The World Is an Alien Place

You know, if you really think about it, the world is an alien place.

We go through our days living inside our heads and bodies and rarely really look at things or think about things. 

Or maybe I should speak for myself:  I go through my days living inside my head and body and rarely really look at things or think about things. 

But if you take a moment to observe and to question, or to do some research, you realize that the world is fantastic, and truth is stranger than fiction.

I mean, you could spend your whole life just reading about and figuring things out about the world. It’s truly amazing.

I remember realizing, when I came to college, that I truly could be anything and that anything I wanted to learn was literally right there within my grasp in the library. Now it’s on the internet, the whole world of knowledge.

It made me want to scream with excitement and possibility.

The world would be a better place of everyone wanted to scream with excitement and possibility.

Hot Pork Sandwiches As a Metaphor for Life

I made hot pork roast sandwiches for supper tonight.  You know the ones?  You take leftover pork roast, slice it thinly. You chop some more pork into small pieces and fry it and make a nice pork gravy out of the fried pork, chicken stock, and corn starch to thicken. Then you serve it by layering a slice of bread, a piece of pork, and hot pork gravy.  It’s yummy and easy and comfort food.

If I’d really been doing it right, I would have made homemade mashed potatoes, but I was running late on time.  So just fresh sliced apples and steamed broccoli with lemon pepper on the side and some pickles.

It’s funny how everyone has their own system for eating.  Some people eat out all the time. Some people only eat homemade. Some people favor lots of cheese and cream. Some people favor veggies.  I lean toward unprocessed homemade food. Sure, on a week when we’re running late to everything, we’ll grab something at Wendy’s or nuke a frozen dinner, but in general I try to make something homemade.

I have lots of shortcuts.  For breakfast, I buy sausages and cook them all slightly underdone and then freeze them so that they can be nuked to warm for breakfast.  They’re better than the ones you buy already cooked.  I make a parfait by layering fruit and yogurt and cereal or chocolate chips. We have bagels and cream cheese or toast with butter and toppings.

Dinners, I try to have all 4 or 5 food groups: a protein, a veg, a fruit, a grain, and milk. So I’ll roast or crockpot or time-bake some meat of some kind, I’ll steam some veggies, we’ll have bread and butter or I’ll timer some rice, and I’ll chop up some fresh fruit.

I guess my yen is for unprocessed stuff.   I used to go way in for strange diets when it was just myself, and it wasn’t until we had kids that I got serious about trying to balance everything. It seems to be working. The kids, so far, have maintained a healthy weight, fights about food are fairly minimal, and they try new stuff.

Things that surprise me. My son loves blue cheese and tomatoes. My daughter loves corned beef and cabbage.

One of the things that got me thinking about this is that I’m much more thoughtful about my kids food than my own.  It’s easier for me to help them be healthy than it is to make myself healthy, due to the half-hazard way I was raised.  I was thinking recently that I should think of myself as  a third person. That way, I might be able to treat myself better than I would otherwise.  Think of myself in the third person. 

And all this is a metaphor for my writing.  I can’t seem to convince myself I’m worth it, either in food or writing. Something to work on, for sure.

As Robert Goolrick says, “If you don’t receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.” 

War Is Mass Delusion

Via the Atlantic

I was thinking this weekend about war and about the rhetoric around war vs. the real reasons we go to war.

It started from a thoughtful post on Facebook friend Stephan Heard’s wall:

I just came to a startling conclusion about how I perceive delusions to work: Namely, the idea that the delusional thinking itself is safe: It is a withdrawal into the creative spaces and processes of the mind, where thought is beautifully free-flowing and the mind can conceive of alternate realities conceptual in nature, imagining things otherwise difficult to apprehend ... The struggle being that delusions cannot ultimately seem to exist outside of the consequences that occur via the delusions, nor can the delusions easily substitute for the goals and tasks a person has and can only seem to achieve though standard rationality and purposeful action. Where, then, and at what point, do the delusions become so disconnected from reality that they cease to be connected to the real world whilst yet simultaneously guiding action that exists in the real world, ultimately leading to the conflict that it leads to?

