Filling the bucket

I’ve had some great opportunities to fill my artistic and emotional bucket lately. Here are a few:

1. Hubby and I took advantage of the consolation prize we got after complaining to the Anniversary Inn about our horrible experience there last time (which was another free night there). This one was much better—partially because we chose a room in the basement hoping to decrease the chance of noise from drunk neighbors and partially because we brought earplugs! But my favorite part of the outing was a long walk we took past the houses in the avenues. I love to walk at dusk when people’s lights are on but they haven’t pulled the drapes yet (yes, I’ve told you before that I’m a peeping tom) and I love to imagine what it would be like to live in one of those tall old houses in the avenues. R is happy to let me walk around and fantasize in the hopes that my fantasies will satisfy me enough and I’ll never ask to actually buy a house there. (We would be horrible owners of an old house since we don’t know how to do anything as far as repairs go.) I can’t figure out why these tall old houses fascinate me so—maybe it’s because my favorite cousins lived in one when I was growing up, and it was the location of many happy hidde-and-seek games with it’s tall closets and back stairway and (best of all) inset bookshelves and huge porch. Anyway, I couldn’t keep from grinning as we walked around buying all the houses we passed. I was just so happy to be alive, and healthy enough to take a walk with my love.

2. Last night we saw Prince Caspian (finally at the dollar theater). C. S. Lewis always does it to me. My favorite scene was when Susan and Peter took a walk with Aslan. Lewis doesn’t let us into that scene (nor did the filmmakers let us hear what Aslan said to them), but we hear afterward that Aslan was explaining why Susan and Peter won’t be able to come back to Narnia. Peter says to Edmund and Lucy later, “It’s not like how I thought it would be. But it’s alright.” I like to imagine that walk, like to imagine the Lord talking to me, telling me I’m headed for something hard (like, oh, say, being sick for a while) but that He will be there with me, and it won’t be like I thought it would but I’ll be alright.



3. Just saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on dvd and feel like my soul had been dethatched. Rent it if you can, or check it out of the library as I did (it’s in French). It’s everything that art should be. Oh, and it’s a true story. I’d read the book, but the movie is better. The movie is more artistic and therefore more true. You know what I mean, don’t you?

What have you seen lately that has filled you?

Breaking Up

This morning, right after I woke up and as I lay staring at the ceiling, I had a very familiar feeling. I suddenly knew that I needed to break up.

When I was engaged to the wrong guy (let’s call him, oh, Tyler), I spent an agonizing period of time Trying To Decide What To Do. Each morning I would wake up (a time I’ve learned from experience since then that is when I am most in tune with my own heart and with the Spirit—-which often feel like the same thing) and feel SICK (and we’re talking literally sick, as in drinking pepto bismol sick) about marrying the guy, claustrophobic, stuck, depressed, etc. Then, as the day wore on I would talk myself back into it. Hanging around with him would feel good, and I would grow more interested in the idea of being married to him and by bedtime I would have brainwashed myself again.

For a while I convinced myself that it was just the stress of finals. Or maybe some sort of stomach bug. I actually saw a doctor. Also, I was drinking Coke all day (which I DETEST but which I use to calm my stomach) and pepto bismol. Anything rather than face the fact that I didn’t want to marry the guy.

One of the problems was that I was convinced that Tyler was my One Chance because he was a righteous guy. How could I pass on him and expect God to provide me with another opportunity?

At one point I took a long walk and imagined myself talking to God about it. God said, “What’s up, Darlene?” I said, “I want to serve you. Shouldn’t I marry this guy in order to serve you?” God said, “Darlene, you’ll serve me no matter whom you marry. I want you to pick someone that makes you happy.”

Wow. God wanted me to be HAPPY in my marriage? Was it OK to pass on this guy just because I wasn’t happy?

Finally, after lots of agonizing vacillating, a few blessings, many early mornings of clarity and late evenings of vast confusion, I/we managed to call the thing off.

The night after I gave the ring back was the first night I really slept in months. And when I woke up, I felt such peace, such renewed interest in the future, such clarity and energy.

