OK, good comments first. The voice acting was great—no, awesome. The animation was impressive.
Even though the "songs" were actually fun for a musical, they were better left out. And, for the most part, it does seem faithful to the book. Howevah, the film was a sour experience for me because of the bratty, unavoidably bad performance of Dakota Fanning (whom I have liked before).
Her character's insolence ended up one of the main themes of the story: if you're a jerk to your parents about saving an animal who just happens to end up winning universal acclaim, they should apologize to you. Needless to say, I don't think my kids will be watching this one. 2 3/4 stars.
(**)
This movie is such a heartfelt exploration of women's lives, it's hard to believe it was written by a man. Based on a true story about a lovely girl who struggles with diabetes — and crazy townspeople — in a Southern town, this one will require a box of tissues for most any female viewer. Hilarious in parts, with great acting from Sally Field, Julia Roberts and (surprise!
) Dolly Parton. 3 1/4 stars. (***)
Idealistic teacher takes on troubled high schoolers.
No, it's not Dangerous Minds. This one has a true story, a much better actress (Hilary Swank), even better music, and more realism. Sure, it's still cheesy here and there, but for the most part, Hilary captures the naivete of her main character, and we still get a thought-provoking lesson on the difficulties of inner-city minority life.
And that's worth it. 3 1/4 stars. (***)
Though this started out as an over-the-top British comedy (think: a marriage of Guy Ritchie and a spoof), its second half quickly turned into the most bizarre experience I've ever had in the theatre.
The plot: a London cop is so good that he's putting the police force to shame. So they move him to the countryside, where he begins to smell trouble. Hilarious, yes.
Wild, yes. POE, oh yes. Not for the faint of 'art.
3 stars. (***)
One of the most brilliant films made by the ingenious Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who also directed The City of Lost Children and who's helming next year's adaptation of Life of Pi). It's the story of a curious girl who becomes a curious young woman, bent on affecting others' lives — for good or for mischief.
One of the most luscious, whimsical, imaginative, fun-loving movies ever made. 4 stars — at least. (****)
Bunuel is one of the most acclaimed directors of all time—and one of the strangest.
I remember seeing bits of this film on Schaeffer's How Shall We Then Live movie, but I don't think he realized that Bunuel was agreeing with him about the human condition. On the surface, it's a fairly shocking premise: a mild-mannered housewife becomes intrigued by her discovery that a friend from her circles has become a prostitute. Through negative example, this POE film reaffirms both marriage and morality through a captivating, sometimes dreamlike tale.
3 1/2 stars. (***)
You could call this lovely realist masterpiece by Vittorio de Sica a kind of artsy Harry Tonto. An aging man, barely scraping by on his pension, faces being thrown out when he gets too far behind on his rent.
The one thing that keeps him going is the love of his scruffy mutt, Flike. Beautifully restored, and genuinely moving, especially in the film's final scenes. 4 stars.
(****)
This Grand Jury Prize winner of the 2002 Sundance festival comes to us from writer-director Rebecca Miller (yes, her pops is Arthur; and now her husband is Daniel Day-Lewis). Three women, three stories, no resolutions. But despite the low-grade image quality, the unpolished stories, and many no-name actors, this film has an engaging, real quality to it.
I was reminded in a way of Paul Auster. Worth it? Ah, probably not.
3 stars. (***)
Keane, the recent British trio sensation, has been called "Coldplay with pianos" (since they are piano-based instead of guitar-based). I've only heard a few songs of their first album, and this second one took me a week or so to get into it, but it's now one of my favorites on rotation.
Wonderful, wonderful alternative sound, brilliant/mature lyrics, and catchy hooks. My faves: "Hamburg Song," "The Frog Prince," "Leaving So Soon," "Atlantic," ..
. aw heck, I love all of em! (****)
A great, great album by Joni Mitchell, that wonderful singer-songwriter with the smoky voice.
She decided in this album to make a song cycle that traces the progress of a relationship. And her arranger evidently decided to take orchestration lessons from John Williams and then do him one better. Astonishingly beautiful.
