the song is “Alternative,” but if you've listened to a lot of popular music you'll realize that “Alternative” is not a very descriptive term.

Fleming McWilliams was operatically trained, and you can hear it in her voice. She has a gorgeous range, and can emote as needed, but also has a sort of passionate grittiness that serves the music she and her husband create very well.

Why do I like this song? It has a wildness that attracts me and the music is loud and complicated. You can hear the slightest hint of their punk influences, though punk is not a genre I am particularly familiar with. I love this particular song because the self that Fleming describes sounds so much like me. That's one of the reasons I'm so prone to sing it while getting dressed in the morning.

I'd like the reprint the lyrics here in full, but don't know whether or not it is legal for me to do so. I am therefore limiting the quotation to the following excerpt:

Dear John, okay I'll admit I was wrong when I said that you always get your way

well you know I can be mean and sometimes I like to scream

about all of the things that I know I'll never change

may be a dreamer and a little lazy but you gotta know I'm just crazy

I'm writing letters in my head...

Those of you who know me may not know this, but the person that Fleming describes is me all over: always thinking, not always prepared to speak, obsessing over the things I've done and things I've left undone, flaring up in anger or frustration, but regretting it almost immediately, feeling a little crazy. If you check out the rest of the lyrics, or listen to the song, you'll see. How many times have I said in my writing, even since mid-June when I started writing again, that I wish you could know what I have to say without my having to say it? How many times have I complained of the great ideas that are lost in the shuffle, and in the necessities of daily life. At times I have felt as though this song were me.

At any rate, I recommend both of the albums Fleming and John have produced, Delusions of Grandeur and The Way We Are. I also warn you that the songs that have gotten the most radio play certainly are not their best songs.

If any of you have publication experience, I would be glad to know whether or not including the entire lyrics of this song in a blog post would have been a mistake.

Books Brought Home from the Library

They are like orphaned children. I realize that it is a horrible analogy to make, imperfect in so many ways. I say it because, even though in a rush of excitement I brought these books into my home, they probably will be returned to whence they came without my reading them. You never know. Maybe they are more like shoes that will be returned right before the 30 day grace period has ended. Yes, that may be a better comparison, as well as getting me into less trouble than the other.

No More Mondays by Dan Miller has come home to visit its brother, 48 Days to the Work You Love. Both books have been borrowed, each from separate sources. I have read the table of contents for each. I have confirmed with an independent source that No More Mondays is  more likely of the two to be the book for us, as neither my husband nor I intend to seek traditional means of employment. I almost wish we would, even knowing that the security there is to be had with an established business is no more than a false security, but we are better of now as we are.  The waiting builds character. It is an entrance into the faith I talked about in Monday's post. No More Mondays supposedly focuses more on non-traditional modes of employment.

Validity in Interpretation by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., because it caught my eye in the church library once again. The second time I've brought it home; the second time I shall probably pass on reading it. The book draws my eye because of an essay on genre I once read in my Theory of the Novel anthology collected and edited by Michael McKeon. The essay was about genre determination, and the fact that we have to adjust our ideas about genre as we converse and as we read, because we may start out thinking we are having one sort of conversation, only to find out that we are having quite another. As I write this I am imagining this applies to a surrealist novel I read months ago. Surrealist? Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde? But it also applies to an imagined conversation with my husband in which he thinks we are speaking about feeding the dog, and he thinks we are speaking about feeding the family. I do not understand why Validity in Interpretation shows up in our church library, but I wish to read it anyway. It may provide a counter balance to the theories of Adler and Van Doren about reading which have consumed me recently.

Next to Validity in Interpretation on the library shelves appeared a book called How to Read the Bible as Literature...and Get More Out of It, by someone named Leland Ryken. Philip Yancey has talked about reading the Bible as though it were an adventure story, both in Disappointment With God and The Jesus I Never Knew. The insights he uncovers while reading it this way are insightful, accurate, and charming. I didn't understand a word of Job until Yancey had explained it somewhat to me. Since I am also reading through the books of the law these many mornings as well, and seeing them as I have never seen them before, I am curious to see what Ryken recommends. The other two books I have mentioned have at least been inspected by me. In this book I have only read the cover. Whether it will go beyond that before I take these books back remains to be seen. It isn't as though I had a shortage of things to read.

You can keep up with my reading through GoodReads, a website I have only recently begun to explore.

Notes and Rumination on the Complications of Faith

This is one I wrote in May. As you'll see, I had been thinking about faith for a while, longer in fact than what I indicate below. I still don't feel I have a handle on it, but I think that's part of the point, part of what it means to believe God and to trust Him with things that cannot be seen:

I really ought to write something long and sustained about faith. I've been thinking about it for just under a year now. I should be accumulating quotation wherever I can find them, other peoples' words that give me a hint of what it means. Last week a guy was talking about his experience during the tornado. He said he thought he had plenty of faith before it happened, and I don't remember where he went from there because I was instantly distracted. I turned to my father, who was sitting beside me, and asked, “Do people really think that, that they have plenty of faith?” I asked because I know for a fact that I have very little.

Kierkegaard, when he isn't talking about the leap of faith, not that I really know what he means by the phrase, Kierkegaard says that faith is not the same as resignation. He says that resignation has to come first, but not to mistake it for faith. Faith is always hopeful, expectant, never disappointed, exists apart from what comes. That's what I understand from a part of Fear and Trembling, anyway, a book I freely admit I may not understand.

Philip Yancey, in his wonderful book, Disappointment with God, says that faith believes God, even when nothing in your circumstances indicates His presence, even when you have no proof that He cares, even when it seems as though He has become your enemy. Faith always believes.

In another of Yancey's books he quotes Frederick Buechner. I love this one. It's long:

If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you're either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: 'Can I believe it all again today?' No, better still, don't ask it till after you've read The New York Times, till after you've studied that daily record of the world's brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer's always Yes, then you probably don't know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you're human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that's choked with confession and tears and...great laughter. (From The Return of Ansel Gibbs, Quoted in Soul Survivor)

It would never have occurred to me to pose the question in just that way, which is exactly why I like reading Yancey, Buechner, MacDonald, Kierkegaard, Dillard and others. I don't actually wake up in the morning and ask myself that question. Usually it's all I can do to remember to say good morning, and acknowledge that half the purpose in my getting up is to say hello to Him. (I don't read the newspaper either.) I wonder how my morning might go differently if I did.