Weaning Ourselves Off of Our Video Addiction

Blogger has made some changes to their interface, and I'm examining them. No time to write today.

Last night in Shepherding Group I mentioned that I had been feeling terribly disorganized, that I needed to impose some structure in my life, cut back on the amount of time my children spend watching videos, etc. I have a question. How do I implement the changes that will get my children to spend less time in front of a video screen?

This morning I succeeded in not having a video put on first thing. I took the children outside to play for a time and Isaac and I went on a little walk together. Next thing I know the boys are asking for the fifth or sixth time if they can watch Little Einsteins, and instead of putting them off again, I give in. They proceeded to watch two Charlie Brown episodes, and one or more Little Einsteins, which represented great restraint in comparison to what they are accustomed to seeing. After lunch we went to a park as a family. So far so good, but we can't go to a park every day. What is a sensible and reasonable procedure for weaning them off videos and computer games? And if I'm not letting them watch television, when exactly to I get to write? These are questions that must have answers.  What do you recommend?

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.

Finding the Balance Between My Job and My job

I suppose this is meta- because I'm talking about what I am talking about.

I spent two hours yesterday working on a blog post I had intended to post this morning. When I woke up this morning, I realized that it cannot be published. Not this morning at least. Why? Because the first part of it is clean and neat and flowed out of me in a matter of minutes, like Athena from Zeus's head, though no one would mistake it for divine. The second part is the part I had labored on, and even though it has taken up more time than I have, it isn't ready. It is a treatment of someone else's ideas, and therefore I have to take the time out to make sure it says something I really want to say.

I don't always take that sort of time. Whether I should or not, I don't know because I am still at the very beginning of this process. What process is that? The process of taking my own writing seriously.

There's a struggle here by virtue of the fact that I am not a writer, though that is what I have always wanted to be. I am a wife and mother. As Nancy Wilson reminded us a couple of weeks ago, when she and her husband were in Tuscaloosa speaking at Riverwood Presbyterian, motherhood is a high and important calling, and I don't wish to devalue it. In another sense I am a writer because I write. Besides that I am a published writer because you are published the moment you hand something over for someone else to read. I've been publishing these things regularly, in various qualities of dress, for a couple of months.

Here's something I've been wondering about. Writing is work. It's a lot of work if you do anything more than a quick draft. Occasionally an email will take me 45 minutes or more to complete. If I am to value my primary job, which is running a household, as I should, how do I do this other thing as well? I imagine some people would tell me that I have to wait until the children are older and don't need me as much. I suppose other people would say I have to write because the writing is the most important thing. I'm not comfortable with either of these answers. You have to have something of your own is the accepted wisdom, and I don't disagree. But how do I do both: do them justice (my husband, my family), and have this something of my own (reading, writing, study)? It isn't as though I can really set them, my husband and children, aside when the need to write arises. It isnt' as though I can always write during those times when they are occupied with other things.

I imagine this is something that all mothers struggle with. I'd like to start looking around for other women who have a similar mix of anxieties, because many of them are bloggers, women who also have intellectual goals, but who combine those goals with a high view of the calling to motherhood.

Consider this a call for help. If you've been reading this thing for long, you probably already have an idea of what kinds of blogs I'd be interested in (i.e. writers, readers, University people, theology buffs). If you have any recommendations to make, please submit them now.

Music and Homework, Learning how to do these things again

I've been listening to music. And working on a homework assignment. How is it that I used to do this all the time?

Back then I had a room all to myself, and I didn't have to worry about waking someone up from his nap. I could listen to it loudly, I could listen to it quietly, and sing as much as I wanted. It didn't bother anyone. At the time my homework assignments involved line drawings made with T-square and angle, cutting mat board with a utility knife, pasting drawing to page, creating templates for fabric design, laborful but mindless tasks that left mind open to experience sound. My friend Sharon once pointed out to me that each of us only lacked a couple of credits to have an minor in art. Back then I didn't have to make dinner for anyone but me.

