The Bard Project

Now that I've graduated, my education must be entirely self-sustained. One must never stop learning, vraiment?

Thankfully for me, the installation of some of my self-discipline in this regard began three summers ago. Actually, no, it really set in the spring semester of 2009. It was my second semester of college, and I was taking my first English class at Calvin. I had taken English classes at UGA, and felt confident in my ability to do well at a university level. But on my first day of English 215, a Survey of British Literature, I began to feel my lack.

"Lack of what?" you might ask. "You seem so cosmopolitan, full of social graces and witticisms beyond measure."

Ah, the illusions with which I entertain myself.

Humor (mostly) aside, I felt my lack of AP courses. I went to a tiny, private high school, which boasted a grand total of 400-500 students K-12. I wore an ugly khaki kilt that liked to kick up its hem at the slightest provocation (unlike Marilyn Monroe, I found great comfort and modesty in a protective pair of bike shorts), a thick polo impervious to any stain (as I discovered by promptly having a nosebleed all over my white one freshman year), and knee-high socks that left textured rings just under my knees every weekday afternoon. I left this tiny school with great friends and an assortment of interesting stories destined to entertain the curious Yankees of my college years.

But I did not leave with AP experience. I won't lie and say I didn't care about the credits; it would've made my life a lot easier. But what really galled me was my lack of reading experience.

"Heavens no!" you interject. "How can this be?"

You see, English education wasn't the highest priority in my high school. Some of my required reading? The Trial (the Christian murder mystery by Robert Whitlow, not the existential meltdown of Franz Kafka), The Old Man and the Sea (since it was read to me in the fifth grade, I exchanged it for A Farewell to Arms), The Last Sin Eater, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Scarlet Letter. Aside from some poetry and a heckuva lot of Edgar Allan Poe, I'm 90% sure that these seven texts comprised the entirety of three years of my high school education in literature.

Five books and two plays. Many of my classmates didn't even bother. Why should they? When our teacher told us to read Spark Notes so we could better to follow the plot of The Last of the Mohicans, most of the class didn't even read those! I got to sit through the lecture, wanting to tear my hair out, as people around me rolled their eyes. But now, I can be honest with myself: this was the same teacher who was making 17-year-olds build dioramas. For an English class. I'll let that sink in.

Has it sunk?

So my junior year, I took the SAT's and applied to the University of Georgia for joint-enrollment. I didn't feel out of place or less well-read in my introductory courses. In fact, I thrived in the setting, rising to the challenge. Most of my classmates had no idea I was 17.

When I went to college as a regular college student, however, I had to have actual, out-of-class conversations with other college students. (Shocker, I know.) Well-read college students with oodles of AP credit. And then professors, used to these kinds of students by now, would throw away comments such as, "We won't be doing Hamlet, because everybody's read that one."

No. Everyone has NOT read that one. But how could I say anything? I didn't need anyone's pity. My education wasn't the same as theirs, but I was (and still am, as a matter of fact) far from stupid.

So the summer after freshman year, I resolved to change my stars, as it were. I began giving myself a few texts every summer, classics I felt that I should read. That first summer, I read Anna Karenina and Gandhi's autobiography. The next summer, I read War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, and Crime and Punishment. The summer after that, I tackled Les Miserables and Tess of D'Urbervilles. It made me feel less self-conscious in the classroom, and it began instilling the discipline necessary to be a self-taught student.

When I graduated, I gave myself time off, as I have always done in the beginning of the summer. After a few light reads, however, I knew it was time to get back in the game. After all, I've had Vanity Fair sitting on my shelf for a year, and I want to move on to Brothers Karamazov. But I also knew that it wasn't enough. I needed something more. Something different. A new discipline for my new life. Then the Hamlet incident came to mind, as such humiliating moments are wont to do.

And then the Bard Project was born. What a build-up, huh?

The reconstructed Globe. I promise, this post wasn't just an excuse to look at pictures from my time in England.

His wife's cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, now surrounded by roses.

So what is the Bard Project?

