A Pile of Dishes

 The guests are gone and the food is put away.  I've loaded the dishwasher, but the sink is full of flour-crusted bowls and cheese-covered pots, spoons and knives and a pair of scissors for good measure.  Patience went to bed, but William is asleep on the sofa behind me, and through the crack under my parents' door I see only darkness.  My mom is sleeping by now, and I'm sure that in Washington, DC my dad is doing the same, trying to get as much rest as he can before he flies out early tomorrow morning.  Where he's going is a mystery to me; I only know that this is his first time back to work in months, and his being gone now says that it really is a new year.

I turned off the classic country hours ago, but the sad Italian music only started floating through the kitchen after everyone was gone and it was just me and the piles of dishes and uneaten food.

When I get up tomorrow, I'll start the morning by washing dishes.  New Year?  Sure, sure, but it's the same life, and we just have to keep on going.  And when we celebrate, we'd better make sure we know what we're celebrating, or all we're left with is a pile of dishes.

I happen to know what I'm celebrating, though.  And it's worth a pile of dishes.

Still America

Sometimes it feels like 2020 jumped into the biggest truck it could find and ran over the population of the entire world.  I had to think hard to even remember that there had been Australian wildfires, because so many terrible things have happened since.

But today (or yesterday, I suppose), we Americans celebrated the 4th of July.  Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors willingly put their own lives in danger for the sake of our great nation.

There is no country like ours.  It is unprecedented and, in my opinion, unequaled.  Nowhere does opportunity exist like it does here.  But it's easy to lose sight of that when it's all you've ever known, which is true of most of the people I know.  Especially when debates are happening daily about how much of a place the government has in the private lives of citizens, and it seems like events in general are cancelled this year.

So here we are, on Independence Day, and there are no public firework displays.  No giant picnics or concerts.  No parades.  Everyone is left to fend for himself.  Do we Americans even care that much about celebrating this holiday if it's not handed to us on a silver platter?

Tonight I went to a cookout, where we ate good food that everyone had contributed and then watched $500 dollars worth of privately purchased fireworks be set off in a backyard.  Over the mountains of upstate New York, we could see, but not hear, the colorful explosions of similar celebrations in every direction.

Then, driving home, there were fireworks all around.  Some right beside the highway, some off across the river, or farther into the cities that we passed, lighting up the sky, in celebration and remembrance.

And I remember that what America has always been a symbol of is individual freedom, expressed and fulfilled on a larger scale by communities and governments.

Without the fireworks shows, there are still fireworks.  Without the picnics, we are still together.  Without the parades, we are still patriots.

Though the country may shake, we are still America.

Probably Not Worth Your Time

I just posted about twenty minutes ago, but I had a thought as I was reading my sister's old blog posts.  She wrote for an audience.  Which isn't a bad thing.  There are two kinds of people, those who write for an audience, and those who write for themselves.  (I'm not going to link my Maggie Stiefvater post here, but you should read it.  Also, typing on a touchscreen is FREAKIN' HARD.)

I happen to be the other kind of person, the kind that writes for myself.  As evidenced by the fact that I will spend hours working on blog posts that I know no one will read.  Which sounds kind of sad, but doesn't actually bother me that much.  It's here if anyone wants to read it.  Besides, 1) I have enough vanity to believe that someday people may discover this blog and go back and voraciously read all the old posts, and 2) if somebody ever wants to get to know my brain really well, I'll just point them here.  It's a treasure trove for that purpose.

If you're reading, thanks.  I'm glad that you're enjoying this.  Or hating it, if you're just reading it to hate something.  That's fine too.  And if you're enjoying it, I hope it is better for the fact that I only wrote it to understand things that I did not.

Goodnight.

In Which I Talk About Myself, and Too Much

So.  There's a person I'd like you to know of.

This person is a girl, and she's a reader.  She spent her childhood taking turns reading and running out her wild side, and the reading won out.  Now she's spent years in her head, turning ideas over and over in her head, driven on by curiosity and a need to feel unique.  A need to discover something that no one else has before.  A need to have ownership of something intellectual, and to be respected for it.