I remember when I got my first copy of Five Wise Virgins by 100 Portraits. I lay on the floor of a housemate's room with my eyes closed and listened and cried and prayed through the entire thing. It is a recording that is too rich to listen to over and over again, but just the thing when you're feeling a little lonely, or need a different kind of gateway to worship.

These days I listen to music only when my children will let me, while I'm washing dishes, folding clothes or taking the dog for a walk. It used to happen sometimes while I was waiting without patience for something on the computer to load. Once or twice I closed my eyes and listened while the boys were down for their naps, but not in a while. It takes me thirty exposures before understand all the words. Occasionally it takes that long for me to decide whether I like what I'm hearing or not.

I love music. I love lyrics. I'd like to learn how to listen to both again.

My husband is only interested in a certain level of technical proficiency combined with adaptability when it comes to music. Trained as a jazz musician and admiring the likes of Charlie Parker and Michael Brecker, if a performance isn't compositionally nuanced and layered it is unlikely to win his approval. I hope he doesn't object to my characterization as such. I'd hate to learn that I had misrepresented him.

I am much more interested in lyrics. I want to hear songs that express the highs and lows of human experience, though narrative songs in the form of ballads drive me batty.

The homework I worked on today came from the exercises at the end of the Adler/Van Doren book. In one such exercise for the testing of elementary reading I was asked to comment on a rather lovely quotation from Sir Isaac Newton, something he said as an old man:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I was supposed to comment on this in 250 words. I could only manage 169.

Newton makes this statement because all of his scientific and mathematical pursuits were a matter to him of great pleasure. It was never his intention to make a great name for himself. He did not particularly enjoy the acclaim of his peers or public, or appreciate being made the center of controversy. All he really wanted was to be left alone to pursue his investigations, which for him were a matter of play. The smooth pebbles and pretty shells he refers to are the objects of his desire, which is discovery, and discovery undertaken only for its own sake. He understood only too well that the answering of a singe question could only lead to other questions being asked. Each new discovery was like a water molecule in the vastness of the ocean. He believed that truth existed and that the work he did contributed to mankind's knowledge of that truth, but he also recognized its infinitude and in fact I would think that he was pleased by it.

If I got nothing else out of the exercise at least I got this one lovely quote, which presents me with another way of looking at the world.

A Consideration of Words

This afternoon as I was driving home from the library I was thinking about words. I described something as splendid this past week. On second thought, splendid probably wasn't the right word to use when describing your admiration for a regional vernacular. Something that is splendid is covered in splendor, is it not? Like the grass covered with the final glow of the sun as evening falls.

Sometimes I want to say that a thing is terrific. But then I pause because it isn't terrific. There is no terror associated with the crayon drawings that my son produces during his daily quiet rest time.

Doesn't fantastic mean that something is too much to be believed? It is a fantasy, which is the equivalent of what Napoleon Dynamite promised his classmates, that he would make their wildest dreams come true. I check with IMDB. Was it Napoleon who promised that, or was it Pedro? My hopes are dashed. I remembered it wrong. Pedro made the promise; Napoleon only suggested it to him.

Here's one that Napoleon actually did use. Copied from the famous quotes page on IMDB.com: “That suit, it's... it's incredible.” Doesn't incredible mean that something really is not to be believed? As in, my credulity can only be stretched so far?

Smashing? I know I'm getting really British here, but could smashing mean that all the matter in the universe is so overwhelmed that it explodes under the weight of existence? Something that is wonderful if full of wonder. Something that is overwhelming in actual fact cannot be borne.

Impossible? Well, I think impossible is pretty straight-forward, even though it is usually used to describe things that really aren't impossible.

Can you think of any others?

I was about to quote something familiar which was said by C.S. Lewis, and that I'm fairly certain I have quoted in these pages before about the death of words. A quick internet search finds references to an essay with that title which I have never read. Lewis also writes about “verbicide, the murder of a word...” in Studies In Words, which I have read. But in thumbing through the introduction to Studies in Words this evening (for it is Monday evening as I write), I find something else to quote instead.

