The Denver Art Museum really is a treasure. There’s a cool exhibit there called Stampede that’s all about animals in art, and there’s a fairy tale section, because animals feature heavily in many fairy tales. This is my favorite piece…
Continue reading “Little glimpses of defiance”The role I never wanted to play
I’ve been contemplating a bit why people who have chronic invisible illnesses really hate being told that we don’t look sick.
It’s about performance.
Continue reading “The role I never wanted to play”The art of subtlety in writing
I belong to a support group, and someone in that group recommended reading a YA book called ‘Jacob Have I Loved.’ It’s about a girl who grows up on an island in the Chesapeake Bay area with a twin sister who’s very different from her – favored and pampered by their parents and the community in general. The title refers to this Bible verse (even though it’s not a religious book):
As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ – Romans 9:13
To give context, in the Bible, Jacob and Esau are twins. Esau is the older one, but Jacob deceives him and receives a very important blessing from their elderly father. The book invokes the conflict between Jacob and Esau in the title; the narrator relates to Esau, as technically she’s the oldest, but it’s the youngest who manages to take attention away from her.
I was reading with a purpose – specifically to look at the dynamic between the siblings and within the family unit. Art reflects life, after all.
What I found were great examples of ‘show, don’t tell’ and subtlety in writing.
“The closing walls and the ticking clocks”
Studies have shown that there’s a powerful link between scent and memory. I have personally found this to be profoundly true. One breath in and suddenly I’m transported into the past.
I have smell triggers. Lilies remind me of funerals. The smell of matches reminds me of burning candles late at night in my room as an angsty teen. The salty smell of the ocean reminds me of going to the shore during summers as a child, which was one of the few truly happy parts of my childhood.
Today as I was leaving a meeting at a local conference venue, I was greeted by the heavy scent of cigar smoke, courtesy of a sheepish-looking gentleman who was having a quick smoke in the parking garage of a smoke free property. He needn’t have worried – I’m the type who snitches on people trying to enjoy a simple vice.
Continue reading ““The closing walls and the ticking clocks””
Transcendental confusion
I was in high school when I first read Walt Whitman. I remember being introduced to the idea of Transcendentalism, finding something about it intriguing, and liking something I read by Whitman. He’s lumped in with both the Transcendentalists and Romantics, but if you think of Transcendentalism as the American spin on Romanticism, or as two highly entwined movements, that makes a lot of sense.
I picked up a copy of Leaves of Grass somewhere, in which the poem Song of Myself is prominently featured. When I read it, I realized with excitement that I was already familiar with it. I was in a choir as a child, and someone picked out several passages to arrange into a chorale piece. It’s about innocence and death, which Whitman seamlessly entwines without allowing it to become dark…
Stepping out of my burrow
So I’m in my late 30s. This is an age that I think a lot of people dread, because 40 marks the beginning of middle age, the no-good, very bad slump that follows young(er) adulthood where we’re all suddenly used-up malcontents who are either beaten down by life or on the verge of launching headfirst into a sitcom-like midlife crisis.
That is, of course, utterly ridiculous. But I have noticed that birthdays that end in 0 tend to cause panic in adults.
To PhD or Not To PhD
I’m a PhD candidate, and have completed almost all the requirements to be able to walk with a Master’s. And I have to admit, I’m very seriously considering it.