And then Tyler called and said he’d changed his mind, that he wanted us to stay engaged while just postponing the date “until we could figure out what’s wrong,” which is what I had proposed the night before (not having the guts to break it off completely). But, it was still morning. And I still felt that priceless peace. So I said, “Last night was the first night I’ve slept. I can’t put that ring back on.” And that (after a stupid trying-to-still-hang-out-together period that, of course, didn’t work) was that.

OK, so this morning I woke up, as I said, and felt that same feeling. The knowing I had to call it off and the knowing it would be OK. Not just OK—that it would bring me peace, renewed hope in the future, renewed energy. That there was something else, something better out there for me and that God would lead me to it if I would just get out of this current wrong relationship.

I’m talking, of course, about abandoning my novel.

I have been dragging out this relationship too long. I have spent too many mornings fantasizing about life without it, and too many days trying to make it work, and too many nights feeling like maybe I could make it work, if I really tried. As with my broken engagement, I am coming to believe that deciding that this novel is not right for me doesn’t mean I am giving up on novel-writing in general. It doesn’t mean I am not a writer. It is gesture of hope and faith that God not only wants me to get married/be a writer, but that he wants me to actually be happy with the person/book I choose. And hope/faith that he will lead me to the right thing, at some point.

So, I guess I need to be careful now not to get too involved in a rebound romance. Instead, I’ll focus on my duty for a while (all those writing projects I’ve been putting off finishing, the edited poem I owe Irreantum, the essay I owe Segullah, the play I was toying with for the New Play Project, maybe some Friend articles to build back up my writing account, the picture book the agent asked me to revise) and trust God that the right novel (the one that’s righteous AND makes me happy, that fulfills me and brings me joy) will come along some day.

Goodbye, my love. I wish you the best.

Votes, please

So the old man is making a last stab at hanging on to his youth by heading up a county rec. softball team this year, and he has to come up with a team name. Here is our short list. I’d love some votes, or other suggestions.

Midlife Crisis
A Few Good Men
Potato Bugs
Vocal Reverberation Under Spinal Pressure (“you know, VRUSP?")
the Borg
Oompa Loompas
Impending Doom
Flying Squids
Therapy

and, because my kids insist I include it:
Plastic Dancing Banana Peels

Hat-tip to Carl Jung

Warning: this is about Stephenie Meyer’s Host. If you’ve read it, you may keep reading here. If you haven’t read it, GO GET IT, you fool! (Well, it wasn’t THAT good. You don’t have to buy it or anything. You could put your name on the list at the library and wait a couple of months. But I think you should read it.) Although I won’t give away any secrets about the book, if you don’t want to hear anything at all about it, stop reading here.

Let me start by saying I AM NOT ACCUSING ANYBODY OF PLAGIARISM! Got it? Good.

Hubby was reading aloud to five-year-old from an Animorphs book (hey, I’m raising boys, OK? At least it wasn’t Goosebumps) and came across this passage:

If the Yeerks had a “Most Wanted” list, we would top it. . . . Maybe they’d do what they’ve done to so many humans: crawl into our heads and take over our brains. Make us Controllers.

A Controller is someone enslaved by a Yeerk, and they’re everywhere. They’re people you know. People you trust. . . . All walking around like they’re perfectly normal. . . . And once you’re in, . . . you walk and talk the same. You have the same memories. You still chew gum in class and toss Brussels sprouts back into the serving bowl when you think your mother isn’t looking.

Only it isn’t you doing any of it. The real you is caged up inside your head, helpless, screaming silently at the Yeerk slug holding you hostage.

Sound familiar?

I’m not saying that Ms. M. copied the idea. I doubt she’s ever read Animorphs. I’m just saying that her idea, which was so cool to read about, is a sort of universal theme. Possession. I’ve read other sci-fi books with the same theme, seen made-for-TV movies with the same theme (or am I thinking of V? Does anyone remember V? All I remember is someone tipping her head back, unlocking her jaw and swallowing a rat whole). Just because the idea wasn’t original to Ms. Meyer doesn’t make her book less interesting to read. Which is good for me to realize because I tend, when brainstorming ideas for my own book, to automatically dismiss any ideas that I think have been done before in any variation at all. I don’t think I should be so scared of telling old stories in a fresh way.