After hearing one chapter of this book when it was still a lecture, a man remarked to me 'You have made me afraid to say anything at all'. I know what he meant. Prolonged thought about the words which we ordinarily use to think with can produce a momentary aphasia. I think it is to be welcomed. It is well we should become aware of what we are doing when we speak, of the ancient, fragile, and (well used) immensely potent instruments that words are. (6, Lewis's formatting maintained)

Isn't it wonderful how human Lewis is? That in the middle of a book that would seem technical to most people, he inserts something as regular as an anecdote, but an anecdote that ties in with the matter at hand? He goes on to describe something similar to what I have been describing in my own undereducated way above, by which I mean to say that Lewis speaks with the authority of study, while I speak only from the considerations of my own mind, not having taken the time or trouble to find authoritative meanings for any of the words I have been pondering.

Inflation is one of the commonest [forms of verbicide]; those who taught us to say awfully for 'very', tremendous for 'great', sadism for 'cruelty', and unthinkable for 'undesireable' were verbicides. Another way is verbiage, by which I here mean the use of a word as a promise to pay which is never going to be kept. The use of significant as if it were an absolute, and with no intention of ever telling us what the thing is significant of is an example.... (7)

This is exactly the sort of thing I have been thinking about this week, and it is exactly the sort of exaggerative usage that I am continually guilty of, almost to the extent that I am “afraid to say anything at all.” Is there a whole lot of chance that I am going to weed these superlatives out of my speech? No. Is there much chance that I will weed them out of my writing? Probably not. But I am still going to be caught up short whenever terrific or terrible are the words I feel compelled to choose.

VBS Frustration and Lit Crit

I have been sick all this week, which has made it nearly impossible to write. Fortunately I had the first half of the week covered with previously scheduled posts, and was able to fill in a couple even in the midst of feeling lousy. The week wasn't supposed to go this way.

I had envisioned getting all sorts of things done while the children were away at vacation bible school. I was going to have plenty of time to think and read and write. I was going to get some things organized in my bedroom and at my desk. I was going to make a dint in the level of dust that is always in my house. None of those things actually happened, and I started thinking that the week was over even when it had barely begun.

After dropping the boys off at the church each morning I would drive home with all sorts of ideas in my head about things I was going to write. Having gotten a voice recorder for Christmas last year, I neglected to bring it with me, and even if I had brought it with me, I wouldn't have been able to articulate all of the things I was thinking.

I think in both words and pictures, but even when my thoughts do take the form of words, it isn't always possible to articulate them. That's why I can read a stimulating essay and still not be able to discuss it with anyone. That's why I can have a lucid discussion with my husband, but still not be able to write a short essay on the same topic. I wish that these things would happen more organically, but they don't.

I get especially tripped up when I try to write. Writing and speaking are not the same sort of activity, although they do have elements in common. I was reminded of this fact as I was skimming Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton the other day. I had picked the book up in order to find something out about Jacques Derrida. Before you start thinking I'm being all pretentious and dropping names on purpose to impress you, either of my intellectual superiority, or my obsessive craziness, know that I desperately wanted to do a degree in English Literature. I also desperately wanted to read and understand theory. I have a philosophy crush, if it isn't inappropriate to say so. I have tried reading and understanding and, more often than not failed miserably. I'm still trying. The dream hasn't died because of failure. And I admit that it is a peculiar dream by most people's estimation. I guess in a way that it is and it isn't a pretension. One of the things they told me in graduate school is that everyone there feels like a fraud at some point, especially on their first job, and that there is some value in putting on the mindset of writer or critic, if that is the sort of activity you are trying to engage in. If you pretend to be a critic, maybe you can write critically.

I want to read Literary Theory: An Introduction, because when we read an excerpt from it's introduction in a 200 level lit course I took as an adult (as apposed to “as an undergraduate”), the teacher said it was a book read by all English Lit graduate students. I read several chapters of it right after giving birth to my first child, impressing my friend's professor-husband with my oddness, or dedication to abstraction, or something. In the preface to the second edition Eagleton says that it was written with the non-practitioner in mind. The book is full of detail, and I'm not certain how to read it profitably, even if it is written for the non-theorist. I had thought I might use Adler's instructions for inspectional reading, sort of as a proof text or experiment. Yeah, I kinda don't think that it's going to work, not because Adler's instructions aren't good, but because I don't think I'm actually willing to work hard enough to carry them out. We'll see.

