Just Tagged...My Follow-through

My sister-in-law, Leah, 'tagged' me with the following:
1. Grab the book nearest to you at this moment.
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Post the fifth complete sentence on that page to your blog.

The book closest to me was The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. I read the book in 2004, but had it out on the piano, ready to send to my little brother.

The fifth sentence on page 123 reads: "I don't understand."

This book had a profound effect on me emotionally at the time I read it. I have rarely burst into tears while reading a book. When I finished reading it in the middle of the night, I wrote a long letter to my husband before going to sleep.

Some of the passages I underlined in the book include:

***But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time...

***People often belittle the place where they were born, but heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners...

***You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you...

***You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to...

***Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else...

***All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped...

***Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge...

***Each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one. (The book's last sentence.)

If a Dog Were Your Teacher...

I found this a while ago and always enjoy reading it when I'm thumbing through my quote book for something else, so I thought I'd share it here. It's the kind of thing a hundred people will send to you on internet - sorry about that - but it's true. Plus I am missing my own dog today while she is at the groomer.

If a dog were your teacher, you would learn stuff like...

...when loved ones come home, always run and greet them.
...when it's in your best interest, practice obedience.
...let others know when they've invaded your territory.
...take naps.
...stretch before rising.
...run, romp, and play daily.
...avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
...on hot days drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
...when you're happy, dance around and wag your tail.
...delight in simple joy of a long walk.
...eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you've had enough.
...be loyal and never pretend to be someone you're not.
...when someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by, and nuzzle them gently.

Word of the Day: Loquacious

I chose today's word after driving my 6th grader to school yesterday. She was doing her vocabulary homework, asking me to define the words she didn't know, and, oops, I didn't know this one either. I'd seen it, of course, but didn't really KNOW what it meant. Perfect for a word of the day!

Loquacious (loh-KWAY-shuhs): excessively talkative, wordy, full of trivial conversation

Example sentences:

In contrast with the loquacious prosecutor, the defense attorney said few words before resting his case.

All plans for a productive day of housework were blown when a loquacious neighbor stopped by for a chat.

Movie Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

I saw this movie two weeks ago and have thought little about it since, though some aspects of it have annoyed me into writing a review afterall.

It's the story of a middle-aged woman (Frances McDormand of "Fargo") in London just as WWII is breaking out. She's been unfairly dismissed from her position as governess and needs work desparately, but her employment office is unwilling to refer her to new clients, so she surreptitiously acquires the card of a singer who needs a social secretary and goes directly to her apartment to apply.

Amy Adams ("Enchanted") plays Dylesia Lafosse, a young, beautiful, strangely innocent yet amoral stage actress who will do anything to make it big on the London stage. When Miss Pettigrew arrives Dylesia is in a state of panic, trying to simulatneously expel an important overnight paramour and clean the apartment before her official boyfriend returns. Miss Pettigrew starts working immediately, covering for Dylesia with all male parties and hiding evidence of Dylesia's infidelity under the rug. Miss Pettigrew earns Dylesia's devotion within the first twenty minutes of their meeting, becoming a much appreciated, indispensable assistant to her.

As the movie progresses (all of it taking place in a 24-hour period) Miss Pettigrew acquires a new dress, attends a high-brow fashion show, and meets the third man in Dylesia's life, who proposes marriage to his beloved and is instantly rebuffed.

So what annoyed me? Gratuitous nudity, for one thing - just enough to titillate the director, I presume, while preserving the movie's PG-13 rating. I also found the script to be lacking action (and if I thought it lacked action, it really lacked action. Given the right circumstances, I can be entertained watching grass grow.) But more than anything I was annoyed by the implication that Miss Pettigrew wasn't living, really living, until she enterred the chaotic world of Dylesia Lafosse. Miss Pettigrew had been living all along - less fashionably than Dylesia, but living nonetheless, and with a great deal more peace and self-respect. I believe it's always best not to assume that one person's life is any better than another person's life. Everyone has a life, and every life has ups and downs. Miss Pettigrew exhibited maturity, perseverence, independence, and a constancy of character all of the other characters in the movie lacked.