Delusions in general, while not causing harm except in bizarre situations, are dangerous, and that is what makes them so valuable, but is undermined by the traditional ways we are conditioned to think ...

I responded:

Great observation. I think it depends on the delusion. (I have relatives who believe we're descended from aliens.) I think delusion is a necessary part of the writer's process. A writer has to believe both that what he or she has to say is important and worth listening to - a certain brand of hubris - but simultaneously he or she often believes that they are worthless, and this is a driving factor in getting work done. It also takes a certain amount of delusional thinking when you start a novel - "Yes, I can write 100,000 words!" We could also talk about how war and religion are delusional and harmful, but that's a much bigger subject.

PS And I agree that delusions inside the head by themselves are harmful, even without considering resulting actions.

A delusion is an idiosyncratic belief that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument.

What do we say about war?  It’s necessary. It’ll bring peace. We’re just doing it for noble reasons.  Death is a necessary cost of political interest ~ to bring democracy to the unwashed heathens. That it’s for the best.

Why do we really go to war?  Commercial interests. Political interests. Too many young men at loose ends challenging the establishment, so let’s have a draft (both the Crusades and Vietnam and probably many other wars). Because we have all this confusing and subtle frustration in our daily lives that has to be focused somewhere, and we think if life were only black and white, if we had a goal, if there was an enemy to fight, we’d have a place to release all this anger and hate.

To be sure, many of the men and women who fight in wars are doing it for the noble reasons. They risk their lives because they believe in God and country and that they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good.  This is an amazing thing.  A very laudible, if misplaced, thing. But many soldiers (I’m not trying to speak for them, of course, but I’ve read it time and again) get over there ~ wherever there is ~ and quickly become disillusioned.

But we lie to each other.  We baldfaced lie. Since it usually isn’t us or our loved ones who pay the price, it doesn’t touch us.  It’s like cheating on you diet ~ oh, I’m making myself feel better ~ but every time you take a bite, someone dies. It’s like passing a law that doesn’t do anything but make yourself feel better, but every time, a country is invaded.

War ~ an idiosyncratic belief that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument.

Humans are capable of such vast and unimaginable horror.

'In Lonely Rooms'

I took this a few days ago ~ a young mouse killed by a cat no doubt.  It blends in with the surrounding grass and makes one think of one’s eternity.

It’s been a rough couple of months. My mom is 91 and having some health issues.  She almost died mid-April with a UTI that turned to toxic shock.  All her systems were shutting down, and her BP was 50 something.  Since then, my husband came down with that flu that’s been going around and has been as sick as he’s been in his life.  He slept literally for a week. He’s just now finally almost back to normal but still a little weak with a bit of a cough.  My son tripped and bent his fingers backwards and broke his middle finger. His hand swelled up and turned all blue and gray. Then this last weekend I took Mom down to specialists in Colorado and she almost had to have surgery.  Luckily, she didn’t and that’s good.

I’ve presented at two fabulous conferences this spring ~ AWP and the Wind River Outdoor Writers Conference.  I also gave a reading at the Albany County Library.  It was all so wonderful, but stressful too. 

I feel like I’m growing, but it’s hard to put my finger on exactly how.  I’m not getting much writing done, which feels horrible and makes me a little crazy, but I feel like I’m stretching in other ways.  The kids are growing too.  Their schoolwork this year was outstanding, and their math and reading has really taken off. 

But it’s all given me a sense of uneasiness. I’m reminded of the impermanence of life and how death is inevitable and ever-present.  I’m not in my comfortable mindless groove, but yet I’m not in my comfortable mindless groove, if you know what I mean.

