Sometimes I wonder why I chose to study film and not something more practical.  Well, yesterday I had an insight into why I made that decision. I was talking with a pathologist about her job when she made an observation that took me completely by surprise.  She told me the most difficult thing about her job is keeping an open mind.  She explained that she has seen her pathologist friends over the years go from being very “wide-minded” people to very narrow-minded people.

“It’s all about the job,” she said.  ”All day, every day, we look into a microscope.  We intentionally narrow our vision.  We must ignore everything else except this microscopic thing right in front of our eyes.  I am not looking at a whole person to find their disease.  I am only looking at a small piece of his kidney or her lung to find the disease.  It begins to affect your outlook on life too.”

She went on to explain how she saw her pathologist friends narrow their views of morality, religion, politics, family life, etc. until they could no longer contextually evaluate anything.  She finds she must be very intentional about keeping an open mind to not fall into the same rut as her colleagues.

As she was talking, the light bulb clicked on for me.  ”That’s why I chose to study mass communications!”  I love gathering information from a variety of sources.  I feel stifled if I am stuck with the same thing for too long.  I feel the most fulfilled when I am in situations where I am encouraged to have an open mind.  I want to live with a wide view.

Lent began yesterday.  For myself, it was ushered in with snow, stress, and rejection of sweets.

Lent is a time for reflection and contemplation.  It is a time for removing as much “noise” from one’s life as possible in order to listen all the more closely to God.  It is a time for fasting from some earthly pleasures (most commonly food) in order to “feast” all the more on the Word of God.  It is a time for remembering our frailty before the mighty triumph of the cross.

This Lent I am especially aware of the fragility of life and the frailty of the human soul.  It has been a difficult year for me.  A year of confronting the limitations of man.

I am a newly-wed and though I love being married, it has brought a new awareness of the brokenness of mankind.  As my new husband and I learn to love one another sacrificially, we realize how much self-centeredness still resides within us.  And as we struggle to move above our own needs to be more concerned with the needs of the other, I realize just how needy we all are.

My mother is in the hospital with a rather serious condition.  It is shocking to me that my mother, who is usually one of the most active people I know, is confined to a bed and an IV drip.  10 days ago she was a flurry of energy and now her body is forcing her to lay still.  Suddenly my whole family is confronted with the fragility of life.

This winter feels like one of the longest I’ve ever experienced.  The rain and the snow just keep coming.  The bitter cold blows through my scarf into the tiny opening of my coat collar.  I struggle to stand upright against the wind some days.  I have literally seen the sun only once in the last two weeks.  As the skies stay closed and foreboding, it is easier to feel the metaphorical heavens closed as well.

For Lent this year, I am giving up meat and sweets.  I have never chosen an especially unique Lenten fast.  I prefer the traditional fasts because I like to think about the community of saints through history and throughout the world today joining in the same fast.  But even with these lofty aims for observing the fast, I feel silly admitting how actually difficult it is for me to give up sweets.  They are my tiny rewards in the midst of a long day.  A cup of hot chocolate (with a cookie on the side) at the end of a tiring day brings an embarrassing amount of pleasure.  Giving up even these small luxuries feels almost like pain to me.  Realizing this makes me feel humbler, smaller, weaker, and just plain sillier than I would ever like to think of myself.

Though all of these things are wearying to both my body and my soul, that is the purpose of Lent.  To bring us to a place of admitting once again that we are nothing on our own.  Our bodies and our souls are much too weak to bring about our own uplifting.  It is only through focusing on the lifting up of the body of one Man that we can find strength or joy in our utter frailty, fragility and weakness.

Unfortunately I do not reside in a parish from which I could receive the Office of the Ashes.  So even though my head remained unmarred, I carry with me every day the searing of the cross on my heart this Lenten season.

And I am eagerly looking forward to opening the tomb and celebrating the life and warmth that it could not contain.

Am I ready for spring? Oh yes, please!  But in the midst of the grey of the winter, I’m reminded of all the beautiful colors that are covered up in each one of us.  I don’t enjoy teaching but I do enjoy getting to know my students.  We start with, “Hello.  What’s your name?” and progress to “What do you do?” and many months later I may be able to ask, “What’s your favorite movie and why?”.  Though this process can seem a little tedious at times, it is never boring.  Each student, no matter how boring or grey he or she seems at the first lesson, eventually reveals a world of color.  Like the student whose career is mechanical designing (still don’t know what it is but she sure loves her job!) or the student who is 65 and his favorite hobby is gardening with his wife (meanwhile sharing reading glasses with his wife in class!) or the student who has worked very hard to become a doctor but whose real delight is discussing current events (well, and also the latest conspiracy theory!).  So many colors.  It’s really astonishing sometimes.

May we always look for spring.

Though planning a wedding is quite the creative endeavor, apart from that, I’m not sure that I have made anything for quite some time.  I have been mulling over this for a while, wondering what aspects if creativity I should pursue.  But to be perfectly honest, I’m feeling kind of tired.  Worn out from a year full of life changes, most of which have been incredibly wonderful, but big changes none the less.  My spirit is a little weary.

But I was reminded yesterday that creativity is supposed to be a refreshing, pleasurable experience.  Father Capon in his book “Light Theology & Heavy Cream” remarks, “the root of all creativity…whether of the divine, strictly ex nihilo variety or of the human, less strict, out-of-thin-air sort, is one thing and one thing only: delight.  The great world exists because it is the apple of God’s eye–because he says ‘Good!’…And the lesser worlds we make by our words–our poiemata, our poems, whether of science, art, or craft–all likewise exist because somewhere a poet could be found to speak them into the dance of her delight.”

