Filed under: Writing | Tags: Burnside Writers Collective, Emily Dickinson, Eugene Peterson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Image Journal, Sabbath
I’ve been busy lately. I worked long hours the last two months – along with the editor, Jordan Green, and our web guy, John Whitaker – to get the new Burnside Writers Collective website up and running. We launched on Monday, but there is still much work to be done. I recently completed a couple assignments for Relevant online. I am writing two book reviews for the November/December issue of Relevant Magazine (deadline: next week), and I am working on a 4,000 word journalistic piece for Relevant’s January/February issue (deadline: the end of October). I write occasionally for the BWC. I also do a lot of reading and writing for the On the Narrow Road project. And now I am writing 30 essays for a book that may have found a publisher (deadline: February). All this on top of work and family and community.
I’ve always been process oriented rather than task oriented, but that has changed. It’s strange to see my calendar filled with to-do lists, and frustrating that I never get all the way through my lists. My index finger has started twitching a couple times a day, either from stress or from the massive amounts of caffeine coursing through my veins.
My biggest concern with all this is not that I will grow distant from my family or my community, or that my work won’t get done. Kate, Dave, and my other friends are there to pull me back from those particular paths. No, my primary fear is that I will become alienated from language, my lifeblood, which is to become alienated from myself.
With this on my mind today, I read an interview with Eugene Peterson in the latest issue of Image. Peterson was talking about the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickinson. Dickinson’s poetry, in particular, which seems spontaneous and less self-conscious, has influenced Peterson as a writer and pastor. “Can I do nothing in terms of publication, publicity, or getting a job done, but instead focus on getting this language into myself – written, spoken, prayed – unselfconsciously?” he said. “If I can, then I’m being honest.”
And so I am instituting a few Sabbath practices starting now. Each day I want to spend at least half an hour reading something just because it’s beautiful; each day I want to spend at least half an hour writing something I have no immediate intention of publishing. Saturdays are my Sabbaths. I won’t publish anything on this blog, On the Narrow Road, or the Writers Collective. I will read a good book, share poetry with Kate and Molly, and write just because I love to write and because that is how I make sense of the world. I need to regularly reconnect with language, and to be nourished by it.
The last few days I’ve been listening to the newly remastered versions of my favorite Beatles records, “Revolver” and “Rubber Soul.” I imported the music into my iTunes, but instead of converting the files into MP3 or AAC, I am listening to the album in WAV format. The result is a revelation. The sound is magnificent.
These records are also changing the way I listen to other music in my library – especially the really great music. How much clarity, detail, and nuance do I sacrifice by compressing my music into lossy AAC files? Granted, the new “Revolver” album takes up ten times the space as the old one. I can currently fit something like 2,000 albums on my iPod. Is it worth carrying only 200 albums in my pocket if it means that the music I’m listening to is closer to what The Beatles – or Dylan, Cash, Cooke, Willie, Miles, and Thelonious – had in mind when they made it?
from “Little Girls in Church”:
“When I was four, I could draw as well as Raphael. It has taken me my whole life to learn to draw like a four-year-old child.” – Pablo Picasso
I.
Late one summer evening
we thought you lost
in the ravine
behind the house. You told me once
God cut it in the earth, angry
because people would not love him.You had built a cocoon of branches
and were curled
inside it, sound asleep.
We broke it open, unfolded you,
and carried you to the house.After first communion,
I held the veil you handed me
and felt suddenly ashamed
that we’d broken in like that,
the branches too thick,
the entrance too low and narrow
for us to crawl through. And now
you’d see us
for the fools we were,
celebrating nothing
in the disastrous place we’d brought you to.II.
Now it begins: the search for a God
who has moved on, the
God-please-help-me need
you still can’t image; strangely
twisted landscapes
in which you may not rest.
The pillar of cloud
you saw march across the plain
will pass you by; some younger child
will see it.It was given
so easily, and now you must learn
to ask for it back.
It’s not so terrible;
it’s like the piano lessons you love
and hate. You know how you want
the music to sound
but have to practice, half in tears,
without much hope.
My new glasses are made by the same guy who created my daughter’s favorite bedtime book, “Only in Dreams” (Molly calls is “Monkey Dreams”). Apparently Paul Frank is kind of a big deal. Now that I’m wearing his glasses, I am too.
Number of Riders: 2*
Total Miles: 21.12
Average Speed: 12.5 mph
Max Speed: 33.0 mph
Total Trip Time: Approx. 3 hours 35 minutes
Total Riding Time: Approx. 1 hour 45 minutes
Time Spent Talking about Writing and Publishing with Long Lost Friend: 1 hour 20 minutes
Cinnamon Rolls from Fleur de Lis Bakery Consumed While Sitting in a Park with Long Lost Friend: 2
Mayor Sightings at Little Ride Bike Café: 1
Time the Two Riders Spent Lounging in John’s Front Yard Postponing the Butt-Kicking Ride to Dave’s House on Mt. Tabor: 30 minutes
Hills Conquered: 3
Hills Left Unconquered: 3
Calories Burned: 1250 (est.)