It's quite simple. I'm trying to read one of Shakespeare's plays every week or two. I began, appropriately, with Hamlet, finally assaulting the ivory bulwark that had impeded my literary progress for so long. I've since read Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice as well. It's not easy; with my schedule, getting through an act can be a battle with rapidly closing eyelids. But I love the power I feel, reading his lines. I love that, for the first time in my life, I can share in a literary context that transcends centuries.

I don't know when the project is going to end. I'm not sure if I want to read all of his plays, or if I want to venture into his poetry, but I know that, for now, the Bard Project is keeping me in my rightful place: in a desk chair, forever a student.

Living Up to the Name

When I began this blog a year and a half ago, it was an experiment. I thought long and hard about what the "theme" of the blog was going to be. I knew from the experience of friends that I didn't want to pigeonhole myself into one facet of my life or another, only to lose inspiration or interest. I rarely have moments of foresight; sometimes I wish they occurred more often with happenstances of greater importance. In this case, as exampled by the sporadic nature of my posts as it is, the choice for my blog to remain more general was an intelligent one.

With the specifics removed from the table (food, school, writing, travel, etc.), I wondered how I was going to focus this blog, or if I even could. Then it hit me: all of my life, I've been striving to be better. Whether it's faith, relationships, writing, food, or fitness, I've wanted to be a different me. I've always wanted a reflection that doesn't disappoint reality.

So I named myself Person in Progress, and I eventually chose a photo I took of a cathedral in Cork, Ireland. I've probably written it before, but the fighting of monsters seemed the appropriate metaphor. And as the months have passed, the theme of the blog has remained appropriate, but not so much as in the last two.

I graduated from college. After four years of work and adventures, I finally achieved that milestone. I didn't have to walk across a stage, for which I, and all the other high-heels wearing gals, was profoundly grateful. But I shook hands, received my placeholder "diploma," and went back out into the sunshine for photos with friends and professors and a celebration dinner with the family who came to see it. I wish I had some of those photos. When I go to Georgia for my brother's graduation in August, I will pester my father for them.

I am living in a house with friends. A duplex, really, but created from a house so large we only feel the division when our neighbors are particularly boisterous. So I pay bills now. I have to keep up with the cobwebs.

And I have a job! On graduation day, at the Senior Breakfast, someone said something along the lines of "92% of Calvin graduates either have a job or are attending graduate school within six months of graduation." Me, being an English major frustrated with the job search process, snarked "Well, I'm the 8%." God has a funny way of making my sarcasm come back to bite me. In this case, that was a good thing. So now I have a full time position with Baker Publishing Group. I have (or will have soon) benefits. I get a paycheck. I have coworkers, all of whom have been wonderful so far. And now, as the craziness begins to settle down, I'm even considering a gym membership.

So I've progressed from one stage of my life to the next. For the first time since I was four years old, I'm not a student. My days are no longer measured in quarters, semesters, and summer vacations. I have no reason to depend on my parents, though they don't mind helping me in the least.

It's not been an easy transition. I'll be honest. I miss college--not the deadlines, of course, but the community. I lived with my friends. I went to class with my friends. As someone who has traveled long distances, and left friends on the other side, I know that they can cause divisions to the closest of friendships. I don't get to see people as much anymore, plain and simple. Some friends, like me, have stayed in Grand Rapids. Others have moved on. Either way, our new lives separate us. It's been a heart-wrenching experience: I am so proud of all of us for getting this far, for following dreams and facing harsh realities. But I'm also sad, in my selfish way, to see them go on to better things.

So I'm progressing.

Discipline of Rest

Life has been insane of late, an excuse that has served me well for a long time. After all, when are we not busy? I struggle to remember a day that I spent in true rest, without anything "productive" to focus my hours. Without cleaning. Without exercising. Without reading an "intelligent" book. Without writing. Just resting, in the knowledge that it is acceptable to just sit and breathe.