Despite this negative review, I would recommend this movie as an inexpensive rental to be viewed on a rainy afternoon. It has its humorous moments.

Stream of Conscience Ramblings...

(About the photograph: I took this picture along the road south of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota last summer. Most of the pictures I use on blog posts are not my own, unless I label the post 'Photography,' in which case the picture is original. All of the pictures I use in the side bar are my own original work.)

Today I'm going to force myself to make a personal post about anything that comes to mind while I'm writing it. Frequent readers of this blog may have noticed that I rarely really 'blog.' Blogging is like journaling, and we've been taught to keep our thoughts to ourselves, to keep our diaries under lock and key...Is it because our thoughts are dangerous, or because they're valuable...? I don't know why.

For me, I guess it's because a blog is on the WORLDWIDE WEB and I can't monitor who reads it or how they interpret it. On the one hand, a blogger wants lots of people to read his/her blog. Why? So that he or she has greater influence in some cosmic sense. On the other hand, bloggers tend to be quiet types. I may want to shout something from the rooftop, but I want to do so without making a noise which might disturb someone. I was raised to be, above all else, a nice girl. I wouldn't want to post anything offensive. It's easier, then, not to post at all - at least nothing that I have to acknowledge is 100% my own thinking. Afterall, someone may disagree with it or be bothered by it.

With this blog (as with anything I create) I want to lift myself and others to higher attitudes, thoughts, and actions - not by preaching, but by setting before us some of what is good or beautiful about life. It isn't all wonderful, no, but the world is full of people who will point out what's wrong with it and what's unfair about it - I don't want to do that. I choose not to add to the negativity of the world as much as I can avoid it. Sometimes I simply can't avoid it and fall in with the complainers, the nay-sayers, and the cynics. I can be as sarcastic as the next person, and more sarcastic than most. It's my debate training, I think. I can see both sides of most every issue.

For everything that's said about the value of a good example (all of it true, I might add), I have certainly learned a lot from the negative examples in my life. You learn consequences either way, if you're observant, unless you insist upon experiencing all of the consequences, good and bad, yourself. I am one of those people who could learn from the mistakes of others without making them all myself, which saved me a lot of time and untold misery.

As a child I used to interview myself all the time (like Oprah, only long before Oprah - probably the Donahue era), pretending to be an Olympic ice skater or a movie star or a widow...those are the three interviews I remember best. This exercise helped me imagine what life would be like in someone else's shoes - what triumphs and regrets they would have experienced, what everyday life for them would be like. Even today Scott is often amazed by my ability to practically 'experience' the hypothetical...I guess I still have a very active imagination.

In recent years I've found myself admiring seemingly negative qualities in other people. For example, I have admired people for their irresponsibility. Why? Because they are not 'burdened' with a sense of duty. They are given more latitude, because no one expects them to be anything other than impulsive. Of course I can see that this characteristic causes them a degree of suffering, too (often a great degree), but who can say whether they suffer more for being irresponsible than I do for being hyper responsible? It takes time and energy to dot all those i's and cross all those t's (but probably not as much time and energy as it would to undot them and uncross them and start over...) I would not choose to be irresponsible even if I could, and I'm not sure that I can. It's just interesting to note that, as with everything else in life, irresponsibility has its pluses as well as its minuses.

A Cowboy Poem du Jour: Dream Ranch

The dream ranch lies

Where cool streams flow

Through deep green meadows

Nourished by snow;

Where the horses are broke

And the boss is not,

Where it's not too cold

And never too hot.

There's hay in the manger

And straw in the stall

With plenty of oats to grain them all.

There's a house in the shade

And a spring on the hill

Where you hear the call of a whippoorwill.

Now the dream ranch, of course,

Just doesn't exist,

But if we didn't dream

think what we'd have missed.

(Colen H. Sweeten, Jr.)