(****)
Some brilliant stuff is happening in this album, the solo effort of Frou Frou's lead singer (you've heard them if you watched Garden State). To be honest, I've only listened to the 30-second snatches of songs on itunes, and downloaded "Hide and Seek," which seemed to be the best one. But I've been enjoying the snatches!
3 1/2 stars (***)
A beautiful CD, a brilliant failure, and evidence of a talented singer-songwriter. This is the guy you thought was Dave Matthews when he sang, "I'm fif-teen years for a moment." There are some great songs here, and then there are some other songs, too.
My favorite: "If God Made You," half love song, half doxology. (***)
Billie Holliday is a wonderful singer. I was a little surprised to read in the liner notes, "though she was not blessed with a magnificent instrument.
..", which I suppose is one way of describing her charcoal voice.
But she makes you feel comfortable, and I always thought she was earlier in the twentieth century as a result of her sound. Holliday was the most significant influence on Frank Sinatra, and she's at her best when she's singing the slow ballads (like "God Bless the Child" and "The Man I Love"). But there are some songs that are really not worthy to be on a "best" collection, and many reviewers were upset that the disc didn't include her standard "Strange Fruit.
" (***)
A dreamlike myth, for children of all ages. A singer of tales falls into danger when the kingdom is overtaken by the Usurper and the land becomes overrun with Tookesheims. Who will save them?
Perhaps the princess? (***)
OK, probably the most briliant, loveliest, most powerful novel I've read in a long, long time. This is Foer's second novel, after Everything is Illuminated.
I must confess, after I read a naysaying review of Foer's books, I hesitated to read his work. Foolish, foolish. (****)
One of Piper's newest, this 200-pager ends up as a sort of compilation of most of his previous ideas (future grace, desiring God, and so on).
I thought the opening chapters (his spiritual upbringing) and the last chapter (Making Most of Christ from 9-5) were the best. (***)
A gripping book that tracks the journey of Lewis's heart and soul after the death of his wife. Bitter at times, brilliantly blessed at others.
A short read, but one of the better things that Lewis wrote, in my opinion. (****)
Buechner is probably my favorite Believing writer (fiction or non-fiction). got an pre-press copy of the book for me, probably at one of those book conferences he goes to.
Thanks! This is a collection of some of his more famous "sermons" from over the course of his lifetime. "The Magnificent Defeat," his talk on Jacob's wrestling with God is, I was surprised to learn, one of his earliest sermons, from soon after he finished graduate school.
I am just getting into the first third of the book, but I am confident this will be one of my favorites that I will turn to again and again. (****)
Out with the Old..
.
I love how the New Year slips in while we're busy spending time with family and friends. It's like dreaming of sugar plums, only to wake up on Christmas day.
Of course, no one really does that kind of thing anymore.
I'm glad we mark years, though, in our system of time. It gives us a chance to reflect, to ponder the concepts of past and future.
It gives us a place to pencil mark our life's doorframe to see how much God has grown us while we weren't paying attention. Here are the resolutions Alison and I made last year at this time:
1. Pay off all our debt.
-- Well, considering that I had no idea what that meant back in January 06, I think God helped us to do astonishingly well. We're not there yet, but much, much closer to the end.
2.
Read the Bible every day -- I realized after the first quarter that this was an unrealistic goal for me.
3. Stick to our budget -- You know, I think we did, and it was one of the best things we ever did.
4. Exercise every week -- Not my resolution, but exercise really does wonders for your energy
5. Read at least one book every month -- I am pleased to announce that I read 15 books in 2006
6.
Alison: Finish book and find a publisher -- Done, and done. Look for this title in 2007. We'll keep you posted.
7. Travel to one place we've never been -- That would be Chimney Rock, NC.
8.
"Enjoy the ride" (Alison) -- Well, I think she has. We spoke today, and she said she thought 2006 was going to really stink (not exactly the word she used), but she discovered that it was actually pretty good.
9.
Have guests over once each month -- Yep. Boy, that was encouraging.
10.
Plan 1 mini-break per quarter -- I don't think we quite made one each quarter, but that sure is a good idea
11. Have our friends Ben Jenna over -- We did that first quarter 06!
But how about ?
