Goodbye, iPhone

Today we had a funeral for my boyfriend's iPhone.

Last Sunday we visited the pool, and he waded in with the unfortunate device in his swim trunks' pocket. It took a few minutes for him to discover the disaster. Or at least I thought it was a disaster; he was unfazed. When we got back to my apartment we stuck in in a plastic baggie filled with rice to draw out the moisture. 

After almost a week, he managed to turn it on long enough to download two hundred some-odd pictures. And today we drove to Best Buy to return the phone and order his replacement. But before we left the car we took a moment to say goodbye to the old iPhone.

We knew we were being silly. But there was a real sense of loss, I think because so much of our communication is mediated through this device. It is the physical representation of all those texts and phone calls that make up a long-distance relationship.

A slightly different example of the personalization of impersonal things: last week I faced a large service bill for my truck (a 2001 Dodge Dakota). Someone mentioned that I should think about  getting a new car. Quite aside from the hassle of car shopping, I realized I don't want to part with this truck. My dad drove it before me, and it has been my friend "through many dangers," if I may borrow Gandalf's line.

Thankfully, my boyfriend was able to replace his phone at no cost, and my service bill was much lower than estimated. But I realized that it's more than money that ties us to phones and cars. They become invested with part of our lives. I suppose it's a hazard of modernity.

Self-Editing

I watched one episode of Downton Abbey tonight to de-stress, then felt guilty for neglecting Bird by Bird and my resolve to blog once a week. Earlier today I was trying to think of something to blog about. Several ideas came to mind, but I ruled them out as either too personal or possibly offensive. Offensive as in I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by saying too much. Too much of real life.

This self-editing hamstrings me. (I just had to look up hamstring to make sure it means what I thought.) I want to write about things that move me, but those things are better left to a private journal. I think.

Also I feel compelled to have a point to a blog post. A mini-essay with a theme and witty conclusion. Shades of English classes in college. I appreciate that discipline, but the purpose of a blog isn't to prove a thesis or wield vocabulary. It's not to show how literary I am. Not (gasp) to earn a grade. 

I guess one purpose of this blog would be to learn to write without those strictures. To get at that middle space between intimate detail and public persona. Or IS a blog simply an extension of a public persona?

Oh, questions...

Rule Books

Yesterday I stepped into my neighborhood Barnes & Noble with a sense of excitement. Purpose! I came not to buy something for a friend, not to redeem a gift card, not to sip a mocha, but to lay down my cold hard credit card for a new book of my own. Something I almost never do. Though I work in publishing, nearly all my reading material comes from the library. As they say, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? I'm too risk-averse to spend money on a book unless it's one I already love.

So it was with the feeling of breaking my own rule that I scanned the bookshelves, keeping my smartphone queued up to a photo of my "Books to Read This Year" list. I justified the rule breaking by telling myself I needed to keep up with my reading plan for the year and didn't have time to wait for the library's hold system. All these self-imposed rules around reading! Quite sad, now that I think about it.

And I am thinking about it. I walked out of Barnes & Noble with Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. I probably first heard of it in a college English class, and since then it has floated around in the "one day I'll read this and be a better person" category.

I think I make reading lists for myself because I know I'm easily inspired. Bird by Bird not only has me blogging for the first time in nine months, but resolving to blog once a week. Not to satisfy a mass readership. If anything, working in publishing has wearied me of words. Not even for the sake of keeping another rule. But because, as Anne writes,

"Good writing is about telling the truth,"

and

"becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff."

The Golden Year

After Christmas last year, I bought a daytimer in a moment of nostalgia for a similar one I had in Oxford. My Oxford one was purple, but this one was gold, which I thought fitting because, in my mind, 2012 was going to be a golden year. I think I expected this because 2011 was a time of transition and stress in various ways. I suppose I was trying to predict how God would work, that a year of pruning is followed by one of growth.

Yet, here in November, I am tempted to characterize 2012 by a list of its tragedies. I'm not trying to trivialize them down to a list of life lessons or try to find redemption where tears are more appropriate. But it is a human impulse, I think, to see a story emerge from disconnected pieces, and to reconcile expectations with reality.

The year started crumbling one April morning when I called my mom to confirm the news I'd found in my inbox: my fifteen-year-old cousin had committed suicide the night before. Even as I fought nausea, I understood, a little, why he did it. I remembered a day when that despair flickered across my own mind.

A few months later, I drove home from work with ashes falling on my truck as the smoke from the Waldo Canyon wildfire clouded my mind with fear. My roommate and I threw some hastily chosen belongings in our vehicles and drove to her family's house on the north end of town, where we watched the flames engulf homes. Not sure where they would stop. Helpless.

As Colorado was still recovering from the fire, the Dark Knight shooting made me wonder when will it end. When will life go back to normal? I remember thinking that the arrival of cold weather would make it safer. After the lethal summer, the rain and snow would blanket us in security again. Yet the fall brought another blow.

There had been rumblings of what was happening, bits of news and conversations. But when my dad called and said the doctors thought he might have cancer, that was no comfort. Lung cancer. Asbestos. Aggressive chemotherapy. All words I now need in this golden year. Good news now comes in pieces I seize like life rings. News that the cancer has not spread. That the chemo is working. While my dad's cancer is not always the first thought I have when I wake up, it's there by the time I hit the shower. The new normal.

