A letter

Dear January 1, 2011,

The 364 days following you have a lot to live up to. I have spent nearly 24 other years full of joy and beauty and grace and mercy and love and wonder and blessings. I have spent countless hours nestled in the sand and good books and the love of my family, feeling God and the world wash over me and wrap around me and I know what happiness is about. Just this last year, a hundred little blossoms in my life bloomed, for better and for worse. But mostly for better.

The prospects of things to come are enough to make my heart and mind do back flips every time I think of them. I have little inklings of where I will go and what I will do, and a hundred million emotions to go along with the inklings, mostly fear and excitement and a couple different kinds of bittersweet. But they are merely inklings and the real prospect of 2011 for me is all the wild, unruly, boundless uncertainty of it. The 364 days to come, dear January 1, hold a lot of responsibility in that boundless uncertainty.

I wrote once that 2010 would be either the best or the worst year of my life. It was neither. That was a frivolous, theatrical remark to make to begin with, and entirely impossible to quantify (though quantification is not nearly as relevant as it is sometimes supposed to be). But 2010 was beautiful and surprising and the grave fears with which I started it out were alleviated. 2010 was remarkable and unremarkable, as the best years are, and, what’s more important I love it with the fullness of my heart. This, too, places high expectations on the 364 days to come (large shoes to fill and all that).

Besides all this, the world is tens of billions of years old, and the pressure a single year must have to make a difference in the whole huge vastness of it must be rather daunting. Nor am I the only living thing placing a hundred million conscious and subconscious bets on the coming year (even excluding all the new year’s resolutions pertaining to exercise or weight loss). I don’t envy you the universe’s demands, 2011, although I suspect that they are linked exponentially to the greatness of your potential.

And I have no particular words of encouragement. Certainly the year is more adept at its own success than I. So long as it is reckless and upright and paradoxical, it must succeed magnificently and as for the amount of work we will all put it through, well that is the nature of its existence and I extend no pity. Like people, 2011 is entitled to nothing. Life is for living.

But this letter is to you, January 1, 2011. (Because perhaps the writing of a letter to an entire year is too intimidating for me.) But also because – if I may be so presumptuous – there are things I wish for you. Small day. Small moment. Things that are more within my realm than the hugeness of this whole year which will, ultimately, do-with-me-as-it-will.

Here are the things I want to tell you:

Wiggle your toes, January 1. Wiggle your toes in the Milky Way or in the Nile, or in some small, obscure, marshmallow cloud or creek somewhere and indulge in just being you.

The grave responsibilities of the world are not yours, though you play a hand in them. Play your hand with grace, but don’t let it weigh down your heart. The smallest of things – even one 365th of a whole – can make an enormous difference. Make that difference, but have faith that others will make a difference too.

You can be a sleepy day, January 1. With the whole year ahead. Be sleepy and gentle and soft, but also kind and generous and wonderful for you are setting this year’s stage, you are planting the year’s wildflowers, you are making the first impression.

Though you are small and fleeting, flourish, dear day. Be gusty and charming and confident. Don’t shy from challenge or sadness or change or other things-which-make-us-grow. Learn everything you can and if you must err (and you must), err toward sensibility before apathy and credulity before mistrust.

In truth, these are things I wish for you and me, both, January 1. And all “the good ones,” whatever corners and grand moments they occupy this year. It is nothing like the wisdom of the mountains or the ubiquity of the wind. It has neither the wit nor the timelessness of the writer-I-hope-to-be. It is, January 1, merely-me to merely-you.

With Love,

R.E.A.

P.S. Please write back.

It’s Christmastime and I don’t want to be like those people in the parking lots at the mall

I am an angry driver. I know this because, for example, the other day I spent ten minutes parked in a parking lot writing down how I feel about turn signals. This is what I wrote:

“Turn signals are not optional. They’re a part of driving – or at least driving-as-we-know-it. If you’re the type of person who drives, you don’t just randomly get to be the type of person who doesn't use your turn signal. There’s a reason we don’t give six year olds driver’s licenses, besides the fact that their feet won’t reach the peddles. A car is a piece of heavy machinery that, without competent supervision, can drive over a cliff at 100 miles per hour, or ricochet around corners without warning the life-loving humans in the general vicinity.

“Putting on your turn signal should practically be a reflex. Like turning the lock before running out the front door, or shutting the toilet lid before you flush. Not doing it should feel more conspicuous than doing it.