It’s interesting to me to think about why this idea of possession is so fascinating to people. For me, it’s even more fascinating that it used to be, now that I have spent some time in a body that is foreign to me sometimes, one that I definitely don’t want to be judged over. (How much of my personality now is due to the struggle I’ve had with my body? How much irritability, fatigue, lack of motivation is ME, the spirit inside my body, and how much is due to the chemicals racing around in here over which I have no control?)

Sunday, Sunday

. . . happens to be my favorite day of the week. I love the long afternoon which always carries the hope of a nap (but rarely is the hope fulfilled) and, if not, at least an hour of reading to my kids. Right now I’m reading Redwall to the little guys (which they would NEVER sit still for if it hadn’t have been for the cartoon of it that they have seen--yes, this is an example of the boob-tube motivating readers and I’m not complaining) and The Summer of My German Soldier to the older guys. The older guys and I have been on a WWII streak that began with The Hiding Place and continued with a little non-fiction book about Pearl Harbor. I’ll either hit To Kill a Mockingbird next or a Shakespeare play, depending on whether The Little Theater pulls off a Shakespeare play in the fall as scheduled.

Anyway, today was a pretty good day, despite the following:

1. I am not feeling well physically today. Enough said about that.

2. I had to teach a particularly challenging topic in RS today. The title was something like “Comfort at the Loss of Loved One.” Yikes! What to say about that? It was a very poorly (I thought) assembled collection of sayings of Joseph Smith at various funerals. The gist of them all could be summed up like this: “People die. There is life after death, so try not to be too sad about it and trust the Lord!” How do you make a lesson out of that without resorting to platitudes? I got through it by pawning it off on others. Our ward is full of people who have experienced very devastating losses (one reason why I felt unqualified to teach THEM anything), so I just asked two of them to speak. It took almost the entire time and they were MARVELOUS. I gave them some good questions to answer, but I didn’t realize until it was over what a hard task I had given to one of them. I asked her to speak on “Advice for someone going through it now, and advice for friends of someone going through it on what to say or do.” I hadn’t realized that she would be speaking to the VERY PEOPLE who had said the right and wrong things to her during her hard time. How hard for her! She did great, though.

3. We finally figured out why the food room still smelled funny even though I had thrown out the rotten potatoes. We have some sort of a leak (either the water main or a crack in the foundation) that has resulted in a LOT of water on the carpet, which has soaked many cardboard boxes and grown a beautiful colony of fragrant mold in the corner. Sigh.

4. I am being haunted by the green monster. My friend Kristi has written the beginning of what’s going to be a blockbuster, and editors and agents are falling all over her. I’m telling you, folks, she’s the next Stephenie Meyer. Remember her name (Kristi Stevens) because you’ll be able to say you knew someone (me) who Knew Her When. (I hope she doesn’t forget all us little people.) Anyway, her book, as I keep implying, is really good. She deserves all the attention she’s about to get. And I’m wallowing in self-pity because I don’t have her talent.

“Look,” I tell myself. “You could have gone your whole life without knowing Kristi. Knowing her doesn’t make you any less likely to write a good book, or succeed with your writing, or have a satisfying life. The fact that she is immensely talented has nothing to do with whether or not you are.”

“True, true,” I respond, and then glumly eat worms.

Don’t worry, though. I will rally. After all, I’ve been in this writing group with all these amazingly talented and successful women for a year or so now, and my life has only been better because of it. It’s a nice thing to be surrounded by so much success. It’s got to rub off, right? Meanwhile, I like knowing these fascinating people. (When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a Mouseketeer. Until one time I realized that it would be even COOLER to be the BEST FRIEND of a Mouseketeer. Because that means that THEY chose ME to hang with.) So maybe I can relax and just enjoy being the one who knew everyone before they got famous—maybe, even, the one who corrected that terrible dangling modifier in chapter five. Then they’ll dedicate their books to me (right guys?).

Meanwhile I’ll keep plugging along on my little manuscripts.

Have a nice week!

A political post: read at your own risk

I know you've all been waiting for me to talk about my opinion on the election. Yes, ever since my diatribe on vouchers, you have been hankering for more politics from ol' Eunice, haven't you?