Fatigue Level: High
Books Bought at Garage Sale: 3**
Days Since Last Shower: 3
Body Odor Level: Extreme
Hours Until Next Ride: 15
* John Pattison and Dave Johnson
** Honey and Salt, by Carl Sandburg; The Cadence of Grass, by Thomas McGuane; The Wilderness World of John Muir, ed. by Edwin Way Teale
Tomorrow morning Kate will be running in Hood to Coast, at 197 miles the longest relay race in the world. More than 12,000 runners are expected to participate. Kate and her eleven teammates will start the race at Mt. Hood and end on the beach in Seaside. I don’t understand running, and I especially don’t understand running upwards of 20 miles in 36 hours. Undertaking this race is one of the craziest things Kate has ever done – but I am immensely proud of her.
Kate, I wish I could write an ode to your run, but W.H. Auden beat me to it again:
The camera’s eye
Does not lie
But it cannot show
The life within,
The life of a runner,
Of yours or mine,
That race which is neither
Fast nor slow,
For nothing can ever
Happen twice,
That story which moves
Like music when
Begotten notes
New notes beget
Making the flowing
Of time a growing
Till what it could be
At last it is,
Where Fate is Freedom,
Grace and Surprise.(from “Runner”)
I can’t wait to see you cross that finish line on Saturday.
This passage from “Acedia & Me” reminds me of blogs, talk radio, and the faddishness of social justice in certain pockets of American Christianity.
Though we may think ourselves far too liberated to be considered prigs, the writer Marilynne Robinson insists that this is exactly what we have become. She points out that the polarized tenor of our social discourse epitomizes the dictionary definition of priggishness, as “marked by overvaluing oneself or one’s ideas, habits, notions, by precise…adherence to them, and by small disparagement of others.” It may be easy to profess not to believe in sin, but it is hard not to believe in sinners, so we embrace the comfortable notion that at least they are other people. “I’m a good person, but God hates homosexuals.” “I’m a good person, but God condemns homophobes.” “I’m a good person, but the homeless are irresponsible bums.” “I’m a good person, but those who denigrate the homeless are evil.” “Good people like me support our president.” “Good people like me oppose the president.” The loud litany of self-aggrandizement that reverberates through out culture convinces me that, for all of our presumed psychological sophistication, we remain at a primitive stage in our capacity to understand the reality of sin…
In the fourteenth century, Chaucer warned that “a great heart is needed against acedia, lest it swallow up the soul.” But in a priggish culture such as ours, this magnanimity of spirit is precisely what we lack, and if we persist in denying any truth but our own, the danger to society is that our perspective will remain so narrow and self-serving that we lost the ability to effect meaningful change. Robinson wonders, in fact, whether we have made such a fetish of social concern and criticism that we have eroded our belief that genuine reform is possible. Anger over injustice may inflame us, but that’s a double-edged sword. If our indignation feels too good, it will attach to our arrogance and pride and leave us ranting in a void.
Filed under: Commonplace Book | Tags: Kathleen Norris, Liturgy, Portland, The Bible
This has been a year of weather extremes in Portland. Last winter the city was socked by snow and ice storms it didn’t have the money, equipment, personnel, or material (salt and sand) to deal with. Everything was shut down for days. We couldn’t get our car out of the cul-de-sac for a week – which was fine with me.
Last month, Portland came within a degree of breaking its all-time high temperature. I heard from someone that that day Portland was the third hottest place in the world, hotter even than Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Portland also came close to breaking its record for the most consecutive days over 100 degrees. The weather outside today is a relatively mild 83 degrees but it is humid and I am grumpy.
I’ve expended a lot of energy this year complaining about the weather. I know we don’t have it so bad – I’ve heard stories of heat in Phoenix so intense that it melts the pavement – but perspective is difficult for me on this. Mid-August is usually when I start to physically crave the rain, and this year especially so.
I’ve been reading Kathleen Norris’s latest book, “Acedia & Me.” In addition to being a personal, cultural, historical, spiritual and literary exploration of acedia – an uncommon enough word, meaning “absence of care,” that Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize it – this moving book recalls her marriage to the poet David Dwyer, his struggles with mental illness, and his death from cancer in 2003.