“I understand that there are situations where a turn signal is not necessary – driving up the 15, for example, between Nowhere and Barstow, when you haven’t seen another car in 157 miles. But seeing as how the last time I drove around Long Beach without seeing another car for 157 miles was...never, I don’t understand why turn signals are so scarce around here.”

I also know I am an angry driver because I am only half kidding when I say I’m going to attach a light-up neon sign to my bumper that blinks the word MERGE in enormous letters every time someone fails to merge properly, a fairly simple task that a surprisingly large percentage of the driving population apparently never learned.

Every time I am stuck in traffic I am not only annoyed, I begin contemplating the dangers of overpopulation and considering the possibilities of launching the worst of the drivers around me into orbit around some other planet, not only relieving the traffic, but also relieving the human race on earth of a portion of its stupid gene. The only way to refocus my brain to anything less homicidal is to roll down my windows and start singing “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” at the top of my lungs. I’m serious. I do all of these things.

I know my spontaneous anger at random drivers is (at least sometimes) irrational. I know I make driving mistakes all the time and have no way to communicate my apology to the person in the other car who is probably contemplating the possibility of launching me into orbit, or something much worse. Somehow I can’t seem to give anyone else who’s driving the benefit of the doubt. If you see my glaring, glazed-over face and my angry white knuckles death-gripped to the wheel, I am probably in the process of summoning the wrath of karma from wherever it resides in my dark mind down upon your head and - assuming karma even remotely listens to me, which I’m pretty sure it does not - you had better hope that you have done something in your life akin to saving starving orphans, as this is your only chance of redemption.

Anyway, the point is that I’m trying to be a less angry driver. I like driving. I like listening to my music loud and rolling my windows down and blasting the heater on my feet so my toes don’t freeze off (which, between the months of September and May they are consistently at the risk of doing). I like being lost and passing through places I never knew or cared existed and suddenly finding that I do care. It’s not the driving that I dislike. It’s the other drivers. And if I get right down to the root of the problem, it’s not even the other drivers themselves, the mothers-fathers-sisters-brothers-aunts-uncles-friends who are driving down the road. It’s the shameless, spineless, vast rudeness of the other drivers that really gets me.

I’ll be honest, when I first realized I had a problem, I considered alternatives to the obvious learn-how-to-manage-your-rage solution. For several months, I decided to try using my horn as a signal of my aggravation, not only in times of danger, but also when the driver in the other car was obviously a moron and needed to be taken down a peg or two. I realized this was a bad solution for two reasons. One, I never think to use the horn until it is too late, even in situations that are actually dangerous and where the horn could really come in handy. Somehow, I am unable to locate the great, giant anywhere-in-the-middle of my wheel and pound down on it quickly enough to make any sense. Come to think of it, perhaps I should get my reflexes or hand/eye coordination checked out by a doctor, as I can see how this could be detrimental in other aspects of my life. Second, the situations in which I contemplated using the horn began to get out of control. There are many, many let’s-walk-out-into-oncoming-traffic-with-our-two-strollers-and-fifteen-kid pedestrians I really wouldn't mind scaring the dumb out of instead of politely slowing down to a halt to accommodate their stupidity. The same is true for some bikers, skateboarders, and police cars...you can see how the idea was becoming more and more dangerous.

The thing is, I’m never actually rude to other people in traffic. I don’t believe in that stuff. I’m just blood-boiling mad by the time I finally get home and I’m really not thinking very kind thoughts about my neighbors either. In fact, I’m generally thinking that a planet with no such thing as neighbors – or any kind of people – might not be a bad idea. I've lived in suburbs my entire life and somehow I am still not even remotely used to how darn many people are here. We’re seriously like ants, teeming all over the earth, except we’re bigger, more colorful, and less organized. It’s not like road rage is my first hint that I should be living somewhere in the middle of 60,000 acres in Wyoming where my only company is the people I don’t wave off my property with a shotgun. And I don’t count PCH in any of my complaining here because I’m pretty sure I could drive 60,000 miles on PCH – people or no people – and not feel upset about it. It’s just that driving bumper to bumper down the street with obscene quantities of retail stores on either side of the road is pretty much the height of depressing. It’s so easy to begin contemplating all the numberless gorgeous places in the world that you've ever been, or never been and only dreamt about. And that way lies insanity.

