just finished: Little Bee

I began Little Bee by Chris Cleave earlier this week, reading twenty or so pages two evenings before bed. On the first of these nights I woke myself crying. On the second I woke in the haze of a nightmare. This is not a happy book.

In places, it is a funny book. In places it is a beautiful book. Despite positive reviews, I also found it to be an overwrought book, a little unbelievable in the economy of action, a little strangely plot-driven, a little tidy. But then, it is not tidy, because in a terrible way it is true,  and sometimes the truth requires the sort of writing that suspends us, queasy-stomached and blurry-eyed, in the agonizingly slow pace of its final pages. Sometimes, in the rush of our days' distractions, we need to be emotionally browbeaten.

Little Bee is the story of a London woman and a Nigerian refugee, bound by an improbable encounter in Africa and then an unusual reprisal in England. It is a story of self-sacrifice, of redemption, of the ridiculous. It is a story about language and stories.

Having finished the novel just moments ago, I am sitting wrapped in a blanket and very, very cold, very, very sad. I am wondering about the divide between ideals and action. I am wondering what to do.

just finished: As Is by Krista Finch

I really, really wanted to love this book when I chose it to review for The Ooze. Its subtitle ("Unearthing Commonplace Glory"), its editorial blurb, even its cover art all promise thought-provoking engagement with the beauty/pain paradoxes of human life. In other words, it seemed to be my kind of literature. I also have a penchant for memoir and in the past year have loved reading the spiritual autobiographies The Long Loneliness and The Shaping of a Life, among others.

As Is is Krista Finch's first book, and it bears many of the marks of a first book, particularly a first memoir: a lot of talk about being a writer, a lot of ebullient stylistic quirks. Reading it, I have the sense that I'd love to sit down for coffee with Finch, that I'd love to be good enough friends to suggest that she strike out a few adjectives and be careful with the alliteration and emphatic sentence fragments, then trade places and hear her critiques of my writing.

The book claims to be a series of "journey notes," brief sketches of profound spiritual intimations drawn not from heady philosophy or theological arguments but from everyday life: encounters in the grocery store or the local gym, interactions with family, and realizations about the narrator's own longings and joys. These notes are often very short--sometimes shy of 250 words--and they generally follow the format of vividly-described vignette + one- or three-sentence spiritual conclusion. In fact, they feel to me a lot like brief blog posts or reflections jotted in a diary. I can imagine that some readers, especially those without a lot of time to read, will appreciate the episodic rhythm, since they'll be able to read a chapter or two in five minutes between other tasks and then mull over the stories.

I read the book all in one go, and this reading experience probably affects my conclusion, but I wish these short vignettes were longer and more sustained. Indeed, the book's strongest chapters are those few that exceed a page and a half, as I often found myself bristling at pious conclusions that seemed too easily earned. I also wished for a more clear narrative development--it seemed to me that the many brief sketches hint at a larger sweep of story, but the apparent lack of chronology and development undermined the strength of a whole that these parts could have created.

Finally, I wanted more specificity. Many of the segments provided tiny glimpses of connection and interest, but they tended to leave me with more questions than answers: why is the speaker so insecure and perfectionistic? why is her romantic relationship, abstractly and mysteriously described in one chapter as "look[ing] different from the outside," so different? why should I trust this speaker, identify with her, find comfort in the conclusions of her own life? I think, along with more sustained reflections and a stronger narrative progression, the book would have been strengthened by more particularity in the life stories. Anne Lamott, one of Finch's heroes, establishes connections with her readers through this sort of sustained, concrete vulnerability, which earns her readers' respect for both her irreverence and her shared life-lessons.

