Currently reading/openings

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This weekend, I opened up one of my used books for American Lit to start reading it. The person who owned or rented it before me had written all over it. I usually find marks in books annoying, especially since I can’t stand writing in them myself. But her notes are amusing and sometimes even spot on. The remark that first caught my attention was on the page opposite the first page of prose. It says,” Why does he open with this?”

In all of my high school English classes (not so much my college ones), the teacher often started with a variant of this question when beginning a novel or short story. With The Raisin in the Sun, we discussed why Lorraine Hansberry took the title from Langston Hughe’s poem, “Harlem.” And with Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, we talked about the nature filled opening. It is a common question for an English major to ask to themselves or out loud. But I think it is also a common question for humans to ask.

Sometimes it comes in different forms. “Why do we do this?” “Why do we do that?” Why when we greet each other do we say “Hello” or “Good morning/afternoon/evening?” Why do we not say “Eat well today!” or “Sleep well tonight!” Well, the answer is: because our normal greetings make sense and are expected.

But let’s return to the original question: “Why does (do) he (we) open with this?” We do not have a choice about how we start in this world, but we do have many other choices after that. That is one thing that I have learned: we have choices that we make every day, whether it be the clothes that we wear or the food we eat. Our beginning does matter, but our middle matters more. The end is simply a denouement, a resolution.

In case you are wondering, the book that I found this thought provoking remark in is Cane by Jean Toomer. Published in 1923, it is a collection of short stories, poems, and drama, all on the subject of black life in the South. It is not autobiographical, but quite a bit of it is informed by Toomer’s biracial identity and his brief stay in Georgia.

I will not say much about the book, except that it is not the easiest book to read and it is quite brilliant. One thing that I would recommend if you wanted to read it would be to research the Harlem Renaissance and Jean Toomer. It is not necessary, but I think it is nice to know the background of literature that is so tied to history.

That flighty temptress, adventure

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“And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” -Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Once again, I find myself preparing for another semester of college. Although I have become accustomed to life at a university, it is always challenging to go back and deal with the swells of homework.

I like new things. I like new books. I love new ideas, such as my idea for A Little Mermaid adaptation. I like my new apartment with a walking trail in my backyard.

But I like old things too. I don’t cling onto them like Gatsby clings onto Daisy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, but I do like looking at birthday cards from the past, letters from friends and family, books that have tape on the bindings and that distinct old paper smell.

As far as adventures go, I’m not exactly the one for them. Like Bilbo Baggins, in a way. I have been on a sailboat once before and my stomach told me that it wasn’t for me, but I love rafting, especially when there are rapids involved. And the one time I was on a cruise, I preferred going on the excursions rather than staying on the ship. And when I tell people that I don’t ski, even though I’m a native Coloradoan,  they are shocked. But I tell them that it’s way too expensive. And also it doesn’t really appeal to me. Give me a sled or hiking shoes or  a tent and I’m happy as a bear eating blackberries.

But adventures don’t have to be big. Actually I think the best of them are small and not monumental. I would count driving around just for the fun of it under this category, as well as going to restaurant with kinds of foods that you’ve never even thought of trying before (For example, I once had a carrot shake with ginger. It was delicious).

School is an adventure for me, even though I’ve been going to school for most of my life. Every day can be an adventure. And if every day is an adventure, can you ever really get bored?

 

An Act of Caring

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“Never doubt the power of a smile, a touch, a kind word, or any act of caring. All have the potential to turn a life around.” – unknown

Last year I was walking to my on-campus apartment when a small, silver car pulled up beside me and a girl jumped out. She was holding a red rose, which she gave to me with a smile. She didn’t say anything to me, just hopped back into the passenger’s seat. I waved at her and the driver and they drove away.

The rose was attached to a poem that I honestly can’t remember right now. I do remember that it was printed on a slip of paper with railroad tracks. I thought it was somewhat sappy, but also meaningful to have a picture of railroad tracks tied to a rose.

Because life is a journey. And every once in a while, we need kindness from strangers.

I was not having a bad day, but when I became stressed later that week, I just looked at the tiny rose that I was drying in my window and felt a little better.

I told my roommate about the random act of kindness that was given to me. She suggested that I should give the note along with chocolate or some small gift to someone on campus the next day.

