When We Are Older This Will All Make Sense and It Will Be Too Late

Sibyl, I have spent a significant amount of time pursuing one career direction, and now I am unsure if that is the right way for me. This is not unusual, but I am unsure how to decide on a new direction. Early 30's still feels too old to just try out some other career paths. I have worked in religious institutions or social services or both or 5 years. Now I would like to try something more creative . . . yet I am unsure where to go or what to do. How do I explore options while still affording to live? What can I do to both explore and survive?

Sincerely, Ummm

Dear Ummm,

I am so glad you brought this up.  True confession time: Sibyl has no idea what the heck she is doing with her life.  Like you, I have invested a considerable amount of time, energy, and debt in following a life in the "helping professions", only to find that it is an unsustainable way for me to live.  So, I am striking out into the world with writing and other creative pursuits, terrified at the outcome but totally sure that it is what I need to do, anyway.

I have learned some things along the way, which I will now share with you, dearest Um.

1. A life of service will suck you dry and spit you out when you have nothing left.  

My father was social worker, and when he would get home every day, I would ask, "How was your day?"  His one word response was invariably, "Crazy."  Whenever I pressed him for more answers, he just said, "It's a thankless job."  And that, my friend, was that.

Despite this harrowing harbinger of the life to come, I idolized my father and followed his footsteps, pursuing a life of helping others.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  In college and graduate school, I heard a lot about the way the work feeds you from within, and how your thanks is in the process of helping others.  This was enough for me, in my twenties.  I worked my ass off at low-paying jobs, and did indeed find the work rewarding.

However, I realized that although I enjoyed this kind of work, I had some life goals I wanted to complete, namely, having a family.  So, I set out to get knocked up and have a child.  This is when I found that having a job that pays you very little to take care of other people's emotional needs does not work well with being a parent, which consists of being paid absolutely nothing to take care of another person’s EVERYTHING.  Like you, I realized I needed to create or I would be left with nothing.  Art poured out of me like my desire to "save the world" once did.  But for whatever money work in social services provided, art provides even less.  What to do?

2. Make a list of all your creative interests, no matter how foolish.

Let yourself really dream here.  Do you want write, paint, be a film critic, cook, front a band, report the weather?  Be ridiculous.  Write, "I just want to be Vincent Gallo."  Okay!  Now we're talking.  Look over your list.  Where do you find the MOST energy?  It is important to tell your inner critic to go take a nap when you do this.  Instead of listening to that nagging voice that says "You'll never make a living that way!", listen to the one that tells you that what the world needs is more people doing what they love, what makes them truly come alive.

There are tons of practical exercises like this in the book The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron.  I suggest you pick up a copy and start the twelve week program she outlines, as soon as possible.  It's a great way to start your explorations while still living your day-to-day life.

3. Get water from a stone.

Have you decided on what creative path you're most interested in exploring?  If you chose filmmaking, you don't need to know what you want to make films about, you just need to start researching film schools, and go from there.  Look up unpaid internships (I know, I know) at your favorite magazine and write for them in the time you used to spend watching sitcoms.  Volunteer at your local artist collective and talk to people who actually do make a living as art-makers.  The way they’ve pieced together their lives could surprise you.  For instance, it may make a lot of sense to combine your helping profession efforts with art-making -- they could inform each other in beautiful ways.

Again, tell your inner critic to take a vacation while you're researching artist residencies in Maine.  Or, better yet, sit that critic down, and say, "You're RIGHT.  I'm never going to save for retirement and buy a house if I follow my creative goals now.  But giving everything I have to others has not made me millionaire either.  So guess what?  I'm going to do what makes me happy.  And when I'm drowning in debt, you can say, 'I told you so', and I can go make a masterpiece on my canvas.  You're right, but I win."

Here's what you need to do, Ummm.  Figure out the very least that you can live on.  One fancy coffee per week instead of five?  Awesome.  Brown bagging it every day instead of eating from food carts with your friends?  Excellent.  Turning on the heat in only the direst of snow storms?  Pull up that blanket!  I know that you've probably been living a life of almost-poverty taking care of others for so long.  But believe me, this is different.

Investing your time and efforts in art-making actually is enriching, in the way that all our professors told us that lives of service would be.  Okay, so you don't have a living room that could be featured in Ladies' Home Journal, and you can't go on vacation and post a picture of your feet with a fancy drink by the ocean on Facebook, but guess what?  You get to be you, and you get to be awesome.

You will always be that interesting person at a party who is not just talking about what milestone your baby has reached, but has a new project or idea you're working on that you want feedback from your friends about.  You'll always have something to do on a Friday night, because you'll be in your studio.  So, you don't have all the material bullshit and security our culture seems to uphold so much, but look how that's working out for those folks?  Rich, secure, and absolutely terrified of losing that wealth and perceived security.  Be bold, risk big, and yes, get mad about the fact that art-making doesn't pay actual dollars.  Do it anyway.

3. Don't go it alone.

So, you've spent all this time taking care of other people, and you're ready to follow your own dreams for once.  Guess what?  All of that time you spent caring for others spiritually and physically was not wasted.  It was all a part of your creation as a soon-to-be artist.  You not only became a person of substance, who actually has something to create art about, but you stored up a ridiculous amount of good karma.

Being there for others means that they are now going to be there for you.  They'll say, "That Ummm, what a good guy, he came to the hospital when my dad was sick, and now he's striking out as an artist and needs a leg up, why don't I buy one of his pieces, or, at the very least, invite him over for Sunday dinner."  You've got to find your people, and chance are, you already have, since you've devoted your life to loving humans.  Lean on them now.  Let them take care of you in the ways you've been taking care of them.  Help comes from the most unexpected places.  Reach out, and see the lovely (and materialistically helpful) ways your community responds.

It will not be magical, it will happen because of all the work you have already put in.  Everything is not going to mysteriously go your way once you set your mind to what you want to do, don’t buy that bull.  However, it will flow back to you proportionally to what effort you put forth.  You want to explore?  Really excavate!  Don’t hold back.  You get out of the creative life what you put into it.  Stop ummming and start risking, give up the fallacy of security, and be who you are, big time.

When we are older, all of this will make sense to us, and we will say, “Oh!  I should have started this or that sooner.”  But it will be too late.  Right now, contrary to what you are being told, is not too late, because it is all we have.  Dive in right this second.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

In solidarity,

Sibyl

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Lauren Kodiak is a Connecticut native living in Portland, Oregon with her boyfriend and her slightly overweight cat. She has a master’s in Educational Policy, Foundations and Administration, but still doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. She loves to spend hours in the kitchen, practice yoga and eat ice cream for dinner. My boyfriend, Drew, is an MFA in creative writing candidate, so every inch of our tiny studio apartment is occupied with books of all kinds. I rarely have to make a trip to the bookstore or library when I’m looking for a new read, as I have a seemingly endless supply at my fingertips. Since reading is such an integral part of our relationship and life together, I thought I’d extend the invitation to him to share a favorite book with you all. Perhaps in light of the tragedies our nation currently grieves, our picks lean toward the darker side, full of raw emotion. But in these stories, as in life, there is always humor and light to be found if you choose to look for it.

Lauren: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live by Joan Didion Comprised of seven books of nonfiction, dating back to 1968, this is certainly a hefty undertaking. But what I love most about it is that I’ve been slipping back and forth between books here and there, in no particular order. My first foray into Didion was just this past year, when I read The Year of Magical Thinking. I found myself captivated by her precise observations and minimalistic prose. I kept rereading sentences, trying to decipher what it was exactly about each one that elicited so much emotion. After reading from We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live—specifically The White Album—I see now that it’s not the how, but the what. Sure, her sentences are sparse, but what they contain are stories of a nervous breakdown, of her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and of the paranoia and anxiety she experienced while living in California during the unsettling time period of the 1960s-70s. She shares everything, spares us none of the unsavory truths. As I read more of Didion, I’m beginning to understand that writing about deeply personal issues is not synonymous with depressing others. Actually, these dark anecdotes inspire and reassure, universalizing anxieties and fears we all have felt at some point in our lives.