For the Festival, I was honored to host Carey Wallace, author of The Blind Contessa's New Machine (which I highly recommend). For her first session at the Festival, she discussed the Discipline of Rest. Humorously, I was too busy to contemplate the possibility of that concept being oxymoronic in any way. I nervously introduced her and took my seat in the front row.


I don't know what I expected; I rarely do. But I didn't expect a challenge of my way of life. In fact, I hadn't really considered how busyness is my way of life. Yes, I complain about the insanity and yearn for the inanity. Yes, I stretch myself thin. I am (for the time being) a full-time student, a part-time worker, a writer, a job hunter, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a believer, and a human being. Not necessarily in that order, of course, but you catch my drift. There is never a moment that I don't feel obligated to fill one of those roles. To be less active would to deny myself part of my identity.


But is that really the case? Are we really meant to be busy all the time?


Samuel Johnson writes, "It may be laid down as a Position which will seldom deceive, that when a Man cannot bear his own Company there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a Tediousness in Life from the Equipoise of an empty Mind, which, having no Tendency to one Motion more than another but as it is impelled by some external Power, must always have recourse to foreign Objects; or he must be afraid of the Intrusion of some unpleasing Ideas, and, perhaps, is always struggling to escape from the Remembrance of a Loss, the Fear of a Calamity, or some other Thought of greater Horror," (Rambler No. 5). 


I read Rambler No. 5 soon after the Festival, and right before a period of great anxiety and stress. This low point forced me to look at my life squarely and honestly. There was no way to squirm out of it, because I already felt terrible. There was no possible way I could feel worse, (Dear Lord: That was not a challenge. I repeat, not a challenge) so introspection didn't particularly frighten me. So I started asking myself questions.


What is it in my life that drives me to be productive even when it isn't required? Is it because there is some "Tediousness" or smallness in my life? Or is it because I'm trying to run from "unpleasing Ideas?"


I wrote this:
"When did my selfish nature decide on deprivation of pleasure? When did adding, rather than removing, burdens become a point of pride? Is my life so empty that it requires such depressing and oppressing adornments?" 


High self esteem and self worth, while encouraged by modern culture, isn't supposed to be the priority of a believer. After all, as sinners, our worth is decidedly low, hence the overwhelming gratitude with which we should receive grace. On my own, I am not worth anything, and intuitively, I know that. I seek to prove to God, to myself, to my friends, to my family, to the entire world that I am worth their time, effort, and love. And that is why I try so hard and stretch myself so thin. To prove something.


But God does love us, deeply, purely, and perfectly. And, by choosing to love us, He gives us freedom from that constant need for proof. We, and I heartily include myself in this, need to take that freedom. When we do that, we can practice the discipline of rest without fear or misplaced guilt. 


Now, it will be interesting to see if I can put that into practice right before finals for my last semester of college...

Meta-Phor-Us

Every Tuesday night, a small group of literary folk gather together, break bread, and discuss the deep questions of writing, literature, and everything. (Hint: The answers are never 42. In fact, if you have any answers, let us know. We never seem to find any.)

Recently, we addressed the topic of metaphor. Metaphors are embedded (ha! another metaphor!) in our language. Life is a journey. Love is a journey. An argument is war. An illness is war. We have given metaphorical form and concreteness to abstract concepts and, in doing so, we have shaped the way we think. To demonstrate how this works, we were tasked with the idea of creating new metaphors, and then create sayings or idioms for that metaphor.

*Silence* Say what?

My partner and I sat in bewilderment for a time, as did the rest of the class. Half-sentences filled the air: "What if...? No, that won't work." "How about...? Wait, that's the same thing..."

Sometimes, I get inspired. And I came up with a metaphor. LIFE, I proclaimed grandly (or would have, if my thought process was in any way linear), IS LIKE A CD.

Bear with me.

How CD's are a metaphor for life:
1. You're getting played. (Okay, so I appropriated that idea.)
2. He/she isn't even a chorus (in your love song).
3. You are the lead singer of your own life.
4. One day, you'll find your perfect duet. (We all retched a bit at that one. Sorry.)
5. Your life is a concept album.
AND...*drumroll*
6. Live a life worth pirating.

