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| I am sitting in the Boston Public Garden. It is a cool day but the sun is warm. An old man with a vest is playing the saxophone. I am hungry but loathe the idea of spending money on food when there is no one with whom to share it. Ironically, I spent the afternoon paging through food magazines. I got a job working as a chef at a boarding house in Back Bay. Next week is my first full week and I am planning the menu of all menus. Planning is what I do these days. Very little living and very much planning.
I had plans for tomorrow but they fell through, as most of my plans are wont to do. Thursday I earn money by cleaning. Friday I will help cook the going away meal for the chef who I am replacing. Saturday I will go to North Carolina. There is life to be lived in North Carolina! I get to see my housemates from last year and engage in general wedding frivolity. It shall be lively and frivolous. Amy and Zac don't like cake so they are having a chocolate fountain. Not-cake people are my kind of people. And then when I come back I will be responsible for feeding twenty guys. Real work is affirming. Having a job makes me feel much more rooted. Several times this month I've felt like I could be anywhere and it wouldn't matter because I'm not contributing anything to the world. But feeding people is a contribution. So I think the most difficult part of this phase is over. And then in a few weeks I will have a place to live! I will be like a normal person!
I am going to give a dollar to the saxophone man. He is playing a beautifully sad song. I haven't given anything to anyone in awhile. I tried to buy a cookie for M-J two evenings ago, but when we arrived at the bakery it was closed. Another of my plans gone awry. | | |
| I feel as though my creative mind is really stale at the moment. Fortunately, I start working on Friday. Creative work. Cooking work. I'm thrilled to say that I got a job as a chef at a boarding house. It's fun to respond to the "What do you do?" with "I'm a chef" when meeting people these days. It gets a much better response than "I'm straight out of school and have no idea what to do with my life."
This week is odd because I'm not looking for a job, but I have nothing to do, so I get to guiltlessly wile away the hours.
Anyhow, I decided to pull out some paint and sit on the porch, but as soon as I sat down it immediately got cloudy. Uninspiring clouds. Just one big, gray flat boringness. I tried painting the house across the street, but it was starting to look like a kindergarten project, so I started dumping paint on the canvas. I've never painted an abstract before. Now it looks like a preschool project. Good thing I paid $3 for the canvas.
I decided to finish reading "Surprised by Hope" because I thought that might be inspiring, but it was less inspiring than I hoped. Extremely good - I recommend it to everyone - however, good theology tends to be unsurprising, and I was unsurprised. I would go bang on a piano, but I just left the house with the piano. Perhaps I'll try reading a novel.
Any suggestions on how to unstale one's mind? | | |
| My New Favorite Picture
My mom just finished a stint as a nun - in the Sound of Music, not an actual convent. Look at all of those children! If it were an actual convent, she would not be considered a very good nun. | | |
| Yesterday was literally bookended by two interesting strangers. I had a job interview in downtown Boston, so my day began at the commuter rail, sitting on the wooden benches next to an old man, who talked about his career as an artist. I found him a little bit difficult to understand, but he said that if I had some paper, he would draw something for me. The only paper I had were mapquest directions, and I didn't want any of the ink from his thick sharpie to bleed through and obscure the map to my interview. That would be a picture of true disaster.
He asked me for my book. It was a copy of "Absalom, Absalom" that I picked up for 50c at the library book sale. I handed it to him and he drew a sketch on the back cover.
Took the train in, had a decent interview, met a friend for lunch, then sat in Starbucks and read "Absalom, Absalom" which is not a good thing to do if the world disturbs you. The afternoon felt endless, perhaps because Faulkner's writing circles round and round the same disturbing events like a vulture over a carcass that's stuck under barbed wire.
I haven't quite figured out how to read Faulkner. You can't decipher him sentence by sentence, or even paragraph by paragraph, you have to push on through. Yet his writing is so dense I want to ponder each sentence because it feels like I'm just skipping over all the depth. His writing is beautiful, but Absalom is like being lost in a swamp. I love "The Sound and the Fury" because it becomes clearer and clearer; the fog dissipates as you move on through the story. Absalom isn't foggy, it's swampy. Within thirty pages you roughly know what's happened and then you keep plodding around it in circles that all sort of look the same. Okay, so I'm only a third of the way through the book. Must plod on.
Anyhow, met some girls in Dorchester that have a room available. They were nice, the rent is a good price, but did I mention it's in Dorchester? Anyhow, I took the T back to the other side of town to catch the commuter rail, and missed my train by five minutes, which meant I had to wait another half hour. I tried to bide the time with Faulkner, but there is only so much plodding a girl can do in one day. Makes the joints sore. So when a man sat down next to me, with a suitcase that had obviously come through an airport, I decided to spark a conversation.
"Where did you fly in from?"
"Fort Lauderdale," he replied with an accent.
"And where are you heading to?"
"Haverhill. And you, where did you come from?"
"I'm just in the city for a job interview."
"So you are American." (Do I really look that foreign? He's not the first to assume this.)
"Yes. Where are you from?"
"Haiti."
So we proceeded to talk about Haiti for a half an hour. Fortunately, I read Mountains Beyond Mountains last year, a fabulous beyond fabulous book that talks a great deal about Haiti.
"Most Haitians, when they come to the U.S., they talk about how terrible Haiti is," he said. "But it is a wonderful place. All countries have wonderful things about them. And there is bad crime in some parts of the United States."
" I would love to see it."
"Oh you should. Have you tried to get a job with the UN? They pay very well."
Then he said he would give me his phone number and email in case I ever decide to visit Haiti. Not wanting to lose it, I asked him to write it in the front cover of my book. Learning French, visiting Haiti, and getting hired by the UN will probably not happen anytime soon, but it's a good idea to be prepared.
And that is how my day was bookended. | | |
| BatmanSome people think Bush is the Joker, and others hail him as the Batman.
Me, I get annoyed when good fiction is overly politicized. Flannery O'Connor once wrote about how much she disliked it when people dissected her stories and spread the intestines all over a table. I concur. It's messy and gross and splayed intestines are so very flat. Political readings flatten a story. Those interpreting the politics see it all from one side, whereas the best fiction keeps many things in a robust, three-dimensional tension. Batman and the Joker are both symbols, and accordingly, are quite fluid. Bush is a man, and accordingly, quite complex (and fluid). As is fiction. As are not political commentaries. | | |
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