Drew: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt As a graduate student of creative writing, I’ve read some great literature. And while I enjoy much of what I read, I sometimes agree with the opinion that criticizes contemporary literature as plot-less and humorless. Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers reminded me why I fell in love with literature in the first place. A hilarious adventure set in the old West of Oregon and California, the novel drives forward in short, sometimes mere page-long chapters, which force things to happen—force horses to fail, whisky to be drunk, and gold-seekers to be murdered. The voice, younger brother Eli’s first person account of a manhunt undertaken with his brother, is pared-down, even keeled, sharply chiseled and oftentimes downright hysterical. Yet at its core, The Sisters Brothers meditates family and the moral compass of a mercenary. These topics, of course, are potent and worthy of examination in imaginative literature. Lucky for us, deWitt doesn’t crutch on his sentiments to carry the book; instead he juxtaposes them against a hilarious cast of characters, situations and killings gone wrong, all of which make this the best novel I read this year.

Both: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout We have a soft spot for coastal Maine, the setting of Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of thirteen linked stories, Olive Kitteridge, and the title character—a crotchety, opinionated retired teacher—serves as the collection’s nucleus. Regardless of whether we are inside Olive’s head or see her through the lens of others, her big, boisterous character is ever-present. Despite Olive’s abrasive and callous demeanor, we can’t help but find her loveable as she lumbers through life. With such emphasis on Olive, it would be easy for the rest of the book to fall to the wayside, but the scenery of Crosby, Maine and the lives of those that inhabit it are richly illustrated. As you become privy to the gossip and secrets of the townspeople—an elderly couple is held at gunpoint, the mother of a killer becomes a hermit, a widowed old woman finds love in the least expected man—it’s difficult not to feel intertwined and invested in this little community. The range of emotions and experiences expressed throughout Olive Kitteridge are representative of those of the human condition. We both got lost in the day-to-day trials and misgivings of these characters, and cheered for them when they found glimmers of hope and happiness. A must-read for all!

Would you like that book in print or pixels?

Armed with a shiny new gift card, I set about fulfilling my reading wish list this week. There was only one problem. For each title, I hovered over the “add to cart” button, wavering unsteadily between two options: print or ebook. In the past, the print vs. digital decision has always been an obvious one. I wanted to feel the weight of a book in my hands, inhale that new (or used) book smell, and wander my way through the geography of its pages. My Kindle library, on the other hand, is made up largely of books I couldn’t find at the university library two hours before a class. The sensory aspect of print always won out; ebooks were second-string.

Lately, though, the gravitational pull of digital has dragged me right into the center of the debate. It used to seem as if digital libraries were isolated ones. When all of our recent reads drift into the abyss of the cloud, we lose that particular intimacy of hovering over a friend’s bookshelves, running a finger over the titles, and uncovering the stories behind the stories.

That’s the thing about personal libraries. They bear witness to the places we’ve been and the people we’ve loved. The collective provenance of our books is like a time capsule. Where were you when you read this one, and who were you with, and where did you get it, and who had it before you? The used books and those with personal inscriptions are of particular interest. They remind us of our connections to friends and strangers.

And anyways, have you ever had an author sign your ebook?

But despite the compelling arguments for print (and I can think of many more), I am beginning to glimpse the possibilities for reading in community with ebooks. You can read together long-distance and share impressions in real time with 24-Hour Bookclub. You can share favorite passages with Readmill, and you can even browse your friends’ digital libraries with Goodreads. I’m just touching the surface of these and so many other possibilities, but I’m excited about reading as a communal sport. I hope it lands comfortably somewhere on the spectrum between very quiet alone-time reading and social media overwhelm.

In the end, I bought one ebook and one print. I’m devouring the former while I wait a whole forty-eight hours for the latter to arrive, in all of its weighty, book-scented glory. As for the rest of my list, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Akiko Yosano: Poet. Pacifist. Tanka Powerhouse.

The other day I happened upon a Wikipedia article entitled “The Top 100 Historical Persons in Japan” and I got historian-nerd excited. This was apparently a television program that appeared on Nippon TV in 2006, which had Japanese viewers vote on who they thought the most important historical figures in, well, history were. For me it’s exciting to get this little peek inside the historical mindframe of a non-Western nation—one that hasn’t been brainwashed into believing U.S. presidents, Italian explorers, and German composers are the most important people of all time-- but who has probably been brainwashed in parallel historical fashion, of course. Yet lo and behold, some of our “top historical figures” still ranked (Christopher Columbus came in at #75; Mozart’s #36; the highest-ranking Westerner of all, at #3, is, surprisingly, Thomas Edison).

The list is mostly dominated by Japanese figures, of course; almost all people who would not have placed on any Western country’s “Top 100 Historical Persons” list. And incidentally, one of these (#80) is today’s Historical Woman.

Akiko Yosano (born Shoko Ho) was a Japanese poet from outside of Osaka who revitalized, no, crushed the 1200-year-old tanka tradition in turn-of-the-century Japan. Born in 1878, young Akiko grew up in an oppressive household, daughter to a baker who privileged his sons over his daughters and actually kind of hated Akiko for the first years of her life for not being a boy. (Ja-HERK.) He got over it enough to realize she was incredibly bright, and was decent enough to get her a good education, as good as was possible for women at that time—but it was Akiko’s own ambition and talent that propelled her out of that house and into Japanese history.

Wandering her father’s library as a teenager, Akiko had become enamored with literature. She began writing poems and started contributing to Myojo, the literary magazine of one Tekkan Yosano, fellow poet. Akiko moved out of the family house and to Tokyo, and in 1901, she and Tekkan were married.

Like Sylvia and Ted, Diego and Frida, Sid and Nancy, Akiko and Tekkan had what can delicately be described as an interesting relationship. Tekkan had already been married twice before, and even after he married Akiko he continued to borrow money from his ex-wife. He was also regularly unfaithful, according to most sources, including with one of Akiko’s best friends, Tomiko, who died of tuberculosis at 29 and who Tekkan proceeded to write twelve poems about.

Tekkan had also helped to spearhead the anti-establishment poetry movement that Akiko’s poetry would be a part of, the revitalization of the centuries-old tanka form that had previously been dominated by an institution literally called the Old School (I know, right?). What’s interesting to me is that feminist icon Akiko’s husband Tekkan had actually written an essay in the 1890s called “Poetry Inviting National Decay: A Denunciation of Today’s Effeminate Tanka,” in which he advocated for a more “manly,” virile poetry. This went over well with contemporary Meiji nationalism, as the nation was in the midst of a war against China. Fittingly, Tekkan wrote some pretty “manly” stuff about swords and battlefields.

But by the early 1900s, Akiko was the famous one in the family. Her poetry star was on the rise; and Tekkan, naturally, began to feel inadequate. One day, Akiko came home to find him squatting in their yard, killing ants. (How sad is that? How freaking sad is that?) To make him feel better, she told him to go spend some time in France.

Akiko’s rebellion and feminism went beyond her poetic success story and her pants-in-the-family home life, though. Her poetry often focused on the emancipation of women, portraying women of all backgrounds sympathetically and advocating for their sexual freedom. One of her most famous collections, Midaregami (“Tangled Hair”), evokes a feminine image of a woman with “hair in sweet disorder”—this ran counter to the public beauty ideal that saw a Japanese woman’s hair as always straight, never out of place. “Tangled hair” could even be read as a sign of the erotic. Additionally, she founded a girl’s school where she also taught, passing her progressive ideas and literary skills to a new generation of little poet-feminists.

Akiko was also a pacifist in an era when the Japanese national attitude was anything but. Late Meiji Japan (1868-1912) was characterized by the rapid modernization of a formerly feudal nation, and over these and ensuing decades an increasingly militarized Japan turned its focus towards expansionism. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, Akiko wrote the poem Kimi Shinitamou koto nakare (“Thou Shalt Not Die”), which later became a kind of anti-war protest song for the pacifist movement.

Akiko died in the midst of World War II, and her poetry was largely forgotten for many years. She has, however, enjoyed a resurgence of late, as demonstrated by her aforementioned 2006 placement on Japan’s list of favorite historical personages. To commemorate her revolutionary-ness, and to celebrate her anti-sexism-ness, I think I’ll end with one of her steamier poems:

Fragrant the lilies In this room of love; Hair unbound I fear The pink of night’s passing.

XVIII. Provence

Alice is from California, and has a sweet, kind way of speaking. She is one of the few students at ACPP who will stay for the entire year rather than a single semester. I admire her for that, and almost wish that I still had the desire to do the same. A group of us begin a weekly tradition of hanging out on a fountain in the square in from of the marie. In France, you are allowed to drink alcohol in public areas, so we buy cheap bottles of rosé, the region’s specialty, and bags of various Haribo candies from convenience stores and spend hours on the fountain.

