I'm giving up social media for Lent.

There. I've said it.

Ash Wednesday, in two days, initiates the period of Lent, which culminates in Passion Week, and leads to Easter. In Lent, we remember and join Christ,

who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
– even death on a cross!

The least I can give up his social media.

What this includes: facebook, twitter, and blogging.

Let me clarify one point up front: Lent is not about establishing good habits or giving up something you shouldn't be participating in in everyday life. It's about giving up something daily as a tangible reminder of what Christ gave for us and how we are to pick up our cross to follow him.

In other words, I'm not giving up social media because I think it's a bad habit I need to break or because I need to get in shape or spend this time elsewhere. I'm giving it up because it is something meaningful to me that will daily remind me of my need for Christ. Every day, when I log in to my computer, my habits will want to direct me to facebook, to my blog, to twitter, to pop in and say hi to my friends. At that point every day, I will remember what Christ did for his kingdom and how I need him.

This is my way of participating in his story.

I don't deny it will be hard (which is the point). I will miss my friends, whom I meet only through cyber interaction on a daily basis. I will miss talking about the books we're reading or our knitting projects.

For example, yesterday, I started reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. (I started it during the Nordic Olympic run, because, let's be honest, as much as I'm an Olympic fan, you don't have to pay attention to the whole marathon-like run.) The story is about an Irish girl (we're not given her age, but she seems to be around 18) who moves to America in the years following WWII in order to get work. She has to leave her family and suspects she will never see them again. She's in a strange land, and knows not a soul. In the onset of her homesickness, the author says, "She was nobody here. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor . . . Nothing here was part of her." Haven't we all experienced this, especially in a globalized society where we begin to lose sense of home? I want to talk about this, but alas, blogging will be gone for me. 

Or another example: this weekend, I had an unknitting project. I had started a scarf quite a while ago with three different strands of yarn, a ribbon-like yarn, a fluffy, sparkly yarn with this faux fur, and a thin string on which I had thread beads of blues and browns. But the scarf wasn't working. The combo wasn't working. This weekend, I unknit the piece to find myself tangled in a knot of the different strands. I spent hours, yes hours, working on this knot. I learned: A cord of three strands is not easily untangled.

Besides missing these conversations (and learning what is happening in your lives, as I won't be reading blogs either), I have a fear. You will forget me. Out of sight, out of mind, don't they say? Then who will I be? (In a way, this relates to the passage from Brooklyn.) And here, during this Lent season, I expect God will remind me my true identity: in Christ. Not in work, not in friends or family, not in blogging, though all these things are good. 

I left this, our junior snowman, with his carrot nose and broccoli eyes and smile, for a moment to get my camera.

Sneaking a Snack

For the weekly Popinjay Challenge. This week's word: free.

Winter is vulnerable and naked. It has not the flourish and feast of spring nor the childhood fun of summer. It has not the vibrant colors of autumn. And in Texas, it usually has not the brilliance of a fresh snow.

But this year, Mother Nature took pity on us. She adorned us with jewels I haven't seen since moving to this state.

The Trees' Fashion Show

Shivering Gnome

Frosty's Lair

A Dog's Dream

Recently, I've been reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. The book is about a writer. For part of his life, he worked for artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In these relationships, Kingsolver explores some questions about art, including its purpose and function.

In one section, the protaganist, Harrison Shepherd, considers the difference between the artwork of his two employers. Diego's murals "[command] men to rise from their knees and fight!" Frida's, however, are "smaller . . . Something people would find dear" (p. 161). It's Frida's work, not Diego's that inspire Harrison to want to write "something beautiful, that people would find very moving" (Ibid).

Side note: I doubt many people would consider Kahlo's work "dear." But Harrison doesn't speak about the surrealism of her work but the smallness and purpose of her work. She doesn't paint political paintings or see her job as doing something big. She observes her life, her world, small as it is, and translates that to painting.

In another scene soon after that, Frida takes seriously the task of decorating a table for dinner. Harrison says about this event, "It's a lot of work to use flowers as paints. By the time the party ends, they'll be a mess of wilted petals. Stains on your white tablecloth that could have been prevented." Frida reacts: "Unnecessary stains and dead flowers! Soli, excuse me but what else do I have for making my marks on life, if not lo absurdo y lo fugar." Harrison supplies the definition to fugar (or attempts to) as "things that run away with time" (p. 169).

Later, Harrison and Frida have a conversation about art. Frida asks Harrison, who journals every day of his life as well as types away his novel, why he doesn't consider himself a writer. He answers, "To be a writer, you need readers." She retorts that she is no painter, then. "Who ever looks at my dumb little pieces of shit?" (p. 197).

My point being: In today's global world with its global problems, we think of our lives in global terms. How am I changing the world? How is my art changing the world? How can I have the largest impact, the most readers, the best marketing? J.D. Salinger said, "There are no writers anymore. Only book-selling louts and big mouths."