Sometimes I speak sensibly to myself about giving up theory, but that is a deception that never lasts. I can not give it up, which I suppose in the end is a good thing. I can't give up trying to write either.

Computers, video streaming, etc.

We bought a new laptop computer, and Michael and I have traded so that I am now using the new Dell laptop, while he has taken over the less new Acer.  This seems to work out well for the both of us as he needs the wider screen for web design, and I need the better speakers for what I do, watch a lot of tv.  Actually I have less time for tv lately, which is a good thing. 

I like the smaller screen, smaller keypad, and lighter weight of the Dell, which makes it ever the slightly more portable.  I might take this one with me to the coffee shop, if I ever decided it was worthwhile to write there. I like that it doesn't have any crud under the buttons yet.  And I like that it's cover is blue.  It helps too, since we now need an additional laptop, we already own this one.

Michael bought the Dell laptop almost by mistake.  We were trying to decide whether or not to send it back, when the window of opportunity for that possibility closed.  We thought about selling it on ebay. Now we have a reason to keep it. 

[Parker is momentarily standing in the hallway at 9:15 p.m. trying to convince Michael that he couldn't possibly sleep in his own room tonight.  It would be cuter if he hadn't already been in bed for over an hour and a half.]

As far as the television is concerned, I am practically run over now that the networks have picked up their Fall seasons.  The ability to time-shift viewing patterns is wonderful.  The way the interesting television shows begin to pile up in my Hulu queue is less wonderful.  Because I'm one of those people who actually like television.  Not everyone who watches it does, you know.  Not only do I like it, but I am also usually (if not always) an active viewer of television.  I like movies too.  My mom points out that I don't have to watch them, but don't I?  Is it enough to pretend that I won't pick up any new ones?  Who am I kidding?

A Bit of Metablogging to Jumpstart the Process

This is what I call "metablogging." It's basically writing about blogging, and the only way that I've ever been able to get started. When I first started this blog, back in the October after my now four year old son was born, I started with metablogging. I talked about how hard it was to get started, how hard it was to figure out what I should be writing about. Well, here I am, almost three years later, wondering how to get started. I've hardly been able to write at all since before my 21 month old son was born.
 I keep telling people: It's been hard to write even a basic email for months and months and months. My friend Alina assures me that it's the left-over hormones from pregnancy and breastfeeding that have done this to me. Ever since she told me that, I suppose I've used it as an excuse for not getting started. I've tried posting to the blog on numerous occasions, but I've been tired, or sleep-deprived, or maybe only too easily frustrated to get in there and do it.

I've tried writing things that weren't meant for publication. I've tried taking down my thoughts as they came to me. One morning I typed up a report of sorts concerning an experiment in prayer I was undertaking, but it all came to nothing.

A few days ago, my cousin, who is a successful freelance writer, posted something about a website where you can to post 750 words of freewriting. It's a tool for writers to sort of warm themselves up for the real work that is supposed to fill their day. I'm unwilling to subscribe to the service, because I have some unanswered questions about it, but the idea is imminently sound, and at some point I will probably succumb. It's the same sort of thing Peter Elbow promotes. Peter Elbow, whose book Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing, I recently read, is a major advocate of the freewriting exercise, the premise being that successful writers need to do lots and lots of writing, not all of it anxiety ridden. He also argues that college students need low stakes outlets for writing, so that it becomes an habit and not merely an exercise in requirement. There are some lovely quotes from Elbow which I shared on facebook. Maybe I should go back and repost them here, where they can be read and remembered.

Note:  If you look back over my older posts you'll notice that the metablogging is always done in italics.  Something about that just makes me feel good.