Our group talks and laughs and complains about the unpleasant director of our program, an unexpected way for all of us to bond in this new setting. Our voices echo off the high stone walls of the nearby cathedral and faculté des lettres, the university for students of literature. I am one of the few students in the program whose French is advanced enough to take a class there.

One of these nights, Alice asks all of us to stay for the year too. But I know my limits at this point. “I’d love to,” I tell her, “but there is absolutely no way that I would.”

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Nina Sovich is an American writer who lives in Paris. She is releasing a travel memoir in July 2013 titled To the Moon and Timbuktu. She has written for Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and the Patriot Ledger. She blogs on travel and raising children in France on www.thesestolendays.com/blog. Every year, at this time, I find myself rereading books I loved as a younger woman. It might be that the holidays make me nostalgic. It might be too exhausting to discover great new fiction or it seems too selfish to buy a present for myself. It may have to do with the fact that I drink more than usual around Christmas and if I don’t read something familiar at night I’ll lose the plot.

I list below the books I love to read, many of which I have read before, that I will inevitably read again. These are not happy stories, but there is a certain authoritative melancholy to them that works in the dark month of December. Many are books that center on the family and wonder on the notion of love.  Many have a strong moral voice or ask ethical questions, which I find acts as an antidote to all the hysterical cheer of the holiday season.  Most importantly, all contemplate escape—from an overbearing Russian husband, a large family in St Louis, the decay of a colonial outpost, even from the myth of African salvation. These books make me feel like myself again, giving me the fortitude to start the New Year.

Lie Down in Darkness. William Styron.  This book came out in 1951 just as the intelligentsia, if not the nation, was realizing the life of convention-bound, country club-going WASPs wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As Virginia gentry, the Loftis’s drink and fight, abandon each other, rip each others’ hearts out and then scream for protection. Love is the least stable element in this family, resentment the most. Styron writes with urgency, despite all the hot summer afternoons and gentle landscape descriptions, and every scene is filled with real terror. Who will save them? Why must they do this to each other? Will the selfish, beautiful damaged daughter Peyton escape, at least a moment, before her death? So much is at stake, yet nothing need be lost. For any woman who has marveled at her mother’s callousness and her father’s adoration, this is your book.

Mating. Norman Rush.  This book is told through the eyes of a smart, unnamed female graduate student who casts out into the Kalahari desert in order to find a commune run by a brilliant anthropologist. She is tough, smart, well-read and romantic. The professor, on the other hand, is a total phony. He spouts social theory, contemplates Marx and sets about the unwinnable task of creating an African utopia by eliminating African men from the equation. The book is both a discussion of obsession and a strong commentary on foolish white expats who try to save Africa. I read it in my 20s, as I travelled the world in search of a cause, and saw worrying reflections of my own life. Perhaps I aspired to escape ordinary American life for something cleaner, more structured, theoretical and moral.  But, in the end, there was always a man at the heart of it--calling the shots, talking about equality… doing nothing.

No Hurry to Get Home. Emily Hahn. This is a compilation of autobiographical stories from The New Yorker that Hahn wrote starting in the late 1920s. She writes a big life for herself, without ornament or hyperbole, and even the small family anecdotes lead to greater freedom. Mickey (Hahn’s nickname) and her sister wear knickerbockers to school, because skirts are impractical, and earn press attention. Mickey goes to college far from home, where she startles the professors by studying engineering. She travels across the country with a friend and gets a job as a writer. Every step is taken with the hope that the world will bend to her conventions and not the other way around. In the end, it does. Soon the girl from St. Louis is travelling alone through the Belgian Congo, recording the racism and hypocrisy of the colonizers. She is smoking opium in China and reflecting on addiction. She is in love with a British intelligence officer and watching the Japanese invade Hong Kong. She lived so many lives in this one book that any one of them would do for me.

Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy. The story is known--Anna Karenina abandons her staid husband and young son to run away with her the rich, handsome Count Vronsky. The great thing about this book (yes, I am here to tell you) is that the moral stakes are high, but Tolstoy doesn’t write judgment into the pages. As a young, single woman, I sympathized with Anna and felt she had the right to pursue happiness, even if she abandoned her young son. Now that I have my own marriage and children, I find myself wondering if old Karenin was such a bad guy after all. I read this book over and over again, always changing my mind. And if Anna’s poor choices and narcissism becomes a bit too much there is Levin, a sweet and conflicted man who falls for the lovely Kitty.  ‘Freedom what is the good of freedom?’ Levin thinks. ‘Happiness consists only in love and desiring; in wishing her wishes and in thinking her thoughts…” That’s a man I can get behind.

Burmese Days. George Orwell. The entire colonial enterprise and all its failures are laid bare here. There are vicious British colonial officials who live for gin cocktails and enmity. Dr. Veraswami, a cultured Indian doctor, whose only pathetic desire is to get into the European club. U Po Kyin the corrupt Burmese official who has money and power but can only see enemies around him. But the heart of the story centers on one British man’s loss of identity and faith. John Flory, drunk, alone, and high up the white man’s pedestal, the view has become blurry. His best friend is Dr. Veraswami, but he won’t admit it. He keeps a Burmese mistress but won’t love her. When the young Elizabeth Lakersteen comes to Burma he courts her, but he has forgotten the small-minded, provincial ways of his countrymen. Needless to say it goes horribly, unbearably wrong.

Slowing down (with Emma and Erin)

“She appears to write much of her poetry, as Americans eat their dinners, in hot haste,” said one critic of Emma Lazarus’s early work, according to Esther Schor’s biography of the poet. I had to laugh at how the 1871 comparison still applies today. We still eat quickly, and we write quickly too, jotting off breathless blog posts and status updates without looking back. Lazarus would have thrived in today’s digital world, I think. In sharp contrast to her contemporary, the reclusive Emily Dickinson, she was a determined extrovert, eager for her writing to make it into the hands of the literary giants of her time. She wrote letters to Emerson demanding feedback on her poems. She milked her “network” in search of literary success. Her persistence and tenacity were astonishing.

But even the talented, energetic Emma Lazarus eventually hit a wall of anxiety as the speed and the pressure to produce caught up with her. As she wrote to a friend, “I have come home to hard work—finding three books to read & review by Tuesday . . . as soon as I feel that a certain thing is expected of me by a certain time, I get a panic & don’t know how to do anything. How anyone lives by writing I cannot imagine.” I was nodding emphatically as I read along. Preach it, sister.

Beyond the usual deadlines and expectations many of us receive from others or set for ourselves, I think there’s a sort of insidious pressure these days to exist online, to be always on and constantly, consistently producing. It’s the marketing advice about “personal branding” and blogging every day and building your audience. It’s that feeling of needing to “keep up” with the internet, as Erin Loechner describes it in her post, “The Rebirth of Slow Blogging.”

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record. I’ve written about slowing down here and here and here and here. It’s been at the heart of my work with Uncommon, a growing slow web community. I’ve been writing and thinking so much about slow food, slow tech, slow everything, coming at it from different angles as a way of figuring out what slow really means, as an intention and a practice.

Something clicked when I landed on Erin’s post, because I think she helps explain something important about the idea of “slowness.” It’s not about doing things in slow motion, but rather taking time for depth and storytelling. It’s about aiming for quality over quantity. It’s about taking time for reflection and creative restoration.

As I head into the new year, I’ve got Emma and Erin in the back of my mind, and I’ll be wondering about the delicate balance between creative impulse and depth, busy production and quiet reflection.

Grab bag.

I don't know if you'd heard, but it's the holiday season. Things are festive and lit up and draped in tinsel everywhere you look. For the next two weeks, the world, my friends, is your disco ball. And while I love the holidays---being a fan of everything sparkly, gifts, and brown liquor, how could I not?---I can't help but spy feminist pitfalls everywhere I turn. The world suddenly seems littered with holly-draped, mistletoe-encrusted problematic situations. In celebration of the season, therefore, I humbly submit to you a grab bag of my feminist holiday dilemmas. Some of these I've come to terms with, some I'm still battling---where all are concerned, I'd love to hear what our lovely readers think, and what they do to cope, especially in these seven weeks of heightened sensitivity and exposure to less-than-perfect relatives. (Or whomever.)

His and Hers gift guides I know, I know. This doesn't seem like a real problem. And I guess it's pretty far down the hierarchy as far as problems go---let's call it, instead, a manifestation of a real problem. It's sometime in November when these types of guides start popping up in magazines and on blogs, and they drive me nuts. Invariably, the His side has something having to do with cocktails, whiskey, and wood, while Hers often features nail polish, cookware, and purses. (Stationery, to be fair, can usually be found in both the His and Hers columns, thank you notes being a universal post-holiday activity.)