I stumbled across this one while wiki-tripping today, and immediately fell in love with it. Though there is a significant history behind it, the Law basically states that 90% of everything is crud. Although it was originally applied to science fiction, people have already begun to use it as a broad statement.
I've been trying to say something like this for years. People will find out I'm interested in film, and they'll give me a weird look with their eyes all funky, as if to say, Don't you realize how many awful films there are? Usually, they'll even say it.
And I'll respond: Well, yeah. But you like books. And I'd say that the stinkage factor is about the same for books or films that come out in a certain year.
It's not really any different.
Now, I need not be so casual. I can ahem, adjust the bridge of my glasses with my forefinger, and invoke in a melodramatic tone: Well, you see.
..it's as Sturgeon's Law proposes.
..
OK, so I had a birthday on Sunday.
And today I've had the strangest experience. I've actually felt different.
Alright, so you know the question you always get asked by odd people on your birthday, So.
..do you feel older?
[If you were one of those odd people this year, don't take offense]. On most previous birthdays I would have scoffed as usual and said, Naah..
.not any different. But this year, hmm.
.., may-be.
I'm sure all this has something to do with being on the cusp of Libra, and the initiation of Fall, and oh did I mention that I got new glasses?
And the innards were closer to brown than ecru. Just how old were these crackers, anyway? Since I was in the middle of work, I had to choke it down, which is hard to do after you've discovered you're eating last year's food.
I didn't know if I should call him Father or not.
Right now our finances seem like a strategically leaky sieve. But as Americans, we've got so much, probably too much.
The first reminder was when I got to spend about an hour with a friend I hadn't seen for years.
He's been in China, teaching English. He never mentioned it, but it was obvious that his experience had given him perspective on all the stuff over here in America. He seemed completely satisfied in God and in any little thing God might decide to give him in addition to Himself.
It was refreshing just to be around him.
Speaking of ..
.how are we doing, you ask?
Well, using the list I began with:
1.
We're chipping away at it. Speaking vaguely and in the passive, progress has been made.
3.
Actually, we've been doing startlingly well
4. Haaaahaaaahaaaa!!
! hooo, that's a good one
5. So far: The Life of Pi; Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy Fairytale; When We Were Orphans; Total Money Makeover; and The Giver.
Well, 5 books for 6 months. I think I can catch up.
6.
The book's almost done, and the publisher phase is getting underway
7. We're working on that. There are plenty of no-name towns in SC, so I'm not too worried.
Although I was hoping for some place like the Riviera or Nepal.
8. The ride is pretty good these days.
9. Again, a little behind here, but having SO MANY people over for the Fiesta sure helps, doesn't it?
10.
First quarter: went to Tybee Island for a Alison's parents in Houston for an utterly inexpensive vacation. The future: who knows?
11.
Yep, we had Ben Jenna over within weeks after writing those resolutions. Now I think we should have them over again sometime. Maybe that was too quickly resolved to be a real resolution.
And here's the guilt trip: all those of you who were secretive enough to keep your resolutions to yourself, how are you doing? :-)
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico by Ansel Adams, 1941.
"Chocolate has one of the richest and most complex flavors of any food.
In addition to its slight acidity, pronounced bitterness and astringency, and the sweetness of its added sugar, chemists have detected more than 600 different kinds of volatile molecules in chocolate. While a handful of these may account for the basic roasted quality, many others contribute to its depth and wide range" (foodie Harold McGee in his kitchen classic On Food and Cooking, page 702).
"Radical change in the quest for approval, which has involved purchasing stuff with money we don't have, is required for a money breakthrough" (financial guru Dave Ramsey in his instant classic Total Money Makeover, page 84).
"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him" (American trappist monk Thomas Merton, in his Seeds of Contemplation, page 18).
"Work is love made visible.
..All work is empty save where there is love; and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God" (Lebanese-American believer Kahlil Gibran, in his poem The Prophet, from chapter 7).
"The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless" (T. S. Eliot, in his "East Coker", one of the Four Quartets).