She has friends, but she doesn't really feel comfortable with most of them.  She loves her family, but she's a grouch, with a sharp sense of sarcasm, and it comes out most when she's with them.  She's loved and accepted where she works, but she feels like she puts on a mask when she goes there, and takes it off when she gets home.

Because she doesn't feel like her life is at work.  She doesn't feel like it's anywhere, almost.  In fact, the only place where she feel like her life is legitimate and true to her, is at home. 

Narrow, but deep.  Bordered, but rich within.  She's only comfortable surrounded by the same things she's always known and sees every day. 

Physically, at least.  Mentally is another story.  She spends her days in her stories: taking them in through music, and movies, and shows, and books.  And then, with much more pain, but satisfaction as well, she pulls stories out of her head as though they were knotted string on a sticky spool.

And she is content doing that; sometimes happy, usually restless, always thinking.

She philosophizes, because that's what life is to her.  She tries to be better, but feels that she is not.  She loves her friends and feels pain because she forgets they even exist, and feels pleasure because that pain is a writing tool, and feels guilt because she should be better than to use pain she's earned for pleasure.

She hoards the diamonds she finds in her own mind, and expects people to know she's rich.  She feels her mind has too many pieces for them all to hold together.

And...shocker.  This girl is me (as if that wasn't obvious all along).

The reason I've described myself in such dramatic terms is that it tends to be how I think.  I have a tendency to wallow in dramatic generalizations about myself.  It's quite pathetic really.

But it points to something true about myself.  I've spent my life discovering reality through the lens of books.  And books, while good and lovely and useful, work not by describing all of reality, but by taking conflict and condensing it into a digestible form.  Words are meant to be a translation of truth.  I happen to speak and write in English; it's the only language I understand (with the exception of a wee bit of Spanish).  So when I'm talking about compassion and kindness for someone who doesn't deserve it, I make some sounds with my mouth that people understand as mercy.  And I spell it that way when I write it out, putting those lines and curves and spaces together like that, because everyone else knows this system that we use to express ideas.

But the idea of mercy existed before English did, and all the forms and systems and rules that we use to judge whether something is "correct" work not as truth, but as a carriage for truth.

Does that make sense?  Language is the tool, not the craft.

And it's very useful, and it can be used very beautifully; and by beautifully, I mean well, as in it efficiently and accurately communicates those amorphous ideas that swim around in minds, so that when I say, "Your hat's hold on your head is tenuous," you understand that I am saying that your hat is coming off of your head, and that I am giving you advice, or possibly a warning, and also that I have some measure of competency when it comes to vocabulary.

And when I said efficiently up there, I didn't mean you only say the barest amount, or use the shortest words.  Look at the example up there: I took over three times the amount of words to explain what I had said than to actually say it.  I used the words I used because they conveyed exactly what I wanted to say: no more, but also no less.

That's efficiency.  It's getting the right effect for the proper price.  And of course, the only way to know what the proper price is, is to know the market.  And that's why having a good grasp on how to use your language tools is important.

But I digress.  Like, all the time.  But specifically right now.

So, me.  I read book people more than I read real people.  And book people are condensed and effective.  They confuse us, but only when they're calculated to (if it's not calculated, we say that their book is a Badly Written Book).  They are supposed to be condensed, in order to convey a deeper message about people and circumstances.  We're supposed to fill in gaps in our heads, and most of us are quite good at this, and have no idea we're doing this.

Unfortunately for me, it is possible to read so much that one believes that book people are the full, expanded thing, because one doesn't have many real full, expanded things to compare them to.  And that's the boat I've found myself struggling to get out of.

The trouble is, you have to get the boat to shore, and then you have to actually step onto the shore, which isn't nearly as relaxing as the water.  And then you have to trust that you can walk away and come back from time to time, and the boat will still be there and working.

Because, to be honest, sometimes it isn't.  But boats also tend not to be very livable long-term.