The real issue here, of course, is that these routinely gendered guides represent and reinforce ridiculous standards. At the risk of stating the obvious: men like to cook. Women like whiskey and things that come in a burled finish. And sometimes, kids, the binary breaks down even further. Men wear clothes made for women, and women dare to buy tools and use them to fix things up around the house. I know---what will come next? The nationwide right to same-sex marriage? (We can only hope.) While I heartedly admit that most men and most women have different tastes, I'd argue that almost all of that difference comes from stuff like this---overt and insinuated guides to what we should want.

That said, I still totally want those pink J. Crew snowboots. Got it, Mom? (I told you I was still battling these things, right?)

The lyrics to Baby, It's Cold Outside I love Christmas music. I love carols, I love secular Christmas songs, I love the classical masses and oratorios. I. Love. It. All. One of my long-time favorites? Baby, It's Cold Outside, written by Frank Loesser back in 1944 and debuted, adorably, in duet with his wife at a housewarming party. It was sometime in college or just after when my friend Miles ruined my fun by pointing out that the song is, it must be said, a little rapey.

If you're not familiar, check out the song, then come back on over. Back? Okay then. Now you should go check out The Atlantic's recent discussion of how the song's problematic lyrics (most notably "Say, what's in this drink?" and "The answer is no!") might be addressed, and then you should pour yourself a cocktail (A Manhattan is really best for this.) and listen to the song again, appreciating how awesome it is despite the creeptastic undertones. As a matter of fact, those undertones (that tension) might be one of the reasons it's just so good.

Men who don't help with post-dinner cleanup This one is both the one that annoys me most, and the one we can actually do something about. Even with the advent of men to the holiday kitchen when it comes to meal prep, I've noticed something: they typically don't stick around afterward to clean up. After dinner on Thanksgiving or Christmas, it's still the women who are far more likely to be found performing the far less glamorous cleanup work while the men relax with a Scotch. Since we've already established that women like whiskey, too, I hope we can all agree to do one thing for our sisterhood this holiday season: confront the lazy men in our lives and make them clean up. Even if they cooked. Because they have quite a backlog to work off, as far as I'm concerned.

I hope you've enjoyed this tour of the little things that torture me during the holidays. I'll leave you now to go ogle some sparkly lights, drape myself in baubles, and order cookbooks for all the women I know. Because, let's face it: I, too, am a product of the patriarchy, and I can't fight it 24 hours a day. Especially when it's so pretty!

Books to Read If . . .

By Randon Billings Noble December is a loaded month---loaded with meaning, tradition, preparation, celebration and, finally, the anticipation of the coming year.  It can be exhilarating, frantic, lonely, relaxing, nostalgic, hopeful---and sometimes all of those things in one day.  But the end of the year always brings talk about books.  Prizes are announced, the “best of” lists come out and people browse bookstore tables shopping for both themselves and others.

Here are my thoughts about what to read this season …

... if you want something in small bites, enjoy adventures but are NOT traveling by plane: Contents May Have Shifted by Pam Houston tells the story of Pam’s efforts to balance family and travel, stability and risk.  Its 144 short vignettes describe her home-and-away adventures in Colorado, Tunisia, Wyoming, Tibet, New Jersey and beyond.  It takes a while to get comfortable with the peripatetic nature of this narrative (in the first few pages we jump from Great Exuma to California to Texas to Alaska) but I feel like that might be part of the point.  Sometimes a thread of story will pick up again a few sections later.  Sometimes it backtracks.  But I never had trouble following it and I always enjoyed seeing where it would lead next.

... if you love the sea and/or whaling but can’t quite manage Moby-Dick right now:

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the whaleship Essex, which was the inspiration for Moby-Dick.  The Essex left Nantucket in 1819, whaled its way to the center of the Pacific Ocean, and was rammed and sunk by one of the very sperm whales it was hunting.  For ninety days its crew tried to sail three lifeboats to the safety of the South American coast while enduring storms, disease, hunger, dehydration and worse.  In the Heart of the Sea continues where the fictitious Moby-Dick leaves off, and it pulls no punches as it describes the aftermath of a shipwreck and the desire to survive.

... if you want a fictitious story about wild animals and shipwrecks:

Jamrach's Menagerie, by Carol Birch, starts with a bang---an encounter with a tiger.  Jaffy Brown, then eight years old, is running errands on the streets of London when he is swept up into the jaws of a tiger, an escaped resident of Jamrach's menagerie.  Jamrach is so impressed by Jaffy's daring (he reaches up to stroke the oncoming tiger's nose) and his survival (his only injuries are some scraped toes), he concludes that Jaffy has a way with animals and hires Jaffy to work for his exotic animal import/export business.  Years later Jaffy is sent on a quest to find and capture a rumored dragon---the ultimate animal for the menagerie.  As in Life of Pi, there is a sea voyage, a boat with a dangerous animal aboard, a shipwreck and a catastrophic outcome.  But my belief in this story never faltered (as it did with Pi), my patience was never tested, and its ending was surprising in quite a different way.

... if you want to be challenged:

What Happened to Sophie Wilder, by Christopher Beha, is a quiet yet demanding novel in which the main character, Charlie Blakeman, wonders what happened to his best friend and sometimes girlfriend, Sophie Wilder, after college and her sudden conversation to Catholicism and almost immediate marriage to a rather unlikely man.  What had bound Charlie and Sophie together in school---a love of writing---does not seem enough to rekindle their romance when Sophie shows up ten years later.  But the book is about much more than their relationship.  It’s about faith and doubt and growth and despair and the way we craft the stories of our lives.  If you can, read this book with someone else; you’ll want to mull the ending over with someone who’s read it too.

... if you want to change your life:

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar is a collection of advice columns from the once-anonymous Sugar at the online magazine The Rumpus.  But Sugar recently revealed herself to be Cheryl Strayed, and anyone who has read her essays (“The Love of My Life,” “Heroine”), or her bestselling memoir Wild, knows that Strayed is a writer of honesty and empathy.   In her answers to questions about divorce, miscarriage, identity and infidelity, Strayed tells stories from her own life, which makes Tiny Beautiful Things a memoir as well as a collection of columns.  Even if you aren’t looking for particular answers to specific questions, reading this collection will inspire you to live a richer, truer, more generous life, reassured, as she writes in her last letter, that even the “useless days will add up to something … The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not.  These things are your becoming.”

... if you like historical fiction:

Hilary Mantel’s award-winning Wolf Hall tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from obscurity (he was a blacksmith's son, which his enemies at court never let him forget) to be Henry VIII's chief minister during the king's turbulent divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, the execution of Thomas More and various misadventures after that.  Usually More is painted as the hero of these stories---a Catholic martyr to his conscience, which wouldn't allow him to name the King head of the Church or grant his right to divorce his wife.  But Mantel transforms Cromwell from the king’s lackey into a full-fledged person: husband, father, guardian; admirer of women, fashion, food and learning; a man committed to his work, his faith, his king.  Wolf Hall tells the story of Henry VIII’s first divorce from a whole new perspective … and then Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy continues with Bring Up the Bodies and the forthcoming The Mirror and the Light.  You will want to read until Cromwell’s (rather bitter) end.

... if you want a smart, quick, engrossing read:

A little bit The Talented Mr. Ripley, a little bit Howards End, a little bit Swimming Pool, and a whole lot of Harriet Lane’s own making, Alys, Always draws your attention from the first word and will not let go.  One winter night, Frances Thorpe stops to help a victim of a car crash.  The woman, Alys, dies on the scene, but once Frances meets her grieving family she begins to insinuate herself into their lives---to what end you’re not sure, and maybe Frances isn’t either.  But as she becomes more deeply involved with Alys’s widower, the reader keeps turning pages to see if it’s at all possible that this twisted story ends well.

... if you have the time/stamina/constitution to read a book in one sitting:

I do not want to give away even a hint of a spoiler about Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, but I will quote the line that hooked me, which occurs early on, on page 37.  In the first 30 pages Nick Dunne has woken on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary at exactly 6:00.  He has braced himself to go downstairs to his wife.  Then there is a space break.  Then he narrates that he was very late getting to work.  What happened during that space break?  We're not sure.  Nick drives home to find his wife missing and a couch overturned and a coffee table smashed.  The police arrive and question him.  He answers their questions, sometimes shrugging, sometimes blurting and sometimes with a lurching stomach.  The last two sentences that end the chapter are: “That was my fifth lie to the police.  I was just getting started.”  The lies stack up and the plot twists do too.  In a way I feel like this book was a dare to its writer: can you pull of this twist?  How about this one?  And THIS one?  I'm not sure how you'll react to the ending, but you'll be chasing Amy Elliot Dunne all the way through.