Mm-keh, so I made my priorities entirely vulnerable just after the turn of the year when I published on the blog. Of course, they were just another exercise in "I have absolutely no idea what God is going to allow in my life this year, but oh well, what they hay..
."
1. Pay off all our debt.
Weeellll, we're actually doing really well on "our" debt. We just kind of had an addition to what "our" debt is now considered. But ya know, I've made up a couple theoretical budgets, and if God is gracious, we could still have all "our" debt paid off this year.
An amazing thought.
2. Read the Bible every day.
Guilty, guilty. I guess when you word it this way, there's no real way of catching back up to it. I'm trying to do better.
Is that okay? If I had worded the resolution that way, though, it would have sounded pretty lousy.
3.
Stick to our budget. Well, we've been doing pretty stellar on this in many respects. For a good part of the year, we've been well under our budget due to cutting back.
4. Exercise every week. Umm.
..this wasn't my resolution.
So...
no comment.
5. Read at least one book every month (Will) and keep track of the books we read.
OK, so not perfect, but I'm doing okay. I read (Frederick Buechner), listened to on CD, and just read , which I just . So, it averages out, right?
6. Alison: Finish book and find a publisher. Again, not mine, but I think we're doing pretty good here.
7. Travel to one place we've never been. This may take a miracle, unless we're going to count some small town in Texas that we may end up in very soon.
I think we had in mind something more along the lines of some fun city in the US or nearby regions. We'll see.
8.
"Enjoy the ride" (Alison). It's been challenging, but she's been working at it really well.
9.
Have guests over once each month. Again, we may have to do the averaging thing here, but we had Dan Rachel Kreider over, Brannon Cate, my parents, and a big dinner with Ben Jenna, Nathan Melinda, and Emily Reach. So I'd say we're ahead of schedule.
:-)
10. Plan 1 mini-break per quarter. Well, not so hot here.
Looks like we're going to have to have two mini-breaks this quarter!
11. Have our friends Ben Jenna over.
Aha! See #9. You know what they say about two birds.
No, Ben Jenna, you are not the two birds I have in mind.
So, God has been gracious, and we are eager to see what He has in mind for us next. We'll keep trying to do our part and be good.
Until the end of next quarter, this has been...
(roll the theme music)...
Will's New Year's Resolutions!
I recently sent out this email to friends and family. If I managed to leave you off that list, this is for you.
It's been a while since we've been able to update you on our situation. Part of the problem has been that things have been so complex, we had a hard time knowing how to explain things! Hopefully this email can give you a whirlwind tour of what's going on right now in our lives, at least.
You probably know that I closed Paramount Roofing a few weeks ago due to complicated problems surrounding some debt incurred by the company. The last several weeks of the company were the most profitable and enjoyable we had, which made it even harder to close the business when the time came. But God made it clear that the reason Paramount had been in existence had come to an end, and there was no shame in closing the company.
So the past couple weeks have been just as busy, while I made sure everything was tied up properly for the company (taxes, projects, customers, etc) while also searching for a new job. I needed to find a job that I could get into soon, but also one that would allow me to pay my share, or even all, of the company's debt. Alison and I had many discussions, and agreed that we were up for whatever God brought us.
Well, within the space of one week, here is what has transpired:
1. We turned in our notice at the apartments where we live, and will be moving out by the end of March. We will be moving into the "apartment" at Mom Dad's (my parents') house, at their invitation.
2. This coming Saturday, all day, we will be having a huge "house sale," where we will be selling off about half of our things. I tried to include each of you on the evite invitation, but a couple email addresses must have been old, because they bounced.
So if this is the first you're hearing of the sale, sorry! It will be at our apartment from 8 am to 8 pm. For those of you who can come, please don't be shocked or offended if you see a gift you gave us in the group of things for sale.
We don't mean to offend any of you, and appreciate each of the gifts you have given us. We are also selling a great deal of things that we bought, even for each other, and believe that right now it is responsible for us to set our feelings aside in order to reduce our belongings and overhead as much as possible.
3.