More excuses, books, and the reason why I don't have any readers anymore

I just noticed the total number of posts I have published to this blog. Just over three hundred in almost two years, and that's including posts that were comprised of pictures only, or excuses about why I wasn't posting. I guess you could say (and I probably have already) that it is emblematic of my stage in life. Parker is almost three. Isaac is a week away from turning seven months old. It's a good stage, but it keeps me from writing--almost anything.

I finished Walker Percy's Signposts in a Strange Land two or three days ago. It's a collection of his essays on numerous topics, and it was great. I have to comment that I probably wouldn't have gotten through the entire thing if it weren't for an obligation to certain friends who were reading it too--but I think that's the neat thing about reading in community: exposure to books you might not choose to read on your own, the opportunity to ask questions and discuss matters of interest with others who share a similar (though never identical) reading experience, and the chance to push forward with something you know is worthwhile even when the reading isn't clearly motivating in and of itself. I remember our friend John K. saying that you have to read things you don't understand before you can begin to understand them. The Walker Percy wasn't the easiest reading, and I probably understood maybe 30% of it, but I'm already planning for the time when I can read it again, knowing that next time I will understand more of it.

Right now I am working my way through Paul Elie's The Life you Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. I'm having a rough time with it. He is writing the stories of four people: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy. It's been hard for me so far because I have only been able to read it in snatches, he intertwines these four histories according to a pattern that hasn't emerged for me, and because so far he has focused mainly on Day and Merton, while O'Connor and Percy are the ones I really care about. I suppose that Elie's emphasis is less literary than I had expected. I'm also uncomfortable with the socialism/communism that was so important to Day, so that has presented some difficulty too. It is also true that my memory has become so bad that I have difficulty picking up Merton's story in the midst of Day's.

The most recent item that has interested me about Percy is his connection with Mark van Doren. It's silly that, having read nothing by van Doren, my interest is engaged because of the portrayal of his character in a movie, Quiz Show.

I'm also reading, at last, and absolutely, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It seems particularly appropriate now because my brother, Andrew, is currently on the road. Not like Kerouac, but still, he is out there. Other more compelling reasons to read it: a passing interest in the beat poets that I never pursued, the recent Mark Helprin nove (Freddy and Fredericka) evoking Kerouac in passages, and more importantly, the recommendation of a cousin, who once described his religion on Facebook as Christian Buddhism.

After writing all of the preceding this morning, I also picked up The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline, by Robert Scholes, while feeding the baby. I couldn't help myself. There it has sat on my bedstand for a couple of months, and Facebook says that I am reading it. I wanted to pick it up and see which essay I was on. Unfortunately I've only barely made it to the second, and of that I hardly remember what I have read. I do remember one thing however. I remember Scholes contention that professors should still be intensely concerned with truth, and yet according to my memory I don't know what he means by that. I don't remember his discussion of truth comporting with my own understanding of it.

An Old Post, Never Before Published

The reason why I haven't been blogging recently (This is how it goes):

I'm pregnant, and when I am pregnant I have trouble stringing words together. Maybe I'll get together a paragraph in my head while I'm supposed to be working on something else, but then I'll start to write it, and... There's an interruption of some sort, or I can't get it to work the way I want it to. It happens over and over again until I finally decide that I'm not going to do this for a while.

In graduate school just before Parker was born my inability to write proved disastrous. Three papers due at the end of the semester--the one I turned in to my Black Women's Metaphysical Fiction professor was total crap. I couldn't come up with anything interesting to write about, and what I finally did write about was incoherent and possibly offensive without any sort of redeeming usefulness. Seriously. I've tended to feel like an outsider a lot of times in the past and tried to write about being disappointingly marginalized by Ntozake Shange's expressed intent concerning the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

The paper I turned in for my Shakespeare class that semester, I don't even want to think about, and to this day I turn over and over in my mind possibilities for completing that incomplete earned in Theory of the Novel because I simply couldn't do anything with it. The incomplete haunts me because as long as it exists I damage my chances of ever being able to go back to Graduate School, even though by now I don't know whether or not I really want to go.