A few days after I got the news, I was flipping through a gift catalog and saw a plaque with a quote from Winston Churchill: "If you're going through hell, keep going." And while it sounds irreverent, I think that's what God would say. He doesn't tell me this year's events are not so bad. He doesn't wave them off and tell me they're all for a greater purpose (even though they may well be). They are hell. They are the work of Satan on earth.

So why should I keep going? Why is it so tragic when someone doesn't keep going? It's easier to stop waiting for the golden year, for Tolkien's eucatastrophe, the sudden and unexpected turn for good.

I suppose what I'm trying to understand is that the eucatastrophe has already happened. Every so often I'll catch the faintest hint of an almost mythical joy trying to break through. As if the most beautiful story in the world has been true all along. Tolkien wrote that "the Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy."

Why do we keep going through hell? Because Christ already did. And while there is certainly cause for grief, there is none for fear. None. "We do not lose heart...for this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:16-17).

I think I can still call 2012 a golden year (1 Peter 1:7).

New York: A Photo Tour

I loved visiting New York with two international friends, representing France and South Africa, respectively. It was a good way to connect with the character of a city that is at once iconically American and essentially cosmopolitan. While preparing for the trip, I remembered that New York used to be called New Amsterdam; it was Dutch before it was British. In the American Revolution, New York served as the base for the British Army.

Speaking of the Revolution, here I am thanking my French friend Juliette for her country's gift: the Statue of Liberty (you can barely see in in the background).


Also in Battery Park, not far from where we took the first photo, is "The Immigrants" statue. This reminded me of the haunting Famine Memorial along the river in Dublin--one of the most moving pieces of art I've ever seen. I don't know the circumstances under which my own ancestors came to America from Germany and Romania, but very likely it was with the mix of desperation and hope represented by these figures.


After Battery Park (and the obligatory photo with the bull on Wall Street), us three internationals visited the 9/11 memorial. Here you see one of the two reflecting pools, which will eventually mirror the new World Trade Center towers. Just to put this in perspective, before we could enter the memorial we stood in line for about an hour (this was after reserving tickets for a time slot) and went through an airport-style security check. It was a bit frustrating, but after what happened here, who can blame them?


Unexpected pleasures: one of the best things about the trip! After dinner at a gourmet pizza kitchen, we found ourselves at a folk concert in the middle of the subway.

Another serendipitous moment of a different sort: Tiffany's "Autumn Landscape" in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After visiting the medieval tapestries, I wandered into the American Wing of the huge museum, and stopped in my tracks to stare at this stained glass. I associate stained glass with biblical scenes, but this was more beautiful than anything in a cathedral. Its beauty pointed to the beauty already present in the world; light on trees and water actually IS that stunning. It made me think of how nature is God's "stained glass," and that this artistic celebration of it is deeply fitting.

...more later!

Pottermore

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

—Dumbledore

I’ve never read the Harry Potter books, but last summer I watched all the movies in the space of a few weeks. Last night I rewatched Deathly Hallows Part 2 and spent an hour afterwards reading about various plot holes/details. And I understood how people could and did get drawn into that world of Hogwarts. (I might have been among them but for The Lord of the Rings.)

But what I really wonder is this. All those fans who love the story and write wikis about the spells and charms and don’t want to say goodbye to the characters—the fans who would presumably enter that world if given the chance—why would they not fully embrace the unseen “true magic” of Christ? (I’m now speaking of fans of any fantasy epic.) Why would such fans not take seriously the true supernatural—that there is indeed great power and transcendent forces and self-sacrifice and love?

Of course it is self-sacrificing love that forms the most powerful force in Harry Potter. Yet we will not believe that same kind of love in our own world. If we feel that we would stand with Neville Longbottom and the others to defend Hogwarts—if only we could have magic castles and wands—will we not stand guard over our own souls? Why? Why will we not fight for something we cannot see?

I’m sure there are other Christians who, like me, would admit to being more moved by the sight of Gandalf riding out to face the Nazgul than by even the most haunting Good Friday service. We ache for beauty; we wish we had a heritage and home to defend; we wish for the camaraderie that is only born of deadly peril. At least we think we do.

What would we really think if Harry and his gang broke into our world? If we were faced with a mission that would certainly mean death? Would we not want to slam the book shut? Say that such things belong in stories, not in real life? We prefer the Muggle world. The world that says transcendence belongs only in your head.

In the end, we will find it is real.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the sign that the things not seen are true.”

—Hebrews

New Start

For the second time in less than a year, I am writing from a new home: this time only a few miles away from my previous abode. This has been a summer of stressful circumstances: an unexpected move and atypical work projects top the list. But such goodness has accompanied me through all of it that I can't help but feel, as I'm writing from a new laptop in a new apartment, that this fall marks a new start.

Perhaps it's the seventeen plus years of an academic schedule, but September is more of a new year for me than January. Suddenly the library seems like the place to be. I have an urge to surround myself with books, notes, and maybe a paper to write.

But of course, little of that enthusiasm is left when I get off work (which, oddly enough, involves surrounding myself with books). I did give myself a "research project" for the next few months (or however long it takes to satisfy my curiosity/college nostalgia): looking into first-century Judaism (and whatever Jewish-history bunny trails I follow along the way).

Another new start began when a manuscript I edited last week rekindled a desire to be around horses. I am planning to volunteer at a local therapeutic riding center, possibly take a few riding lessons to see how much I remember, and maybe lease a horse a few months down the road.

We'll see.