Looking forward to using words for delight a little more frequently now.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

I feel like I need to do a Writer’s Confession and clear my conscience before I can start productively writing again.

Let’s see.  I graduated without a job lined up.  I entered the real world and moved into an apartment with friends and began looking for a job right away.  I had just started dating an incredible guy and was all caught up in that.  I was stressed about job searching and spent hours online everyday looking and emailing and calling about potential jobs.  I got a part-time job that was more stress and commute than the money was worth.

I was already planning to take a couple months break from writing before I took it up seriously again.  I needed to detox from years of writing just for school and to finish projects.  I wanted to learn how to write for myself again.  But then a couple months became several months and I still wasn’t writing very seriously.  Through all of this, I was, ironically, part of a writer’s group (which is the only reason I even attempted the poetry and short stories).  I LOVED the writer’s group.  I loved hearing what people were thinking about writing and reading and critiquing what they were writing.  And I was very jealous.  Why were words so hard for me to put down on paper?  They used to come so freely.  Unbeckoned even, at times.

Then I got a job in another country teaching ESL.  Not my dream job by any stretch of the imagination but a job.  That incredible guy that I was dating came along too.  And I was falling in love.  Head over heels kind of love.  It’s kind of funny.  I always imagined that when I fell in love it would unlock some hidden reserve of words and language.  I would suddenly become a prolific poet and understand the meaning of life well enough to condense it into short story after short story.  I would write the most romantic screenplay ever imagined.  Even “Casablanca” would be incomparable.  My Prince Charming would not carry me off to his castle but instead become the ultimate muse.  Well, that didn’t happen.  Instead I was so caught up in falling in love that I just quit writing.

I think I am only just now beginning to understand why.  I am naturally private person and writing is a form of sharing for me.  Words are so important to me that sharing words with other people is an emotional undertaking.  I also thrive on sharing ideas.  Writing for me has always been a way of sharing ideas.  (And oddly, it always feels like I’m sharing ideas even when no one is actually reading my writing.)  I love sharing!  But it takes work on my part and some sacrifice as well.  Getting to know this incredible man necessitated that I share a lot of words with him.  I love talking with him.  I love telling him my ideas and hearing his thoughts and critiques.  Part of the reason I fell in love with him is because I love sharing words with him so much.  But suddenly, I no longer needed my writing in order to share ideas.  I was speaking my words instead of writing my words.  And I was talking A LOT.  Between getting to know him and teaching language, I was sharing words and ideas almost every waking moment.  I had no words left for writing.

We got engaged.  We are busy working and planning our wedding.  We are growing more and more in love.  I am a no more of a poet now than before.  (And in fact, I find some romantic poetry that I used to enjoy to just be nauseating these days.)  I may be a little closer to understanding the meaning of life but much further from neatly synthesizing it into a short story.

But, I am beginning to feel the words building again.  I look at my computer and my fingers begin to itch to fly across the keys and share some thoughts again.  I read a story and think of five of my own again.  I’m even tempted to open the computer file marked “scripts” and start editing one again.  I remember there are publications called “magazines” and “literary journals” that will at least glance at a submission I send.  I remember that there are a lucky few who actually make their living through sharing words through writing.  And that old longing to write and ponder a story to near obsession is returning.  Now to find the time to actually do it…

Thank you for hearing my confession.  Please tell me to go and dawdle no more.

I read in the summer.  Sometimes during the summer I read shelves of books.  But I hardly ever write.  Oh, I may turn out a poem or two, maybe even start a short story, but nothing serious or that ever really comes to anything.  I started to realize this yesterday when I walked home in the rain and came up with two or three separate short story ideas in the space of forty minutes.  I fully realized it this morning as I walked to the bus and noticed the cooler air and autumn light of September.  Something in my mind is stirring and something in my heart is beating harder and I want to write.

Now I’m trying to figure out why I never write in the summer.  Is it something I trained myself to do after years of school?  I write so much during the school year that I want the summer to rest?  Or maybe because I have a freer schedule my writing just gets neglected?  Is it related to the warmer weather?  Does the heat dampen my feelings of creativity?  Whatever the reason, I need to take steps to keep writing creatively even when I’m not feeling creativity.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the renewed creativity and really looking forward to autumn words.

Anyway, I wandered into a clothing store (not Anthropologie) the other day because I was bored and they had interesting window dressing.  I was not planning on buying anything and then I saw these headbands:

I have always like peacock feathers.  I think it is because of the colors and the way that they seem to invoke bygone eras.  The current trend of headbands with decoration on the side comes off as very classy (as opposed to little girlish) and is more flattering to most women’s faces.

Alas, these headbands were $24 (and that’s before California’s ridiculously high sales tax) which just seemed a little excessive for a headband with a few feathers glued on so I backed away slowly and left the store.  I’m hoping to maybe find one in a knock-off fashion store.

Now, was that trivial enough?  Can little things like trendy headbands even deserve the word beauty attached to them?

Violets are blue,

ACHOOOO!

Now where was I?

(I was in bed with a cold for most of the week and feeling rather moody so I thought I would try to write some moody poetry.  The problem was that when I am sick I cannot keep a thought in my head for more than a few moments at a time so I ended up with a bunch of moody lines but no poems.  This is the result of that experience.)