I have applied to over 100 jobs, and have heard back from a few. I have been accepted for a part-time, long-distance position with Google to be a Quality Rater. This will be a 20-hour per week research position, and can be done anywhere there's a network signal.
In addition, though, I was recently invited to take a position with the company that Alison's dad is a partner in. It is a support company in the oil industry, and the job will mean moving out to Texas as soon as late March or early April. Since Alison will not have a replacement at her UVA job until June, she will need to stay here in Greenville until then, before moving out with me.
4. We also heard very recently from the ( ), and they have accepted both Alison and me for programs there. Alison will be taking a taught 1-year Master's degree in Creative Writing, and I will be in a 3-year Ph.
D. program in Literature. We are welcome to start the programs this fall, but since , the professor we would each like to work with, will be on research leave, they invited us to defer until the fall of 2007.
Not only was the acceptance a shock (I had determined not to expect anything in particular), but this invitation to defer was providentially amazing. We knew it was going to be challenging to get Paramount's debt paid off by this fall, but we were certainly going to try. What St Andrews went out of their way to offer us was exactly what we needed to avoid stress about the situation.
So that's the news from Lake Wobegon. I hope each of you is doing well. Sorry it's probably been so long since we've talked, or gotten together, or whatever it is we used to do with you.
We feel that we are at the end of a very long, hard part of our lives and are eager to see what God has for us next.
I would encourage you to check out I put on my blog last fall. It's from the T.
S. Eliot conference, and looking back on it now, I believe it shows God's smiling Providence in working during this entire time to line up just what He intended for our future.
Hopefully all of this can be an encouragement to you.
God is still at work in our lives, and He finds the most unusual ways to remind us that He does it in love.
When they brought Jesus to the place where his dead friend lay, Jesus wept. It is very easy to sentimentalize the scene and very tempting because to sentimentalize something is to look only at the emotion in it and at the emotion it stirs in us rather than at the reality of it, which we are always tempted not to look at because reality, truth, silence are all what we are not much good at and avoid when we can.
To sentimentalize something is to savor rather than to suffer the sadness of it, is to sigh over the prettiness of it rather than to tremble at the beauty of it, which may make fearsome demands of us or pose fearsome threats. Not just as preachers but as Christians in general we are particularly given to sentimentalizing our faith as much as Christian art and Christian preaching bear witness — the sermon as tearjerker, the Gospel an urn of long-stemmed roses and baby's breath to brighten up the front of the church, Jesus as Gregory Peck.
But here standing by the dead body of his dead friend he is not Gregory Peck.
He has no form or comeliness about him that we should desire him, and as one from whom men hide their faces we turn from him. To see a man weep is not a comely sight, especially this man whom we want to be stronger and braver than a man, and the impulse is to turn from him as we turn from anybody who weeps because the sight of real tears, painful and disfiguring, forces us to look to their source where we do not choose to look because where his tears come from, our tears also come from.
From Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy Fairy Tale by Frederick Buechner (36-37).
1. Pay off all our debt
2. Read the Bible every day
3.
Stick to our budget
5. Read at least one book every month (Will) and keep track of the books we read
6. Alison: Finish book and find a publisher
7.
Travel to one place we've never been
8. "Enjoy the ride" (Alison)
11. Have our friends Ben Jenna over
Ate dinner and had wonderful conversation with unbelievers who are just beginning to believe.
Conversion looks different from this side, but it's just as inspiring.
Did the Heimlich Maneuver on an old man who was alone on Coffee Street, choking on a piece of steak. I might have saved his life.
Discovered an acquaintance from childhood while reading book reviews on amazon. Our interests are so similar that we're like separated twins.
Tried to drive while medicated.
That was weird.
Watched from a distance as my company almost lost an important job. That was scary.
Took an afternoon nap in 3 stages, amused each time the alarm went off at how my senses were about 3 seconds behind my actions. I would be halfway to the alarm by the time I actually heard it.
Saw a great film about the last days of East Germany, remembering the real events from my childhood and my foolish xenophobia.
The conclusion of the whole matter: come to terms with the fact that you can't figure out what your life is going to be like, read Ecclesiastes, enjoy life anyway, and fear God, keeping His commandments. (I guess at the very least because He's someone who actually knows what is going to happen next).
