Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

Lunch with a Book

The kids started school today. I could not let myself miss out on taking the littlest S to her first day of Kindergarten so I asked for a half day off. Getting them settled into their new classes was uneventful, none of us came close to shedding a tear, and I was at the office by 8:20. Which meant by 12:20 I had worked 4 hours, which is in fact half a day, so I left. The biggest S had to work a double today so I found myself with almost 3 hours all to myself. The last time I had that much time to myself I used it to catch up on sleep, but today I felt pretty rested. I considered coming home to read, write, draw, meditate or perhaps even sunbathe. But I felt more hungry than I did creative and since we spent most of last week in North Carolina our cupboard is decidedly bare. It seemed like I should take myself out to lunch. Our little town really has only half a dozen places to eat that aren’t fast food so it didn’t take me long to run through the food and atmosphere of each in my head and decide that the Chinese place without the buffet was the place I wanted to be.

The restaurant is dark in a soothing kind of way and usually doesn’t have that big of a lunch crowd. Though when I arrived today they had a new big banner advertising a $4.99 lunch special and most of the tables were in use. Along the the far wall they have one long booth with maybe five or six small tables, each with one chair across from them. I was seated at the second one and as I pulled my book out of my purse I looked down to the end of the booth where another woman was sitting by herself eating with a book. She didn’t look up so I re-entered the strange world of Rushdie’s Enchantress of Venice. When I put the book down to order I noticed another woman was being seated to my left, also alone with a book, and before my food had a chance to come a fourth was seated to my right, also with a book. So there we were all lined up along the edge or the restaurant with our lunch specials and our novels. We must have been quite the sight.

My food was good and the story interesting but rather than being comforted by the presence of my fellow solo readers I felt a bit annoyed by them. Perhaps it was because I went in with the idea of treating myself to something out of the ordinary and then realized my experience was actually a very common one.

I would like to continue to write about what this might mean, but my duties as Soccer Mom are calling…

Creativity

“How do you know if you are creatively blocked? Jealousy is an excellent clue. Are there artists whom you resent? Do you tell yourself, ‘I could do that if only…’”

 -The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron

Starting September 1 I’m going to be joining a group that will be working through The Artist’s Way. John Chandler, who writes the Creativityist blog will be facilitating. My mom brought me her copy of the book yesterday because I think mine got left in Mexico. I read the introductory chapters and was especially convicted by the lines I’ve quoted above. I know jealousy isn’t a very nice thing to admit to, but I don’t think I’ve ever pretended, hmm, well,  recently pretended not to have all sorts of neurosis where my art is concerned. The baggage I carry from the 2 years I spent at School of the Arts alone could fill a couple U-Hauls. But I think I’m ready to try and work through it, and I’m fascinated by the idea of doing it with an online collective. Accountability really is a big deal and I hope it will help me make it through. It really does look like it will be a lot of work but I’m excited. It was hard not to go ahead and start week one last night. I did get up and write what Cameron calls morning pages this morning. I figure it won’t hurt to go ahead and start getting used to that. Though right now my biggest concern is how I am going to manage to find a 2 hour block of time each week to take myself on an artist’s date and where we might go. Though The Funky Chicken Art Project is still on my list of places I need to visit, as is Matilda’s in Alpharetta, and then there is that gourd place on the way to Ellijay. I guess I’ll figure it out.

perspective

So my friend Jenn has gotten a facebook account. That’s not really news. It is mildly interesting that I had one before she did as she is usually the leader in such things, but she probably knew about it way before me and has just now deigned to join up. Most of her profile is exactly like her myspace one but I skimmed over it anyway. When I got to the books she likes part I noticed she listed Garden Spells by Sarah Addison which I read a few months back and really enjoyed too. Our reading tastes are usually very very different so I was a bit excited and started to write her a little note on her wall expressing my shared enthusiasm for the book when I noticed that in the same book section she had also listed, “Any book by Anne Rice (well… any book written before she found God). ”   My enthusiasm ebbed. I’m sure I sighed out loud. Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe just how different our perspectives have become.

When I was in high school Anne Rice was hands down my favorite writer. I couldn’t get enough of her vampires and then later her witches. Her fascinating characters and the intricate weaving of their present and past not only kept my attention but mesmerized me. As a sophomore in high school I wanted nothing more than to leave my actual life behind and go live with Lestat and Louis, but by the time I was deciding which few precious books would move to Mexico with me not one of hers made the cut.  They got left behind with all my The Cure albums.Though I spend plenty of time thinking about the past and wondering why things turned out the way they did and what I might have done to make things better I didn’t spend much more time thinking about Anne Rice. At least not until I heard she was writing books about Jesus.

I’m pretty sure it was Jenn who told me about the books themselves and about the amazon reviews and the whole deal. I remember thinking at the time that Anne must have been like the boys at art school who when they first come out of the closet have to become flaming queens for a while before they settle back down to just being themselves but openly gay. I think its a pretty natural reaction and probably common for a lot of born-again Christians to come on overly strong at first before they learn how to be just themselves but Christian. Anyway, I was anxious to read the  books.

I read the first one, Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt,  last September and thought it was okay. It held my attention all the way through but was easy to move on from. Then just this last month I listened to Christ the Lord, The Road to Cana on a road trip and I can not get the story out of my head. I thought it was excellent. I thought she did a great job of presenting Jesus as fully human yet fully divine, just as tempted as any human yet sinless. I think her experience in writing supernatural characters such as vampires and witches perfectly prepared her for this. She wrote a interesting fictional story of her own creation yet it seems to me that both her theology and history are sound. I was especially captivated by the way she described Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness and the subsequent temptations from the devil. She made it all come alive for me and I’m still thinking about it several weeks later. In fact I read The Shack right afterwards and even though it was a powerful little book itself I think The Road to Cana had a stronger effect on me.  But I think as a former Vampire Chronicles aficionado and current intentional Christian its no great surprise I’m in to these books. I would be interested for both my secular and Christian friends to give them a chance and let me know their perspective.