There is a passage in chapter six in which Norris remembers walking to visit her husband in a psychiatric ward on a day when it was so frigid that it hurt to breathe. As she cursed the cold and icy pavement under feet, she recalled the words of a canticle from the Sunday divine office. She was, she wrote, unaccountably consoled. “The words were now a part of me, and when I most needed them, the rhythms of my walking had stirred them up, to erode my anxiety and self-pity, and remind me that blessings may be found in all things.” All things, indeed.
I’m trying to commit the words from that canticle to memory. They are my second entry in my commonplace book.
Bless the Lord, winter cold and summer heat…
Bless the Lord, dews and falling snow…
Bless the Lord, nights and days…
Bless the Lord, light and darkness…
Bless the Lord, ice and cold…
Bless the Lord, frosts and snows;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever
(Daniel 3:45-50)
Filed under: Books, Commonplace Book, Cycling, Family, Writing | Tags: Dave, Moosefest, Northern Exposure, Poor Old Dirt Farmer
A lot has happened since last we met. Kate and I are not moving to Chico. We decided a few weeks ago to let the lease on our apartment lapse at the end of September. We are going to spend much of the next year traveling around the country. The purpose of this grand adventure is to travel along the highways and byways of America, visiting churches, meeting people, learning about their faith, and trying to better understand our own spiritual heritage. We are chronicling our journey on a new blog: http://onthenarrowroad.com. I will be writing a series of articles about our trip for one or more publications (specifics coming soon), and I hope the journey culminates in a book. This is a project we’ve been contemplating for three years, but with Molly starting preschool soon, and our deepening desire to buy a little acreage somewhere and put down roots, we feel like it’s now or never.
I think the Contours of a Country blog will take on at least three main themes. First, I will use it as a commonplace book. Second, I want to write more about what I’m reading, including a series I want to do with Poor Old Dirt Farmer called “Thirteen Books that Changed John and Dave,” inspired by Jay Parini’s book. Third, I want to write more about biking. This is right in line with the title of this blog – something I haven’t explained before – which comes from a quote from Ernest Hemingway: “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best…”
I hope you’ll follow us at On the Narrow Road. Even better, maybe we can meet you somewhere along our journey.
For the first entry in my commonplace book, I point you toward the latest post on Poor Old Dirt Farmer. Like PODF, I have been watching the show “Northern Exposure” on DVD. “Northern Exposure” was one of the few television shows my mom watched when I was growing up. My younger brother Dustin also liked the show, and he ended up marrying a girl who looks kind of like Maggie, the show’s female lead character. The setting for the show is the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska. (The show was filmed in the town of Roslyn, Washington, which holds an annual Northern Exposure Festival called Moosefest. Kate and I will try to work that into next year’s itinerary.)
Also like PODF, I feel like I have found a kindred spirit in the character of Chris, an artist and morning DJ on the local radio station. Chris is an ex-con who has found a home on the Alaskan frontier. He taught himself physics, theoretical mathematics, psychotherapy, and literature. His guiding lights include Carl Jung, Walt Whitman, Soren Kierkegaard, James Joyce, and Thomas Merton.
Anyway, PODF wrote a great post this morning that includes a clip from my favorite scene in the show – Chris at his best. I’ll go further and say it is one of the best scenes from any episode of any show. Read the post. Then Netflick the DVDs. “Northern Exposure” is a smart, funny program that you deserve to rediscover.
Americans need room to buy stuff Americans don’t need.
I read an article in last week’s New York Times Magazine about the movement to convert vacant retail space into churches, museums, libraries, schools, and other community spaces.
The article’s author, Rob Walker, quoted some statistics from a book called “Retrofitting Suburbia,” by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson. The statistics were somehow shocking but not at all surprising. In 1986, the United States had about 15 square feet of retail space per person in shopping centers. By 2003, that figure had increased by a third to 20 square feet. “The next countries on the list are Canada (13 square feet per person) and Australia (6.5 square feet).” The European country with the most retail space per person in shopping centers is Sweden, of course, at 3 square feet per person.
Interesting note: As of October 2008, Portland had the country’s fourth lowest level of retail space in shopping centers per person among major American cities, according to to this report with the ironic title from CoStar Advisors. At 14.43 square feet person (which is still huge), Portland comes in behind New York City (1.66 square feet), Long Island (9.3 square feet), and San Francisco (12.25 square feet). (The picture above is of Portland’s mall, the Lloyd Center.)
CoStar also calculated the total retail space per capita (shopping centers and everything else) for the 59 major markets. Those 59 markets have an estimated average of 43.71 square feet of retail space for every man, woman, and child in the city. Portland has the third lowest retail space per capita at 27.95 square feet, trailing Long Island and Charlotte. The market with the most retail space per capita is Southwest Florida at 74 square feet, followed by Richmod, Winston-Salem, Greenville, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Toledo, San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Birmingham.
This is a post about our priorities.