Oh, and the picture is from a couple weeks ago, when Alison and I got lost trying to find somewhere to eat on the way back from Savannah.
"Strangely enough," we were in the perfect place to watch a great sunset.
OK, so this is a really goofy image and a fairly goofy quiz. But I thought I'd post my results anyway, because at least today, they seem fairly on-target.
Of course, that's because they make it sound like I'm really amazing, which is probably just a matter of opinion. I've got a sneaking suspicion that this quiz is like horoscopes, and no matter what choices you make, you'll get some false affirmation and some stroking of the ego. Oh well.
Sooo...
.any of the rest of you care to try it out and share your feedback?
and are a shoulder to lean on.
You give advice at any given time.
person. You immerse yourself in other people's problems and forget your own.
People see you as: Friendly, secretive, and popular. People envy you, and may try and use positive relationships with people. Neither of you have close friends, but unlike graceful people, you try to help people out and aren't as arrogant.
You need more: Solitude. You hardly get the problems. You can't take other's really are.
Christmas is my favorite time of year. No, I don't mean just Christmas day. In fact, it usually happens that the day is so full of activities that it's difficult to simply enjoy it - in my family, you have to focus more on making it through the day.
But the whole season that leads up to Christmas day, and resonates a little while after - that's what I love.
Alison and I started playing Christmas music again recently (in fact, I'm listening to one of our favorites, trumpeter Chris Botti's CD right now). And my family started sending out the seasonal "what-do-you-want-for-Christmas" emails.
Thanksgiving or Thoughtless Glutting?
In a way, Thanksgiving seems to me to typify the whole Christmas season. Well, in my ideal perspective on it, at least.
I suppose for the average Joe American Dream family, both Christmas and Thanksgiving mean perversely celebrating the God-given excess they enjoy by clinging to it as if it were all they had, and then becoming gluttons and spendthrifts and trying not to regret it afterward.
But what should really happen is this: Christmas should be a season when people become aware of others, when they realize that there's more to life than them, that even though this world is not conclusion, there are some wonderful things and people here, and that appreciating them is part of living life as we ought. And what better holiday to celebrate in the middle of the season than Thanksgiving (with a capital T)?
I suppose gving thanks could easily slip into sitcom spirituality (the way "faith" slipped into "faith in ourselves and in each other"). But seriously - who else are you going to give thanks to?
I think Thanksgiving is the mindset that should characterize the believer all the way through the Christmas season.
A thankful heart toward the Giver of all good gifts keeps you from gluttony, from foolish prodigality. It makes the eagerness of the weeks before Christmas day an eagerness that can't wait to give a gift to a loved one, rather than one that can't wait to get anything in particular. True thanksgiving (the kind the believer understands) is the kind that makes me realize "I already have more than I could have ever dared to imagine.
And here I am celebrating another year of life with some of God's greater gifts - my family and friends. Why would I worship at the altar of stuff when I have such a grander reality to live in?"
So thoughts like these are running through my mind as I figure out what to make for Thanksgiving dinner, what to buy for family and friends, when to visit the Fireside Pancake House with Jeff Emily, and whether or not to visit the Biltmore House again this year.
Life is such a great gift of God that it needs to be celebrated, for His sake. By our lives we need to take His gift around to everyone we know, telling them by the way we live: "Now this is a great gift!"
Recently I read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, a beautiful read.
I picked it up at a booksale because I saw a quote once from a woman who said she loves this book so much that she reads it once a year when she goes to the beach. Now that I've read it, I'm not surprised.
Lindbergh falls a little short of the mark, though, especially with regard to her views on a woman's need to have "alone time.
" Unfortunately, she seems to believe that having alone time is pretty much the panacea for all spiritual ills. This view caused Will and me to have a detailed conversation over a delicious Mexican dinner the other evening about women and their special need for "alone time." I explained to Will that I really identify with this need - although in a more Biblical context, I would hope.