The raw material, the premise, some of the insights, and Finch's passion for writing all add up to a lot of promise, but the execution leaves me wishing for greater depth. This is not a book I would recommend to my friends, but I do look forward to seeing Finch's writing continue to develop and to seeing what else comes out from the press she and her husband inaugurated with the publication of this book.

book report: early May

In the past few weeks, I've been scarfing books like a teenager scarfing mac and cheese between sports practices (not that I was ever a teenager between sports practices, but I've seen a few in my day, and they are master scarfers, particularly of pasta).* In the interest of contributing to public knowledge, especially since as of last week I no longer have a captive audience to listen to me talk about books (they will take their final exam tomorrow: let's hope they learned something in my rambling), I thought I'd try to make a habit of posting about these books. Here are a few:



Life Work and Unpacking the Boxes by Donald Hall

I read Life Work, a slim volume that's somehow about Hall's family heritage of East Coast work and also about his life as a writer, and I found it inspiring. I loved reading about his past, and I loved reading about his work habits (getting to work at 6:00 in the morning, for instance, is incredible and enviable; keeping weekly and daily to-do lists to stay on track is something I can put into practice right away). The way Hall describes work is really quite beautiful, and the narrative is both lyrical and readable. So I read Unpacking the Boxes next, and I must admit I was a bit disappointed. While I was glad to read more of Hall's biography, I really did hope to discover more about his relationship with the late Jane Kenyon, the material about whom, it turns out, Hall's editor had him turn into an entirely separate book, I'm assuming for the sake of sales? I'll dodge that motive and check it out from the library.



36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Goldstein

Astonishing. This novel manages, all at once, to enter into the recent "God debates" and the so-called "new atheism" and to both engage and gently mock, all the while exploring the textured and complicated nature of any specific life in relation to the debate's abstractions. The book also exposes both the idyllic and the ridiculous in academia, the mystery of relationship and beauty, the nature of belief and responsibility. In describing it, I'm resorting to all sorts of abstractions myself, but I'd say that one of the best parts of this book is that it refuses abstraction and generalization, dealing instead in particularity, hilarity, the strange interplay between philosophical postulates and concrete characters. If you have any interest in the God debates, or Hasidic Judaism, you must read this book, probably several times. The ending is breathtaking.



Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

I seem to recall this book causing some scandal in regard to its uncomfortably autobiographical nature (when I was studying incest narratives and memoir/autobiography for my undergraduate senior seminar project, it came up often). I can't believe I haven't read it before now, and while it is terribly painful, I'm glad I finally took it down off the shelf. I do think this book is compellingly written, refreshing in its protagonist's imperfections, and mournfully honest in its conclusion. Of course, since I'm researching women and suffering and gender and abuse and religion, I appreciate of books that deal with these themes in a suitably complex way, which this novel does. That said, it's not for the faint of heart.



Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Presented as a dying Iowa preacher's "begats," or memoirs, for his very young son, this is a novel of profound beauty. Its reliance on gaps and absences, its slow unravelling of a long history of family and small-town love and failings, its exploration of the desire for faith, its implicit interrogation of a complex narrator's motives and longings -- all these subtle elements add up to a very quiet but very lovely meditation on the complexity and preciousness of life. Especially toward the end, the lyrical prose leaves me ready to copy paragraph after paragraph out for others to read. Perhaps I just ought to recommend the book.





[* I'm aware that this metaphor is too convoluted to be practically helpful, but now I'm too amused to delete it. ]

why it is so effing hard to be a Christian

swear words

A few days ago I spoke with a church leader who characterized the "emergent church types" as people who, among other things, curse a lot, and I've since been mulling over this description. Those of you who know me know that I do not curse/cuss/swear much. Or at all. I attribute this to my fundamentalist Baptist upbringing, my stubbornness in the face of school friends who made a game of trying to get me to say certain words ("Say buh. Okay, now say itch. Say them fast together! Haha! She almost said it!"), and my distaste for speaking any words I consider particularly ugly. I'm aware that this last cause might be considered pathological.

I'm also aware that this cuss-busters style might be considered judgmental. I've had plenty of moments in my life where peers' realization that I will not swear leads them to wonder if I'm judging them for doing so. When I was thirteen, the answer was a resounding yes. I was judging them. But then, at that point in my life, I was also judging people for using the New International Version of the Bible and for wearing jeans to church and for listening to music with drums. Nowadays, my silence in the swears department does not indicate that I'm judging other people's language (in the same way that I am really and truly not judging your grammar). I'm well acquainted with four-letter words; they do not shock me; they are part of normalized human expression. [Footnote: from a completely different perspective, I am uncomfortable with the fact that most of the curse words in English belittle either human sexuality (and often women in particular) or spirituality. The counterargument is that nobody actually associates the words with their original meanings. I still wonder, though, if there are deeper resonances: call a woman a b**** or a man a son-of-one, and the force of the word still arises from its literal meaning.]