But I also feel incipient, like things might change and things might be hard but they also might be good, you know?  I think we’re always on the verge of something and maybe I’m just more aware of it at the moment.  But change and rebirth is hard, is painful.  Things die, things are reborn.  It helps me to think of myself as unimportant at these times ~ insignificant, as the Romantic poets pointed out.  Like Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey:

                               These beauteous forms,

      Through a long absence, have not been to me

      As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

      But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

      Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

      In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

      Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

      And passing even into my purer mind,

      With tranquil restoration: ~ feelings too

      Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,

      As have no slight or trivial influence

      On that best portion of a good man's life,

      His little, nameless, unremembered, acts

      Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,

      To them I may have owed another gift,

      Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

      In which the burthen of the mystery,

      In which the heavy and the weary weight

      Of all this unintelligible world,

      Is lightened: ~ that serene and blessed mood,

      In which the affections gently lead us on, ~

      Until, the breath of this corporeal frame

      And even the motion of our human blood

      Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

      In body, and become a living soul:

      While with an eye made quiet by the power

      Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

      We see into the life of things.

I don’t know what I’m saying here exactly, except that I love life and beauty and that my memories, like Wordworth’s, sustain me. And awareness of death is ever more present.

Making People Real to Themselves

For the Earth's Imagined Corners Bewitching Book Tour, today I'm hanging out over at Creatively Green Write at Home Mom! I'm so honored! Thank you, Wenona!

Giuseppe Magni

I've been manning our grade school book fair all week, and I love it.  It's in the library, so I'm surrounded by new books and old books and people who love books. And I get to watch the kids and their enthusiasm.

There's nothing like a kindergartener, all bright eyes and pudgy hands, squealing with delight over this object, this thing that I, too, love. And the jaded lanky fifth graders, coming in all cool, and then they grab a book and sit in a corner and get so absorbed or show off books to their friends. 

I've realized something over the course of the week: my job as book fair person is to bear witness.  A kid will come up to me all excited and discuss the pros and cons of a book. Or they'll ask for help finding something.  Or three of them will cluster around me, pulling my sleeve and vying for attention. They'll explain about how they're buying this for their little sister who is only three, or they'll ask how much a book is and whether they have enough money. All the microcosms of society are there: every once in a while a kid will try to steal something but then there's many more generous kids who are paying for their friends' books.

And it's my job to listen and affirm.  But what I realized is that that's my job in all areas of my life.  It's my job to affirm my family. It's my job as a marketer to affirm the educational institution I work for. It's my job as a writer, too. I'm telling the stories of characters, of people. I'm listening to the world and then mirroring it back, trying to show the world itself.

And in the process I'm trying to affirm myself.  That's something I felt was missing in my childhood. No one listened, and I believed almost until I was thirty that I was invisible.

And so, in addition to being the keeper of memories, we also make people real to themselves.

(Hey, that's also what I do as a parent!)

Is the Sublime Sublime?

Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Today, we tend to think of the sublime as a positive concept, but the Romantics didn't.

According to Edmund Burke, the sublime is "whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger ... Whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror."

Wordsworth said:

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery
In which the heavy and weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened

Coleridge said, "No object of the Sense is sublime in itself; but only as far as I make it a symbol of some Idea. the circle is a beautiful figure in itself; it becomes sublime, when I contemplate eternity under that figure."

And so the sublime is not something inherent in nature but rather is manmade and within ourselves. As such, it's a product of language. 

I was thinking this morning how it's the human condition, how hate and love and elation and depression are all tied together in this gordion knot. On my good days, I think that's wonderful ~ the highest are higher because the deep lows are there. But on my bad days, I think, what's the use?

Time Passes

"Is Time Passing So Quickly" by Edyta Stala

Time passes.  I have these great ideas for these great blog posts. I have these great ideas for short stories, for novels, for personal essay, for memoir.  That would be so cool!  I long to jump on it, to take it by the reins and ride galloping off into the sunset ~ tired cliche ~ but then I have to take a shower or cook dinner or balance the checkbook.  I'll be ninety before I know it, and all those ideas will have little ornate graves there in my head.