I went to an all-girls high school and I loved it, mostly because it wasn’t unusual for a girl you had never seen before to stop you in the hallway to say hi or leave a note on your locker. It was a loving environment. Turns out that it is harder to give something to a complete stranger on a co-ed campus.

I managed to give a girl who looked just a little stressed a small bag of gummy bears attached to the poem that the girls had given me. On the back of the poem, I briefly explained how the railroad tracks had gotten to me and explained that by giving this present, I wanted to start a chain reaction of sorts. A chain of kindness.

I don’t know if she passed it on like I suggested or if she even saw the note. I would get it if she threw it away because strangers are scary. We have been taught to not to talk to strangers. And for a good reason. Not all strangers are kind.

But some strangers are the nicest, gentlest, most humble people you will ever meet. Like the guy that called security when I broke my leg and then stayed around until the paramedics came, the paramedics themselves, a man at the grocery store who picked up dropped cream cheese when my hands were too full, and the tow truck guy who let me sit in his truck to get warm and helped me find a tire company on New Year’s Day.

Actions don’t have to be big to mean a lot. They don’t always come with a new TV or a refurbished house. Meaningful actions can be as small as smiles, holding open doors, or pressing the button for your floor on the elevator. I don’t want to be sappy, but please be kind.

 

 

Currently Reading

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Happy New Year!

As we greet a new year, I look at a book that reflects on the past.

This book is Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. It should not be confused with Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James.

Sepetys’ beautiful novel features Lina Vilkas, a fifteen year girl from Lithuania who is deported with her mother and younger brother to Siberia under Stalin’s regime. Lina is an artist and secretly draws portraits of everyone around her and writes descriptions of everything that happens. She hopes that these pictures will somehow reach her father who was separated from his family.

On the back of my copy of the book is a review by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, the Newberry Honor-winning author of Hitler Youth. She writes that she feels grateful “for a writer… who bravely tells the hard story of what happens to the innocent when world leaders and their minions choose hate and oppression.”

Bartoletti’s review is incredibly apt as when the year “1941” is spoken or read, people think of the Holocaust and Hitler. Typically, they do not think of Stalin. And if they do think of him, he is somehow separated from Hitler in their minds. I get this because I do it too. And there aren’t many, if any, survival stories. Unlike the Holocaust. It is quite clear in the book, however, that these two events are happening at the same time because every once in a while, someone will mention news about the ghettos, the concentration camps, or the progress of the war.

Even though this book is a work of fiction, I believe that it is quite good at capturing the despair, the chaos, and the dehumanizing nature of the situation. This is possible because fiction, I believe, always holds a glimmer, or perhaps a whole sun, of truth. It also captures the random and uplifting moments of humor and joy that always seem to pervade throughout dark times.

The style of Septys’ writing is simple and clear. It does not make the horrific events, like shooting a young mother because she was grieving over her dead newborn, more or less dramatic. They just simply happen. Like most novels, it has chapters. They are shorter than your average chapters and sometimes break up the narrative. This clearly has not disrupted me because I have had a hard time putting it down, even when it is midnight and I know I have work in just a few hours.

While reading it, a quote from another book, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, popped into my head: “I am haunted by humans.”  I, a human, find myself thinking I am haunted by humans because of the events portrayed in  Between Fifty Shades of Gray. I am haunted by their ability to do evil. I am haunted by their ability to be good and kind amongst all odds like Lina’s mother is. But mostly I am haunted by their ability to love and survive when hopelessness abounds.

The Taste of Reading

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Sorry for the delay in posting. The last two weeks have been more than hectic with the end of the semester. My last thing isn’t due until tomorrow, but I saw a news report about the Taliban attack on a school and I decided publish something more uplifting. Something that is proof that the world is not just full of darkness.

My sister and I walk to the library. It is a nice day with a blue sky and sunshine.
At one point, we cross a driveway. We think the car is going to stop for us, but it jerks forward at the same time that we start walking. “Always try to make eye contact,” my sister tells me as she grabs my arm.
She heads right for the reserved shelf. I want to peruse the young adults section, but I already have a few books from the last time we were here in my room. She finds the bright green paper that proclaims our last name in black permanent marker and pulls the book that we had chosen together off the shelf. It’s Pride and Prejudice.
It starts to rain while we are checking out using the new “do it yourself” system. We walk quickly out of the library and down the hill. My sister tucks the book under her coat to keep it safe. No cars bother us.
We are both cold and fairly wet when we duck into a restaurant. We are eating later, so we just order two hot chocolates and sit in the slightly comfortable chairs in the corner next to the fireplace, which is thankfully turned on.
My sister suggests starting the book and I lean over as she reads the famous first sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Always mindful of the time, I allow her to finish the first two chapters before I say that we should be going; we have a movie to catch.
It is yet again sunny and bright outside as we walk over the highway to the dine-in movie theater that is a few blocks away from my house.
One half of the theater is dimmed and the other still has its lights on full power. My sister and I sit in the lighted side and order one Mushroom and Swiss Burger each. While we wait for the food to come and the movie to start, she pulls out Jane’s Austen’s work. She gets through half a chapter before the lights start to dim.
“I guess they don’t want me reading out loud,” she says as she closes the book