This metaphor has kind of gone overboard (I hope I'm not throwing you in over your head; I can sea how it's easy to drown in all these ideas).

Well.  (That's a deep subject.)

OKAY.  WE ARE GETTING BACK ON TRACK NOW.

What I've been trying to say this whole time is that it's easy to confuse the tools for the craft.  So the way I described myself up there is, in a way, my attempt to understand who I am.  It's me trying to take all the pieces and condense them into a few manageable ideas.

But I am far from manageable.

So what I said up there is truthful to a degree.  But it's certainly nowhere close to being the whole truth.

And in the spirit of being truthful, even the tone is deceptive.  It paints my life as rather dramatic and intellectual and intense.  And my life may look like that from certain angles.  But I was describing it as though I felt that way myself, and I don't feel like that at all.

In fact, words I would use to describe my mental state more than half the time are as follows:

Muddled.

Clotted.

Cobbled.

Overwhelmed.

But imagine if I wrote like that.  It would look like this:

have to-Alexa and Max would but (fountain pen ink) not Ranger and Erica------->future (2 years?)                           [what song] {Wythin} I need to clean my room=disaster | please stop eating, Anna - where did my papers--goodness, I didn't know we had doughnuts {RIVENBARK}--> Theodore was the original source of my genius, I'll never [melancholy shift] get that back //// just keep writing - belltower?  (flower?) [[thought you had my back [lack, sack, hack, rack, track, TRACK], our trains on the same track]] <--too plebeian. (snob) [is funny]                        (dirty room)) LET'S WALK [where to go?]  loneliness is my lot in life [Britta and Jo?] [tired of driving

And that would be exhausting, and it may communicate something, but it's not easily digestible.  It's also not fun (that was the hardest writing of this entire post, by far.  I've been sailing).

So instead, I've been trying to use the gifts God gave me to put something out there worth somebody reading sometime.  My ability to analyze.  My strange sense of humor.  My flair for the subtly dramatic (boy, I hate describing myself in those last five words).

And I guess something else, maybe.  My desire, if not talent, to be vulnerable.  To make myself understood. 

It's all a show, of course.  But it's supposed to reveal something deeper.

What a ride this has been.  I have a feeling I've done even more rambling than usual, and I'm not quite sure what I've even said.  But hopefully there's something good up there in that mess of words.

It's been fun anyhow.

A parting note: the patterns, the truth, the forms, make no sense without God.  This would all be a whole bunch of gibberish without my King.  There is no commonality or basis for reality without him.  So I know I didn't say much about that, but seriously.  Think about it.

Also, I NEVER edit these things before posting them.  I don't read it or anything.  I just decide I've said what I want to say and hit the publish button.  So you're welcome.

Hello New Year

True to form, I already started this post earlier, on New Years Eve, didn't finish it, and decided what I had written wasn't really worth keeping anyway.  So I erased it all, and started again on a blank page on this first day of the year, and of the decade.

In a way, it seems kind of symbolic.  We've been told, and maybe we actually believe, that the New Year is a time of change.  Of improvement, and even of starting over.  A time to shed the things in your life that weigh you down, and to carry on without inhibition.  Because it's the new year.  And new is somehow...different.

But of course, I've always had trouble seeing the passage of time as an indicator of any kind of practical change.  I wrote a post about that, many years ago on my birthday.  I talked about how numbers simply quantify time, they don't define it.  The river keeps on going; it may be flowing past different mile markers, but you could move the mile markers and the river would be the same old river.

The mile markers aren't special because they make us come farther.  They're special because they remind us of how far we've come.

2019 was a strange, dramatically subdued year for me.  I look back and it seems at first glance that I've accomplished absolutely nothing this past year.  I still have no idea what I'm doing with myself.  I'm still struggling with many of the same sins.  I have fewer friends than I did twelve months ago.

It's only when I look long and hard at the last mile marker that I understand just what this year has meant in the grand scheme of my life.

There are many things that I could look at and point to and say, "In at least some small ways, this thing has changed me."