Another proposed metaphor I enjoyed was: Life is a Book. Yes, that one's already sort of a metaphor (a new chapter in our lives, reading body language, etc.), but they had fresh sentences, ones that made me pause and think for a moment.
1. We are edited by experience.
2. We feel valued when we are being read.

Even though it was a difficult exercise, it was exciting. We were thinking about life from a whole new perspective. We were reshaping our worldview with just a tweak of language.

And people say English classes have no value. 

Another Late Holiday Post

In the spirit of my holiday procrastination (see my Valentine's Day post), I'm going to write about St. Patrick's Day. For those of you concerned with the purity of my intentions, yes, I am actually Irish-American.

My maternal grandmother, an Irish Catholic New Englander, was the keeper of the Irish traditions in our house. She lived with us until I was eight, so she was a significant part of my formative years. Sadly, she passed away five years ago. But this year, since I got to spend spring break (and thus, March 17) with my parents, I suggested we celebrate St. Patrick's Day the way we used to. As with all good traditions, the celebration of our Irish-American heritage means food.

So for dinner, we had corned beef and cabbage (with carrots and, yes, potatoes) and an old family recipe: Great Grandmother Monaghan's Soda Bread, which is made like so:

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp caraway seeds
2 heaping tsp baking powder
1/2 package raisins
1 stick of butter (softened)
1 cup milk

My mother took my documentation with condescending equanimity.

1. Mix the first five ingredients and cut in the butter.
2. Add raisins and milk.

The dough is supposed to be dry, a little more biscuit-like than bread-like.

3. Bake in a greased pie plate at 350 for 1 hour (though my mom suggests checking after 45 minutes).

Delicious!

 4. The bread is dry, so slather a slice with butter, and enjoy!

My grandmother traditionally made two loaves: one for St. Patrick's Day, and then she'd put one in the freezer for Easter. So tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be making some of my own and carry on that tradition.

Note: The point of Irish soda bread is that it's easy and cheap to make--the caraway seeds and raisins were actually considered "posh" additions, so you don't really have to add them. Since I'm not a big raisin fan, I'm going to try and make my loaf without them, but the caraway seeds made a big difference in flavor, so I say they're worth it.

A tasty bit of family tradition.

Book Review

This year, Calvin College will be playing host to hundreds of book nerds for the Festival of Faith and Writing 2012. I am rather excited (and already enjoying a little pre-stress stress), as the Festival will play bookends to my literary career at Calvin. For my DCM (Developing a Christian Mind) January class required by Calvin, I took the Festival of Faith and Writing class with Professor Debra Rienstra, a lovely woman.

It opened my eyes. Now, I was already considering an English major at that point. Because, you know, I love books and stuff. Somehow that revelation took a while to sink in. Anyhow, Professor Rienstra's class quashed any doubts I could've had left at that point. For the first time, I was taking part in a conversation about faith and literature, and censorship was considered part of the problem, not the solution.

It's kind of scary now to think about how mind blowing these conversations were. But I digress.

So the FFW DCM was my introduction to the philosophy of the Calvin College English Department. And now, as a senior, I am a member of the FFW student committee. I will be hosting two authors: Carey Wallace, author of The Blind Contessa's New Machine, a historical fiction novel about the invention of one of the earliest typewriters; and Tony Earley, author of Jim the Boy, set in Depression-era North Carolina.

To give you a taste of the Festival, I present my review of Jim the Boy, written for my Senior Seminar class.

