libros mayo

the random stuff i read this month:
olivia joules & the overactive imagination by helen fielding, author of bridget jones's diary. i am definitly not a fan of chick lit but i found this book for 5 bucks in the bargain section at borders & for some reason it looked good. the london times said "if bridget jones shaped & named a certain kind of life in the 1990's, it looks as if olivia joules, helen fielding's new heroine, may do the same for the new decade." i admit i did like the protagonist. but i should warn you that if you decide to pick up this book you should be prepared for things like... a man who looks like osama bin laden showing up at a face-cream launch in miami. a girl that alternates back & forth between falling in love with said osama-look-a-like-man & thinking he is the head of a secret terrorist group. bombs on boats. drugs stuck in bags while in a foreign country. bombs in the oscar statues at the academy awards. & much more, all nicely wrapped up with a textbook happy ending in maui. not exactly a classic. however, if you want to be distracted this is the book for you.
on a completely different note, i just read the book messy spirituality by michael yaconelli & loved it. from the cover... "this book is for messy christians. christians with problems, christians who struggle, men & women who do things they regret. if you're haunted by your personal inconsistencies, doubts, addictions, failures, by all the things you think exclude you from God's pleasure, then messy spirituality not only will encourage you & perhaps even shock you - it will also free you... to embrace the high & low adventures of real-life faith."
other good stuff this month:
frangipani by celestine vaite, a book i found on the borders 'new voices' list, double act by jacqueline wilson, a british kids book from the bbc top 100 & criss cross by lynne rae perkins, the 2006 newbery winner. and i kindof hate to admit this, but i am about half way through 700 sundays by billy crystal. exactly the kind of book i would mock (mainly just because it looks like a typical celebrity biography) but i got too many recommendations so i had to try it. and as it turns out i will totally recommend it too. publishers weekly said... "Reading the book version of comedian Crystal's Broadway solo show can be initially off-putting. The jokes he uses to warm up his audience (on why Jews eat Chinese food on Sunday nights, his complaints about his circumcision, the nasal pronunciation of Jewish names, etc.) are distinctly unfunny on the page. But once Crystal is finished with shtick and on to the story of his marvelous Long Island family, readers will be glad they can savor it at their own pace. There's the story of Crystal's uncle Milt Gabler, who started the Commodore music label and recorded Billie Holiday singing 'Strange Fruit' when no one else would. Then there's the Sunday afternoon when Holiday takes young Crystal to see his first movie at what later became the Fillmore East. There's even Louis Armstrong at the Crystal family seder, with Crystal's grandma telling the gravelly-voiced singer, 'Louis, have you tried just coughing it up?' At the heart of these tales is Crystal's father, the man who bought his little boy a tape recorder when he announced he wanted to be a comedian and didn't scold when he recycled off-color borscht belt routines for family gatherings. Crystal's dad worked two jobs and died young, so they had maybe 700 Sundays together — but how dear they were."

life can be peaches & cream

after a week of steady cloud cover & seattle rain, today the sun came out...jenny & i decided to use the occasion to start the summer off right, at a little place i like to call the puget sound.

we were sitting at home & we were antsy so we got in the car with some coffee & some music & explored such exotic places as federal way & des moines. it turns out there is more to these seattle suburbs than just alot of terriaki places & a coffee stand on every corner.

it wasn't long before we found ourselves here...

a big long op-ed about auschwitz, java island, memorial day & empathy

normally i wouldn't really go out of my way to do anything different on memorial day. (my family actually had a discussion yesterday about whether we were supposed to be remembering vets -- or if that was just veterans day & today was for remembering anyone who died? clearly we haven't spent alot of time thinking about this particular holiday.)
but as it happens the thought of disasters has been on my mind a bit lately. on wednesday night i watched oprah & elie wiesel (author of the book night), visit the nazi death camp, auschwitz & talk about what life was like during that war. i've been to auschwitz. but something about it just sunk in, watching & listening wednesday night, in a different way than it had before.
world war 2 isn't exactly a shock to us. it's history. i grew up knowing that a guy named hitler had set out to destroy the jewish race, i grew up knowing that the world had tried to ignore him for awhile. i knew millions had died, i knew about occupation, & death camps & war. it just doesn't really have the element of surprise anymore. which is weird -- because i still get shocked by my own suffering. as if i expected suffering to be only something that happened back in the 50's or something.
my life over the last year has been pretty crappy. i've had to face up to alot of loss & death & alot of aloneness. i think at the moment the result of all that stuff in my life is that i'm pretty narcisistic. let's hope it's just a stage, but i'm so used to being overwhelmed with my own crap that i don't feel like i have the energy to take on the suffering in the world. but this week, maybe because the stress in my life has lessened or maybe becuase of oprah or maybe because of the earthquake in indonesia on saturday or maybe because of memorial day, i've been trying to notice.
people say we need to remember, so that we can prevent it from happening again. that never really meant much to me. but i was thinking this week about africa, about that scene in the movie hotel rwanda where the journalist says that people will look up from their dinner, see horrific images on their tv screens, say 'oh, how awful' & then go back to their dinners & do nothing about it. i was thinking about darfur & the congo, about september 11, about the tsunami, hurricane katrina. and then on saturday that earthquake hit the island of java, indonesia. as of this morning on google news, estimates are at roughly 5,000 dead.
but i'm wondering if "awareness" is enough? i suppose awareness is better than nothing. but it can feel so helpless, because what can we actually do? it's good that i know that there are kids starving to death, but me knowing it doesn't actually seem to get food to their mouths. i signed the one petition & i pay attention to the news (sometimes) & once in a while i send 20 dollars off to some aid orginazation or other. it just doesn't seem like much.
maybe when people say "we must remember" they don't just mean we should stick a flag on our mailboxes & act solemn for a day. they mean we must feel. we must develop some sort of empathy that gets us to transcend our lives & actually see into the lives of other people. maybe it's okay to be overwhelmed by the suffering in the world because it means we are paying attention. maybe trying to come up with a way to live where our own problems stop being this consuming thing in front of our faces taking all our energy & distancing us from everyone else, & instead our suffering becomes what connects us, maybe that will help. maybe.
i'm being way dramatic here. it's just that this whole thing frustrates me. i hate it; i hate this 'death toll' number becoming something we're so used to. i find it really hard to open myself up to what is going on around the world without feeling like i'll drown in all the hopelessness. i want to help. i have no answers. i'm just wondering. okay. rant over.

