Sunday, January 26, 2014

Lily and Madeleine

These lovely young sisters had a "tiny desk concert" on NPR recently.  Their voices are gentle and sweet and just the thing for a day like today--a cold day stuck inside doing domestic things like baking and cooking and cleaning.  They elevate all of it.



Important to note, I feel only "stuck" inside not "stuck" doing domestic things.  I love to cook food for our eatings.  I love taking care of my people.  And this music is a peaceful soundtrack to that good quiet work.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

My Favorite Movie of the Oscar Picks

I should be honest and say upfront that I have not seen all of the Oscar nominated movies.  Okay, I've only seen two of the Best Picture nominees: her and American Hustle.  But I've seen a smattering of other movies that have nods in other categories: Cutie and the Boxer (documentary), 20 Feet from Stardom (documentary), August Osage County (acting nods), The Croods, Despicable Me 2, a number of others.  I will see Captain Phillips and Inside Llewyn Davis and likely Frozen before the awards come around.  But I get excited because my husband gets excited because his twin (who was a film major and loves film film film) gets excited and there's lots of talk about who should win and why.

I should also be honest and say I don't really care who wins.  Giant celebratory awards ceremonies for honoring millionaires for being the best at a job that they adore. . . Nowadays?  Seems a little tone deaf.  But film is still good and moving and important.  And so my pick for Best Picture, simply because it was my favorite film of the year, hands down, is Spike Jonze's her.


Looking at reviews online, it seems like people either love or hate this movie, but I just thought it was beautiful.  When I was a kid, loads of movies about aliens were positive--Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Starman--and writers and directors made space for a vision of alien life being gentle and curious.  That's incredibly rare now. Even Spielberg's aliens are angry and violent now, and it makes me a little sad.  It feels like a lack in our vision, and likely a lack of wonder or generosity or hope. Artificial Intelligence--the other Sci-Fi bogey man--has rarely ever been anything other than terrifying.  Machines become smarter than us, and they immediately set to work enslaving or killing the entire human population.

But not so in "her".  A.I. starts as a personalized OS system that begins its life and learning getting to know individual people, and as a result, it loves us.  It's such a hopeful take and I hope more likely than The Matrix or Terminator or 2001: A Space Odyssey or even the ridiculously morose A.I.

Beyond the Sci-Fi genre thoughts, her is also, primarily a story about love.  How do we love?  What constitutes love?  Does romantic love happen in your mind or does it have to also be physical? How do we learn that we are loved or even lovable?  What constitutes a human connection and has that been changed by the influx of technology into our personal lives?

It's a pretty thought provoking movie, with the bonus of also being uplifting as well.  In 2014, my year of pursuing love and quiet joy, her was undoubtedly a quiet joy.



Also, I would totally kick ass at Twombly's day job.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Best Book of 2013



At the end of 2012, I was pretty tuckered out.  I spent the year recovering from back surgery and serving on a pretty time-consuming committee at work, and I felt removed from my life and creativity and the people I love.  And I'm not even sure I realized it, until I saw the movie "The Beginners".  Such a quiet lovely movie, and after watching it, I vowed to be more connected in 2013. . . and I think I was.

But as it turns out, being more connected to the people around you isn't enough if you're disconnected from yourself.  I discovered that in one of the hardest ways possible in 2013, before reading A.M. Homes ridiculously strange and beautiful and funny and sad and celebratory novel "May We Be Forgiven."  But "May We Be Forgiven" showed up for me at just the right time as I was swimming back to the surface.

I don't want to give too much away about the book except to say that, for me, while reading the novel, the title felt like a question.  Is forgiveness possible?  Can we forgive each other?  Can we forgive ourselves? And it made me think deeply about how much worry and sadness and embarrassment and fear I carry around with me--most of it over incredibly trivial things or things that I have blown way out of proportion.  Why are we so hard on ourselves?  Why is it often easiest to default to thinking the worst of ourselves?

The characters in "May We Be Forgiven" do far more terrible things than I hope I have it in me to do, but they work to redeem themselves.  And they work to forgive each other and that work comes mostly through love.  And I want to learn from that--to learn to do that work and to also forgive others, even people who aren't interested in my forgiveness.  Because even though forgiveness is a kind of grace, it's also incredibly self-serving.  And not "self-serving" in a negative way, in the sense that it's a way of caring for yourself and freeing yourself from anger.

I was filled with a strange and powerful sadness in 2013, but as it ebbs away and I start building a new future, that empty space is filling with love.  And that's how I will forgive myself.

I want the same for you.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

2014 - The Year of Love and Quiet Joy

I have been in a haze.  A little unhappy.  A little unfocussed.  But mostly I would describe it as absent or removed or maybe lost.

I assume this happens to everyone--some period in your life when woe or doubt or exhaustion accumulates unnoticed until you're perpetually carrying around a grey dirty window that separates you from the electricity of the world.  Nothing seems as bright or as lovely or as engaging as it had before.  Maybe you realize that you're bored and that you can't figure out what would you like to do with your free time--you who have so many interests, so much curiosity, so many things you usually want to learn or do or see or experience.

I wish Americans felt more comfortable using the word "ennui," because it's the perfect single word to say what I mean.  And ennui can be difficult to shake (especially in the winter, in a polar vortex, with a windchill outside of -45 that wants to eat you the moment you leave your home).

But 2014 is the year for breaking the grip of my sadness and complacency.  I'm getting back on track and shaking off my distance from the world.  So, as a first step, I am going to take stock of my life right here in public to make a declaration of the things I have to be thankful for:
  1. I have a beautiful life in a cozy house with a cute grumpy dog and the perfect man for me.
  2. I was born into an amazing loving family--not everyone has this.  This is amazing luck.
  3. I have married into another amazing loving family--seriously.  I have two great moms and dads now, and I tripled the number of cool brothers I can pal around with.  Again, how did I have this luck?
  4. And I have a small wonderful network of chosen family who I have had the good fortune to meet, collect and hold dear no matter how close or how far they are from me. 
  5. I was raised to be polite and empathetic and engaged and curious and to love learning, and those have been the most important skills that have made everything else in my life possible.
And that's the list.  That covers everything.  Every other thing that I might be grateful for is just a subset of that list of 5 things.  It's that simple.  And so I'm going back to that list this year (and I hope every day for the rest of my life) to refocus my life on those things and those people, and I am quite certain that joy will follow.

I invite you to make your own list.  It's amazing how easy it is and how cheering it is to write it down.  

Happy New Year, friends.  May your 2014 be filled with love and quiet joy.