update from this morning

1) it was coffee, but the coffee was so incredibly awful that I poured it out. Then Josh made me tea. Then I drank water, then diet pepsi, then instant green iced tea, and I think I'll have some more tea in a minute. My feet are cold.

2) it's been touch and go for a while with the paper, but we're limping along. I always wax so melodramatic during this painful birthing stage.

3) i'm sitting on the floor because it's different from the other places I feel like I've been sitting endlessly for the past few days (or semester?).

4) i'm going to write a post about being a woman soon. It will have real content, and it will require responses.

morning snippets

1) I woke up a bit ago from dreams of Edith Wharton (which makes sense) and Nintendo--only I was a character wandering around a video game, complete with funky but friendly huge pink monsters and screens that told me how many of them I had to find.

2) The apartment smells like burnt barbeque sauce because I will never learn not to marinate things in highly sugared marinades when I'm going to pan-broil them. Dinner last night was good, but you had to eat around the black crust...

3) I have one page left in the notebook I've been using. That is such a satisfying feeling.

4) I have 25 pages to write today and tomorrow. Better get to it.

5) Can't decide this morning between coffee and tea. It's probably going to be cof--er--we'll see.

true confessions

In preparation for these weeks of finals--and because there was a sale at Target--I bought a family-sized bag of Cheetos last weekend. A family sized bag of those knobby little orange treats contains 22 servings (a serving size is 21 pieces, I'm assuming of varied size). It has been four days since we purchased this bag, and half the Cheetos are gone.

I really can't help it. I go into the kitchen to get a glass of water and remember the crinkly orange bag. So I fill a white bowl with a reasonable amount--I don't count them or anything (Josh makes fun of me for measuring out 3/4 cup of Trader Joe's granola, but granola is calorically dense, and this granola is so good, I really want to make it last)--and put away the bag. The problem is that they're so delicious (it's the flavor and the texture, you know?) that I end up craving another bowlful later in the day. Or later in the fifteen minutes.

Do you have any foods that hold such power over you?

and I'm sure the door was open

A saint went home this morning, and I'm sure the door was open.

I didn't know this gentleman very well; when we first moved to the neighborhood, I knew him as the tall, quiet man who brought his flute to worship and played with the congregational singing. Later, working with after-school program, I knew him as a kind man who learned my name and used it when he said hello. I also knew him as an artist, glad to share his markers and teach the clumsy-handed to make something beautiful.

Something beautiful.

Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.

quiet

I'm on my fourth time through Toni Morrison's Love, and it's a provocative collection of pages. This is sort of my thesis--those of you with literary leanings, I'd love for you to tell me what you think.

TM writes about race in all eight of her novels, and about class, gender, prejudice, history, family, etc. In this novel (her most recent, although a new one is supposed to come out in the fall), Morrison plays with all sorts of these same issues, and they're all overlapping and complicated. We have a 52-year-old man marrying an 11-year-old girl (he's rich, she's poor; he's lighter skinned, she's darker skinned; he's a man, she's a prepubescent woman). We also have a dead (it turns out) character-narrator, in part. And lots of competing understandings of the same things from different characters.

Morrison also repeatedly refuses labels--she doesn't like "isms." So she's not into feminism, she says, no matter how many feminists love her books. And she's not into theism, no matter how many biblical references she makes. (One of the most hilarious is naming a character "Second Corinthians" in a book called Song of Solomon. Top that. Seriously.) She also accuses academics of using dead, meaningless language.

So this academic is assigned to write a 25-page paper on the novel, and I'm thinking that Toni Morrison (as a representative of contemporary literature) does theory--she plays with all sorts of "-isms"--but she does it in narrative form, which allows so much more complexity and nuance and relationship between issues. And I'm kind of wondering if creative writers have made this whole literary criticism/theory thing obsolete, because they've taken it upon themselves to enact and thematize (really elegantly) all these ideas scholars clumsily write endless difficult papers on.

Thoughts?

good old Yellow Springs

I stumbled across this story via multiple links and found it amusing. There's a crochet mafia at work in my neighborhood too, but it's funny to read about this happening in Ohio: Yellow Springs isn't exactly the place to make a statement about urban space and aesthetics.

See the Dino's sign behind her head? Great place, but oh, so slow.