my own paranoia

by phillip lopate

we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every thursday
we have been meeting
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
but since our thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

bollywood

bride & prejudice: the bollywood musical meets mister darcy... with a cameo appearance by alexis bledel. sounds slightly insane, but i should have known that i'd love it.
i love watching foreign films...

(top 5:
amelie ~ french
the motorcycle diaries ~ spanish
life is beautiful ~ italian
bread & tulips ~ italian
monsoon wedding ~ english, punjabi & hindi)

or just any movie set in another culture. i've wanted to watch some bollywood movies for ages but didn't know where the heck to start. this did it for me; i think i'll be on a bollywood kick for a while now.

happy.birthday.to.you.

ah, renee skifstad, my friend. she has a birthday today. we've been friends for almost 15 years now & we've had some stellar experiences. just a few of the things we've done together...

• studied in england
• worked at barnes & noble
• lived in minnesota, illinois & europe
• shopped in london
• ate at a cafe in paris
• drank sangria in madrid
• drank coffee in seattle
• 
• layed on a beach in ibiza
• put on a puppet performance in ireland
• hiked in arizona
• thought we were getting kidnapped in fez, morocco
• 
• swam in austria
  
• & gambled in vegas.

happy birthday, my friend.

let us go then, you & i,

yankee hotel foxtrot

possibly i am the only person who would spend the day before moving to seattle not packing, but looking up apartments in chicago. apparently my nomadic style is so severe that i have started planning two moves in advance.
i leave spokane tomorrow. i'm loading my car up again & driving to seattle where i'm going to spend the summer with my dad, my mom & my sister, which i'm massively looking forward to after a long & insane 7 months of crazy times, like: 2 funerals, a surgery, & multiple nervous breakdowns. i told my sister i'm probably going to jump up & down singing the rocky theme song when i get there, because for me this move is the end of 7 months of grief, possible actual craziness, & living in my grandpa's basement. not that i am sorry i was here: i really wouldn't change this time of being here for anything. i loved getting to know spokane (which is where i was born, but i haven't lived here since i was a kid) & i loved getting to know my family that i really haven't been around much in a long time. plus i just know it was the right place at the right time... but damn, i'm glad it's over.
next? i think i'm going to move to chicago in the fall. hence, the time looking up 'bucktown' & 'river north' on the computer, when i should have been downstairs packing for seattle. because of this possible fall move my sister & i, in the name of research, decided to look up the marina city buildings. even though they're right in the middle of chicago, overlooking the river, & right next to the house of blues (not to mention on a certain wilco cover,) i remember them looking mildly rundown & kindof 70's-ish, so i thought maybe i had a shot at them being vaguely in my price range. well, chances are that with my price range i'll be living in cabrini green. but still, these buildings turn out to be as cool inside as they look from outside: apparently, every apartment is wedge shaped. so you come in the door at sort of the tip of the apartment, in the middle of the building, & then they get wider as you go into the apartment -- & every single one of them ends with a balcony. there are studios, 1 bed or 2 bed; if you have a bedroom, you also have another balcony. the buildings were built to be a "city within a city," so inside, besides apartments, there are restaurants, a dry cleaners, a grocery store, a gym, a bank, &... a bowling alley. i want to live there.
i realize that probably this is only interesting to me, but oh well. it's my weird & round-about way of saying goodbye to spokane & getting ready for what comes next. here's a little random spokane entertainment to make up for it, from the hilarity that is my cousin aaron. this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it makes me laugh, so here you go. who says there's nothing to do in spokane?

1:5

for
just
as
the
sufferings
of
Christ
flow
over
into
our
lives,
so
also
through
Christ
our
comfort
overflows.

from the mind of nelson mandela:

'our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. it is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. we ask ourselves, who am i to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, & fabulous? actually, who are you not to be? you are a child of God. your playing small doesn't serve the world. there is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.'

tossed salads & scrambled eggs

summertime in seattle, here we come. ahh, the land of verona, the land of meridith grey, the land of tom hanks on a houseboat.

this is how it feels when the sacred is torn from your life & you survive.

(natalie grant)

we're asking why this happens to us who have died to live. it's unfair. this is what it means to be held. how it feels when the sacred is torn from your life & you survive. this is what it is to be loved & to know that the promise was when everything fell, we'd be

held.

if hope is born of suffering. if this is only the beginning. can we not wait for one hour watching for our savior?

welcome to the world, baby girl

meet hallie ryanne, 2 weeks old today.

born to my cousin hollie, her husband steve, & big sister grace.

(making her my... second cousin? first cousin once removed? well, something like that anyway.)