Thursday, September 29, 2011

After Jonathan Safran Foer*

Wow, a whole week without a blog post, probably because the week was filled with more people than thoughts. I did consider posting a list of all the things I had run into in the past week, but that wouldn't have been very interesting. I also thought about posting "Church with the Homeless" and I still might at a later date.

On Tuesday night I started job training, and I have that again tonight. I think I am going to love my job, and that is a great feeling.

Loving Caleb more is also a great feeling.

Reading a book that talks a lot about people dying is not a great feeling. The book is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I think I am too much like the kid protagonist to read a book like this. He thinks of too many bad things that can happen, and it's not good for me to read all of his ideas about fear and danger around every corner. The story is very good and it's very intense, but I realized yesterday that I should take smaller bites. I'm almost done now... I do like reading about September 11 for some odd reason. I don't know if that's good for me either. I think part of me wants to get close enough to grief so that I'm not afraid of it anymore. I like reading about people who are able to move on through the pain, but the characters in this book haven't been able to yet. I want to punch this one guy really bad: this is the second book I've read in the last couple of months where the husband selfishly leaves the pregnant wife. I like way that the book is written with pictures and other unconventional devices. I also like all of the ideas that the eight/nine-year-old kid has. They are fascinating. Too fascinating for a nine-year-old. He is a weird kid, but endearing.

Wednesday night we had dinner at Laredo's (yummy Mexican food) with a couple from church, and agreed that we need to do more things like that because they fill up your soul. Not just Mexican food, but being together.

Also, this morning, we had perfect water for the first time in over two weeks. It was a beautiful and wonderful and awesome and secret and perfect gift. Rowing isn't fun if you can never actually go out on the water. That's why people row-- not so they can erg all the time. I got to stroke, and it was wonderful. So refreshing. Best workout I've had in weeks.

Monday at waffle night Tom Fowler presented his 2040 presidential campaign and we had a great discussion about what would happen if the states broke up and blah blah blah Hunger Games. I love talking with those people. It feels like college because everyone is from somewhere else. I don't usually have conversations about what-if scenarios because my brian doesn't work that way. That's why I can't write fiction. It's hard for me to stop seeing what is.

I got up at 4:30am on Wednesday so that I could write a letter to Dr. Stackhouse about our little article toss back and forth on beauty because I knew that if I didn't get up and write it while I was unable to stop thinking about it in bed at 4:30 am that I would never write him a letter at all. I still think I'm mostly right. It started to get too philosophical because I started talking about people's pain being based in the true reality of their circumstances or being based on lies they think about themselves, but all pain is felt pain no matter what it's based on-- lies or truth-- so then that didn't work. And I was stuck.

List of the beautiful and good: Kickapoo coffee, Kelly, Danielle, Kathy, Ashleigh, Katie Van, strip of Whitney Way with yellow leaves, weekend vacation, family coming in one week!, perfect water, Water the person and Elizabeth, Caleb, Brittaini, fall, pumpkins, purple nail polish, new job, discovery of path by pond with two long-legged birds, wearing high heels.

*This is why the tone is how it is in this piece. Once I read someone for a while, I start to write like they do. He wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 



1 comment:

  1. Sarah! So glad I found your blog so I can keep up with you! Hope you are doing great and enjoying marriage! Miss you!

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