... if you are a romantic and/or an academic:

Love, in Theory, by E.J. Levy, is a collection of ten stories that entwine love with its seeming-opposite: academic theories.  Sometimes the characters actively ponder these theories, sometimes they are living illustrations of them, but always the story is enriched and not burdened by its intellectual overlay.  My favorite of the ten was the last, “Theory of Dramatic Action,” which is told in the provocative second person, so “you” are the star of the story.  You are film student who has recently left Colorado to attend film school in Ohio.  You are learning about theories of dramatic action and fear your life has no such arc.  But then you meet a handsome professor of ancient Greek.  And then an old friend comes to town.  And then your story might be moving into “Plot Twist (I)” or “False Resolution” or perhaps “Plot Twist (II)” after all …

... if you are a new mom and don’t have time to read:

Stealing Time is a new literary magazine for parents started by Sarah Gilbert and Katie Proctor.  They describe it as “a quarterly print literary magazine about the heart of parenting … fiction, essay, poetry, book reviews, and other pieces that are sad, hopeful, ebullient, resigned, reverent, wry, surprising, gut-busting, or just plain strange.”  The very first issue’s very first essay---“Into it All” by editor Sarah Gilbert---evokes all of those adjectives.  Gilbert writes---lyrically and inspiringly---about ways to balance writing and motherhood, art and biology, your own written words on the page and the unexpected words that come out of your child’s mouth.   Her writing and her magazine remind us to look up from the task at hand, the dishes in the sink, the search for the lost object, the Virginia Woolf novel at your bedside, and revel in the ambivalent and infinite role of being a parent.

... if you are or have a baby:

Big Board Books: Colors, ABC, Numbers by Roger Priddy

If you are a baby you will want to sit with this book for many minutes at a time.  If you have a baby, your baby will want to sit with this book for many minutes at a time---which will leave you free to read some of the above!

Happy reading, all!

If I Had to Dress Up as a Lord of the Rings Character...

I haven’t seen The Hobbit yet. I’m sad about this. This will be remedied soon.

The reason I’m sad is because I was obsessed, no really, obsessed with the Lord of the Rings trilogy when it came out. I wasn’t a huge nerd—I hadn’t even read the books all the way through—but I nerded out to the max when it came to Peter Jackson’s ridiculous over-the-top epic trilogy. I saw the first one four times in the theater. And recently, I rewatched the movies again and, thank goodness, I’m still an LOTR nerd, ten years and fifty viewings later.

One thing I really appreciate about the film trilogy is its amplification of the female roles in the translation from book to movie. Like many fantasy worlds, Tolkien’s universe is, you know, kind of a sausage fest. The female characters that appear in the movies—Arwen (Liv Tyler), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), and Eowyn (Miranda Otto)—all appear in the books, but with proportionally diminished roles. In particular, Arwen’s role was beefed up big time to provide a lovely elfin female face for the franchise and give greater emphasis to the films’ central (only) romance, between her and Aragorn.

But if I were to dress up as a Lord of the Rings character for, say, a premiere, or a convention, or a nerd party, I would forgo the elf costume (the Rivendell aesthetic is kind of played out by now anyway) and choose Eowyn, because she’s the closest thing to a feminist hero that the overwhelmingly masculine story has.

Eowyn is Rohan royalty, and like most womanly royalty she’s expected to stay in the castle, but all she really wants to do is fight. Her uncle, King Theoden, forbids her from battle, so she does what any self-respecting sword-wielding lady would do: cross-dresses in some battle gear and goes to war anyway. (Like Mulan!) She also transfers her own pathos onto the hobbit Merry, who is likewise forbidden from war because of his small stature, and sympathizing, decides to take him along with her.

The crowning kick-ass feminist moment comes when Eowyn comes face to face with the Witch-King, whom “no man can kill.” First she chops the head off of his flying dragon transportation. Then she dodges a ton of terrifying mace blows (while admittedly looking absolutely terrified). Witch-dude reiterates for both Eowyn and the audience’s benefit, “No man can kill me!” Eowyn pulls off her helmet, revealing her flowing locks, and says:

“I am no man.”

And bam! Sword to the face. Or the black void inside his helmet that we can only assume contains a face somewhere.

The moment walks a fine line between eye-rolling and fist-pumping, but I still enjoy it. It’s great to see that even in medieval-seeming Middle-Earth, traditional gender roles are being challenged. Of course, besides her war story, the character of Eowyn also contributes a touch of romantic triangle by falling in love with Aragorn, who is, duh, Arwen’s boyfriend, but eventually she finds her own happiness without him. (In the books and in the extended film version, she rebounds with Faramir; also a great guy.)

I’ll wrap up this nerd post by saying that, in general, fantasy can be limited in the roles it offers its women characters, not to mention minorities (see LOTR: minority actors appear only as evil men or under globs of Uruk-hai makeup), so I’m gladdened whenever a strong, realistic female character shows up—even if that means broadening and underscoring a minor role from the source material.

Conversely: Why is Galadriel in The Hobbit? Fellow nerds?

Since You Brought It Up: Good, Grief

By Rhea St. Julien In the first five minutes of the 1965 classic A Charlie Brown Christmas, the main character pronounces himself "depressed", "let down" by Christmas, and lonely.  He dislikes the tradition of card giving, because it reminds him that no one likes him when he doesn't receive any.  He rails at the over-commercialization of Christmas, and despairs that no one seems to take it, and him, seriously.

Watching it with my toddler on Hulu, I realized that if it were made today, A Charlie Brown Christmas would be deemed too glum for mass consumption.  Characters on TV today have bizarrely huge smiles even in the worst of situations---Diego's grin at having to find the lost maned wolf reassures kids that "Sure, the mom lost her pup, but don't worry!  Everything is okay!  Al rescate!"  The expressions of the Peanuts gang look more like they have chili-induced indigestion, over things as small as decorations, unhelpful advice, and ill-thought-out letters to Santa.

I love that the Charlie Brown special depicts the big emotions of kids at this time of the year, because children are totally overwhelmed by all the bustle, no matter how tinseled it may be.  They act up, get scared more easily, need to be held during nap times and have melt downs in the middle of Target.  They are hopped up on sugar (when did Advent calendars start having chocolates for each day?!) stay up late for parties, and the stress of their parents is passed down to them.  It's a never-ending cycle, as parents get more stressed by their kids' behavior, and disappointed when special holiday-themed outings turn disastrous.  "I'm just trying to give you a good Christmas!" I saw a mom say thru gritted teeth, outside a store where other families were bopping around to carols, enjoying the discounts at the annual holiday party, happy it wasn't their kid that had filled their fists with cookies and ran out onto the street.

I felt her pain.  Just last week I took our toddler to a showing of The Velveteen Rabbit, a dance performance for children based on the Margery Williams book.  She had never been to anything like that, and though she overall enjoyed the experience, I did not.  She sat on my lap and asked questions throughout the entire show, at times scared, at other times just trying to make sense of what she was viewing.  All the kids in the audience were talking, laughing, and shouting, but mine seemed to be the very loudest.

The grandmother in front of us concurred with my estimation.  She turned around every five seconds, sneering, sighing, and shushing us.  I tried to explain to her that it was a children's performance and kids are allowed to make noise, but she proclaimed I had "ruined it for her" and I bowed out of the discussion before I got really angry.  What that lady thought she was getting when she bought a ticket to the 11am matinee is beyond me, but her shaming of my daughter while I was working really hard to parent her through the performance was horrible.  I left feeling defeated.  I had tried to do something special with my daughter for the holiday season, and had only managed to totally overwhelm her, myself, and the people sitting near us.

This week, at a winter-themed Story/Song/Dance time I was leading at my friend's store, I took homemade paper snowflakes out of my bag and let them drift down onto the children while I sang "Let It Snow", the closest those California kids would get to a snowstorm.  My daughter stood right in the middle and screamed, "Mama, I'm done!  Mama, no singing!"  I just sighed and asked my friend to take her for a walk so I could continue being all magical for the tots who were actually enjoying it.