But in these passages, I found something freeing. I can create something small. I can focus on making something small and beautiful that might move only a few people. I don't say that I wouldn't like to have millions of readers who read my books and find something beautiful, moving in them, that I wouldn't want half a nation to see my words and realize they're not alone. I'm not even saying that we shouldn't market our art.

But that's not the point, is it? The point is "writing . . . with eye and ear and heart" (Adam Gopnik, "Postscript: J.D. Salinger," The New Yorker). As Andy Crouch says, we create unuseful things (as opposed to utilitarian things). And this is beautiful.

Image via Wikipedia

I've picked up Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradise) to study for my WIP.

(Side note: thank you, Kindle, for making this selection available to me for free. We love you, Kindle, oh yes, we do.)

A couple of interesting observations from my study of the poem and the little I've read on it (mostly in order to understand the references):

1. The Roman Catholic concept of purgatory originated with this work, which is allegorical. Most likely, Dante intended Purgatorio to represent the Christian life. Some things never change when we take allegory too literally.
2. The arrangement of sins--which is worse, in other words--differs from how the evangelical church would today arrange sins. While Dante's work isn't divinely inspired (and therefore not the biblical standard for arrangement of sin), it provides an interesting anthropological study in how our cultures affect our view of sin. To clarify: this doesn't imply that lust, for example, is a sin in one culture and not in another, or that the culture itself defines lust. It shows how we as human beings attempting to grapple with sin, its effects, and transformation from sin into life, do so differently in different ages. Dante's culture, and the problems therein, affected which sins (while all worthy of punishment and separation from God) seem more harmful. It brought to light the sins we prefer to gloss over because of our situation.
3. Dante struggled with God's justice and mercy. He reiterates that those in hell reside there because they denied Christ. And, above all, separation from God is a horrible thing. But you also see in Dante this hesitation to see good people in the hands of an angry God. So men like Virgil, Homer, Julius Caesar, Plato, and other great philosophers and thinkers, while apart from God (and quite upset to be so, to Dante's credit) are not actively tortured as others are. These men reside in a meadow in hell, which wouldn't seem so bad except for the complete lack of presence from God. Dante asks, "Is this eternal? Or will there be reprieve?"
   
   This subject continues to bother us. What is hell? What is the gnashing of teeth? What about those who seemed so close to baptism?
4. Dante incorporated Greek and Roman mythology (popular during his day as mythology saw a resurgence in the Renaissance). He uses it almost sacramentally: everyday items infused with God's grace to draw the unknowing to God.
5. Finally, an amusement: Dante had no quelms about putting real people in hell, men he admired, and men he blamed for the downfall of Florentine society. This is the writer's ultimate retribution, is it not? Cross me, and I'll put you in my novel. We may change the names (Dante didn't bother to do even that!), but we carry out our ideas of justice and revenge in our own ways.

I have not been able to keep up with Michelle's weekly Popinjay Photo Challenge, but I'm able to pop in every once in a while (knee slap for that pun, please).

This week's word: Guilty

Recently I finished Unveiling by Suzanne Wolfe (an excellent read I highly recommend due to her poetic prose, complex characters, and willingness to enter into suffering and beauty). In it she comments that museums, with their metered environments, lose the contexts of churches and homes for art. This made me think about museum installations. Are they the artist's desire to create context where none exists?

I suppose "no context" is impossible. How about sterile? Removed? Unfamiliar with the breathings of our daily lives?

***

Over the past several years, memoirs have invaded Barnes and Nobles. I recently read an article about this plethora of memoirs. The author (Daniel Mendelsohn) compared this to the phenomenon of reality TV. He remarked, "If you can watch a real lonely woman yearning after young hunks on a reality dating show, why bother with Emma Bovary?"*

In a global, transient, cyber world, are memoirs our attempts to grasp a lost context? The question, "Where are you from?" becomes more and more difficult to answer without giving an essay.

Mendelsohn also notes that this may stem from a misunderstanding of the type of truth presented by fiction, "'a truth' about life," he says, "whereas memoirs and nonfiction accounts represent 'the truth' about specific things that have happened." While not wanting to dismiss all memoirs by any means, in a world where specifics shift faster than we change our shampoo bottles, perhaps we look for specifics rather than general truths in the books we read.

*quote from "But Enough About Me" in The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2010, p. 73.

One of the threads that weaves through Douglas Coupland's apocalyptic novel concerns blogging. (Yes, Generation A is apocalpytic in that it portrays the end of the world as we know it--and, thanks to a Prozac-like drug, we feel fine.)

Each of the main characters in Coupland's story tells his/her own stories. One character tells a story of a young man who has lost the story of his life. The implication is clear: springing from our obsession with fame, we all look for the story of our lives. Unfortunately, with nothing real left in life, we can't find one. We use our extreme sports and death-defying feats in attempts to bring fame-worthy excitement into our lives.