Although I don't view my alone time as the source of all happiness, I agree with Lindbergh when she says that being completely alone for a little bit each day or week or month can revitalize one's fount of creativity and allow a person to get down to the brass tacks of exactly who one is. It's hard in this day and age when women (and men) are pulled in so many different directions to settle down and remember who they are and what they are living for.
This train of thought got us into a discussion about women who go too far with their desire to be alone.
I'm not sure if you've seen the film The Hours (or read the book), but we felt like that Julianne Moore's character in that story, the one who leaves her family and becomes a librarian in Canada, is an example of a woman who valued her alone-ness too much. Another story that comes to mind is Doris Lessing's "To Room 19," which I remember reading with horror on the sundeck of Mary Gaston. The protagonist in that story, Susan, continues to separate herself from her family and finally ends her life (sorry if you haven't read it).
Anyway, though Susan is decidedly not a sympathetic character, Julianne Moore's character in The Hours is, and I appreciated that. The book/film at least tried to come to an understanding of what really makes a woman desire to be alone more than to be with her family, so much so that she would leave.
At this point in the conversation, Will wondered aloud if there were any sympathetic men characters who leave their families.
He said that if a man leaves his family in literature or film, he's usually very un-sympathetic. We wondered what this meant socially - the fact that America tends to view men who leave their families as completely without excuse. Which they are - I'm not trying to excuse them!
I'm just trying to figure out what's going on here. Will and I felt that it was unfair to men to gloss over the reasons for their wrongdoing, while explaining away a woman's sins by saying that she just needed to be alone.
Then I remembered another book I read recently called Ironweed, by William Kennedy.
This book, I realized, is a sympathetic portrayal of a man who has left his family. Not sympathetic in the sense that you applaud his choices, but sympathetic in that you understand what led him to make those choices and you say to yourself in the end, "But for the grace of God, there go I."
All in all, being alone struck me as something along the lines of a fine perfume - a little bit goes a long way.
Surrounded as we are by a world of sin, it's easy to go to one extreme or the other. Without the fragrance of alone-ness we end up losing ourselves (and becoming really smelly :-), but it's just as easy to go the other way and be alone far too much, to the detriment of our social and spiritual lives.
I would recommend each of the books and films I've mentioned above (although The Hours has some elements of homosexuality in it that could be potentially offensive, so be wise).
If you have any thoughts to share on the subject of being alone, please do. I think it's an interesting subject.
So, I started a new commonplace book recently.
I've kept different kinds of journals off and on since the late 90s, and have plowed through about a half dozen since then. Each of them has a different feel and a different style, and I love to skim through them from time to time. It reminds me of what I used to be like, and like an aroma coming from around the corner, it gives me feelings of transported nostalgia, and for a moment I feel like I am reliving the past.
Commonplace books used to be...
well, commonplace hundreds of years ago. It was a way to record the seemingly random things that pass through a life. I thought I'd share the first few entries into mine.
"A gentleman knows how to make others feel comfortable." (from How to Be a Gentleman 1).
"Man is born broken.
He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue." (from The Great God Brown by Eugene O'Neill, Act 4, scene 1)
"A human life is like a single letter of the alphabet.
It can be meaningless. Or it can be part of a great meaning." (quoted in Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, 100)
And the fire and the rose are one.
"
(from Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot)
"Smell is the most powerful memory trigger of all the senses, but we differ so greatly in what smells hit the right or wrong notes.
As well as our own emotions differing greatly from person to person, we all live in our own sensory world. I know that this might seem a little spiritual but we do see, hear and smell things differently..
.As long as this continues, the world of eating will be a very exciting place." (from the Philosophy section of Heston Blumenthal's website for his restaurant | Thought I'd share some random life thoughts every now and then, so I started a new category for them.
Today: some favorite smells. Feel free to respond with your own.
Nice-smelling people (especially in Europe, for some reason)
Citrus fruits, especially limes and oranges
Everything associated with Christmastime (cut evergreen, gingerbread, wood burning in the fireplace, raw air, etc)
Crayons and play-doh (I'm sure it's part of my childhood reversion, but it just brings back vague happy memories)
Big cities, not near any dumpsters (a completely different smell)
Rain, when it's just starting
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