'There Is a Warrant Out for Your Arrest'

(via)

I was almost arrested yesterday. Or at least I thought I was going to be.

At about 4 in the afternoon, I get a message to call a policeman, a Lieutenant Johnson, right away. And so I dial the number.

“Hello, this is Tamara Linse,” I say. “You wanted me to return your call?”

“Yes,” the man says, “thank you for returning my call.”  He sounds like a young man, with a slight southern drawl, and he forms his words like policemen do: formal, precise, deep-voiced.

“Is there something I can help you with?” I say.

“Yes, there’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

Adrenalin shoots through me. What?!  What?!

“You were called to jury duty and you did not appear, and therefore the judge ruled you in contempt of court.”

“I was supposed to be in jury duty?!”  All this while I’m thinking, in my heart of hearts, I’ve always wanted to be on jury duty. Something about the access to secrets, the drama, everything.  It’s the same reason I read Ann Landers. I’m a fiction writer after all, and we’re evesdroppers and purveyors of horrible crimes.  But, alas, no, I’ve never been called.

“Yes. You should have received a written notice in the mail last week.  It was definitely sent, and the post office is really good about these things.”

“But I did not receive it.” At this point I’m totally freaked out. I want to protest my innocence.  I never received it! I’m innocent, I swear!  How can it be legal for a warrant to be out for my arrest if I did not receive the summons?!

“Well, you’re lucky,” he says. “It’s just a misdemeanor, but …”

At this point, my self-preservation brain kicks in. Everything doesn’t seem to be adding up. Would I be arrested for not showing up for jury duty? I mean, how many people probably miss those summons?  Lots, I’m sure.  And now that I think about it, it was not local number. And he just answered without a “this is a police officer” until I said something.

And so I interrupt him: “I’m sorry. There’s been a lot of scams going on lately. I’ll call you back.  I’ll call the number for the police department and they’ll transfer me back to you.”

“Uh, oh, okay,” he says.

I’m shaking as I call the police department. I ask for Lieutenant Johnson, and the lady dispatcher transfers me back. I get voice mail. That nails it for me: the voice on the message who identifies himself as Officer Johnson has no southern accent and is not the same voice.

I want to confirm, so I call back again a bit later.  The dispatcher transfers me to another person who will know where Officer Johnson is.  At first he says that there is no Lieutenant Johnson, just an Officer Johnson. I explain what happened.  He confirms: “Yes, it’s a scam, and it’s been going around for a while.” He’s really nice and tells me I did just the right thing. And the reason I thought to call them back? Because the police department had posted a notice in the paper a couple weeks back saying that’s what to do if you suspect a scam.  The system works.

After I get off the call, a coworker says she’s gotten the scam a couple of times in the last couple months too. And so it’s all over, but the shadow of adrenalin is rushing through my body. Plus, all during this, my daughter has missed the daycare van, and I have to run out to get her.

And my takeaway from this?  There are many parts of the world, for many people, where this would be real.  They are justified in believing that they are going to be arrested ~ because they are arrested, if not killed, for “driving while black” or because the guy in authority wants a bribe. 

I am aware of my many privileges that I get just because I am who I am and I live where I live.  And all my life, since I was a little girl up to this very day, all I’ve wished for was that everyone got along and loved everyone else. I say this without shame.

Iceberg

(via)

Isn’t it peculiar how one’s psychology is often a mystery to oneself?  How you may pin a mood on one thing, but it may also be due to something else.  I wonder if anyone has done any psychological research into this ~ explicit and known reasons for elation or depression vs. subconscious ones.  We are icebergs, are we not?

To Be Famous, You Have to Document Yourself

(via)

“History goes to those who leave stuff.” ~ me

Have you ever noticed that biographies and documentaries are most often about people who leave a paper trail or a video trail or photo trail?  Coincidence? I think not.