For this edition of Alicia Reads Books, I chose Jim the Boy, a young adult novel by Tony Earley. I have picked up YA novels only recently, (Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and, sadly, Twilight excepted), so my familiarity with the genre is limited. In my defense, Young Adult fiction as its own category is a new concept. Writing and marketing books specifically for the nebulous tween/teen age group is in its infancy. It has exploded into sub-categories, notably including “Paranormal Romance,” “Supernatural Thrillers,” and “Edgy Stories.” Judging by the YA bestsellers, thrilling, highly dramatized narratives are the most popular, ranging in subjects from vampire-filled high schools to the precocious conniving of the titular Pretty Little Liars. While some of these books merit their popularity with interesting concepts like a post-apocalyptic, gladiator-like Arena or an adolescent criminal mastermind who turns to magic to meet his ends, others rely on pure scandal, intrigue, or whatever passes for “edginess.” But with Jim the Boy, Earley does something completely different, harkening back to older qualities of YA fiction like Charlotte’s Web or The Bridge to Terabithia. Jim the Boy is a moment of tranquility amongst a multitude of Picaresque narratives, and well worth the time of readers of all ages.

Earley was raised in North Carolina, and like his debut book, a collection of short stories, Jim the Boy is set there. Jim Glass, a ten-year-old boy, lives in the fictional, rather sleepy town of Aliceville, North Carolina. It is 1934, and the United States was in the Depression. Having lived in the South myself, I was interested to see how the environment inspired Earley’s narrative. As it’s novel set not only in the rural, post-bellum South but also during the Depression, I expected Jim the Boy to be marked by great sadness and tragedy, the usual sort of bildungsroman material. But what I found was something else entirely.

Jim’s great tragedy happens long before the book begins; in fact, it happens before he is even born. His father, also named Jim Glass, dies of a heart condition while working in the fields, leaving his mother to give birth to and raise Jim as a single mother. But she isn’t entirely alone: her three brothers Zeno, Coran, and Al live in houses nearby. They not only financially support her and Jim, but they also jointly take on the role of Jim’s father. It is an unconventional family, but a warm and loving one; Jim never wants for love, support, and, markedly, moral education.

The book begins with Jim’s tenth birthday. He decides that he wants to work in the cornfields with his uncles and the farmhands. When Jim accidently cuts a stalk of corn, he buries it in hopes of hiding his mistake. His uncle Zeno discovers the cover up, and confronts his nephew. Jim feigns ignorance, but his uncle isn’t fooled. There is no punishment, just a simple lesson. “’Jim, this was a mistake until you tried to hide it,” he said. “But when you tried to hide it, you made it a lie’” (22). Jim, who loves and looks up to his uncles, is overcome with guilt. It is a simple lesson, one that all children learn, and Earley’s Uncle Zeno handles it with the grace of a loving parent. These small lessons continue through the book; instead of big mistakes and even bigger consequences, Jim’s growth as a character is slow and steady, much the same as any real ten-year-old.

This lack of high drama is the narrative’s greatest strength. Earley replaces the usual YA drama with clean, simple prose. One of the pivotal scenes in the novel, when Jim leaves Aliceville for the first time with Uncle Al to buy new horses for the farm, is treated with straightforward language that only enhances its beauty. That beauty is so striking, in fact, that I can’t help but quote the scene in its entirety:

“Two thoughts came to Jim at once, joined by a thread of amazement: he thought, People live here, and he thought, They don’t know who I am. At that moment, the world opened up around Jim like hands that, until that moment, had been cupped around him; he felt very small, almost invisible, in the open air of their center, but knew that the hands would not let him go,” (53).

This narrative voice makes reading Jim the Boy like taking a breath of fresh air. It is completely uncomplicated by any sort of affectation. As I read, the words and the pages seemed to slip away, and I finished large portions without realizing how much I had absorbed. It mirrored my experience reading two other Festival writers, Marilynne Robinson and Gary Schmidt. 

However, I found that the expectations I brought to the narrative, fed by current fads in Young Adult fiction and a quick read of the potentially bleak synopsis, nearly ruined my experience. I found myself waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. I held my breath for the big adventure, for something big to throw the quiet story upside-down. For the first half of the book, I kept putting it down, unable to explain my vague sense of dissatisfaction. But then I realized: that was it. And I finally exhaled.

