Light and Momentary

Remedial Student Kicks It Old School

I posted a year ago about mailing in our state tax forms, like a Family Ties character or a particularly dutiful dinosaur, but what I didn't realize at the time was that because I filed paper forms in 2022 I would temporarily lose access to the state's e-filing system. I thought I could just reset my login and sproing back to the twenty-first century, but ALAS I have condemned myself to wander the primeval wilds like a pteranodon in search of prey or perhaps a postage stamp. 

This is a problem I could have solved if I had given myself a little more lead time, but I...did not give myself a little more lead time. This led to a rather BRISK and EFFICIENT series of exchanges between Mr. and Mrs. Pteranodon, as the clock ticked down to the last opportunity for an April 18 postmark. "Fill out the dependent schedule," squawked Mrs. Pteranodon to her spouse as she worked on the primary form. "And the property tax schedule!" 

I was racing out the door with my sealed envelope when I realized I had forgotten the state's copies of our W-2 forms. So I stopped, ripped open the envelope, taped it back up with the necessary forms inside, and zoomed off to the PO. I caught the postal worker as he was walking away from the emptied mailbox. "No problem," he said, as he dropped my envelope into the bin of outgoing mail, apparently unruffled by his face-to-face encounter with a creature straight out of the Cretaceous Period.

Dear Future Jamie, do better next year. Two years in a row is more than enough.

TAMDRAL Time

This will be the tenth year in which I have hosted a Dickens read-along in this space after the end of the spring semester. Here's what we've read so far:

2022 Nicholas Nickleby
2021 Little Dorrit
2020 Oliver Twist
2019 Tale of Two Cities
2018 Pickwick Papers
2017 Martin Chuzzlewit
2016 David Copperfield
2015 Our Mutual Friend
2014 Bleak House

For the Tenth Annual May Dickens Read-ALong this year I am thinking about reading either Great Expectations or The Old Curiosity Shop, starting on May 15 after grades are submitted. Want to join me? Any preference?

Book Notes

Have we had a book post recently? I don't think so. I've finished eight books over the past month and some of them were marvelous. Maybe I will write about them in appreciation order rather than chronological order.

1. Romantic Comedy. I love Curtis Sittenfeld; she is on the short list of authors whose books I will always pre-order. This one is hilarious and tender and also thought-provoking. I persuaded the roommates that they should read it too so we can have Zoom book club again like we did when Rodham came out. I am still not quite sure that I buy the premise but I WISH I bought the premise. How likely is it for a famously handsome male celebrity to date someone less attractive and more intelligent? Color me skeptical, but I loved the book anyway.
2. The Latecomer. My friend Becky recommended this one to me and I gobbled it right up. It's about a family of triplets who are followed much later by a singleton sibling, and I enjoyed it immensely. This is the second Jean Hanff Korelitz book I've read; I am a fan of her characters and her plotting and her writing style. Here too I am not entirely sure that I buy the premise but I was willing to suspend disbelief.
3. The Great Divorce. And now for something completely different! Stella was telling me recently how strange she'd found the beginning of this book, and I was agreeing with her. I couldn't remember if I'd ever finished it, but I decided I'd pick it up again. I finished it tonight and I might start it over tomorrow morning.
4.  The Sweet Spot. I think this was an Ask A Manager recommendation, maybe? Funny, engaging, full of endearing characters. Yet again I am a leetle dubious about the premise, but whatever. I enjoyed it enough to give it to my mother for her birthday, and she gave it a happy thumbs-up.
5. I Have Some Questions For You. I pre-ordered this one because I loved The Great Believers so much when I read it last summer. And I liked this one-- I like her writing and she did a good job with the plotting and the pacing. But it was also hard to read because it's about violence against women and about who gets away with what in this country. I would not call it a hopeful book.
6. Dr. Wortle's School. I picked this one as my next Trollope novel pretty much randomly after I finished Miss Mackenzie. They both feel a little lightweight after The Way We Live Now, but I guess most books are going to seem less hefty than TWWLN. Both books have a lot to say about marriage. Will Miss Mackenzie choose a husband? (It's a more interesting question than it sounds.) What does a choice to violate marriage law say about a person's moral state? What should we make of a person who does a bad thing for a good reason? 
7. Run Like A Pro. I've recommended a bunch of Matt Fitzgerald books here over the years; I'm lukewarm about this one. He pushes high-volume running, which I am not really cut out for. He also says bench presses will slow you down, because they add useless mass to your upper body. You'll tear that barbell from my cold dead hands, Matt. Bench presses are awesome.
8. Honor. Included for completeness; not a fan. More violence against women; more failures of the legal system.

Today I started The Three Clerks, because I got an email from the UK Trollope Society. They'll be meeting in Cambridge this month to discuss it. It's an in-person meeting; I will not be putting my passport-less self on a plane to talk about obscure Trollope novels. But I love the idea of reading Trollope with other people, so I downloaded the free Kindle version. (Amazon said, "Did you mean the Kevin Smith movie 'Clerks III,' Jamie?" No, Amazon, I did not. Those two things could hardly be more different.) I was trying to tell Elwood about how witty it is. "He's joking about the Board of Commissioners for Regulating Weights and Measures! AND decimalization of English currency!" I told him, with all the enthusiasm at the command of someone whose middle name might be Enthusiastic if it weren't Patricia.

He does not find my fondness for Trollope persuasive, alas. But here's my plan, friends: I am going to crank through The Three Clerks, which promises to be a rip-roaring* tale of love and bureaucracy. And then! It will be TAMDRAL time! I have not given much thought at all to this year's Dickens Read-Along. Maybe we can chat about that tomorrow. If you can stand the suspense, that is.