In the story of the young man who has lost his story, the following exchange occurs between a woman at the Learning Annex, where this young man has gone for lessons in something interesting (bungee jumping, Tae Bo), and the young man (it begins with Craig, our young man in question):

"I thought maybe Tae Bo would loan my life a unique narrative edge."

The woman--whose name was Bev--said, "Craig, the hardest things in the world are being unique and having your life be a story. In the old days, it was much easier, but our modern fame-driven culture, with its real-time 24-7 marinade of electronic information, demands a lot from modern citizens, and poses great obstacles to narrative. Truly modern citizens are both charismatic and [sic] can only respond to other people with charisma. To survive, people need to become self-branding charisma robots . . . So, in a nutshell, given the current media composition of the world, you're pretty much doomed to being uninteresting and storyless."

"But I can blog my life! I could turn it into a story that way!"

"Blogs? Sorry, but all those blogs and vlogs or whatever's out there--they just make being unique harder. The more truths you spill out, the more generic you become."

(I'd give you a page number, but Kindle doesn't list page numbers.)

To add to this evidence, I read an article in The New Yorker the other day about media, specifically in regards to Obama. This article also pointed out the (negative) consequences to this 24-7 media marinade, which disallows journalists from getting any real story. Several times, especially when quoting Obama communications administration, they referred to the narrative Obama wanted to communicate, or the narrative of Americans. Have we become so self-aware of our own story that we can no longer let it unfold naturally? What are the implications of this?

(Side note: These past weeks, we all watched the events in Haiti, blogging, twittering, perhaps watching a rescue on TV. I'm happy to see our concern for another nation, but I wonder how much is true concern and how much is it safe concern? If our sympathies are real, why not spend time on a weekly basis in homeless shelters, orphanages, and nursing homes, entering into their suffering?)

While these Neil Postman-esque prophesies unfurl around us, I don't believe this means we abandon blogs (obviously, or I'd be using this post to say Goodnight, Gracie). Ruth Haley Barton warns us against accepting technologies without evaluation. This doesn't mean we all don Amish garb. It means we better know how things affect us--our Christianity, our communities, our families, our work, our play. We can't all become Wendell Berrys. Because of blogging, I've found other writers, knitters, gardeners, poets, and photographers (as well as a slew of other artists) who have encouraged me in these endeavors. I've discovered friends who have encouraged my spirituality. If I consider creativity and spirituality (not entirely different entities, by the way) to be essential to humanity, than blogging has shaped me in positive ways.

But I also have been obsessed with finding my own niche, my own small pond in which to be famous. I've asked, how can I be unique in this space? What is my brand?

I suppose we approach this as we do everything: with mixed motives. I am neither purely good nor entirely corrupt. I am saint and sinner. Coupland's comments and The New Yorker's article remind me to always pay attention to the whats, whys, hows, and consequences, to not do things willy-nilly just because I want to. And that's a good thing.

Thoughts? Reactions? Poison?

Print between the lines: Title quote from Bones (Sealy Booth)

He's probably lounging on a beach in the Caribbean sipping a gin and tonic, goggling the girls with his one good eye.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck, senza Muse, to figure out what to do with this writer's block.

I've deleted more words than I've written. How is that mathematically possible, you may ask.

Exactly.

I'm in negative wordage. Which means I have to scribble words on random surfaces until I'm back at zero and can return to my manuscript. I write on Post-It notes, backs of receipts, and bathroom stalls. (Yes, I've discovered the mystery. Messages on stall walls were written by blocked writers, not delinquent teens. Tommy Tutone cured his artistic block by scribbling "867-5309" on a bathroom wall.) I create grocery lists I don't intend to buy, to-do items I'll never do.

The next time my Muse goes on vacation, I'm going with him.

Today, I received one of those treats born on fairy wings.

It happened on my way to yoga--an ordinary day in an ordinary car taking my ordinary route. The classical radio station started playing Lehar's Gold and Silver Waltz. For those unfamiliar with the piece, it's sprightly, delicate, and at times, mischievous. In other words, the perfect soundtrack.

At an ordinary light at an ordinary, albeit busy, intersection, something had gone awry (the work of Puck, perhaps?). The light had stopped working. Cars, most on their way to work, some to drop off kids at school, treated the six-lane intersection like a stop sign.

And that's when I noticed it.

All of these cars, normally infused with Dallas impatience and road rage, waltzed, a sprightly, delicate waltz.

The intersection became the ballroom, and cars lined up and took their turns. One, two, three, one, two, three. Light, on your toes. One, two, three. Not a misstep.

We danced to Lehar's Gold and Silver Waltz.

And then I came to the other side of the intersection, and the moment had ended. For me, at least. The dance continued behind me.

I suppose if it had not been an ordinary day, I wouldn't have noticed the fairies making mischief.