Light and Momentary

Saturday Shakespeare, Vol. 5

Dernit, this post was supposed to have a first line and it was this: There are a bunch of reasons you should read Comedy of Errors with me this month.

Reason #5. Because it is SO wintry and dreary that you need a little infusion of the Mediterranean coast into your life.

Reason #4. Because it is Shakespeare's shortest play, and thus only a modest commitment.

Reason #3. Because it will lead you straight to Plautus, Shakespeare's source, who is full of silliness and fun. (And testicle jokes. I can't even guess at the number of times Plautus characters say "I'm intestate!" -- meaning "I might die without a will" but also "And wouldn't it be hilarious if I were missing some important parts?")

Reason #2. Because reading is more fun when you can chat about it during and after. (I just finished The Paying Guests this morning and it left me wishing for a pal who could talk it over with me but also very sure I didn't want to recommend it to any book clubs. Let's talk about Comedy of Errors instead.)

Reason Too Lame for a Number. Because I have strep throat and you should be nice to me.

Reason #1. Because it is frothy and fun and you'll be glad you did.

Spruce-It-Up Sunday, Vol. 4

All right, y'all, this week was a total fail. I was slammed all week at work (I have been at search committee dinners for three of the past seven evenings), sick in bed on Saturday, busy for much of Sunday. (And anyway, Sunday's more about resting (and making plans) than about smiting Blu-Tack stains. Even when a person is feeling behind, it's better to rest on Sunday than to rush on Sunday.) So this week I'll just try again on last week's goals.

I do love hearing about your plans and your successes, so comment away if you have something to share. Onward!

Saturday Shakespeare, Vol. 4: Thoughts on Beauty

This morning I was felled by an attack of vertigo and spent most of the day in bed. It was weird: I was up tending to a sick kid at 3:30 and I was perfectly fine. The alarm went off at 6:20 and I tried to get up for a 7:00 meeting. It was immediately evident that I wasn't going anywhere. I am mostly better and am freshly grateful for the concatenation of small miracles that makes possible my usual good health. Once I was a little better I finished Lear. I also had lots of time to think, and one of the things on my mind was Melanie's comment about beauty. She asked if I would describe Shakespeare as beautiful. What makes a work of literature beautiful? I have a formula for your consideration.

Phi is for phrasing. From the time I was small I have always loved a wordsmith, always felt a little shiver of pleasure at a thoughtfully constructed sentence. (It doesn't have to be clever phrasing, just memorable -- like Lear's "Never never never never never" today. Love that train of trochees.) But phrasing isn't enough. I often enjoy David Foster Wallace's writing, but I'd never call it beautiful. The more important part of beautiful literature, I think, is that it brings a moment of recognition, a glimpse of an enduring truth that is both familiar and unfamiliar.

The υ is for the unfamiliarity factor, the blending of known and unknown. There's a range of ratios that works, but it's important for me that both be present. Too much unknown and it feels too alien to be beautiful; too familiar and it seems trite. The τ is for truth. To be beautiful, a work needs to tell you about something that matters. This weekend I read Sign of the Seahorse to Stella. It scans beautifully; there are some clever turns of phrase. But the wanderings of saltwater trout don't offer much in the eternal truth department.

And I'm going to part company with Keats here: I disagree that truth is beauty. The world, I think, is awash in ugly truth. I've got that gamma in there as an exponent because what makes truth beautiful is seeing it through the lens of goodness. Maybe it's human goodness; maybe it's divine goodness. Naked truth can be monstrous, though. I haven't seen Hotel Rwanda, but I doubt I'd call it beautiful.

So that's my parenthetical term. The thing about beauty, though, is that you have to be in the right place at the right time to see it. The μ is for mysterious readiness. You can read Keats in a cynical mood and think "Shut UP, pal." You can see beauty in Calvin and Hobbes if you're feeling receptive. Sometimes it's about state of mind; sometimes it's about life circumstances. I was especially responsive to the bits of Lear that talk about frailty and death today, given the malfunction of my vestibular system.