Mothering in a Larger Sense

(via)

Everyone has an opinion about mothers.  Everyone has a mother, or a couple mothers, or an absent mother.  And there are many mothers who are fathers and fathers who are mothers. It’s personal.  People feel strongly about mothers.

I was struck about the sheer volume of strong feelings expressed on Facebook yesterday.  Many of them were blanket positive, but there were many that were negative too ~ either they had a horrible mom or they can’t have children or some other combination.  Pain and anger are perfectly legitimate responses to mothers.

I don’t know how people can have a straight positive or negative response, though.  Life is not like that.  No person is perfect and fulfills our every need.  Likewise, no person is all bad.  I believe there is a continuum, and some mothers are mostly good and some are mostly bad, but our response ~ because it is such an intimate relationship ~ is inevitably mixed.  It changes over time too.  You may have been in conflict with you mother as a teenager and then realized so much once you have children of your own. 

We live in a cynical age.  We do not embrace platitudes easily.  We are happy to shoulder the negative and glory in it, but believing in something pure and good is seen as naïve at best. We wear our hairshirts proudly for all to see and we boast about it.

I would like to make a case for motherhood as nurturing.  Not a personal thing ~ not your mother or my mother.  Rather, a platonic ideal, a daily practice,  a way of life.  I would like make the case that nurturing is a powerful force for good in this world.  The maternal side in mothers and women who are not mothers and in little girls and in fathers and men who are not fathers and in little boys and in transgendered people and in single people and in people of every stripe.  I would like to hold up as an icon that part of everyone that puts the needs of others ahead of itself, that sees within the person the baby that each person was and cares deeply for them, the creator of meals and safety, the one who will face down the tiger or the bureaucracy or the abuser for  the sake of another.  All those traits we associate with the ideal mother, the ideal nurturer ~ those are the things I would like to celebrate, that I think the world needs more of.

Like David Foster Wallace said, the clichés are true.  That’s the reason they are clichés.  But that doesn’t mean they should be ignored.  They are clichés because they are no longer fresh and they don’t surprise you into feeling the emotion that they used to.  If you really thought about them, if you really let yourself feel for the other person, to put yourself in their shoes, how could you feel anything else but profound empathy, do anything else but nurture. 

I’m as guilty as the next person of pulling the chitinous armor around me and shutting it all out.   But I need to be braver.  You need to be braver.  We all need to make this world by love, not war.

Happy Mothers’ Day.

Names as Destiny

The Gashleycrumb Tinies, by Edward Gorey (via)

Are our names our destiny?  Well, Edward Gorey is certainly evidence in favor of the theory.  Like Charles Addams, he saw life as dark and humorous, and his work is amazing. 

But as it turns out, he did not originate the meaning of "gory."  According to the OED, it occured as early as 1480. 

So what do you think?  Nature or nurture?

Getting to Know the World One Person at a Time

Something I've wanted to do for a long time is to find an English-language newspaper from somewhere across the globe and follow it for a week or two.  Read the local news and the obits and the feature stories.  Then find another newspaper and follow it for a while.  The world is such a fascinating place.  It strikes me that this would be the ideal way to find out about the world ~ get to know it place by place, person by person, story by story.

Shshshshsh

via

I was thinking about the medium of television and movies and how it is all external.  It is all image. Filmmakers use various techniques to try to circumvent that, to show you the internal life of the characters, whether it’s facial expressions or voiceover or symbolism or special camera techniques.  However, it is essentially an exterior medium.  It is the way we experience the outside world every day, and we have to try to figure out what’s going on inside other people.  We’re these scientists who investigate the clues to others’ inner lives.

Writing is not like that.  It is an interiority medium.  You have to make a much more conscious effort to paint a picture of the outside world, and even when the world is presented it’s a reflection of the inner life of the characters or of the writer. I’ve always said that this is why I love fiction ~ it’s as close as you can get to another person’s reality.