But here’s the thing, it’s Christmastime, and, as you may have heard me mention before, I really don’t want to be like all those people in the parking lots at the mall. Besides which, I haven’t yet received a memo from God or the universe letting me know when the opportunity to squat on 60,000 acres in the middle of Wyoming may come my way, which means that, for the time being at least, suburbs are my fate. Seal Beach Boulevard, Tustin Avenue, Freeways 405, and 22, all the wonderful people of Southern California, these are my routes and driving buddies on the current road trip of my life. And since I have neither the power – nor probably, when all is said and done, the heart – to really send all these people into orbit around another planet, there are really only a couple things left for me to do if I have any chance of keeping my sanity through 2011: toss the map in the back seat, roll down the windows, turn up the heat, and hit play...”Santa Monica Freeeeewaaaaaaaaaaay, sometimes makes a country girl, bluuuuuuuue...”

-R.E.A.

Home is the most important place in the world

One time when I was driving past IKEA, they had a giant sign stretched across their even more giant, blue building that said: “HOME IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE WORLD.” Now, I have to confess that IKEA, as a store, pretty much gives me the creeps. Not because I have any silly hang-ups about mass produced furniture. And, in fact, their random sections of rugs and wine glasses and things really delight me if I have to be at the store to begin with. It’s just, have you ever noticed how it’s set up like this huge, life-sized maze? Like those terrible mirror mazes at fairs except that instead of running into yourself you run into furniture. And I don’t care how cheap or how delicious it is, there is something off about a giant furniture store serving breakfast in its own personal furniture cafe. It’s like it’s trying to be its own self-sustaining microcosm. Weird.

But the sign struck a chord with me. It’s trite, I know, and, in this case, an advertising gimmick. But yet it is so, so true. Harry Emerson Fosdick (who, incidentally, I think I would have disagreed with on a lot of things, but who I wholeheartedly agree with here) said, “He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.” He was talking about home in the bigger sense. A home nation. But it’s the same gist. Most of us can name hundreds of places we would love to jet off to. Tropical islands and quaint mountain towns, exotic forests and five-star resorts. Many of us could even name several “places-we’d-live-if-we-didn’t-live-here.” But there is something about “home” that is distinct from its setting, its place on the map or in a country. There is something about “home” that is so much more important than how beautiful, or un-beautiful it is. Home has a tighter hold on our heartstrings even than that delightful place we most want to visit. At least it does for me.

Last week, my family moved out of what has been our home for the past 12 years. It’s funny how different a house looks when it doesn’t have you in it anymore. The family room, without our couches and tables looked bigger than normal. But my sweet, sunny bedroom with the marzipan walls seemed smaller somehow. The last 22 years of my life, indeed all my remembered life, save for a few select memories, I lived in that neighborhood, that town, that community. Standing in our empty family room, feeling the home all around me, I realized how well it knows me. There, under that roof, I figured out how to be who I am now. And I learned how to be happy on my own account. That house has seen pretty much every emotion I have ever had. And I love it.

Our new house is a dream come true for many reasons. And it’sbecoming home. But the transition from “just another house” to “the most important place in the world” is a gradual one. Though it sounds ridiculous, I miss the ocean. (Now 20 instead of 5 miles away). The little town we left along the shoreline is pretty much my idea of perfection here and I miss its Main Street and its familiarness and its sea smell and its proximity to other things that I know and love. I even miss the silly things like my bank and post office and Trader Joe’s and library. Here there are also banks and post offices and Trader Joe’s’ and libraries, but they are not part of my home yet. Maybe most of all I miss the jostling, gentle, sunshiney, fresh-aired, certain feeling of being there and belonging there.

Have you ever watched the final episode of “Friends?” Because everything in life has a “Friends” moment, I will tell you about it here (For those of you who are six years behind the times and still care, this is a spoiler alert. Better to be safe than the jerk who spoils the ending). Monica and Chandler (yes, I will talk about the characters as if you already know who they are because, if you don’t, you should go learn as soon as possible) are leaving the city (New York) to live in a suburb just outside to raise their newly adopted babies. It’s 30 minutes away (I did some smart mapquesting to get that info, by the way) and all the other friends are staying in the city. It’s not like they’ll never see each other again, or even like they won’t see each other often. It’s not like anybody died. In fact, everybody has happy things going on in their lives at the series finale. And yet, at the end of that episode, when they all lay their keys on the kitchen counter and walk out of the apartment for the last time, my heart breaks every time. Because that fake little plywood apartment with the funky colored walls and a hole in one side for the studio audience is home - the most important place in the world - and they are leaving it, and so must we.