Pride and Prejudice wasn’t the first or the last book we read together. First, we read The Hobbit. Some of the reading took place on the hammock in our backyard. One chapter was read in the dark with a flashlight. And in middle school, she would pick me up after school and we would walk home where sardines and crackers would wait with our latest book. We read A Great and Terrible Beauty and Timothy Zahn’s Dragonback series.

While my sister was reading, I would sink into her voice and all thought would be suspended temporarily as I crawled into the minds of the characters. And throughout all these experiences, I would be happy. Because you see, books are love.

25 Reasons to Love Life

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This entry is  based on Kim Dana Kupperman’s “71 Fragments for a Chronology of Possibility” and her writing exercise in Blurring Boundaries: Explorations to the Fringes of Nonfiction (edited by B.J. Hollars).

25 Reasons to Love Life
“Wherever she was, she was at the center of the world. That one lives at the center of the world is the world’s profoundest thought.” Wendell Berry, Whitefoot

1. At the center of my world is purple. Purple for passion, passion for survival.

2. At the center of my world is my heart, its beats going unnoticed most of the time. It pumps, provides, pushes blood through me and guides my every step.

3. At the center of my world are the dreams I dream about the future someone who will be my other purple.

4. At the center of my world, a mountain stands.

5. As I write this, I understand the center of my world.

6. As I write this, I know that the center of my world is solitary, but not alone.

7. As I write this, I realize that the center of my world is circling and always, always, always changing.

8. As I write this, I am certain that I center my world on writing.

9. I need to be strong for the center of my world.

10. The center of my world is silence and taking time off for myself.

11. The center of my world is love and loving myself.

12. The center of my world is chaotic.

13. The center of my world is difficult and arduous, like rapids in a swollen river.

14. The trees in the center:
a. Aspen
b. Blue Spruce
c. Oak

15. The colors:
a. Mauve
b. Forest Green
c. Royal Blue
d. Rose Pink
e. Gold

16. The couch on which I sit now in my apartment is not the center of my world.

17. The pillows with prints, although they are nice to rest on, are not the center of my world.

18. The politics of my work, school, and nation do not belong in the center of any world.

19. What is the center:
a. Music
b. Breathing
c. Warmth of a friend

20. I hope that the center of my world will be like an oval. Or a labyrinth with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

21. I hope for hands to hold mine.

22. I wish for magic.

23. The center of my world is why I should love myself.

Why?

24. A reason: Hope.

25. Another: Life and the beautiful mess that it is.

I Hope You Dance

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This weekend, I saw a little boy, maybe about three or four, stand up on his pew and dance. Maybe he shouldn’t have been standing up on it, especially during church, but I couldn’t help think that we should all be dancing like that kid without any idea of what we look like or if it’s wrong.

Dancing seems to be reserved for those special occasions such as weddings and proms or reserved for dance studios or shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing with the Stars.” But really, we should dance whenever we get a good grade, when we’ve accomplished something difficult, when we’ve secured a job, when we feel happy. We should dance like the hard-working moms and grandmas in Mamma Mia who leave their tasks and skip down the path just because they want to.

And in honor of Thanksgiving coming up, we should dance for what we are thankful for. We should dance for the food in our belly. We should dance in remembrance of people and times gone and we should dance for forgiveness. We should dance for love. We should dance.

When I was little, the priest in my church always invited the kids to dance down the aisle with him. I didn’t always join the group, but when I did, I felt my heart lift a little bit for a least a small amount of time. Back then, I danced because I loved it. When I was part of a dance studio, I danced for an audience as well as myself.