I am sitting here, listening to something high in the wall scratching around (a mouse? a ferrett? a bird on the roof?), looking out the windows, vaguely aware of faint voices, human interactions taking place outside or in other people's homes (only feet away, but so very anonymous). Tonight my goal is to pound out a five-page paper I'd like to turn in tomorrow and cross off my list. It's not going so well.

In a few minutes I will scrub potatoes for either baking or boiling (do you all have a preference?). I have some low fat cream cheese I'm thinking would make a really lovely addition to mashed taters, but I've also been kind of lusting after baked potatoes with their skins rubbed in olive oil and kosher salt. I bought a steak to cook in a skillet, and will toss a salad with strips of red bell pepper and cook some green beans or limas. This will be a proper dinner. We will listen to classical music and drink very cold water.

I'm feeling sorrow in my heart again today, but I'm really very thankful for these things:

- the red cloth binding on my copy of Love by Toni Morrison, and the chance to write a paper next week that plays in all of the novel's ambiguities.
- four loads of laundry washed and dried (or drying) and folded and put away. Even the socks matched and tucked into their drawers.
- a high of 70 tomorrow? seriously? Shall I teach in flip flops?
- the stability of a manilla folder full of notes and outlines waiting to be expanded.
- Josh's recent flurry of kindness, even though he's been sick: the man washed our floors, shopped for groceries, vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom, ordered and procured fabulous takeout, and brought me coffee -- all in the last few days. We were cranky at each other this morning, but it only takes a moment of reflection to make me see how blessed I am. Plus, he's pretty smart and listens to me ramble about books he's never read.
- The news that Starbucks is giving perks to those who register their gift cards, like free refills on brewed coffee and free fancy drinks if you buy a pound of coffee.
- a blog to type in as warmup/procrastination.
- readers.

Seriously, though, answer me three questions:
1. best potatoes?
2. best hot beverage?
3. worst laundry experience.

crazy hazy

I'm in this fog of piled up work that really needs to get done (I love that phrase: "get done" equals lots of responsibility and angency for the work itself, not so much for me). So it's time to drink some coffee and eat some leftover frozen pizza (a strange food phenomenon) and get to it.

I want to be sewing dresses.

oh, cedarville

Cedarville, oh, Cedarville, my little school, you are growing famous. When I graduated from you three years ago and made my way out into the world (with a B.A. in English--what do you do with a B.A. in English?) I had no idea news of you would follow me. I mean, I'm not surprised by the occasional appearance in Christianity Today or on Facebook or through dinnertime money-hungry phone calls to alumni. But the Chronicle of Higher Education?

First of all, I have to say this. That B.A. in English from a little school in the cornfields was a quality B.A. in English (quality, indeed, is stamped all over it). I was introduced to a broad variety of literatures, contexts, and interpretive paradigms. In fact, the theoretical foundation I gained at CU ended up stronger than many of my peers' theory backgrounds. (Go figure: in a place where theory is contested or threatened, it's accorded more power and thus, in many ways, more respect.) My education in the English department was challenging, nurturing, and imbued with the sense that it mattered.

Similarly, the theological debates that raged while Josh and I were there, while they were sometimes divisive (which is obviously not good, especially for a body of people called by Christ to unity), were also suffused with importance. Why debate shifts in how we do church? Because it's of potential eternal significance! Why stay up late in the night battling over boundaries and limits for art, for worship, for concepts of God? Because these questions get at the very root of what we're here for!

I'm sad (and embarrassed) to see the direction some of these conflicts have recently taken. I understand that professors at Cedarville are desperately in earnest when they argue ideas of truth, that they carry the weight of responsibility not just for teaching their students information but for shaping their spiritual direction. This was not always clear to me: when a few professors took to warning students in their classes about Josh (by name!) because he was writing on a Catholic theologian for his senior seminar, my first response was to be outraged. How dare they--!? Isn't this a university--!? Did they even ask him--!? What about the "if thy brother offends thee, go to him" bit in the Bible they clung to so literally!?

But then Josh, in this remarkable gentleness, explained that with this weight of responsibility--not just for test scores or future careers, but for souls--could explain the reactionary spirit that seemed to take over the campus at times. And that if we read these issues as rooted in care, concern, even fear, the whole scenario seemed vastly different.