The older I get, the more torn apart I feel. The people I love are strewn about the world. The places I love are hundreds of miles apart. Sometimes the things I want and the things I need are in two different places. Indeed, sometimes two things I want or two things I need are in different places from each other. Happiness is here and there and all over, and yet sadness too is perennial.

I love this new place. I really do; I’m not just saying it to try to convince you, or myself. I love that we watched it grow into what it is right now, with us inside. I love it for how hard my parents have worked on it and because it has a gorgeous big backyard where Mom can garden. I love that it means good things for my family. I love that some of my favorite people – and animals – in the world are here with me. I love the hardwood floors. I love that right now I am sitting here listening to the rain come down outside and the record player playing Christmas music. And those are the things that homes are made of. So I’m not worried. My problem, it seems, isn’t that I feel homeless, it’s that I have too many homes. And yet, with my heart here, full to bursting in all its confusion and joy, I wonder if that’s really a problem at all.

-R.E.A.

In recognition of National Library Month

In recognition of National Library Month (or something like that) the UC Davis School of Medicine library served free coffee, tea, and - depending on how long after they set them out on the table you got there - cookies. Now, really quickly before I go on, I’d like to clear my conscience, and my record. I did indulge in both tea and cookie, even though I have never contributed anything to the UC Davis School of Medicine, financially or otherwise, and in fact even used up some of their toilet paper and soap in the bathroom. It is my – and my conscience’s – hope that Jason’s tuition over the next four years will pay for my celebration of National Library Month. If your conscience tells you otherwise, please don’t let me know, because I have a guilty suspicion that I wouldn’t care. That tea and cookie were delicious!

But matters of the conscience are really not what this entry is about. This entry is concerned with the much more philosophical topic of cookies. And stickers, a little bit. But mostly cookies. Cookies and stickers have something very relevant in common. It’s relevant because it has to do with joy. And with the simplest kind of pleasures. Cookies and stickers are alike because nobody, young or old, can resist them. I watched people as they walked past the coffee-tea-cookie table set up in the library. Coffee and tea were, for most, uninteresting. Coffee and tea are easy to come by. Most of them had had at least eight cups already that morning and many were carrying with them thermoses full of cups nine and ten. But then their eyes would catch the plate of cookies and, without fail, their step slowed. A hesitance came into their conviction that they needed to get over to that table and start studying right away. Cookies had been introduced into their feeble day. Seven out of ten made the unstudious decision to grab one and carried it with ceremony and relish to their study table. The other three, who made the more somber decision to pass by, still could not remove their eyes from the plate of cookies until doing so would require turning around and walking away backwards. One, after passing the table twice, came back and took one after all. This room full of diligent aspiring doctors and nurses, people who got 35s on their MCATs and, in a couple years, will be saving lives, could not resist a measley plate of cookies. (Ah, how beautiful it is to be human!)

Now students are notoriously starving. I’ve known people to sit through hours of boring presentations about things they do not now and never will care the least bit about just for a free sandwich of questionable cheese and day-old bread. Who am I kidding? I’ve done it myself. More than once. Free food is like extra credit in the game of life. And students know all about extra credit, in and out of the classroom. So maybe you think a bunch of graduate students rejoicing over a plate of cookies is no great indicator of the cookies’ power. But let me tell you about the doctor who came in.

Middle aged, balding Indian man with serious glasses. Tall, wearing nice slacks and a tie and a white coat. The long kind, that goes below your knees and shows you’re the real deal. A physician. A seasoned one, by the looks of him. He came in and went straight to one of the low shelves in front. He knew where he was going and what he was looking for. He pulled out a ginormous encyclopedia-like book and opened it up, thumbing confidently through the pages. He pulled out another, then another. He spread out four or five doctor-reference books across the low shelves and pored over them, running his fingers up and down the pages. This guy had something on his mind.

I don’t know when he noticed the cookies. I was busy writing, or contemplating life, or brushing cookie crumbs off my shirt. All I know is that I looked up to see the doctor striding across the floor to the cookie table (no offense to the coffee and tea, but let’s face it, they were merely supplements; the table belonged to the cookies). The encyclopedias were shut, lined up neatly atop the shelf. The doctor was at the plate of cookies. He started with coffee, but his eyes were on the cookies the whole time, contemplating. Everyone knows how they like their coffee without thinking about it. You ask a man how he takes his coffee and he’ll tell you like reflex. Black. Cream. Sugar. But cookies are a little more complicated. Even if you’re certain of your preference. Even if you’re a chocolate chip or an oatmeal raisin or a sugar person, there’s always that ooey gooey chocolate dusted one whose name you’re not sure of but who looks scrumptious in all its mysterious glory. His hands were pouring coffee, but his eyes were on the cookies. (He’s a doctor, he has skills).