I have a job.  I have several new stories that I will someday finish.  I have a nephew, the sweetest little three-month-old who loves to smile at Aunt Anna.  I have ideas for things that I want to do.  My room is a little bit cleaner than it was the other day, and will likely continue to improve.  I say likely, because I've decided that that is worth my time, and so I will not simply hope for a cleaner room; at least not without then walking back into the house of action and getting to work.

But one of the most important ways in which I've grown is in how I take pain.  I'm not good at pain.  It's just so uncomfortable.  But this year I've learned that there are things that I can't control, and I've learned to accept the consequences of these things.  I cannot overrule God.  And while this sometimes leaves me feeling lonely, it also helps me see that I can live, and I can live well, without many of the things that I didn't think I could lose.

I don't know what the coming year holds.  I don't know a lot of things about myself and about my life.  If I'm being honest, there's some apprehension doing its rounds in my heart.  There's so much left behind.

But look--there's so much river ahead.

My Favorite Books Through the Years

12:24 AM, December 25th. Good morning and Merry Christmas.

It’s my dad’s first Christmas at home in about five years, and the first Christmas that my little nephew has ever experienced. True to form, I procrastinated on my Christmas shopping (though not as much I usually do) and spent much of yesterday thinking about what a suitable gift for a baby’s first Christmas is.

I’ve known ever since I really started thinking about it that a book is the way to go. The right book is welcome before they can read, and is loved for a lifetime to follow. And so I thought, what book should I get for Nephew?

Nowadays, if you ask me what my favorite book is, I’ll tell you it’s The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. The whole series is fantastic, but that one in particular (the third in the series) stands out to me as a well-thought-out, tightly plotted novel with incredible character development.

And I would tell you The Scorpio Races. There’s so much texture and character on every page, understated and warm, and, again, containing such beautiful character development.

These are my top two. They are books that I have read many times, and will never grow tired of. And they would be terrible Christmas gifts for Nephew.

Nephew doesn’t know the first thing about character development. He couldn’t even tell me the role of conflict in a story. Nephew is just starting to learn to hold his head up on his own.

But these weren’t always my favorite books. I worked my way up to them, as all readers must.

And so, when I was young, what were my favorite books?

I took a look at my shelves, and I found some that I loved as a child. Books that I read over and over again, starting from when I was rather young (six or so), that I still smile thinking of.

Before The King of Attolia, I loved the All the Wrong Questions series by Lemony Snicket. I still think that Daniel Handler has a very distinctive voice, and such a unique grasp on word-choice. It’s a matter of preference for me, and I’m about to give you a spoiler. I don’t like sad endings. End spoiler.

Pride and Prejudice has always been well-loved by me. I’m not sure when I first read it, but it’s always been able to grip my attention; I’ve found that every time I read it, I find more that I’ve never noticed before.

While I wouldn’t say these have ever been my favorites, I’ve always loved the Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins; and if that name sounds familiar it’s because she wrote The Hunger Games, which I happen to think is an inferior product next to Gregor.

Redwall was my favorite series for a very long matter of time; several years, in fact. Probably from seven to about twelve years old.

This next paragraph I wrote a bit later; I figured if I didn’t turn out the lights and go to sleep lying down, I’d end up doing it sitting up, and then I’d spend Christmas trying to work the crick out of my neck. So now it’s 5:04 PM. The sun is setting and the gifts that we opened this morning are scattered around the house.

But as for Redwall, I devoured it. I read every single book, and today most of them sit on my shelf. Martin the Warrior was my hero, weasels my enemies, and Redwall Abbey my home. I explored that world, the woods and high seas. It was the energy and the adventure that drew me in. There was so much possibilty to explore in the world of Redwall. I haven’t read a Redwall book in probably four years, and I think that’s a shame. I wish I had more time these days to devote to rereading the books that first fed my love of reading.

But while Redwall might have been my greatest obsession as a young reader, it was not my first. That status belongs to the Hardy Boys books. I vividly remember pulling The Twisted Claw off of the shelf that sat behind our sofa, and looking at its cover curiously before opening it up.