Are we really so different from my easily-overwhelmed little one? I think not.  Everyone I know seems to be already over the holiday season, and we have at least two weeks more of it.  As adults, we dull our feelings with cocktails and present-buying, but they are still there.  That's why tonight, instead of heading out onto the wreath-lined streets to hit up a friend's pop up art show, I'm going to stay in with a book and a journal.  I'm going to write about how I miss my sister and my mother, who I am not seeing this year, and my father, whom I will never be able to spend another Christmas with on this earth again.  I'm going to take some deep breaths, and make some Charlie Brown faces.  I'm going to feel that good grief he keeps talking about, and create some space and patience for my daughter's feelings, as well.

***

We believe we can find more joy in the holidays by squashing the little voice that tells us bright spirits and good cheer are only possible when we’re perfect.  The magic of this time of year comes from connecting with loved ones near and far, reminding ourselves of all we have to be thankful for, and . . . covering everything in twinkling white lights. 

We’re embracing our present lives—foibles and all—so we can spend more time drinking egg nog and less time worrying we’re not good enough. Imperfect is the new black; wear it with pride.

Want to lighten your load? Read the post that kicked off the series, Ashely Schneider's Down, Not Out. Add your story to the “Since You Brought It Up” series by submitting it here. 

XVII. états-unis

One Christmas, Clémence sends me a thin paperback collection of stories called Lettres de mon moulin. Letters from my windmill. I love French books, not just for reading but for the sake of the object itself---the spines are upside-down, the words going from top to bottom, which makes bookstore browsing feel simultaneously awkward and fun.

I read the stories not knowing anything about where they come from. Provence, as it turns out. The author, Alphonse Daudet, is one of the more known provençal writers. He had a windmill where he wrote these stories, a collection of tales about his life and experiences in the south of France. The mill is still tucked away in the countryside somewhere to the east of Avignon. But I don’t learn any of this until years later.

My favorite story, then and now, is “L’Arlésienne,” about a young man in love with a woman from Arles. He finds out that she’s married to someone else and he kills himself.

Il s’était dit, le pauvre enfant: “Je l’aime trop . . . Je m’en vais . . .” Ah! misérables coeurs que nous sommes!

It sounds melancholy, wistful, and it is. But the language is sparse and lovely and the ending always makes me cry. Just like this France of mine.

And to All a Good Night

What happens when you put your Jewish friend in charge of stringing the lights on the tree, is that you get to the bottom and have no way to plug them in.  “What I have here in my hand is two female parts, but it seems like I need two male parts,” I called out to my oldest friend.  She looked perplexed, herself, having never been the one to do the lights on the tree.  The tree endeavor (both selection and installation) had always been the province of her husband, who made a big production out of it with her kids.  He had been gone just three months and the whole operation carried a pall of sadness.  I was determined to establish a fresh tradition, help her feel confident in her new role and win the day with enthusiasm.  The kids had been good sports at the tree lot that morning, although it must have been terribly disorienting to be there without their father.  I felt the least we could do was to get the tree going before nightfall.  Ultimately, we had to call up our reserves---two effective and creative friends (with four children between them), both Mommies who were responsible for all things tree-related in their homes.  Within the space of twenty minutes, those two had stripped the tree, restrung the lights and carefully dotted the whole situation with ornaments.  That day, my status as “other” when it comes to celebrating Christmas and participating in the “Holiday Season” took a back seat to being present for a loved one. I returned home feeling decidedly less sorry for myself.  Even considering my pattern (like so many American Jews) of feeling a bit left out at this time of year, I had to consider the heartache of my friend and so many others who have lost a spouse or someone close to them, knowing the pain of a loss like that is much more acute during Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and the assorted benchmarks of life.

As much as I have my own issues with the Christmas behemoth, its value as a touchstone for many families in this country is undeniable.  It is a marker around which people create important memories with one another.  Children experience Christmas as an expression of familial love and have the opportunity to be showered with special attention by parents and extended family.  Adults take time away from work to be with their families and reflect.  Sometimes people even use the Holiday as a way to process wounds that haunt them from childhood.  The corrective experience of making your own Christmas for your own family as an adult must be incredibly powerful on a number of levels.

There still resides inside me, the smart-ass fourth grader who wrote an essay about how the White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony was a violation of church and state.  This represented my desperate attempt to communicate the plight of the American, Jewish 8-year-old during the Holidays.  Back in the 80s, they didn’t really show much of Reagan lighting an obligatory Menorah somewhere or sitting down with his staff for a game of Dreidl.  And I likely would have argued that, to be fair, he shouldn’t be publicly participating in any religious celebration.  They also didn’t give Chanukah much air-time in the media in general back then, which made it even more critical that I drag my Mom into my elementary classrooms so that she could fry up Latkes on an electric griddle.  There is almost nothing more tragic than a bunch of disinterested school children carting floppy paper plates of greasy potato pancakes and dollops of applesauce to their desks to “enjoy.”  “Also, we get chocolate coins!” I asserted to anyone who would listen.

While I feel certain that I will be confronted with many uncomfortable conversations with my own children about why we don’t adorn our home or really do anything amazing at this time of year, I also trust that they will find ways to turn their outsider status into something interesting.  They might end up with a fantastic sense of humor about it.  It might increase their empathy for people that experience actual “other” status (people of color, immigrants, gay families) and who live permanently outside the mainstream.

I will always feel a little twinge at Christmas time.  I will try and remind myself that I can appreciate someone else’s traditions and how profound they are without needing to participate myself.  We have our own traditions on December 25th– Dim Sum!  Blockbuster movies!---and I remain grateful that I won’t need to cling to them like a life-raft, girding against loss.

Lessons from Copenhagen...

Dear Clara, Believe it or not, our time in Washington is coming to a close.  When we arrived last summer, two years seemed like decades away, but in less than half a year, we’ll be on the move again.  We know where now, and that always lifts burden off my shoulders.  I never really mind where the home is, but I do like knowing what I should plan for.  Your father and I did a little scouting mission to our new home-to-be this past month, and here’s what we noticed so far about Copenhagen, Denmark:

• Candles are cozy and lighting matters: In a place that gets dark by the time most of us are finishing up lunch, light and atmosphere matter a lot.  We had heard a lot about Danish “hygge”, which can only be loosely translated as a feeling of coziness or warmth, but we didn’t really understand to what extent those principles of creating a welcoming environment really matter.  Even the Laundromat had candelabras and everyone took their job of creating an environment you want to be in very seriously.
• There is no such thing as bad weather: . . . only bad clothes for the weather---many a Dane seems to say that with pride.  And it’s true---weather conditions, again in a place with a long and cold winter, don’t seem to stop people from doing much.  Whether it was dark or cold or rainy, people had on the appropriate footwear or layers or hats or gloves, and everyone was out, on their bikes no less.   It was a reminder for us that if you’re prepared, you can still be up for anything.
• Fresh air is good for you: In a similar vein to the above, people seemed to be ready and willing to be outside and partake in fresh air.  We saw baby carriages on the outside of coffee shops---with babies still in them---and children out at recess.  Fresh, clean air is a luxury that refreshes the body instantly.  If we’re lucky enough to be surrounded by fresh, clean air, we should take advantage of it.
• Early to bed, early to rise: We arrived just past ten o’clock in the evening our first night, and already all the restaurants were closing up, including in the hotel.  Everything seems to be happening earlier here: people get out of work earlier, they eat earlier and they go to bed earlier.  Yet somehow, I bet their day is still longer.
• Maybe things are supposed to be more expensive sometimes: You notice instantly that life in Copenhagen doesn’t come cheap.  Even the small things, such as a simple coffees in a café, are easily three times the price we’re use to paying.  I know we will be quick to complain about the cost of living---it’s an adjustment after all, and paying more for one thing, means having less for another.  Yet, life in Copenhagen seems to be pretty good; people seem to be taken care of.  I’m sure we’ll get a better sense of how everything works once we’re living there day in and day out, but the thought occurred to me, maybe it’s not a bad thing to pay more for the smaller things in life if it guarantees that some of the bigger things will be provided for.

I can’t wait to explore our new home with you –

All my love,

Mom

Christine de Pisan: Widow. Writer. Anachronistic Feminist.

A few weeks ago, on a lazy Sunday, my boyfriend and I were watching the History Channel. This is not something we tend to do, and as a self-dubbed historian I can tell you that us historians have our problems with the so-called “history” of the History Channel (often fondly referred to as “the Hitler Channel”). Nevertheless—on that Sunday, it was on. Specifically, a show about ancient Rome, and its marvels and its Caesars and its rise and its fall and all that stuff.