This is my favorite Shakespeare quote, from Merchant of Venice: Such harmony is in immortal souls, / But whilst this muddy vesture of decay / Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. It ticks all of those boxes: there's so much food for thought in the phrase "muddy vesture of decay." It puts me in mind of "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" It reminds me that there are better things beyond us that we cannot see. I came across it in late December one year, as I was reflecting on the year that was passing away and the year that lay ahead. There is a longing in that last line -- we cannot hear it -- that speaks to my heart year after year.

This is a post in which I could tinker and edit and feel dissatisfied for a long time. But I am going to take my slightly wobbly self to bed, in hopes that a little extra rest will be good for the parts of my muddy vesture of decay that manage my sense of balance. Please tell me what you think -- I'm curious about your thoughts, and your favorite Shakespeare quotes, and the literature that you find beautiful yourself.

Spruce-It-Up Sunday, Vol. 3

Mixed success this week. Our long-handled duster seems to have disappeared, so some of the cobwebs are still mocking me. And I was going to order a replacement, but Amazon is giving me decision fatigue.

I was also going to ease matchsticks into the stripped screwholes for the speaker grille so the screws would have something to grab, a trick I learned from The Tightwad Gazette back when my oldest was a toddler. Alas, my attempt to clean up my husband's clutter (the speaker grille) was thwarted by my husband's attempt to clean up my clutter (the matchsticks). It's like the cynical married version of The Gift of the Magi: Jim and Della, Twenty Years Later. (He says, "I love you, honey, but your hair gets EVERYWHERE. Want to sell it again?" She says, "I love you too, honey, and your watch is SO DAMN LOUD I can't get to sleep until it winds down. Want to pawn it again?")

Progress, though: I did smite some of the Blu-Tack stains and my husband and I are trying out a bold plan for dealing with the exasperating office chairs situation. And yesterday, when I wasn't prowling around in a vain search for the missing wooden matches, I tamed the stinging medusa. Every time I reached into our server, it caused me a little pang of despair. I have to reach into the server frequently, because that's where the placemats and napkins live. But they were in such a horrible jumble that things came spilling out all over the floor if you even thought about opening the door. This is not a House Beautiful solution, but it works. Placemats are in two separate and reasonably neat stacks, sorted by shape. Napkins are piled in a serving dish, with a different dish brought up from its basement exile for serving bread. (It seemed silly to store the napkins in the bread bowl if they were going to be tipped out every time I served hot bread.) We'll see how well it works.

For this week:

1. Overcome decision fatigue and buy a long-handled duster already.
2. Track down the product recommended by the Blu-Tack company, because life is too short to expend this much elbow grease.
3. Fix black shoes.
4. Fix a pair of handknit socks.
5. For real, reattach the speaker grille.

How about you?

Saturday Shakespeare, Vol. 3

Lear, Act IV: Regan and Goneril are so evil, and Cordelia is so loving and forbearing, that I'm feeling a little skeptical this time through. (It reminds me of last summer, when I was rereading Bleak House and feeling doubtful about Esther.) Is an utter absence of bitterness a marker that you're either reading fiction or hagiography? 

And there's Albany. In these circumstances is it plausible for him to say, "Woman, you're too evil for me"? It also rings false to me when Albany says, "Gloucester, I live / To thank thee for the love thou show'dst the king, / And to revenge thine eyes."

What say you? Do you buy it? Are you reading any Shakespeare this week?

How Officer K Got It Right

So far three separate people have sent me links to articles about that Maryland family whose Free Range Kids philosophy didn't go over so well with their local authorities. It is a terrible story. It makes me want to punch someone. 

It also makes me grateful for Officer K.

