http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post – Page 14

Lessons in English

#1: Food often looks like less in a container than it is in your stomach. Remember that. I’m talking to myself.

#2: There’s nothing that warm sun, a good book, and a pool of azure water can’t fix. Remember that, too. I’m talking to you.

#3: As fun as hyperbole is in writing, it can be exhausting in thought. Case in point: I spend a lot of time these days staring at the sky, half expecting an answer, half expecting it to fall down on top of me and crush me into dust.

#4: It’s been five days since I’ve been on Facebook. I’ve been tempted, when I find myself looking for an escape from my current task, or entertainment, or something stimulating (which Facebook is not). Keeping in touch with old friends? Great. Keeping in contact with job networks? Great. Running my life? Not so great. I’d rather spend my time outside with the real people. Ironically, I’ve spend most of my time in novels with other fake people. But these people I haven’t met yet.
Welcome to my head.

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new cookbook, my shouldn’t’ve-but-I-did gift to myself for no reason in particular, other than I’m a freak when it comes to food. (See item number one). So I make lunch and eat while reading the newspaper, and in turn, eat too much.
I love baking in the sun like a tomato, but it dries out my skin.

What’s a girl to do?

My solution:

Love and Death: Woody Allen, 1975

Enjoy.
Incidentally, the whole film is available on YouTube. But this movie is worth whatever means necessary to watch it (remember the phenomenon of renting?)

What’s in the news today?

A fourteen year old girl goes on a diet–in a children’s book.

Bill Clinton’s a Vegan.

Celebrity this, celebrity that.

Social networking is harmful.

REALLY?

Maybe I was a sheltered kid and as an adolescent, really stayed in my own bubble, but as I get older and become an “adult” (whatever that is), I am growing sadder and sadder at the state of the world around me. And feeling more and more helpless because I can’t change that. Even with God in the equation, the state of things is the state of things. So how can one possibly have a chance at happiness when every habitual nature of human beings is becoming detrimental to each self, each other, and the planet? De-pressing. I don’t have an answer. I really don’t.

Instead, I have decided to take a break from social networking–if I can’t change the world, I can change myself, at least temporarily, and ignore the rest of the world while doing it! Hah. I will go one week without checking Facebook, without reading daily blogs and tweets and feeling like my brain is wiring in ten thousand different directions all at once.

In place of mind grumbling brain scrambling, I will read newspapers, every day, some on paper, some on-line (because we only get the Times once a week). And I’ve decided that for every article I read that makes me want to cry, pull my hair out, or do ten hail Marys, I will find a positive, uplifting article to read to remind me that the world is not ending because of mechanically processed chicken, for example.

I started this morning, and I want to share the articles I have found:

#1-Hail Mary Full of Grace, What Is This World I Live In? (take a look at the side articles as well)

#2- Uplifting (a truly touching story)

#3- Yay, Human Rights and Progress!!

I also got to spend this past week with a wonderful little man, nine months old and discovering life for this first time. This is Lydon, and for him, I want the world; a clean, genuine, unspoiled world. I pray this is the case.

I Have Seen the LIGHT.

And it’s going eastward on Route 78.

Somewhere in Alabama.

Lies I told myself.

I was born at home, in a five room house, the youngest of the three children of a school teacher and a book store manager taking night classes. My parents’ room was in the hall near the back door. My brother slept in what was marketed to my parents as the dining room, and my sister and I shared the front bedroom. When I was seven years old, my sister, ripe in her pubescent distain for everything, decided she wanted her own room. She moved into our parents room, they moved into our room, and I “moved” into the living room. We had a sleeper sofa.

When I was fourteen, living in Memphis with my very own room (and blue and white painted ceiling), I decided I wanted to go to NYU to be a stage actress. I was, after all, starring in most of my middle school skits. How much harder could it be? The world was my oyster, and I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

When I was eighteen, I decided I wanted stay in Memphis and study so that I could get that extra “F” on my transcript. BFA. It just looks more romantic than a plain old B A. Also, I learned that NYU, like many other “reputable” schools, is designed for kids with trust funds. Not me.

I am now twenty years old, and I still believe that the world is my oyster, despite the fact that once again, I am living in my parents’ living room (different house though, slightly different family, and this time, I have a mattress). I guess family is handy like that. They only see the best in you, even when all you can see is the worst.

I am part of a generation of go-getters. We are CPAs and on the fast track for CEO.

We tour in bands and tour foreign countries, and eventually, after we’ve conquered the world and created our 401ks, maybe we’ll marry another rich CPA and have some kids. And we’ll do it all without disturbing our French manicures or missing our spin classes.

That’s all well and good, but what about breathing? I think somewhere along the line, there’s something we forgot…

The northern Mississippi River peeks out from behind some Minneapolis foliage to say hello to the sun.

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