In any case, rather than particular words, I'm much more concerned with language that is used to show a lack of respect, a lack of care, a lack of love. My rubric for judgment (for myself and, when necessary, for others) is not which words one uses, but how one uses them. For instance, in my conservative childhood, I heard plenty of hurtful language--language that demeaned, language that wounded, language that judged too quickly--with nary a "naughty word" in it. This sort of legalism, this self-satisfaction that we've kept the rules, distracts us sometimes from the broader call to love everyone (including our enemies), even with our language.

Back to the characterization of "emergent types" as those who "swear a lot." I'm in no place to determine where this opinion came from, or what sort of swearing "these people" are doing. But sometimes I find myself compelled to spice up my language a bit just to prove to those around me that I'm not "one of those" types (or at least not anymore). The most I've managed is "crappy." Which is to say, I can understand the impulse to distance oneself from the legalistic religious folk (even from previous versions of oneself) by swearing on purpose. But this is just the beginning.


an unbelieving context

For me, the heart of the issue is really a question of different versions of "Christianity" at large in our culture and the drive to distance oneself from certain versions. How do I make clear to people that while I was raised in a religion that had institutionalized a good deal of bad along with the good, I've since grown into a faith that is based much less on fear and control? How do I explain that while I'm still (help me) an "evangelical," Pat Robertson tends to turn my stomach?

Sometimes my academic research helps me think about this. In his incredibly long but very insightful book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor takes on the difficult task of exploring how Western civilization changed from an "enchanted world" in 1500 to a "disenchanted world" in 2000. In other words, how is it that in 1500 it was the norm to believe in God and the spiritual realm, for this to be the most ultimate and assumed reality, whereas 500 years later no one assumes the existence of God, and even those of us who choose to believe in Him make that choice in a world full of other possibilities? Taylor argues against the simplified view that science replaced religion and argues instead that a complex and related series of changes in theology and popular religion, social norms, government, economies, philosophy, art, science, and daily life worked to bring about the change.

This is the first reason it's hard to be a Christian today: western culture typically assumes that God does not exist nowadays, rather than that he does. What we learn in school, what we see on TV, what we hear on the news--it usually privileges the view that the physical, material world around us is all there is. I'm not just talking about teaching evolution in schools here -- I'm talking about the structures of our everyday lives. The way we are socialized to spend our time, do our work (more and more of it, statistics show), watch the media, spend our money: the underlying value in all of these norms is that this world is all there is, that none of our decisions have any greater value beyond the years until our deaths. The transcendent, if occasionally spoken about, isn't made real to us in the fabric of our daily lives.

So the first challenge nowadays is establishing that there is more than cells and atoms at all. This at least gets us to the place where our 16th-century forebears were. But belief in God is not the same thing as Christianity (as the book of James tells us, the demons also believe--and tremble). This is as far as a lot of apologetics go since the 19th century -- proof of the existence of a God. But again, that's not Christ-following. I suspect that the citizens who assumed the existence of God in 1500 were not all Christians, either.

they will know we are Christians by our...?

Of course, the next step is belief in Christ: in both his historical person and in the radically mysterious and humanly impossible claims about his death and resurrection and his power to save--basically, his deity. This isn't exactly easy, either -- I'd say it takes a bit of faith.

But because we come to this concept of "Christianity" after around 2000 years of its history, we arrive at another complication. "Christianity" as a movement has a horrible history of oppression and violence: how does one contend with the shame of this heritage? "Christianity" also has a history of schisms, so we have myriad "versions" available: which does one choose?

Charles Taylor talks about this history of dissention, but he also demonstrates how Christianity came to be associated in the 17th and 18th centuries with other developments taking place in western civilization: developments like the value of order, civility, morality, decency. These values were not always part of what it meant to follow Christ. (One of my friends likes to point out the difference between biblical "kindness," "charity," or "love" and the non-biblical idea of "niceness," for instance.) As the middle classes rose, Christianity came to be associated with ideas of human flourishing and comfort as our ultimate goals ("of course God wants you to be happy!"). Needless to say, these ideas are very prevalent in the "moral majority" version of Christianity common in the U.S.