Through historical reenactment and cheesy voiceovers, we were introduced to Emperor Claudius and his wife Agrippina, a conniving seductress if ever there was one. We’re told that one day, poor Claudius took violently ill and died. Cheesy voiceover: “Claudius was poisoned by a mushroom flower . . . and his wife’s ambition.”

“Do they have any evidence to substantiate the claim?” I asked (the History Channel doesn’t do footnotes, after all).

“Yeah,” my boyfriend replied. “She’s a woman.”

Before you virtually slap him, note that this was said tongue-in-cheek. This is how our cynical senses of humor work.

I bring this up because, while the woman-as-seductress trope remains alive and well in many contexts—particularly in political thriller and historical biography—there was a lady who, way back in 1399, was also sick and tired of such tired and misogynist characterizations, and like me, she decided to write about it. This lady was Christine de Pisan.

Christine was born in 1364 in Venice, but grew up in the French court—her father was the court astrologer to Charles V of France. (Yes, that was a thing.) She was married at 15 to a court secretary named Etienne, had three children, and then was abruptly widowed at 25. None of this was particularly remarkable. What was remarkable was what she chose to do after that.

Most medieval women of her class would have remarried, or, if they were feeling particularly pious, gotten themselves to a nunnery. Christine did neither. To ensure the financial well-being of herself and her children, she decided to work for a living by utilizing her special talent at writing.

Here I must exclaim with delight. (Yay!) As Virginia Woolf once famously noted, there were very few women writers prior to the nineteenth century; so Christine was trailblazing a path that literally did not exist. In her career, she was patronized by the rich and powerful and produced many well-received works of poetry, practically creating what it meant to be a “woman writer” in Western Europe, and was able to provide for a family without a man to help her.

What’s more, her works are considered to be some of the earliest written examples of feminism. Now, it’s a bit anachronistic to ascribe the word “feminist” to anyone living in the Middle Ages. That said, Christine’s work impressively promoted women’s value to society and combated the “misogyny” of her male writer counterparts.

For one thing, she practically invented the whole "Your Historical Woman of the Day" concept (though I will retain all rights and privileges to said concept, thankyouverymuch): In Le Livre de la cité des dames (“The Book of the City of Ladies," also the best book title ever), written in 1405, Christine recorded examples of historical women who were known for heroism and virtue, who could serve as inspiration for women in her own time.  And in Le Livre des trios vertus (“The Book of the Three Virtues”), she discussed women’s role in medieval society and provided moral instruction for women from all walks of life.

As mentioned earlier, Christine was perturbed by certain depictions of the archetypal Woman in medieval (male) writings, particularly one satirical Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun, which portrayed all women as conniving seductresses. So she directly engaged ol’ Jean in her critique L’Epistre au Dieu d’Amours (“Letter to the God of Loves”) and defended women against such misleading attacks. Her view was that, contrary to popular belief, women were not simply temptresses designed to lead men astray; rather, they  were valuable members of society who, if allowed to receive the same education as men, had the potential to be just as accomplished and successful.

Many feminist scholars have cautioned against holding up Christine as some kind of Light of Early Feminism. Obviously, her thinking was still constrained by medieval understandings of society and the world, and she later in part recanted her more “radical” early attacks of misogyny. And, in the end, she did get herself to a nunnery, where she remained until her death around 1430. However, her accomplishments make her quite the iconoclastic figure—a woman who made her own career in writing, who earned widespread acclaim from kings and nobles (including Henry IV of England), who promoted the place of women in a society far more rigidly patriarchal than the one we know today, whose books continue to be remembered. She even wrote an account of Joan of Arc’s early victories; and it was written during Joan’s lifetime, the only such account in existence.

Not to get cheesy, but I’m pretty sure Christine and I are sisters across the ages.

The Call to Prayer

Any traveler will tell you that every place has a distinct essence to it, part smell, part sound, part people---it all wraps up into a ball of experience and existence unlike any other location.  Years after you've left a place, a particular sight or scent will immediately transport you back to the previous time and place.  Although its heard all over the world, The Call to Prayer will always bring me back to Bangladesh.

Muslims, as you may know, pray five times a day.  They are alerted to the times of prayer by a call being sung out from the mosque.  This was the original purpose of minarets. A man would climb to the top of the Minaret and alert the faithful that it was time to pray.  Today speakers and microphones are used and walking to the top of the tower is no longer required.

There must  be a mosque just around the corner from our apartment, although I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen it.  There was a neighborhood mosque just around the corner from our apartment in Dhaka. While I was rarely ever up at the first call to prayer, I doubt a day went by when I didn't hear at least one of the calls, more often than not, the last three.

If there is one thing that I loved most about living in Bangladesh---besides the experience or the adventure, or trying new things, but one tangible thing that I can point to, it would probably be the call to prayer.  I love hearing it---broadcasting out from the speakers, the static and what I imagine to be rudimentary wiring making the noise crackle and sound distant-like an antique radio.

I’m not sure I can fully describe the sound, or the feeling that accompanies it.  It’s one of those things you just have to experience, that defies words.  The closest comparison I can think of is Gregorian Chant---it is undeniably mystic, there is an inner peace to the foreign words so that even without fully understanding their meaning, the spirit is clear. The voice carries over the neighborhood rooftops, hauntingly melodic, intoning a request.

For me, its a reminder to be zen, to pause and be in the moment, to listen, and to be grateful.

Stillness is a state of mind

“And eeeeeven when you are reaching for your toothbrush, you are dancing.” I remember my ballet teacher stretching out, cat-like, her limbs taut and lean, torso erect, one arm gesturing dramatically toward the corner of the studio. In her own masterful way, she instilled in us what Silas House describes in “The Art of Being Still,” a way of embodying your craft wherever you are, whatever you may appear to be doing. When I look back on the period of time when I was dancing, I think of it as a time when I was always dancing, just as my teacher had insisted. That meant stretching my calves at the bus stop or going over choreography in my head, but it was also something more subtle and persistent. It meant that I saw the world in relation to dance, and even the simplest aspects of daily life were metaphors for something I was learning in the studio. The flow of traffic in the halls of my high school was a chaotic, pulsing choreography. Every moment, from the sacred to the mundane, was set, in my mind, to a soundtrack of classical music.

Conversely, I also brought the studio with me into the world. The constant tension between strength and flexibility in my practice also found its way into social interactions. The discipline and intensity of my ballet training manifested itself in my studies as well.

When House explains that he gathers material for his writing while standing in line at the grocery store or biking to work, I get it. I’ve never felt exactly that way about writing, but I’ve experienced it through dance. There’s a certain state of mind that persists when your body is your tool. From the top of your shellacked bunhead to the tip of your aching toes, every part of your body seems to exist to remind you that there is work yet to be done and that whatever your other roles in life may be, you are ultimately a dancer.

It might seem odd to compare dancing with the stillness House describes, but I think it is simply a particular state of mind. It is a way of allowing the foreground of your mind to attend to the business of living, while in the background, your creative mind remains agile and supple, perhaps idling, but never turned off completely. This is not the same as multitasking or absentmindedness. If anything, it is a way of being present.

As dancers, we cultivated this state of mind through many, many hours of practice. Since we spent so many of our waking hours in the studio, it was impossible to ever really leave it behind completely. As for writing, I’ve never been quite sure how to cultivate the same sort of presence. Writing a lot helps, of course, and reading does too, I think. Not the sort of online reading, which darts rapidly from one link to another, wandering among disparate bits of information. Rather, it’s the deep reading that comes only by curling up with a paper-and-ink book and settling in for the long haul. Perhaps one’s mind is simply freer, while suspending disbelief in order to be enveloped by someone else’s world, to tinker in the background with other worlds-in-progress.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Megan Flynn is a self-proclaimed foodie and writer with dreams of a literary life.  She has a master's in Children's Literature and an affinity for cultural studies, good food, caffeine, cute animals, dirty martinis, bookstores, and those first few weeks of autumn. Her hobbies include running, cooking, taking photos, crying over her favorite music, trying to keep her room clean, and blogging away at freckleditalian.com. She currently resides on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, where she drinks wine and works in the social media & mobile apps division of a software company in downtown Roanoke. When fall and winter come around with their chilly mornings and fog, I cling to old books. My Norton Anthologies from undergrad move from my bookshelf to my bedside table, and I flip through the bent and sometimes coffee-stained pages of my favorite novels from that time. Sometimes I don’t even read the whole thing; I just page through until I find a section with a lot of underlining or notes in the margins. It reminds me of the days when the majority of my time was spent reading, sharing clothes with my girlfriends, doing work in a library.