The internet is an interesting combination of both.  It lends itself to the visual and therefore the quick fix, the exterior.  Yet it’s also word driven and therefore we have the insides of people displayed for all to see.  Everyone can get past the gatekeepers to express their inner lives.  But the quick fix nature of the medium encourages the reader not to connect and understand but to form an instant opinion and move on.

Lately I’ve been finding this all exhausting, and I’ve been seeking out the little corners of the internet that have long quiet intense articles.  Anything by Roxane Gay.  Byliner and its long-form journalism.  The Rumpus.  Or I’ve been avoiding the internet altogether and going to the source, to my beloved books.  Still working my way through that fabulous short story collection The Story and its Writer, and also started the second in the Song of Ice and Fire series.  Seeking solitude and quiet.

 

Hunting Is Honest, But Hard

I'm caught up in paradoxes this morning. 

How do you balance everything that's important in your life?  How do you let your children go and hold them close at the same time ~ today is their first day of first grade.  How do you regulate your representation yet not shut yourself down. With regard to this last, I really am as honest and transparent as I can be.

I'm very proud of my husband ~ for a whole bunch of reasons, of course! ~ but right now because this weekend he got a deer with his bow.  We both used to hunt with rifles, but he loves being out there so much he's transitioned into bow hunting.  The season is earlier and there are a few less hung over good ol' boys out there swinging a deadly weapon around. 

You may not know this, but hunting is flippin' hard.  It takes years of building up your skills to be a decent hunter, and bow hunting is even harder.  You have to stalk the animal and get even closer when you bow hunt.

I think a lot of the world might consider hunting the purview of hicks and third-world countries.  But to me ~ and to my husband of course ~ it feels more honest, you know?  A lot of people are blissfully unaware of where their food comes from.  They think of meat and vegetables as originating in factories like electronics.  They don't think about someone having to kill an animal for that hamburger they have at McDonalds. 

Have you ever stood there while an animal you killed is dying?  It's quite an experience, and it's really hard to do.  It makes you value your food so much more.

So I guess I'm thinking about owning up to truths (things die so that you can live AND there are parts of you and your life that others might find offensive).

Where I Live

The Laramie Valley

Just the last few days, it’s been chilly here in the mornings.  As I’ve mentioned before, we’re at 7,200 feet above sea level here in Laramie ~ the high plains.  It makes me sad to see summer going so quickly.

Summers in Laramie are a wonder.  Temperatures are always moderate ~ mid 70s to low 80s ~ except for a couple of days in August where we get in the 90s.  Every afternoon, it clouds up and rains just a bit, for fifteen minutes or a half hour, and cools things down, and then it’s sunny again.  Summer light is clear and bright, and in the mornings and evenings it’s yellow and gives everything a lovely cast. 

It’s more of a challenge to grow vegetables because we are so cool.  Our growing season is, at the most, 3 months.  You’re not supposed to plant your starts outside until June 1, and we can get the first frosts in September.  Literally, we have had snow every month of the year at some point.  But it makes for mild beautiful summers.

We almost always have a heavy late spring snowstorm that breaks branches.  Some winters seem longer than others.

And the students at the university are gone.  It is so peaceful.  The town during the school year can be hectic with traffic because the students double the size of the town.  And in the fall, when they first arrive back, there are a lot of crazy drivers that just aren’t paying attention or are too filled with racing hormones or something.

But fall is also one of my favorite times of year.  Something about the cool in the air, the excitement of the return of the students, the deep breath before winter.  I’ve always loved that. 

Of course, this year has been different.  We had that hot spell early in the year and all the wildfires.  But then our usual summer weather kicked in. 

Because of our weather and where we are, we don’t have many bugs ~ just a few mosquitos ~ and we don’t have tornados to speak of or hurricanes or anything like that.  Our worst of course are the blizzards.

We’re a good combination of big town and small.  It feels like a small town ~ heck, Wyoming feels like a small town ~ but you can still get breakfast at 2 in the morning and we have music and theater and all that.  And if you’re really missing the city, you can go to Denver 2.5 hours away.  Or if you’re an outdoors person, the mountains are 20 minutes away, literally.