I think this outlook helps now, too, as our troubled alma mater goes through a public fiasco being narrated in terms of academic freedom. When you combine the contemporary university with conservative faith--when you seek to walk the line between academic and spiritual, learning and belief, the study of human efforts and the study of God--you run into trouble. "Religion" ratchets things up a bit, carries professors into fits of righteous indignation, blurs the lines between appropriate conduct in the academy and appropriate conduct in a church. The proper lines of communication and conflict-mediation grow fuzzy: and so classrooms can become battle grounds, where captive audiences listen to "lectures" anathematizing other faculty members. Conflict resolution becomes bureaucratized, divisions remain, and it seems okay since it's an academic setting.

But these are not issues of academic freedom and the safety of tenure. These aren't questions of fact, or differences of theoretical opinion. These are church issues, complicated by their presence in classrooms.

Honestly, I sometimes miss Cedarville: I miss the conflict, the discussions, the dialogue that always has an aura of really meaning something. I miss feeling as though I were participating in something happening, in the stretch and pain that precipitate God-ordained growth. I miss the provocation.

And I think that this conflict must continue: I think that the ideas have to be contested, because this is what development is. Lukewarm is not what we want: we want passion. We want ideas, questions, debates. For all the history of the church (not that I'm any expert), people have been wrestling over ideas, and this wrestling has moved us forward in ways we take for granted, but in this I see God at work.

But I think we need to find a way to maintain the sense of value, and even to disagree--vehemently!--with a little more respect (they'll know we are Christians by our love, right?), a little less fear (perfect love casts out fear, right?), a little more humility (we're following a God who took on the form of a servant for us, right?). We need to find ways to provoke without condemning, to listen without assuming, to care for the fatherless and the widow (read: the oppressed) instead of trying to oppress one another.

I carry the name Cedarville with me wherever I roam in the academic community: it's emblazoned on my C.V. and will accompany my work with every conference proposal, journal article submission, and job application for the rest of my days. And I'm sad--really sad--that the ONE reason the name might be recognized now is that Chronicle article and news coverage of this recent conflict. I know the school is grappling with the very issues I've been talking about, namely the tension between structures of academia and structures of church polity/community, but oh, how I wish it could be different. Oh, Cedarville, how is this shining?

the clouds roll in

Today on my way home from class I walked from windy cold into cloudy-wet-heavy-angry sky. The rain--just this moment--has begun bullying my windowpanes. The thunder began with my key turning the lock.

I will make tea. I will work on tomorrow night's presentation.

Another aspect of the walk home was a smile from a firefighter, out the side window of a firetruck turning right. He did not leer or gape: he smiled.

I am forever exploring, forever wondering, on these walks home, about how I interact with men in public space. To them, I am a body, a white girl, with a lazy ponytail and wind-flushed cheeks and a heavy backpack, incogruously dressed. I am a composite of my gender, my race, my size, my class, my education (emblamatized by the sagging Jansport). African American men, Hispanic men, Eastern European men, Asian men, Caucasian men, of themselves so much more than the races and cultures apparent in their faces, look at me, and I look at them. They have personalities, stories, families, complexities. And we share the same sidewalk.

I'm thinking of this today especially because of an incident that occured a few blocks before the fireman smile. Walking quickly to beat the rain, I passed a group of young African American men, probably on their way home from high school, sauntering in their oversized hoodies and weaving a wide path on the sidewalk. At this point, a middle-aged Hispanic man exited a building on the sidewalk a few yards ahead, and I saw him take in this picture: solitary white girl being followed by group of black boys. He didn't say anything, didn't gesture, but his face registered concern, or maybe it was just keen observation.

Did he feel himself my protector? Did he identify more strongly with me, in this complex web of cultural and racial prejudices, than with them? The boys weren't following me maliciously--I'd passed them. Moments before, I was following them: would this scene have arrested the older man in the same way?

I'm not saying I resent being looked after. In fact, I think we'd all be better off if everyone kept their gazes a little wider on the streets. I'm thankful for kindness from any sector, and I'm thankful that most of my sidewalk interactions have been innocuous. I'm just interested in the complexity: how do our assumptions, prejudices, and previous experiences shape our social reactions? How are they harmful? How are they useful?

In the quiet afternoon,

the slow-go slum of taupe and sunlight,

I overhear discussions. I over-

spend my time.