But eventually it’s time for a winter with new books. So I’ve compromised this season, toting around three new ones with only one repeater. And I asked an old college friend to tell me what she’s reading right now, too.

--

Atonement by Ian McEwan This is my nostalgic winter read of the year.

“Cecilia knew she could not go on wasting her days in the stews of her untidied room, lying on her bed in a haze of smoke, chin propped on her hand, pins and needles spreading up through her arm as she read her way through Richardson’s Clarissa.”

Atonement very deeply conveys the power of writing. I love McEwan’s ability to tell me a story without being overly emotional and still make me feel more than some Nicholas Sparks novel would. I love that when I first read Atonement, Cecilia and I were both reading our way through Richardson’s Clarissa. It’s a book that will stay with you, and remind you of where you were in life when you first read it.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo I have literally been working on this book since June. The story is gorgeous, but I sometimes get lost in Hugo’s narration. I take breaks and read other things, which I think is fine, and people keep asking me why I don’t just put it down and forget about it. It’s so long, they say. I know that. But I started it because I thought that any novel that could inspire the songs from Les Misérables, the musical, was worth a try. And I haven’t felt like putting it down for good yet. I’m trying to finish it by Christmas, when the new film version comes out. Hey, I dreamed a dream!

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami From the back cover: “Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an ccount of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.”

One of my smartest friends gave me this book as a gift, and I’m only twenty-five pages in, but when I close the thing I’m left with the feeling that I have no idea what I’m about to get myself into. I mean that in the best possible way—this novel is already beautifully mysterious and odd.

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter The same professor (my absolute favorite ever) who had me read Atonement and Clarissa in one semester also recommended this book to my class. An English professor with a Ph.D. in British Literature, he said that every year he tries to read something from outside his field in order to see things with an open mind and stay sharp. Although not rocket science, I thought that was amazing. Right now, you’re listening to a woman who had so much trouble with math in school that she shies away from basic addition and subtraction, and certainly doesn’t make time to try to tackle algebra head-on.

Hofstadter addresses the idea of what we mean when we say “I”—is it even real? Is it just a state of consciousness? His writing is more accessible than I anticipated and he tells great stories. Never mind the fact that I bought my copy three years ago and am only on chapter four. I’ll get to it with a bit more energy soon, perhaps once I’m done with Les Misérables.

And as a bonus, here is a suggestion from my dear friend Emily, a 9th grade English teacher. When Emily suggests a book, I always pick it up.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain This book deliciously tells the story of Ernest Hemingway and Hadley, his first wife. Although this is a fictional account of their marriage, the novel is meticulously accurate on all major plot moments and was clearly written after much research. Readers will be re-introduced to familiar names such as F. Scott, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound as Hadley and Hemingway drink their way around a glittering Paris in the 1920s.

This novel is creatively, gracefully told from the perspective of Hadley, and I couldn't help but find her vulnerability infectious. I thought I knew Hemingway before this novel, but I was amazed to discover how re-shaped my perspective is now on such an electric, but selfish, man. I devoured this novel, knowing all the while that their love didn't last, hoping all the same for Hadley's happiness in the end. Once you've read this novel, you will never read The Sun Also Rises the same way again. (And, if you're like me, that's exactly what you'll pick up once you've finished the final page of The Paris Wife.)

--

So, what are you reading?

XV. Provence

There is a French television show called Plus Belle la Vie that Agnès and I watch some evenings together, sitting on her neatly arranged couch with our feet on the floor. The show is set in Marseille, the large port town just a 30-minute bus ride away from Aix, and features lots of tanned characters with dramatic relationships and secret dealing in the underground crime scene. The usual stuff of soap operas, I expect, but it's a pretty nice half hour that I spend with Agnès. I’d take any kind of connection with her at this point. Our time together, however, does not always go uninterrupted.

Agnès’s son is named Jérôme. He is 13 years old and spends most of his time when he’s not at school in his room, playing online games or doing homework. I’ve been living in this small apartment for weeks, and I’ve still barely spent any time in the same room with him. Jérôme opts not to eat at the kitchen table for dinner most of the time, which I had never heard of in a French household until now. When he decides that he is hungry or just wants an answer to a homework problem he can’t solve, he shrieks Maman! Viens! in his shrill, pubescent voice. Mom! Come here!

And just like that, Agnès wordlessly gets up and goes. I stare after her every time, wondering why.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Bethany Suckrow is a food-instagramming, coffee-obsessed writer at bethanysuckrow.com, where she shares both prose and poetry related to life, faith, storytelling and creativity. Her writing has been featured in Prodigal Magazine and Relevant Magazine. She and her musician husband Matt live in the Chicago suburbs. I set out at the beginning of the year with a goal to read twelve books, hoping for an average of one a month. I began this endeavor with a few fiction classics I had always wanted to read---On the Road, A Moveable Feast---and then I plowed through the entire Hunger Games series after my cousin insisted I borrow them (after Twilight, I've grown wary of fiction fads). As the year went on, an unintended proclivity for nonfiction emerged from my choices---memoir-style works on faith, to be specific. Some I had been wanting to read, some were given to me, some I stumbled across. Reflecting back on this unintended theme in my reading life this year, I've realized that my spiritual life was starving for enrichment.

And how better to feed my spirit than to consume the written word?

This list of books has challenged the way that I express my faith, internally and externally. They've given me a better understanding of the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith, the benefit of learning from the authors' faith journeys, and encouragement as a woman when I don't understand the stories found within Scripture.

I'm curious---what do you read to fill your spirit and refresh your faith, whatever tradition you identify with---agnostic, atheist, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist? Are there any fiction books you've read that have fulfilled you spiritually?

Blue Like Jazz

by Donald Miller

Originally published in 2003, Miller's Blue Like Jazz is a spiritual memoir subtitled "Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality." A lot of my friends read it in college, but I didn't pick it up until early this year. I appreciated this book for Miller's rawness as he wrestles with his belief in God and how he expresses his belief to others.

A quote from the book that explains its unusual title : "The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands."

Mudhouse Sabbath

by Lauren Winner

After her conversion from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, Lauren Winner sought ways to incorporate the spiritual principles of Judaism into her Christian faith through the rich traditions and practices that she grew up with. What she shares in this short book is more than ritual, but an invitation to explore eleven Jewish spiritual practices that offer a transformative view of God, the world, and our relationship to both. I have loved uncovering the layers of symbolism found in the Jewish tradition that Christianity has thrown by the wayside. So much of what Jesus did spoke directly to those rituals and the meaning behind them, but Christians don't often understand them because we neither study nor practice them. Rediscovering them has helped me understand Jesus's teachings on a deeper level.

Ruminate Magazine, Issue 25 : Unraveling the Dark

This latest issue of Ruminate Magazine titled "Unraveling the Dark" explores our cultural preoccupation with remaining positive. Having lost my mother early this year, the theme of this edition touched the depth of my sadness in a way that few things have been able to during this season in my life.

Nicole Rollender's poem, "Necessary Work" throws life and death, dark and light, into high contrast with lines like, "the beautiful plum falling / from its long branch, then sweetly decomposing."

It is exhausting to live with the reality of loss, even more so to daily extol the "blessings" of grief that Christians, for some reason, always seem to expect of one another. "Unraveling the Dark" offers relief in its somber reflection on the darkness of life's circumstances. After all, even the psalmists bore lament.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood

by Rachel Held Evans

I had the pleasure of meeting and dining with Rachel Held Evans at STORY Conference this year, and there I also heard her speak about her new book, released this month, which chronicles her pursuit of "biblical womanhood" over the course of one year, as she explores the literal interpretations of the Bible's instructions for women.

I commend Evans for her grace, humor and valor in challenging what Christians, especially those of the evangelical persuasion, believe about women's role in the home, the workforce, and the Church. Having grown up in a faith tradition that is infamous for repressing diversity and gender equality, I found Evans' book enlightening and empowering. You can read extended excerpts of Biblical Womanhood on Evans' blog.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

by Anne Lamott

This one is actually on my Christmas wish-list and so I haven't read it yet, but if it's anything like Bird by Bird or Traveling Mercies, Help, Thanks, Wow will be a great read for continuing my habit of memoir-style spiritual nonfiction into 2013. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott distills our groanings of the spirit to three simple prayers for help, gratitude and wonder. You can read a wonderful excerpt of it on Salon.