When a neighbor called the police because my 6yo child was walking home alone, Officer K responded to the call. He could have swooped in like the Maryland police, snatching up my son, demanding that I show ID, summoning 5 (5!!) additional squad cars to subdue the clearly dangerous pregnant lady with the temerity to tell her son to hop out of the van and walk. He could have threatened to shoot in front of my child (because that's totally less traumatic for a child than walking to the playground). Officer K did none of those things. Here's what he did instead:

First: Officer K listened neutrally to everybody's side of the story. He didn't assume my neighbor's frothy-mouthed version of events was correct. The swoop-snatch remedy wouldn't have been appropriate in this case, and he took the time to find out what would be. He listened to my explanation; he also let me know, gently, that my neighborhood is not free of criminal activity. He responded courteously when I pushed back about the kinds of crime we see here. 

Second: Officer K had his priorities straight. First priority: my son's safety. He was gentle and respectful with my kid, more focused on how Joe was doing than on flexing his officerly muscles. Second priority: keeping the peace. He could have written a report emphasizing the neighbor's frothy-mouthiness. He could have written a report emphasizing the fact that my son did run across a street without looking. Instead he wrote a report that called it a neighborly disagreement requiring no further follow-up. (I might quibble about his definition of neighborly, however.) Not a priority: power-trippy games. I said, "I need to get my son to the dentist." He could have opted for the Maryland cop's approach and said, "You can go when I say you can go." Instead he said, "No problem."

Third: Officer K followed up. One of the most upsetting elements of the situation for me was that the freaked-out neighbor lady had physically restrained Joe. "I want to go home," he told her clearly. "I know how to go home." Holding his arm firmly, she yelled, "You can't go home until we get you some help." I considered a number of possible responses, none of which felt very Christian to me. When Joe and I went to the police station to talk to Officer K about it, his response was immensely helpful to me. I asked him if it would be better to send a registered letter or hire a lawyer, and he said, "Well, you could do that, if you wanted to go to the expense." But then he offered to stop by and talk to her himself (the story is in the last paragraph of that post), to let her know that she was out of line. And he offered me a bit of calm perspective that has stayed with me. "Janelle's young," he said. "She doesn't have kids." He didn't lecture me about how she was looking out for Joe's best interest; he just offered a very gentle encouragement for me to consider her point of view. I haven't forgotten it.

In our family we have talked a lot since 2008 about the process of raising independent kids in a helicopter-parent world. We talked about it again tonight. "Don't let ANYBODY give you any flak EVER about walking home from school," I said earnestly to my sweet 9yo, the lemonade renegade. "It is a REALLY GOOD thing that you can get yourself around our town. You are not doing anything wrong when you walk by yourself."

It is a pep talk I have also given myself. These days when I think about that 2008 experience I feel galvanized; I feel confident about reasoning my way to good decisions for my kids. I have written before about the frenzied neighbor, and I have thought often about my frustrations with the CPS caseworker who couldn't be bothered to return phone calls or meet his own deadlines. But I haven't said enough about Officer K, who brought some sanity to a crazy situation.

So thanks, Officer K. I appreciate it more than you know.

Spruce-It-Up Sunday, Vol. 2

Farewell, Christmas decorations! Farewell, grime-writing on the front siding! Farewell, most of the cobwebs! Farewell, uncertainty about how to tackle the speaker grille!

This week (still...consciously...holding back...from the Fix All The Things mentality):

1. find a long-handled duster and dispatch the cobwebs I couldn't reach this week
2. tackle some of the Blu-Tack stains
3. fix the speaker grille
4. come up with a Plan for organizing the server in the dining room in which the placemats and napkins are currently piled in an untidy heap

Want to play along? A short list of things that have been bugging me is a powerful motivator...

Saturday Shakespeare, Vol. 2

Fifteen years ago I sat next to a boy who had just turned 3 and read Lear's words aloud: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. I didn't expect him to be interested; I just wanted to hear the rhythm, the urgency. "Read it again, Mama," he said. "And again." So I did.

Today I read those words aloud again: You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, / Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, / Singe my white head!

