Intro
A little while ago, in an e-mail to my brother, I declared “The blog helps me to confront, weekly, two struggles: 1) clarifying my thoughts and 2) handling topics that expose opinions I feel vulnerable about.” For the longest time, I thought it was much safer not to have opinions about things and I think that can be felt in the stiffness of earlier writing. Taking a plunge - life is a river in this metaphor - distilling a cup at a time, paddling on; all that is a more vigorous way of living… And so, this week, more reading, more listening, and just a little more opinion.
Finished reading
I’m happy there are so many books on the subject of writing… I can go on in life continuing to find them and take in their little doses of inspiration. Lately I finished a classic; John McPhee’s Draft No. 4. Of the dozen pages bearing a sticky note, I’ll transcribe two quotes that are in fact pieces of advice. The first:
No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. (p 82)
And the second:
Never market-research your writing. Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way. (p 180)
Podcastland
Part of being a fan of the Freakonomics podcast, with host Stephen Dubner, is admiring how he manages to find not just interesting topics (horses!) but also interesting people. Recently he interviewed Judy Faulkner, shining a light on how a company can be run differently than the maximizing profits model I feel trained to accept as normal. It felt like a refreshing point of view.
The other, less-fun part of being a fan of a podcast and its host, is accepting that they, like you, are paddling a river and can influence you to like and accept something that later, you realize, wasn’t all that great. A case in point is a recent episode of If Books Could Kill. Titled “Grit”, I was reluctant to listen. Grit is Angela Duckworth’s word for a quality associated with success, and I’d been won over by her voice on Steven Levitt’s People I (Mostly) Admire. But here, Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri were going to apply their show’s tagline: “the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds”.
Is it embarrassing to have to revise a previously favourable opinion of something? I used to think so. I used to think that you had to be categorical about things, about people. It’s both harder and more liberating to accept that people are more like fellow travellers than sovereigns; that ideas can be more ephemera than doctrine.
Collecting
Adding to a previous picture of a bar code I liked, this one, featured on a bag of Pop Corners:
A French audiobook
I liked listening to Veiller sur elle by Jean-Baptiste Andrea. This description of the protagonist’s feat of sculpting a saint, as if he was alive, made me laugh when I heard it:
Il examina le saint François dans mon atelier tandis que Francesco et moi, comme autrefois, attendions son verdict. J’avais bien travaillé. […] J’avais sculpté François la main levé près de sa joue, un oiseau perché sur l’index. Jusque là, rien d’anormal. Mais l’on devinait par une audace insensé de ma part, que l’aile de l’oiseau avait dû frôler son cou dans la seconde d’avant, le chatouiller, car le saint souriait. On n’avait jamais vu un saint chatouilleux, encore moins souriant, en tout cas, pas en statuaire, où tout les saints arboraient en générale des mines de fonctionnaires divins, harcelés de demandes d’intercession.
In interviews around this book’s winning the Prix Goncourt, (such as here and here) Andrea talks about his love of writing and the priority he gives to a story’s structure.
A birthday
Enzo, our velvety drapes-for-ears beagle, turned 6 this week, so we gave him some gifts to unwrap.
Baking
Occasionally I’ll get a really specific dessert request, and this week, is was for something simple. Something that didn’t have any hidden “health” to it. No sneaking in some fancy flour, like buckwheat. No fruit and nut-filled batters. I complied and made vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting, thanks to a recipe for both from Smitten Kitchen Every Day. In the quest for interesting flavours and unusual ideas, I sometimes forget that basic can be perfect.
Walking the dog
This week, what caught my eye was texture… more golden grass, more sticks, more curly bark, and hey! Check out the chickadee that landed there!
Sun-drenched texture… from pine tree branches to pussy willows.
And in the forest, where last week we spotted a frog, this week, there was a box.
Do you know what was in the box?
Nothing!
Happy Sunday!