But now, I dance for myself in the living room and the kitchen. I dance for joy when something good happens. I dance to make me feel better. When I dance, I try to suspend that moment and try not to think about the homework or the work that I have to do. I try to dance like that kid on the pew.

I hope you dance. Because “Life is not waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

Unhomeliness

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“Unhomeliness” is usually used to refer to the odd feeling of being part of two cultures, but not really feeling comfortable in either. According to one of my Literature classes, it is a state of in between.

Earlier this week I saw someone who looked quite familiar with “unhomeliness.” He was sitting on the corner in a light grey jacket and a red and white blanket. His face was completely covered and he had black gloves. It was 18 degrees outside and snowing and the cars were passing him like he was just another blade of glass under the snow.

That man suffers from “unhomeliness.” He is part of the world, which houses millions of people, but his world kicked him out of the house he had onto the streets. He doesn’t quite belong anywhere. He could also be called homeless.

I looked for something to give him, but I didn’t have food or even cash in my car. Instead, all I could do was offer up a prayer. I’ve volunteered at a homeless shelter before, but that was in another city that I knew better. I couldn’t even direct him to one. Instead, I had to drive past like I didn’t care.

Last year, there were about 1500 people who are homeless in my city and the surrounding areas. Some of them have gotten help and sought shelter and food and in some cases, employment, but many of them are still in that state of in between.

I know it is difficult to give things away to people you see on the street. If you give them money, they might buy alcohol, but at least they will be in a warmer place for a few minutes. You’re not brave enough to slide your car window down or to walk over to them, but when you do gather your courage, you will not only feel better but you will have helped another human being. And there’s legitimate excuses like not having anything at all to give (even if they are not the best excuses).

But remember, even the smallest thing helps.

I believe…

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I believe in words. I believe in those times when you are forced to talk and also those times when you should be silent. I believe in their restorative power as well as how well they destroy. I believe in words. I believe in “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” I believe in comparisons to summer days. I believe in the road less traveled. I believe in the stolen plums from the ice box and the white chickens. I believe in voltas. And speaking of change, I believe that “thee” and “thy” have morphed into “you” and “your.” I know and believe that slang has become modern and then outdated as culture moves on.

I believe…

I believe in light. I believe that it dispels the dark and the dark is afraid of it. I believe that when the sun creeps into your bedroom in the morning, it is saying good morning and get up because I want to see what you are going to do today. I believe that electricity can be expensive, but brightens your day. I believe in light. I believe that light bathes you. I believe that it can take your breath away. I believe in the yellow light and I believe in the pink. I believe in the hazy light at dusk and the brightness of midday.

I believe…

I believe in breathing. I believe that it is vital, but somehow unnoticeable.  I believe in friendship. I believe it brings a voice to the heart and wings to the soul. I believe in family. I believe in water. I believe in peace. I believe in the sky. I believe in words, light, breathing…

I simply remember my favorite things…

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This post was inspired by Maira Kalman’s book My Favorite Things. Sadly, my list is not illustrated like hers is. Maybe I’ll add that to my list of projects which includes a novel and some short stories…

My Favorite Things
Used bookstores. The store is used quite often and the books are well –loved.
A soft blanket wrapped around my lower limbs.
The kettle on my electric stove. The anticipation of its enthusiastic, shriller-than-shrill whistle.
The poinsettia on my headboard. Its yellow pot has a tribute to a fallen friend.
Playing Bananagrams with myself. The words I acquire: extraneous, embroiled, femur, pesky, fibia, glaringly, testy, rodent, gem, coupon, credit, thunder, quay, hover.
The Colorado autumn, gold and quaking.
Planting my feet firmly on the sidewalk.
Mail in the mailbox. Excepting bills.
Eavesdropping. “I ain’t dropping no eaves, sir!” – Samwise Gamgee
The resonating sound of a cello, like molasses. There’s a glass of milk in case your throat goes dry.
The middle of a book. Not finished yet, but you’ve made progress.
The words “happy birthday” coming from a two year old mouth.
The first day of a new month. 29 days to look forward to.
Accomplishing something small. It feels big at the time.
Sleeping in. The day goes by so quickly.
Seeing the sunrise, even if it means getting up way too early.
Dreaming of the future with no sweating involved.
Quotes. “And remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God!” – Les Miserables
The anticipation of reading books that haven’t been read it.
Rereading.
Happiness.
Thinking of more favorite things.

 

What are your favorite things?