Well, here's what I have to say on the subject. And I hope all responsible citizens will watch this. In fact, if I didn't have such a strong aversion to people sending mass e-mails on political subjects to everyone they know, I would be sending this to you right now. But at least I can claim that YOU came to ME, tht you watched this because you sincerely wanted to be informed on the issues and know the truth about things:



Today Now!


I have to give all credit to Melinda for putting me on to this one. I had to watch it three times to catch all the important info on the graphics. I hope you will, too. Because this is an important issue.

I Love to See the Temple

Today I took family names to the temple for the first time. My own family names. As in NAMES THAT I FOUND MYSELF WHO ARE DIRECT RELATIVES TO MYSELF. Like Emily, I am blessed enough to be in a family that has already done most of the temple work, at least the easy stuff. But I found a line that had been neglected, and I hit pay dirt—well, at least for a few names, anyway. And it is SO COOL to find these people, to pluck them off the family tree, fresh and ripe. And it was so sweet to go to the temple today with my husband and 12-year-old and do baptisms. I felt like a missionary seeing my investigators baptized.

I want to say here that I have a testimony of the temple. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t understand the significance of, and sometimes I get little a-ha moments about meanings or possible symbolisms here and there. But that’s not what I mean when I say I have a testimony of it. What I mean is that I have felt the spirit there. I have felt God’s love for me there. It is there that I have most clearly realized the amazing value of a single soul—my soul, and everyone else’s. I feel God’s parent-ness most there. When I’m there, I feel my soul being turned like you turn that dohicky on the front of the video camera to change it’s focus from something in the foreground to something further away (but more important), or vice-versa. “Oh yeah,” my spirit sighs, “here and now is what matters. The being-ness of things. Of souls and spirits and God and eternity.”

One of my very favorite hymns is “If You Could Hie to Kolob.” Maybe because its haunting tune and words that speak of endlessness remind me of the temple and of eternal capacity, eternal potential. THAT’S what I love about the gospel: always there is hope, grace, potential, growth, for as long as I’m willing to choose it.

camping

I have been camping. Yea, verily, it is clear to anyone who visits me at my house that I have been camping, because “camping smell” permeates all of the laundry that is decorating my laundry room currently. Camping smell is very nice while you are camping. For some reason, it sours on the way down the mountain, so that when you get home and open your duffel bag it has turned into “camping stench.” What is it in our lower-elevation air that causes this chemical reaction? I don’t know.

I love to camp. I would not love to camp if we were tent camping, nor would I love it if my youngest weren’t as old as he is. I have tried camping with a baby and, since we have pledged to never bring children into bed with us, it never worked. Because the babies, awakening in a strange place, became inconsolable. They wanted their happy, familiar cribs. And since camping in with the whole family in one room is obviously the exception, we tried to bring said inconsolable noise-makers into bed with us—-but they, having been trained to prefer sleeping alone, would have none of it. Always hubby would spend the rest of the night in the car driving around with said noisemaker in a carseat so that the rest of the campground could get some sleep. So now that youngest is five and can be bribed and threatened to stay in his sleeping bag on a designated sleep surface, we are campers.

I love our tent trailer. But it is very old and I discovered this weekend that it is falling apart. There are the little things that we can fix when they break one at a time, but then there is the state of falling-apart-ness that makes my stomach tight and my breathing shallow and I begin to think that I won’t be able to rest easy until we replace the whole thing. Which we can’t afford to do, of course. So the question is, how much of the rattle trap can we hold together with spit and wire? I guess we’ll find out.

The good thing is that our little-engine-that-could van did actually get the trailer up the mountain. I’m not sure how many more times it will be able to, but for now I’ll just rejoice that we got one more trip out of it.

Here are the ingredients of a good camping trip:
Plenty of good, light reading for myself.
A really good read-aloud chapter book to calm the kids down with at night.
Enough paper towels, diaper wipes, sunblock and hand sanitizer.
No rain on the day we have to put the trailer down.
Enough marshmallows and chocolate for smores.
Minimal bleeding and no one throwing up.
A working furnace. (I didn’t say we rough it, did I?)

And we had all of these factors working for us this weekend, and thus it was a success. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go move the laundry.