Hence the concern with swearing: it's a public display of "indecency." Our association of order and civility with Christianity impels us to create systems of rules: Don't drink. Don't dance. Don't swear. Don't miss church. Don't look bad in public. (Not: respect your body as a precious creation of God, and practice moderation; respect other people's bodies, and avoid using them for your own sensual pleasure; treat everyone with a love rooted in God's love for them; gather together for encouragement; always be ready to give answer for the hope that lies in you.)

The point here is not really the legalism (that's another topic for another time). The point here is that "Christianity" in the last several hundred years has taken on a lot of associations and norms that I don't think are rooted in the gospel. In other words, this is another element of the influence of culture on the church, only in this case we don't even realize it.

If we understand Christianity to mean a deep faith in the God-Man Christ Jesus, in his work in the world, on the cross, in his resurrection and ascension, in the fact that he is the only possible intermediary so that we can, through faith in him, enter into a truly personal relationship with a Triune God -- if we understand Christianity, too, as a radical call, as manifest in the bible, to commit our entire lives to Christ, to answer his invitation "follow me," to be part of his "body" the church on this earth, a representative of God's incomprehensible love and a taste of the kingdom to come when justice and peace will finally reign -- if we understand Christianity to mean all these things, then we must understand it to be profoundly countercultural.

And this is difficult. Because not only must we struggle against the pervasive cultural assumption that there is no transcendent, no "metaphysical" reality beyond the physical, we must also struggle against the cultural elements of "Christianity" as it is passed down to us and practiced around us that are not true elements of the Good News of Christ. We must develop--by the grace of God, and with the wisdom of His Spirit working in us--the capacity to think critically, to sort through the culture of Christianity and determine what is faithful to Christ's purpose for us and what is not.

This is why we need each other -- to sort through the mess together. To share perspectives. To call each other back from the extreme sides of the paradox and into synthesis (for instance, one might remind me that in another sense, it is profoundly easy to be a Christian, in the sense of childlike faith). We need to find a more adequate way to define ourselves against Christianities that are not faithful to the radical Gospel of Christ. Because honestly, I think this is something we need to do. But I also honestly don't think cursing up a storm is the way to do it, as good as the motivation may be. What do you think? And this time around, I really do want you to tell me, especially if you've made it this far.

a good kind of day

I'm sitting on the living room floor next to the radiator feeling my hair dry and keep falling over my face as it does so. It's that kind of morning -- a catching up with emails, getting back into work responsibilities, jotting lots of notes in my planner morning. And I'm loving it.

This has been a week of domestic achievements: four loads of laundry, baking soda/vinegar/boiling water bathtub drain fixing, cleaning out yet another closet, catching up on holiday cards, drinking dozens of cups of tea, and having meals with friends. Plus reading. I'm reading Toni Morrison's newest novel, A Mercy, and Madeleine L'Engle's The Irrational Season, and some N.T. Wright, plus starting research for an independent study on women writers and Christianity. The notebooks are fresh, the pencils are sharpened, and the snow reflects sunlight like nothing else.

New Look

It's about time, eh? I've actually had a much prettier plan in mind for months, but haven't had the time/technology/motivation to make it happen.

The quote is pulled directly from Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change (213). I'm hardly a hardcore McLarenite, but I do find that his books challenging and provocative. This one is particularly political, not written for a specifically religious audience; in it, he examines the global effects of late capitalism and considers how these relate to a contextualized Christian faith. His sociological research is pretty sound, though some of the biblical exegesis leaves me unconvinced. I am convinced, though, that many of the norms Christians take for granted--not so-called moral issues like sex on TV, but things like our complicity in global structures that exploit others for our own comfort--are profoundly antithetical to the Good News, and that when we become aware of them, we are rendered responsible. And when I say responsible, I mean it in the sense Emmanuel Levinas, one of my favorite philosophers, explains it: we carry the burden of the other's wellbeing on our shoulders and we have no choice but to respond, since even ignoring or doing nothing is a form of response (and one that certainly sends a message).