I went on to read and reread all of the Hardy Boys books that we owned. I discovered Nancy Drew in my sister’s room and enjoyed them, which isn’t surprising given the similarity in form and content. But there was something about the Hardy Boys that was always more attractive to me. The writing was lighter and funnier; more outrageous in some ways, but less dramatic. It was boyish.

There are other books that stand out to me; standalones that weren’t able to take over my life to quite the same degree, but have settled solidly into place on my favorites list.

Years ago, on one of our long family roadtrips, perhaps to my aunt’s wedding in TX, we listened to the first audiobook that I ever remember listening to. I remember hearing of a woman eavesdropping on the same men who were looking for her, as she hid upstairs in an inn. I remember her realizing that the dirty Jewish peddler is actually her husband. Years later, I borrowed that book from the library. It was, of course, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and it’s one that I return to from time to time to discover with Marguerite the man she really married beneath the facade he hides behind.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle was where my addiction to independence met my love of reading. There are few books that have showcased to me so clearly the struggle to be free and the consequences of succeeding. Or the way that the fight to survive can change a person into someone completely different. In so many books, the hero doesn’t understand the choice they’ve made until afterwards. Confessions is stark and thrilling in its simplicity. The setting and the short cast list give plenty of space to see clearly the choices set before her, and the consequences of them. But there would be no enjoyment in the fight, of course, if we couldn’t see what she was fighting for. I didn’t know until Charlotte stood on the top spar of the mainmast, with the wind in her hair and nothing but ocean for miles around, how good freedom tasted.

And so, on this Christmas of 2019, my love affair with books continues. This year I got Stephen King’s On Writing and Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon by F.E. Peters. Neither of these are fiction, but I recently raided a bookstore, so fear not. There are so many stories out there to read, and so many characters to get to know.

But a good book is a good book at any age. Good writing somehow goes beyond the age and the context of the reader to get to something deeper. I learned more about myself from the books I read in my youth than I did from what my friends said about me. I learned what it feels like to open up whole new sections of the world, all at once. And believe me, after writing this post, I have some rereads planned. I’d like to remember that feeling again.

Yet after all this, none of these books were right for Nephew. It’s hard to find a good book for a baby.

When I looked on my shelf last night, I pulled out a book that I used to read often, as evidenced by how beat up its paperback cover is. I wondered how old it was, so I looked inside.

The first surprise was that the book itself was printed either in 1988 or 1992 - probably the latter. I had always thought it was given to me new. I found the second surprise when I opened the book.

Christmas 2005
To Anna - This looked fun!
We love you,
G’pa Tony + Marnie

Not only had I not known who gave this book to me, I hadn’t realized that it was given to me when I was only four years old.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read Mr. Popper’s Penguins. It’s been in my life as long as I can remember. It’s strange and funny and delightfully old-fashioned. And I think it would make the perfect gift for my nephew.

In Which I Acknowledge the People

I happened to drop by my blog today and discovered that for some reason, people have started reading it again.

What the heck is this.

With that in mind, I have two announcements, the second being dependent on the first.

First of all, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year.  It's not going splendidly at the moment, but I keep chugging along like a little mule.  I'll give a long retelling of the experience when December comes around.

Or not.  I'll do what I want, because this is my blog.

With that in mind, I'm not doing any other writing this month.  So, as I know six of you people saw my start to a long and thoughtful blog series, this is my explanation that I have taken it down for the time being so that I can put it back up when I'm actually able to complete it.  I don't know when that will be, though, because obviously the holiday season will be on its way in when NaNoWriMo ends.

I can't believe I have to explain my actions on my own blog.  This is criminal.

I suppose I should give the obligatory, "Thank you for reading, it means so much to me," but I'm actually kind of cranky about it.  I thought I would have more time to myself to make things ready for readers.

Oh well, if fame is to be my destiny, fame it is.

It's a gift...and a curse.

(In all seriousness, I wasn't expecting any readers.  But I guess I'm glad that people find my rambling interesting.)