(*Okay, okay, it's possible that "rip-roaring" is a mild exaggeration. How about "gently and consistently funny, with charming characters and a delicious authorial voice"?)

Just like old times

Back before the pandemic, a married couple directed music at our church and did a fantastic job of it. I've been singing in choirs since I was a wee small girl, and they are my favorite directors ever. There are a lot of tensions for a church music director to straddle: the music has to be more worship than performance, but if you don't pay sufficient attention to the details you can distract from the worship. You want to welcome new musicians while also keeping a reasonable standard for musical skill. You need to let people know when they have to fix something while also remembering that human error is an inevitable part of live music. You have to keep the pastor and the congregation and the choir happy even when they want different things. It's a lot, and this couple did a terrific job.

In 2021 they announced that they were resigning from their paid positions. They agreed to stay on in a volunteer role, but the Masses were divided among a team of volunteer directors and they were only in charge of one liturgy each weekend. It conflicts with my standing Sunday Zoom call with my college roommates, so I hadn't sung with them in-- gosh, probably two years.

She texted me to ask if I was available for the Triduum services, and I said I'd love to come. We rehearsed last night. And you guys, it was the best.

I stopped playing flute for Mass in 2020 and I never went back to it. Do you remember those articles about viral particle spread via wind instruments? I'm remembering a particular story that put the flute right behind the vuvuzela in its capacity to serve as a COVID dispersion machine. When we were permitted to have musicians at Mass again, they couldn't be wind instruments; there was too much concern about virus transmission back in the pre-vaccination era. I am still happy that I learned to play the bass during that time, so I'm not complaining. But I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed playing the flute for Mass.

Last night we were paging through the music together and I was jotting down notes in my binder about which parts to play where. At one point the director said, "Jamie, can you play the tenor part for the refrain? And can you pad on the verses?" In a calm voice I said, "Sure," and penciled "R-tenor, V-pad" on the page. But inwardly I said this instead:

Snoopy Happy Dance GIFfrom Snoopy GIFs

Padding on the verses means I'll add in something pretty and unobtrusive -- maybe a little harmony under the vocalist's line, maybe a little echo of the melody, maybe just the roots of the chords if I'm putting more emphasis on unobtrusive than pretty. Padding is where the structure of planning and rehearsal gives way to the spontaneity of improvisation. 

For two years before the pandemic I played the flute for Mass more often than not. So in some ways this feels entirely normal; I have plenty of pages of music marked "R-tenor, V-pad." But at the same time it feels like a homecoming. At the beginning of the pandemic when all the churches shut down I felt like I was walking around with a limb missing. I wrote about the sadness and the weirdness in that first pandemic summer. Even after we had access to the sacraments again, we didn't really have access to the church community. Though I've been involved in simple ensembles pretty consistently, I've really missed that larger community of musicians.

So tonight I am feeling lucky and grateful about this thing I get to be part of tomorrow and the day after and the day after that: a trusted director, a big and joyful ensemble, and a shared commitment to doing something beautiful and evanescent, in the service of something beautiful and eternal.

Self-compassion ripples outward

This morning I volunteered with a friend. It went smoothly, for the most part, and afterward we hugged each other and exchanged a smile about the bits that didn't go exactly as planned.

It sounds unremarkable, right? The thing I am thinking about this evening is that none of it would have seemed likely a year ago.

A year ago I wouldn't have called this person a friend, because I found her so prickly. I would not have answered the call for volunteers, because I did not spend time with her by choice. But last summer and fall we were on a retreat team together, and things changed.

I was not expecting things to change. We'd been on retreats together before, and the usual retreat magic had not really improved the situation. I am still not sure what enabled me to relax this time around, to go in with low expectations. I resolved to be helpful where I could and not sweat the prickliness.

Whatever the reason, something shifted in an big way. I learned a thing I had not known before-- namely, that she struggles with self-criticism. When I looked back on all the past interactions that had hurt my feelings, I saw them with a new understanding. This is a true fact: it's easier to speak kindly to other people when you can speak kindly to yourself.

I think it used to be that when we spent time together I slipped into chilly-distant mode. I was always waiting for her to say something resent-able, which did not have a great effect on my disposition. At one point during the retreat she said to me, in a tone of surprise, "Jamie, you're fun! I didn't know how fun you were!" "Huh," I thought to myself, "I guess it takes two to make a relationship tense."

One morning during the retreat she was leading a song and she got stuck in the intro. It happens sometimes when you're playing from lead sheets: you have the chords in front of you, you've rehearsed the music, but you can't find the starting note. I've been there; it stinks. I bowed my head and prayed for her-- not so much that she would find the note (although there was some of that) but that she would know the love of God right there in her moment of getting it wrong. That she would see her own goodness and perceive the Lord's tender affection for her in all circumstances. Afterward she said to me, "I looked over at you, and I could tell you were praying for me not to be too hard on myself."

I have blogged a little, here and there, about my experience of working through Kristin Neff's Self-Compassion. I didn't say a lot about it, because it was hard and slow and it left me feeling too vulnerable to tell the internet all about it. I think the experience of learning to be kinder to myself has made it easier not only to feel more at peace in my own skin, but to be more at ease in all kinds of relationships.

I can't know exactly why things changed between us, but we did something good together this morning and it brought us both joy. And I am thinking back on it this evening, glad and grateful.