I do not usually “go” for the quiet books. While I enjoy the clean prose of Marilyn Robinson’s Gilead or the understated sadness of Gary Schmidt’s Okay for Now, I read those books only within the past three years. I still have yet to get used to the idea of a narrative that is more of a steady heartbeat than a shock of adrenaline. My first instinct is to expect the unexpected, to be on the edge of my seat (or rather, the page) until the author delivers the great twist or the epic battle. I have to fight that first instinct. For Jim, it took longer than usual, because everything, at least superficially, points to great drama. Hence my being halfway through the narrative before I finally realized that Earley was not going to surprise me with a gimmick.

Once I had gotten past my own presuppositions, I enjoyed the novel immensely. I could share in Jim’s jealousies and fears, because they are what all children experience in some fashion: the shame of being caught in a lie, the desire to look cool, and the realization that the world is a big place. I could understand the heartbreaking decision of Jim’s mother not to remarry, because her abiding love for the husband taken too soon is the simple, deep emotion I see in the relationships of people around me. The love and humor of Jim’s uncles reminded me of my own family, of that camaraderie that only comes from the close ties of love and blood. Earley didn’t need any dramatics to sell his plot: his simple, everyday characters did that for him.

Even though Jim the Boy is technically Young Adult, it is one I would recommend to those above that age group as well. I do not lightly name it “Gilead for Young Adults.” For too long, authors pandering to fads and theatrics have ruled that genre, creating an imbalance in selection, but simplicity and contentment have not been lost. Jim the Boy, like The Wednesday Wars or Charlotte’s Web, brings the beauty of quiet stories back, and deserves to be on anyone’s reading list.

            

Observations from an Airborne Tube of Toothpaste

I settled my elbow on the strangely soft plastic of the armrest, pressing the heel of my palm into my jaw. I then spent the first few minutes of my pre-takeoff zoning trying to configure myself into a more optimal daydreaming pose. As it was an airplane, whose necessarily close quarters reminded me of the innards of a tube of toothpaste, I was unsuccessful.

The man across the aisle grumbled about the airline, most notably the lack of overhead compartments for us, the back row. I would have pitied him had he not had an empty seat next to him, the oft-heard of but rarely seen jackpot air bubble of the mile-high traveler. He feebly tried to make it look like he was trying to put his carry-on underneath his bonus legroom. With my negligible talents of depth perception and volume estimation, I wasn't fooled by his failure.

For my part, I was just happy to be there. My bad travel juju, karma, luck, whatever superstition have you, had continued to feed the whirlpool of anxiety with block letters: DELAYED. It took the goodwill of three United/Continental employees--Craig, Stephen, and Maria, to piece together a new flight plan that would put my comfortably-shod feet on the affordable carpet of RDU.

I had found my most-optimal-but-not-quite-there etude, and I stared, my eyes more glassy than the plexiglass paned oval that served as my headrest. The sun set, bleeding the clouds pink. It reminded my out of it self that haste makes waste when it comes to a load of whites. There had been a brief mention of a thunderstorm, but since it had been brought up during the pre-flight safety spiel, I had ignored it.

That is, until a brief flash of focus caught a wink from Mother Nature.

Act I:
Forks of lightning prodded the swirl of purple clouds, looking for an escape route. As the plane engine (somewhere in the vicinity of my left ear) or the altitude had drowned the accompany grumbles of thunder, I could watch the spectacle without fear. Slowly, we passed the sparks of the approaching tempest.

Act II:
The cabin lights came on. ORD was near. Beneath the plane, the terra firma had taken up the entertainment for our descent. Fog was rolling off Lake Michigan. Having consumed Navy Pier, its greedy fingers crawled to the Willis Tower and its antenna beacon. Beyond, the city was alight in a messy grid and blood vessel highways. The headlight veins, still so small, approached while taillight arteries darted away.

Act III:
The landing gear whined over the runways of ORD. A technicolor light show of red, blue, green, and orange spoke in a code for which I had no key. They welcomed us to the tarmac, guiding us to Terminal F in their cryptic manner.

Finis.

And then the show was over. There was no applause--it's passe now. Instead, we picked up our baggage and squeezed out of the tube, efficiently dispersing. Our time as an audience was over. After all, you can't put toothpaste back in the tube.