Did people complain more about the weather in Shakespeare's day, since they had to be out in it more often in an Gore-Tex-less age, or did that spur them to adapt? I suspect the former. Lear's complaint is not with the weather. 

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; / I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children, / You owe me no subscription: then, let fall / Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, / A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.

In Act III Lear moves from wrath to derangement, wrecked by injustice and lack of love. I love the phrase "thought-executing fires." Make it so I don't have to think about this any more, Lear says. I can't keep thinking about this; I can't stop thinking about it.

In this act his elder daughters are descending too, not into madness but into savagery. Regan looks at the maimed and bleeding Gloucester and spits: "Let him smell his way to Dover." Wickedness begets wickedness, for Regan and for Goneril as for Lady Macbeth. And the costs of their wickedness are painful to see -- Edgar is so moved by Lear's agony that he struggles to maintain his disguise.

I was trying to imagine how one might stage Act III, with its rain and lightning and wind, its mangled snippets of nursery rhymes and its litany of fearsome devils. It would be a wild ride, one in which it's clear that the wheels are coming off. How did things fall apart so quickly? I scribbled a little note to myself as I was reading: Maybe it's only love and kindness holding us together. Betrayal from someone you love is enough to unman the manliest.

Any Shakespeare in your reading pile this week? I'd love to hear about it! 

Transparent...ish

I put the blog in the Christmas letter again. When I started this blog I specifically envisioned it as the sort of blog I could put in the Christmas letter: funny kid stories, breezy thoughts about life in grad school, notes on interesting books and recipes, not so much with the soul-baring. But really I envision this blog as a sort of girlfriend meet-up (with occasional visits from men who don't mind the girlfriend vibe): yes to funny kid stories, also yes to some intermittent soul-baring. Every time I send out a Christmas letter I hem and haw about whether to mention the blog.

Usually I do, and then I have a little January case of blogger's block. Last Sunday I spent a l-o-n-g time on a post about family differences. I took great care with it, trying to be vague enough to avoid hurt feelings or unnecessary conflict, but also specific enough to be worthwhile. On Monday morning I decided the potential for misunderstandings and hurt feelings was too high, and back it went into the drafts folder.

I suppose I'll get it figured out in a few weeks. Maybe I'll re-post those thoughts from Sunday when I get there.

Safe

There was no school today; there was no school yesterday. It's cold here. My Facebook feed is divided on the question of whether it's really that cold, with some voices saying "Think of the children" and others cantankerizing* "When I was a kid...."

*totally a word

We had frequent snow days when I was a schoolkid in Raleigh County, WV. The mountain roads are steep, narrow, and curved, and they become unsafe quickly in winter weather. I remember missing plenty of school while we waited for the county to plow itself out. But I do not remember missing school because it was cold -- not ever, not once.

It's always about costs and benefits, right? I do not deny that there are real costs to being out in this weather and that they hit some families harder than others. I expect to give my grade-school kids a ride in the morning (my husband, born in Wisconsin, bred in Michigan and Minnesota, pauses here to roll his eyes at his softy Southern-reared wife); I understand that's not an option for some families in the district. I can replace a missing pair of mittens or buy a beefier coat -- another choice that's not open to everyone. But there are also costs associated with missing work, with hiring babysitters, with leaving kids unattended, with closing school-associated free lunch programs in communities with high rates of food insecurity. And -- oh yeah -- with missing instructional days.

It seems to me that the conviction that kids shouldn't be out in the cold is related to the idea that kids shouldn't play outside alone, or shouldn't take the bus by themselves, or shouldn't face the risks built into metal playground equipment. As a culture we prize safety, and if it might hurt someone we might need to prohibit it. This is why there are only two parks in Dubuque, Iowa where sledding is allowed. This is why a uniformed police officer once stopped me to tell me it was a bad idea to walk with my baby on a 20-degree morning. This is why, I think, there was no school today.