At this point I've said way more than I meant to say when I'm supposed to be posting pictures. Anyway here's a post I started at the beginning of May, and so instead of throwing it away, I'm posting it here, almost eight months late:

Parker slept late this morning, which turned out to be a good way to start the day. Especially since I wasn't in the mood to put anything away last night; so there were toys to redistribute, dishes to add to the dishwasher, and others needing personal attention. He atypically slept through one and a half showers, giving me the opportunity to do some devotional reading. I'm slowly and inconsistently working my way through Devotional Classics edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith. Today's selection was from Jonathan Edwards, and I confess that it did not get the attention it deserved. Maybe I'll have better success with comprehension tomorrow.

Parker has lately become a hugger and a cuddler and a climber and a talker. He doesn't blab, blab, blab away all day, but he is saying more and more words.

I've emailed two different people blog worthy material this morning, so I'll lay aside the guilt I feel at not revisiting those subjects afresh, and reproduce what I have already written here.

The first item I considered blog-worthy on May 2, 2008 was a story about how pregnancy hormones affect the mental faculty:

Two coffee cups. One has residue from yesterday's coffee because I found it this morning under my bed. The other has been freshly used then rinsed because I've decided to make a cup of tea. Which cup do you think I chose to put the tea bag and hot water in?

My used-to-be perfectly-good brain says, make sure you use the right cup. My perfectly-good brain does not say, put the old cup in the dishwasher before you do this. Thankfully the tea tastes okay anyway, and Parker is temporarily placated. Unfortunately I just realized that I forgot to put a bib on him, so he has oatmeal down his shirt.

Honestly, I no longer remember what the other blog-worthy post was meant to be.

Trials of Technology and Children

Parker frustrated me just now when he turned my computer off in the midst of my typing. Some ideas on Pierre Bayard's book were finally coming together and I had made all sorts of changes to what I had already written, when access to blogger was broken.

Parker Plays on the Quad

I simply haven't been in the mood to write lately, which is probably why I am reading a book right now on the value of non-reading. For some reason that seems ironic to me.

My Home in Lit

Brief moments of self-deprecating humor often appeal to me in the reading of non-fiction. This seems to be a hallmark of so many British authors, as I think Peter Elbow pointed out in one of his essays on composition.

Since I finished reading Orthodoxy over the weekend, and received my copy of Devotional Classics through the mail from Amazon, I decided to pick up Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis as my next continuous non-fiction read. I will revisit Larry Crabb's The Papa Prayer, and Piper's Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ later. (Devotional Classics is not meant as a continuous read; it is made to be read in fits and starts, and the very first selection in the text is from Mere Christianity. Thus my progression to Lewis.)

I was reading through the introduction to Reflection on the Psalms this morning, in which Lewis remarks, "There are some enlightened and progressive old gentlemen...whom no courtesy can propitiate and no modesty disarm. But then I dare say I am a much more annoying person than I know (8)."

Dillard Writes Such Beautiful Sentences About Plain Things

I have gotten Annie Dillard's novel The Living from the library exactly twice. Both times I have attempted to read it, and both times my attempts have failed. This last time I said to Michael, "I really want to read this book but I just can't. Her sentences are beautiful. She's a wonderful writer, but she goes into these high levels of detail about things that just aren't interesting to me. I scan through the pages looking for dialogue and there is very little." Michael suggested that if I really wanted to read it perhaps I should treat it like a technical exercise. Read to discover how she composes and punctuates such wonderful sentences.

I'll give you the example I gave Michael a few nights ago. You might need to read this sentence out loud to notice how wonderfully balanced it is:

"One November night after a supper of dried salmon and potatoes, the Fishburns sat in the Rushes' dark cabin drinking coffee made from burnt toast."

There is a short story appearing in The Annie Dillard Reader, the events occur at some point in the novel. I enjoyed the short story very much, even though it isn't the sort of fiction I would typically read. I think that if I really were a serious reader I would persist through all the detail of the novel, but alas, I am not really a serious reader. Maybe next time I take the book out of the library I will make even more headway.