To be grateful for the good things in our lives, though, for our families and food and so forth, can be a profoundly subversive stance. Gratitude, in our day and age, means refusing the constant call to want more and more, the nagging dissatisfaction that is inculcated in us through a barrage of advertisements, media images, and social values that have little to do with what is truly Good. Gratitude--taking the time to contemplate and appreciate blessings and experiences--can change our entire outlooks on everything. I've been listening to Josh prepare a sermon on this very topic and can't get the words out of my head:

Rejoice always
Pray constantly
Give thanks in all things
(I Thess 5.16-18)

Of course, this is the season when we purport to pause and give thanks. This year, I'm challenging myself (and you) to actually do it.

on Zadie Smith's White Teeth

I'm trying to get better about acknowledging comments (I think this might increase, you know, interaction). So, my very brief thoughts on White Teeth.

Have any of you read this novel? It got a lot of attention when it came out -- the blurbs on my paperback edition are blush-worthily effusive. Apparently Ms. Smith wrote this as a student at Cambridge (hearsay from Brandi)? I know she as 24 or 25 when it was published, which shames me and brings out the green in my eyes.

Anyway, White Teeth covers decades and decades, colonialism, postcolonialism, globalization. It traces class difference, religious difference, nationality difference, gender difference, generation difference, lots of hot-stuff-pomo Difference. Reading it (and especially coming to the end), one gets the sense that creating a flow chart or mapped web or some other visual representation of the characters' interrelations and parallels and comparisons would result in this chaotic mass of lace on the page. Seriously, everything is connected.

I will say--and perhaps this is influenced by that tinge of green iris--that the tooth conceit is a bit overdone, or perhaps awkwardly artificial. Does anyone who's read this agree?

But really, it's provocative and sort of lilting and gritty and even charming in its portrayal of the ridiculous and the painful. I'd read it again.

simplicity

I'm all over the place.

This blog is supposed to be an experiment in bringing together the many disparate areas of my life, but too frequently silence is the only result. One of my goals for this, my twenty-fifth year, is to keep pursuing balance, whole humanness, simplicity. I planned to continue to clear clutter (in the musty closets and in my musty mind) and to more actively trace the connections between my various passions and activities. But too often I feel more borderline schizoid than whole in the sense I'm reaching for.

How, in a fast-paced world chock full of opportunities, does one weed out the excess? I love to play the piano, but I usually opt to look through a magazine for recipes rather than to struggle through a new prelude or dash off a familiar tune. Which reminds me that I love too cook (!), but find it difficult to keep on top of meal plans with my grad school responsibilities. Which reminds me that I'm such a student, such a reader, such a writer, but never manage to go the next (and necessary) step of researching conferences and journals for submission. Which reminds me that I love to write creatively, but let's not even walk down that path...

Which reminds me that I love to go hiking (but without the heavy packpacks, love), but schedules and gas prices keep us from even occasional weekend treks. Which reminds me that I have so many faraway and wonderful friends, but do I keep up with them very well? No. And I love to stitch things and paint things and glue things, but do I do this very often, or set up an etsy shop to at least fund my hobbies? Nope.

Part of me thinks it's an issue of risk-taking and extravagance. I'm stingy sometimes, with money (have to be) and with experience (don't really have to be). Why is that?

But it's also the impossibility of keeping everything as a top priority. My mind only holds so much at a time, and I tend to get engrossed in projects or ideas one at a time. And when I'm not in the midst of a project, I have a horrible time choosing which one to do next. The pace of grad school usually solves this problem for me, but I finished an assigned novel this morning (White Teeth--fascinating) and have spent the ensuing three hours on laundry and fiddling about, unable to choose whether to throw myself into hemming napkins or writing a story or writing an abstract for a conference proposal or taking a walk down to the beach and risking cold rain.

Maybe it would be easier if I didn't enjoy so many things, but I do. In my efforts to simplify and focus, I can't just chop off the inconvenient tangents that mean a lot to me. And I've already chopped off most of those that don't (like going out much, or shopping, or ever getting my hair cut, or organizing the freezer so things don't fall out of it and bruise my toe when I open the door). So what's left?