You might recall that I get a little het up about the hidden costs of safety. That neighbor, for instance, who was so concerned about keeping my kids safe from their negligent mother actually caused them a whole lot of avoidable stress. Of course I am not going to turn my children outside with shorts and tank tops tomorrow and tell them they can handle it. But in my marrow I am certain that there is enormous value in having authority figures in your life say again and again, "Off you go; you can handle it."

It's not just childhood that's affected by an over-emphasis on safety. Recently I have been reading Atul Gawande's book Being Mortal. I've been an Atul Gawande fan for years, and this is the best thing he's ever written. Twice today it has made me cry, both times with a keen sense of gratitude for the evanescent gifts of life and love. The first part of the book talks about how we deal with frailty in aging adults. And how, my friends, do we deal with frailty in aging adults? We focus on their safety. While the frail themselves would often prefer a focus on preserving autonomy, our system isn't set up for that. For adults even more than for children, the costs of playing it safe are substantial.

I was walking to lunch today (and let me tell you, it was a BRISK and INVIGORATING walk), thinking that we don't seem to have a problem with discomfort, exactly -- how could CrossFit be proliferating if discomfort is the problem? I think the issue is more that we want to be able to control the suffering. We assume the suffering attendant on staying home for another day with siblings and catching up on school in June is preferable to the suffering of waiting for the bus, maybe.

But I sat there in the warmth of the restaurant feeling determined to push back against a safety-at-all-costs culture: to embrace the cold. To be glad for the unexpected. To continue to encourage my kids' autonomy. To live gratefully and, as far as I can manage it, fearlessly. 

I have a bunch of other thoughts brewing but it looks like I will need to herd kids to school in the morning. I'm interested in your thoughts. Hope you are staying warm.

Spruce-It-Up Sunday, Vol. 1

Back in the fall I was involved in a little lunchtime book group at work. We were talking about productivity. One week the group leader gave us a sheet of paper on which to write down things that had been niggling at us. I promptly listed about 50 things, writing until I ran out of paper. I spent the next several weeks observing the outsize impact of these things on my mood: dealing with small annoyances has a big effect. 

Recently on Ravelry I saw a link to this article, which argues that we're actually better at dealing with big irritants than small ones, because big irritants trigger coping mechanisms. "Ahaaaa," I said. If you've been around for a while, you might remember Weed Where You're Planted Wednesdays, in which I picked little trouble spots to smack around once a week. It's time to resurrect that strategy, I think. Want to join me?

...pause in which I consciously restrain myself from planning to Fix All The Things this week...

This week:

1. Put away all of the Christmas stuff on Tuesday and vacuum up the resulting trail of needles
2. Clean the grime-words from the front siding (I wrote "CLEAN ME" in the grime on the front of the house to illustrate the failure of the painters who were supposed to have power-washed it and to explain my refusal to pay for services not rendered, and then it got too cold for the painters to come back before spring)
3. Smite cobwebs
4. Discuss strategy for replacing speaker grille with Elwood P.
5. If and only if the joy of completing these tasks is too much to contain, have a little baseboard-dusting session.

I feel better just writing it down.

 

Saturday Shakespeare, Vol. I

You guys, I have an idea. I am kicking off a ten-year re-read of the Complete Works, and I think you should join me. No pressure to read the whole thing if TItus Andronicus gives you the wobblies, but wouldn't your life be better with a little more Shakespeare in it?

My plan is to read King Lear in January, Comedy of Errors in February, Titus Andronicus in March, and 1 Henry IV in April. I'll put up a short post each Saturday about what I've been reading, filling in the gaps between plays with some of the poetry. Perhaps if I spread the sonnets out over several weeks they won't have that Devil Went Down To Georgia vibe (repetitive, annoying, self-aggrandizing).

Your task: read whatever Shakespeare catches your eye. Blog about it and share a link to your post, or comment here if you prefer. I think I'll probably do it each week until the end of April and then pick up again in 2016. If it turns out that this corner of the blogosphere is clamoring for a regular Shakespeare blog carnival (and why wouldn't it be?), we can re-evaluate. Who's in??