Institute for Writing & Thinking at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

It's been a long day; I am really tired, but I've got to get at least two items out of my head and onto the blog before I can go to bed.

The Caption is from a brochure I received in the mail a while back.

Item #1: This is a question to which I seriously desire an answer. Research is what it is. This may not be the last time I ask this question, and it is as follows: Have any of you ever used writing to work out the meaning of something you read? If so, what technique did you use, and anecdotally, what was the result? I ask because I would like to learn how to do this.

Item #2: In the caption to this blog I say that I will "pull a thought at random from those swirlling 'round my mind." I've been a little uneasy about this caption only because I wasn't completely happy with the way those words together sound. I was very gratified the other day therefore to find that Chesterton uses a similar phrase in Orthodoxy. On page 85 of my edition he says that he will give instances of his argument "at random," which is exactly the part of the phrase that was bothering me.

Pitfalls of Reading and Writing

It pleases me to say that I am writing again. I'm writing here, on this blog, which is sort of an on-line journal where I can make statements, get feedback, and keep track of interesting things I will enjoy remembering about my baby's childhood. Remember that word: journal.

Last weekend I picked up my book journal for the first time in two years perhaps. It is a really adorable little book that a friend brought me from San Franscisco, and it is a joy to write in. Writing in this book will help me to remember things that I have read, to make notes on those things I really want to remember, and even analyse things I do not fully understand. It is a slightly more personal set of notes, but it is also a resource for ideas I may want to address publicly in the future. But there's that word again: journal.

Also last weekend, I picked up a very nice cloth bound journal that my sister-in-law got for me a few years ago. I've written in it off and on over the years, and I specifically picked it up last weekend to note something Michael said that was encouraging concerning our marriage. This is the most personal of the journals that I keep. Journal.

I also have a cloth bound calandar that I use to make notes about Parker, the type of stuff I get asked by other mother's from time to time, for instance, when he started sleeping through the night, etc. It also keeps up with appointments, the occasional to-do list, and things I might want to add to the baby book later. It's actually sort of like another journal.

So this morning I picked up Surprised by Joy to try and find the quotation I mentioned earlier this week. Thanks to Jim I've connected what Lewis says about the dangers of introspection to one of the points Lewis makes in A Grief Observed (more on that later, I hope), so imagine my surprise when I came across the following quote:

"If Theism had done nothing else for me, I should still be thankful that it cured me of the time-wasting and foolish practice of keeping a diary."

Finding this amongst my most thoroughly admired author's writings both startled and amused me because journal-keeping is one of my most prized activities. Of course, when Lewis said this I think that he was referring to a different use than mine, because he goes on to say,

"Even for autobiographical purposes a diary is nothing like so useful as I had hoped. You put down each day what you think is important; but of course you cannot each day see what will prove to have been important in the long run (233)."

In my better moments journaling for me has been more like praying, which for Lewis became a mode of extraversion. But he makes a good point (or criticism), and I don't know yet what I'm going to do with it.

The Difficulties of Writing

One of the things I have been taught about writing is that it is necessary to orient your readers to the meaning of any quotations you may choose to include in your text. The meaning of and the reason for the quotation may seem obvious to you, but is not necessarily as obvious to your reader.

Okay, I accept that. But I am not very good at doing it.

Just now, I spent a good bit of time attempting to explain what Chesterton says about "the balance of apparent contradictions." I would type a fragment of a sentence, contemplate it's meaning, and then erase it because it is difficult to speak for someone like Chesterton.

My Dad has occasionally said that when it comes to quotations, most statments are not so well made that they cannot be stated in another way, so quotations should be chosen wisely. I keep that in mind as I write, but too often in the sort of work I prefer, it is the cadence and the rhythym of the sentence I am trying to convey, not just the meaning, because the cadence and the rhythym inform the meaning in some way. In those cases paraphrase or explanation is inadequate, yet my understanding of the meaning is probably unclear.

This is just another one of the problems of writing I am not sure how to solve.

By the way, I just about give up on formatting anything properly in blogger (see below).