This is a rant, but I'm going to post it anyway. What do you think?

pencils

This morning I bought a pencil sharpener for twenty cents and now I'm a pencil-sharpening fairy. I go through phases in my love affair with writing implements, and just now all the humble wooden pencils I can find are receiving loving care and pointy-tipped makeovers. I feel compelled, now, to use them.

I also just finished reading The God of Small Things, which is a breathlessly painful book. Last time it was for "fun," and this time it's for class -- I don't know if I could make it through a third. Have you read it? (I was in a coffee shop today, and I noticed how many people share my somewhat rude but very human and endearing [I think] habit of bending at funny angles to see the title of a stranger's book.)

Other bits of day:

a woman walking down a local street with grocery bags in both hands and a twelve-pack of Coca-Cola on her head;

the elderly man who hangs out in front of his building at all hours of the day and calls me "Sleepy" whenever I walk by because once I yawned when I passed him--today it was, "Awake today, Sleepy?" and big, big smile;

a workman (beautifying our building) who blocked the sidewalk when he saw Josh and me approaching, held out his arms, and in Balkan-tinged English demanded five dollars and laughed delightedly when I told him we didn't have five dollars (we've been friends this week, ever since I nodded approvingly at his work);

two pounds of strawberries for just a bit more than a dollar (shortcake this weekend? yes? who would like to come over for some?).

so caffeineated

Reading Walker Percy's Lancelot and can't put it down.

between stitches

Tonight I had every intention of reading Ricoeur--or, rather, beginning with Ricoeur: A Guide for the Perplexed (I love this series)--but somehow I couldn't. I finished off a bag of Chex mix (3/4 of a bag, to be scrupulously honest) and read a whole chintzy magazine and finally decided that if I was going to procrastinate, I was going to do something I actually wanted to do.

So I pulled open the blue bin that houses my magical collection of fabric and thread, did a whole lot of pressing, and then I pinned pattern tissue to cotton cloth, cut out the pieces with my shears, and sat down to try out my newly arrived sewing machine.

Oh, the delight. Oh, the joy. Oh, the sweet, sweet pleasure of needle and thread and fabric, the quiet hum, the coming together of seams and tucks and darts into something that's halfway to wearable. (It's a dress. I'll try to remember to post pictures when it's done.)

But now it's ten o'clock, and I really do need to do some of that reading I avoided, so I'm going to brush my teeth and crawl into bed and let the cool evening breeze soothe me into understanding yet another Important French Philosopher.

Buzz! Buzz! I'm drinking loads of caffeinated fizzy beverage and eating these curry-flavored potato crisps that Brandi thought weren't so great, but they really grow on you. Or at least they grow on me.

This is the part of almost-spring where riotous sunshine is overtaken by days of cloud and drizzle, runny noses, dramatic tumbles and twirls in the weather and my mood. This is the part where we have daffodils in cobalt cups, pink carnations in coffee mugs (from a neighbor overwhelmed by our willingness to take out her garbage--that speaks for itself of our city culture). This is the part where I buzz from group to group, meetings and coffee dates and even miniature childcare gigs, like a pollinating little bumblebee hoping things will flower soon. (This is also the part where we eat repetitive leftovers and wonder how anyone else ever gets their laundry done, lest you think our life too rosy.)

Forgive the strained metaphor.

I'm skipping poetry playtime this afternoon in order to get some work done, which should probably not involve writing a blog post, but it's been a while. Caffeine always makes me expansively verbal. Tomorrow my students have a paper due, so I will bake zucchini bread for them in a bit (or chocolate chip cookies, if I have chocolate chips and can tamp down my health conscience about giving 18-year-olds cookies for breakfast). I also have a group presentation tomorrow night, and I foolishly began Paradise last night, which is a rather long Toni Morrison novel that has me hooked and twisted in its mystery already and is really tempting me to read it. Have any of you read the book before? After this I only have Love left, and I think I might feel bereft when this wandering through TM is over (though is it ever, really?).