It’s not beautiful in the way many places are. It’s not Jackson, and many people think it’s ugly. Heck, I think it’s ugly about February or March during mud season.  But you get used to its quiet beauty.

One of the many things not to take for granted.

Going Deeper

I’ve been thinking about the Malcolm Gladwell video I posted yesterday. I’ve also been thinking about some of the great bloggers who consistently write long and glorious and intelligent posts ~ my friends at Guy’s Library and The Vivid Ellipsis and This Is So Gay and Brain Pickings immediately come to mind, but there are more.  Byliner also highlights great thoughtful long-form journalism. And of course there's TED.

These people push the limits of knowledge.  They explore things deeply and intimately.  The lengths of what they write harkens back to a slower time and is not what internet marketers say you should write.  No, our attention spans are too short these days.

But I know that I crave these types of essays.  I don’t always find the time to read as many as I’d like, but I love them.

On this blog, I tend to write a bit shorter.  What I can think through in a matter of a half an hour or an hour.  I quickly write through an idea, but I never go back and revise (except superficially), and I rarely do much research.  I draw from what I already know or personal experience or the source I’m talking about.  I post 5 days a week, and it’s sometimes challenging to come up with interesting things to write about every day. But it’s fun too.  And I think readers rely on bloggers to be predictable and regular in their posting habits.

But I sometimes fear that these posts are too shallow, and I long to go deeper.  So many great writers have talked about how writing is thinking, and the only way they know what they are thinking is by writing it through, thinking about it, revising.  I’ve thought about developing one post a week into a longer, researched, more in-depth kind of thing, but I don’t have the time at present.  I’m also afraid my fiction would suffer (which is what I most want to write).

Truth be told, I’m in love with people’s minds, with ideas, and because I value these so much, I don’t want to come across as shallow or surficial.  I want to “measure up.”  I would like to have the time and mental space to explore these ideas and to arrive at new and distant shores.  I am infinitely attracted to the Gladwellian life.

At Least I’m Not Chasing Cows

"Snow Storm ..."  by J.M.W. Turner

Every day, when you drive down Grand Avenue in Laramie, there’s this guy walking back and forth on the sidewalk along the same block carrying a sign.  On the sign, it does not say “The world will end.” It does not say “Down with the government.”  No.  It says, “AT&T Mobile.”

It’s always the same guy on the same block in front of the AT&T store.  The guy carrying the sign invariably has on a pair of earphones.  He carries the sign hugged to his body next to his ear, so that he walks with his shoulders hunched forward and his head hinged off-center away from the sign. It’s as if he’s lurching slantwise down a hill.

Every time I see him, I think, God what a horrible job.  Maybe I’m projecting, but I don’t think I’m alone here.

Whenever things are tough at the office or we’re doing something we don’t like to do, my husband and I have this thing we say.  “At least we’re not doing X.”  X is that job you did when you were young that you absolutely hated.  For me it was chasing cows on foot far from home in a freak early fall or late spring snow storm, the ones in which the icicles hang off the horses' noses and the snow or fog make it hard to see and you never have enough coats so you have to stomp your feet to keep warm.  (Us kids walked; some of the older cousins had horses.) For my husband, it’s cleaning out an un-air-conditioned hog farrowing house in Nebraska in August with a power washer.  Remember to keep your mouth shut.

I think it’s a good thing to remember.  We have so much here in the United States and so much more than our ancestors.  And we so take it for granted.  I must remind myself of this every so often.

That’s One Tough Mudder

Via

I have a friend who is participating in the Tough Mudder on Saturday in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It advertises itself as “probably the toughest event on the planet.” All you have to do is watch the video on the website and you feel like running with the bulls.

Here’s what the website says:

Tough Mudder events are hardcore 10-12 mile obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test your all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. With the most innovative courses, half a million inspiring participants, and more than $3 million raised for the Wounded Warrior Project, Tough Mudder is the premier adventure challenge series in the world.