To my friend the poet who says that he has fallen out of love with poetry

The thing I always loved about your poetry
was that every single one,
regardless of the subject,
was a love poem.

Because of knowing you
I had begun to believe
that all the really best poets
are simply the really best lovers
of the world.

And although I’ve never really bought into the theory
that an artist creates solely out of yearning
I can’t help but notice
the coincidence
that even as your poetry trickled out
you were finding a brand new joy,
a place to overflow into that wasn’t there before.

And I’m happy for you--
truly--
though I mourn your loss.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING #1

Continuing the "boring report" motif, this week I feature some tidbits from what I’ve been reading lately. (Don’t you wish I’d feature tidbits of what I’ve been writing lately? Hmmm. Sounds like a good idea. Maybe I will.) Anyway, in the past few weeks I’ve read a few interesting things that I’d like to talk about here.

First of all, I read Host. I’m not going to get into the whole Stephenie Meyer-bashing thing because I find it rather boring. It boils down, I think, to this: if the story is gripping enough to you, you might notice the writing flaws but you won’t put it down. If it’s not, then you’re not really in its audience so why spend time griping?

I’ve never had a problem picking up a “dessert book” once in a while. I love deep nourishing reads (I re-read Angle of Repose this month as well, and will have something to say about that later), but I like engrossing, plot-heavy quick reads occasionally as well. And Host was one of these. I read it quite quickly and am not ashamed to say that I enjoyed it. I like a little sci-fi now and then, and the whole concept was interesting to me. I especially liked pondering the effect that bodies can have on personalities (which Meyer really doesn’t get into until right near the end), a topic which has been major in my life as I have dealt with illness. So what’s not to like? Engrossing story, thought-provoking concepts. I’m glad I read it.

Next we come to Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty. A friend recommended it long ago and I finally got to it (memoir isn’t one of my favorite genres) because I just sort of stumbled on it at the library. It was very interesting reading, the story of a friendship between Patchett, a novelist, and her friend Lucy Greaves, a poet and memoirist. Lucy was a fascinating person both because of her poetic nature and her struggle to go through life with a distorted face (due to a brush with cancer in her childhood). The story gets gradually more depressing as it goes along (Lucy died as a result of a heroin OD) but I found myself reaching for a pen to write down some gems from the text. Here are my favorites:

“While Lucy had discovered that she was different from all of the other children in her grade school because she was sick and was different from all the other children on the hospital’s cancer ward because she continued to survive . . . “
This sentence stuck out to me because I recognize that feeling of not fitting in with either group. I find that a tiny corner of me is reluctant to get well. What about all the sick people I leave behind? Am I no longer welcome in their club? How can I talk to them anymore if I’m well? It’s sort of like being nine months pregnant and running into someone who used to be a companion in infertility—and she’s still infertile, and there’s your big belly staring her in the face. I find a small sense of loss about not being one of the “sick ladies in the ward” anymore. I have enjoyed new levels of friendship with people I never would have known well at all had it not been for my long-lasting (“chronic”) illness. If I get all the way well, for good, will they feel betrayed by me? Will I lose what I had with them?

“I’ve never met ‘Bob,’ yet I always have this strange compulsion to put his name in quotation marks.” (p. 98) This was about a guy that her friend was dating. I imagine it’s sort of related to saying “the Donald.” I have so felt this way about people my friends have dated (or married!). I wonder if there’s anyone out there who feels that way about me? (“So, Roger, how’s ‘Darlene’ doing?”)

“Cynicism, which is rarely more than a symptom of inflated ego anyway” p. 96.

On looking at people who had/have it much worse than you (i. e. Holocaust) in order to make yourself feel better: “It isn’t possible to use the death of six million to make oneself feel lucky, because after a while the enormity of that pain simply replaces your own, making it different and in no way better” (93)

“I have a very pure image of my own [deceased] father, one that is almost a myth. It has more to do with me than with him” (p. 35). This one so reminds me of my own feelings about my deceased mother. It's embarrassing when I realize how much of missing her is about me and not her. It makes me uncomfortable as a mom, too. If I were to die, would my kids miss ME or just themselves with me? Maybe it doesn't make much difference, but it hurts a little. I guess all relationships really are a product of the stories we tell ourselves about them.