P.S. Classes for summer and fall are looking to be ridiculously wonderful. Sigh. Buzz.

footnotes and beautiful human beings

First of all, my paper is printing, and it's delightfully punctuated by musing footnotes. At least that's how I feel about them right now, high on strong black tea and peanut butter. Essays at this umbilical cord-cutting stage always seem to glow with brilliance and wit, subtle argumentation, panache. It's not until later--usually halfway between turning it in and receiving comments--that phrases somehow clunk up and the footnotes shift to tedious interruptions. Dear me.

***

The class I teach is moving into a chapter on bodies, selfhood, and the limits of responsibility. Yesterday we discussed first perceptions of other people, how gender and age affect our judgments, and the students were divided. Most of them spoke of their own experiences of being judged (unfavorably) for their youth as camp counselors, sports coaches, and music teachers, or of receiving poor treatment at restaurants and stores. But they couldn't agree over whether public judgment improves throughout one's life or peaks in middle age. Some of them believed strongly that the older an individual, the more wisdom and thus the more respect from society. Others mentioned how we belittle the elderly, view them as less valuable or as entering a second childhood.

Much later (remember my Mondays?), on the bus home, we made a stop to let off a woman with a large stroller and to let on an elderly couple. Recognizing the mother's need for help, I watched the couple on the sidewalk meet each other's eyes, and then the woman bent to help move the baby safely from the bus to the sidewalk. Bundled in long quilted coats and fur hats, the man and woman had deeply creased faces and whispy grey hair. But once they were safely on the bus, I saw the woman turn to her companion and give him such a look of glee, such an eyebrow raised, shrug-shouldered, gorgeous smirk of delight, it took my breath away. The man returned her smile, and two blocks later I had to get off at my stop, reeling with the sharp loveliness of their companionship, their delight at interacting with other people. Oh, to be so blessed in fifty years.

Sula is a tricky little bit of lit

Well. I'm working on a paper about Toni Morrison's second book, Sula. Let's just say it's kicking my smarty-pants behind. Enough of that.

In the meantime, I am baking potatoes in the oven, and I've just this moment realized how formative the scent of baking potatoes was in my childhood. Tonight Josh and I will eat them, like we did then, with sour cream and salt and pepper, and a salad drenched in Italian dressing. Which means, of course, that I have an excuse to leave Sula for a while and wash some lettuce.

What is your dinner tonight?

So far today, I have

(1) taught class -- I marked drafts last night, so we had a great deal to talk about.

(2) been to Bible study -- we discussed Isaiah 28-29 (tricky stuff), ate amazing banana bread with coconut in it, drank strong coffee, played a bit with the little ones (E tried to put a sugared walnut in my mouth, but it had already been in his, so I ended up with a sticky wet smear all over my cheek).

(3) filled two grocery bags at the market -- tonight we're having fettuccini with maranara (jarred) and alfredo (homemade) sauces at girls' group. A shameless plug: http://www.reusablebags.com/ sells these bags, and while I'm totally into making my own, these are really heavy-duty bags with a lifetime guarantee.

(4) eaten popcorn and cheese for lunch (don't worry, mom, I'll sneak in some fruit this afternoon).

(5) vacuumed.

(6) dashed down the stairs to meet the mail carrier, accept my package of three more Toni Morrison books, and give her a very late Christmas gift card.

(7) sat down at my desk to start some more research on Song of Solomon and write an abstract for conference submission.


A little moment to share: Walking along the icy sidewalk today, I passed a young man with a travel mug, who trailed behind him this strong and mysterious aroma of Earl Grey tea. That was probably the hilight of my day.

And almost snow day

We awoke this morning to the sound of the snowblower echoing up through the courtyard at 6:00. I was hopeful for school closings, but the muffled gorgeousness of the city at 7:40 was quite worth a trek through drifts and unshoveled sidwalks a foot deep. The flakes have tapered off, leaving us in a quiet white world punctuated by scraping shovels and children's laughter.

I am reading The Grandissimes by George Cable--New Orleans in 1805, feuding families, secret romances, murder, the like. And this is my job!

This afternoon I was struck by the beauty of gleaming coffee beans in a dark blue canister, waiting to be ground and brewed.