As I was running my measly 1.5 miles today (working my way back up to 3), the thought crossed my mind that training for and attending events like these are like writers going to the best and most challenging writing conferences.

Bear with me here (and quit rolling your eyes).

I’ve written before about how running is like writing. 

Writing conferences are competitive. You compete to get in, and also you compete for scholarships. You also feel a little competitive while you’re there because there are all these great writers doing all this great stuff. Just like the Tough Mudder.

You train. Oh, how you train. You write every day ~ or feel guity if you’re not. You read like your life depended on it. You obsess. You read your workshop manuscripts. You lose 10 pounds. You practice your presentation reading. You research the other participants. Just like you’d do hardcore training for Tough Mudder competitions.

But more than that, writing conferences are about being with others of your kind, of rubbing antennae with the other strange bugs. About finding your tribe. And what else the Tough Mudder but people coming together to find other people like themselves. Sure, they’re competitive too, but I bet more than anything they think of the others there as their kind and those who don’t compete as the nameless mob. Much like writers do at writing conferences.

So, as I sit here thinking about how crazy this friend of mine must be for wanting to do the Tough Mudder, I have to remember that many people think I’m just as crazy to want to write a novel. But crazy is good, I think. It means you’re passionate about something and you’re throwing your heart and soul into it. It means you’re living your life ~ with emphasis on both the living and on your life.

A Vegetable Garden, and How It Relates to Unrealistic Expectations

We put in our vegetable garden this weekend, and I’m bit sunburned and a bit sore—but very happy. 

We put in a garden every year, but the last number of years my husband has been doing all the work.  He loves growing things and working in the yard, and all things being equal he would have loved to have been a farmer.  But this year I was struck by a bit of romanticism about it and was ready to pitch right in. We always had a garden when I was growing up on the ranch.

All gardens can be a bit challenging, but we have our own here in Laramie at 7,200 feet above sea level.  You’re not supposed to plant until June 1, and even then it can be iffy.  The growing season is three months at the outside.  You can’t grow melons or okra or sweet potatoes or pumpkins.  Corn’s a bit iffy, though you can get a few ears of the short-season variety.  You might think tomatoes are out of the question, but my husband has had really good luck with cages and walls-o-water.  We always get a good crop of tomatoes.  What we grow particular well are cole crops like lettuce and spinach and things like that.  In fact, there used to be lettuce farms here in the Laramie valley, apparently.

The kids and their grandmother put in some flowers that the kids chose into the planter on the porch.  Next weekend, I think I’ll work on the other flower and herb beds. 

I heard on NPR the other day that whenever a recession hits, people take to growing vegetables.  Makes sense.  But that implies that most of the time people don’t grow vegetables—not enough space, more concerned with flowers, too much effort involved, etc.  In my own case, it’s sometimes not a priority, and plus we’re members of a CSA farm, so we get vegetables every week from June to December. 

But that got me thinking about how that’s just another way we’re disconnected from the natural world.  We can go throughout our whole lives without being exposed to nature more than the walk from our house to our car and then from our car into work or school.

And then I was thinking about the metaphors that we take for granted. The metaphor we use the most nowadays is that of exponential growth.  In the financial arena, we should always get raises and businesses should build and everything goes on an upward trajectory.  In our personal lives, we should be improving ourselves and aiming ever higher.

All this upward seeking, though, creates ever higher expectations—and hence ever higher disappointments.  In the U.S., which arguably has the highest standard of living in the world, we are more frustrated and disappointed than people in less prosperous countries (see there, I almost said, “less advanced” and that in itself shows how the metaphor extends throughout our lives).

But if we all grew vegetable gardens, if we were all closer to the natural cycles of the earth, wouldn’t our basic metaphors change?  Wouldn’t it be the cycle of life and death, not the ever-increasing ledge of expectation?  And wouldn’t we be happier, then?

Potatoes, now there's a goal in life.

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