Quotes on Writing

I have a HUGE collection of quotes about writing. I thought I would share a few from time to time. These are offered in no particular order - just as I come across them in one of my quote journals (in this case, the green one):

As a young man, I realized that I was doomed, or elected, or sentenced for life to the writing of poetry. Edwin A. Robinson

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure. J.D. Salinger

I have drawers in my mind, so many drawers. I have hundreds of materials in these drawers. I take out the images and memories that I need. Haruki Murakami (Japanese novelist)

From "How to Be a Writer" by Lorrie Moore: First, try to be something, anything else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/Kindergarten teacher. President of the world. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age - say 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire.

If there were a special hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works. John Dos Passos

Dickens makes his books blaze up not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire. Virginia Woolf

If only I could manage, without annoyance to my family, to get imprisoned for ten years, without hard labor, and with the use of books and writing materials, it would be simply delightful. Lewis Carroll

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress. When I get tired of the one, I spend the night with the other. Anton Chekhov

And my favorite from this little group of quotes:

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. Anton Chekhov

Movie Review: Nim's Island

Just home from seeing Nim's Island.

Thumbs up - I liked it. You have to be willing to suspend disbelief and accept some outrageously improbably events, but if you can successfully do that (i.e., if there is a child still inside you somewhere...) it's an entertaining movie. (And it wasn't completely implausible - all motives were well explained.)

It's the story of a girl named Nim (played well by Abigail Breslin) who has lived her entire life on an island in the South Pacific with her marine biologist father. They harness solar energy for electricity to communicate with the outside world. While he's gone on what is supposed to be a two-day field trip, Nim begins answering questions online from her favorite writer, a reclusive novelist researching a story on volcanoes. (Jodie Foster plays the writer, a rare comedy role for her.) After an injury, she tells the novelist that she is 11 years old, hurt, alone, and fearful that her father will not return in time to save their island from 'buccaneers.' After trying to arrange for help from the safe confines of her San Francisco home, the novelist decides that she will go save Nim herself...a difficult proposition for someone who hasn't had an actual adventure of her own in years, perhaps ever.

I wanted to see the movie, in part, because I loved Swiss Family Robinson so much as a child, and this movie did remind me a little bit of that one (a treehouse, friendly, cooperative animals, etc.) Both movies inspire my imagination. They make me want to go live on a tropical island myself.

Quotes on Intelligence/Brains

Some of these are pretty fun and obscure quotes:

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. – Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”

I am still learning. – Michelangelo, 1560, age 85

In youth we learn. In age we understand. – Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, 1883

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweat shops. – Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, 1980

Joining Mensa means that you are a genius….I worried about the arbitrary 132 cutoff point, until I met someone with an IQ of 131 and, honestly, he was a bit slow on the uptake. – Steve Martin

Word of the Day: Bliss

Follow your bliss.

Fuller Quote:

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track

that has been there all the while, waiting for you,

and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

When you can see that, you begin to meet people

who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you.

I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid,

and doors will open where you didn't know

they were going to be. (Joseph J. Campbell, 1904-1987)

bliss: supreme happiness; utter joy or contentment; ecstasy

bliss out: (slang) to experience bliss or euphoria, or to cause someone else to experience bliss or euphoria (Example: "Just follow the trail to the meadow in bloom and bliss out." "This recording is guaranteed to bliss out Mozart fans.")

Some things that have caused me to 'bliss out' (in no particular order):

husband & children (family)

open road (adventure, discovery)

mountains (from a distance or in a canyon)

green furrowed fields in spring

shady woods

water: streams, falls, rivers, ocean waves

hot fudge sundaes

books, poems, quotes, ideas, words

art supplies & office supplies

dogs

fish tacos

crossword puzzles

animals in nature

Japanese gardens

the musty smell of a basement or a museum

rolling hills dotted with cows

small cottages

laundry fresh from the dryer

movie theater popcorn

sailboats on a pier or in a bay

picnics

floating in a swimming pool, ears submerged

perfume

Observation: Very few people need a reality check, but almost everyone needs an occasional 'bliss check.'

Question for Readers: What is your bliss?