Father’s Day
One of the blessings and curses of being the oldest child of young parents is that you get to watch them grow up. I am old enough to remember my dad’s youthful joie de vivre.
Stories We Tell
One of my many sisters once told me that if I ever wrote a memoir she would never speak to me again.
Or maybe she told me that if I ever wrote about my family she would never speak to me again.
Or maybe she told me that if I ever wrote a memoir she might keep speaking to me, but she might not.
Hourglass
I’m thinking about moving on and letting go all the time these days; it’s time for me to turn the hourglass over and start again with different hopes. I love the comments on this piece about letting go of a lifetime’s library, especially this one from an 85-year-old who believes in reincarnation:
“Just in case I get reborn to one of my great-grandchildren, I am coaching them in being the sort of parents I will want. As for my books, I hope to find them again in second-hand bookstores with all their valuable underlinings which I might need.”
On Writing About Real Children
Some people are disgusted by expressions of experience and think it’s presumptuous to tell personal stories. Get over yourself! Shut up! is their watchcry. Memoirs are lazy and trendy and self-indulgent! Nobody cares! Who do you think you are?
The Books of 2013: May
A partial list.
Agatha Christie. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. 1962. (again)
Agatha Christie. Sleeping Murder. 1976. (again)
Agatha Christie. At Bertram’s Hotel. 1965. (again)
Agatha Chrstie. Nemesis. 1971. (again)
Cloudland Revisited: Before Midnight
As a teenager I was too cynical for Before Sunrise, but it was a canonical movie of my generation and I saw it more than once. I saw Before Sunset in the theater with the guy I was dating at the time, and I loved it, but we had a wrenching conversation afterwards that foreshadowed our relationship’s eventual bitter end a year later. I am bracing myself for Before Midnight.
Soulstirring at the University Church in Yale: A Pentecost Prayer
Come Holy Spirit,
Hover in the air like a dove,
the beating of your wings becoming the beating of our hearts,
your rushing wind roaring in our ears like the sound of the ocean,
your heat traveling over our bodies like a blush,
A Kitchen of One’s Own/A Kitchen With a View
In my circles it’s sometimes seen as reactionary and retrograde to express domestic desires that involve marriage or reproduction, so I’ll come out say something even more shocking and indefensible, which is that I crave solid domestic real estate and the life I imagine I might live in it. Look at that amazing sunny window out which to gaze at flowering shrubs as you do dishes! How perfect to look through an arched doorway or to perch on an open staircase. How wonderful to have a banister to slide down and a newel post to grab, Jimmy-Stewart-style.
Now, Voyaging
I don’t really have anything new to say about Now, Voyager, except to say that I have been loving it since I was young and now I have finally grown into it. And the rest of my life will be spent panning for stardust in the same dark galaxies where it always leaves me.
The Books of 2013: March
Toni Morrison. Jazz. 1992. (again)
Toni Morrison. Beloved. 1987.
Gillian Rose. Love’s Work. 1995.
Agatha Christie. The Moving Finger. 1942.
Agatha Christie. Murder at the Vicarage. 1930.
Agatha Christie. Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories. 1932-1961.
Josephine Tey. Brat Farrar. 1949. (again)
Maria Semple. Where’d You Go, Bernadette. 2012.
Marilynne Robinson. Housekeeping. 1980.
Soulstirring at the University Church in Yale: A Sermon on Deadlines and Lifelines
This week,
a friend of mine posted a diagram on facebook.
It was a semi-serious timeline of The Creative Process,
From the first moment
To the final deadline.