Actually, to be really honest, his eyes were on the cookies except for the few brief moments they were on the creamer. (He was a cream, no sugar man). It was that questionable, non-dairy dry stuff whose origins nobody really understands. He didn’t believe it was creamer. He asked another doctor standing nearby – who, incidentally, was munching on a cookie – about it. She assured him it was cream. He was convinced it must be some sort of off-whitish powdery sugar. I don’t think he ended up using it. You can call a shoe an apple until you’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day, it still tastes like shoe. Personally, I think it’s when you question the validity of the creamer, instead of just pouring in whatever you see and scarfing it down, that you know you’ve transitioned from being a student to being a physician. (People tell me there are other ways of telling, but I think that must be the clearest).

But even the physician had nothing on the wiles of the cookie. After the creamer episode, he picked one. With relish and ceremony, just like the students. He sat down to enjoy the National Library Month celebration, but the information he needed from the encyclopedias must have been too pressing. After a few sips, he tossed the coffee and got up. Still munching his cookie, he strolled back to the bookshelves and diligently went back to work, heedless of the cookie crumbs that settling into the book bindings. (He’s a doctor, he doesn’t have to care about cookie crumbs). It doesn’t matter who you are. Young or old, thick or thin, seasoned professional or starving student, there is something wonderful about cookies.

Have you ever seen children at Trader Joe’s or Wal-Mart or somewhere when the cashier or greeter gives them a sticker? One puny, monochromatic, half-a-cent sticker. Have you watched their faces light up? Next time, don’t. Instead, look at the child’s parent. Though parents are just a bystander in the delightful giving and receiving of stickers process, their faces reveal their own personal delight. And parents know that sometimes, if it’s a good day, the sticker becomes theirs after all, clinging to a purse or cell phone after the child has melted away into peaceful slumber. It’s not just a reaction to seeing their child happy. I’m convinced that it’s the sticker itself that brings a twinkle to a parent’s eye. Give the child a lollypop and the parent will likely become concerned about grown-up things, like stickiness and cavities more than with their child’s delight. But give the child a sticker and the parent can’t help but smile. With age and wisdom, a parent may forget the cherry-watermelon-raspberry jubilee of flavor in a sucker, but somehow, as with cookies, we never forget the simple wonderfulness of stickers.

No child ever got spoiled by having too many stickers. They’re not destructive like markers can be. The worst case is nothing a little goo-gone can’t fix. Stick ‘em on virtually any surface and after a good day’s work, they’ll peel right off again. Price tags will not. Price tags are not real stickers. Smiley faces are real stickers. And Lisa Frank kittens, and hologram dolphins and frogs, and sometimes letters that spell out your name in different colors. R-o-y-a. Or y-o-R-a if you get too excited and accidentally stick them on wrong.

But I don’t think parents like stickers just because they’re less destructive to the furniture and a child’s mental well-being. I think parents like stickers because they are irresistible. Have you ever noticed how excited people get over the “I Voted” stickers at the polling place? The love of stickers is totally non-partisan. You might vote “yes” and I might vote “no,” but we share solidarity in that small inexplicable burst of joy we get over that little waving flag sticker. The polls are the one place where stickers are for grown-ups, not for kids. I know people who vote just to get the sticker. I don’t condone it, but I don’t blame them either. I secretly suspect people who vote absentee of some small thread of lunacy simply because they knowingly forfeit their flag sticker rights.

Cookies and stickers. There's something magical there. I don't get it, but I feel it. Simple pleasures. Small joys. It's nothing to write home about, but it works on almost everyone. Maybe not profound, just some dough or gluey bits of paper. But it makes me think about what the world's made up of. Something from nothing. Some creativity making for a whole medley of small joys.

-R.E.A.

Oh, let me tell you about the ocean today

Oh, let me tell you about the ocean today. The way it leapt choppy and turquoise in the strong wind. Valiant. Each wave an unsung hero. The way it mingled without mingling with the periwinkle sky hung with charming clouds oblivious. The way the wind unyielding blew the stock still sand into low dust clouds and the palms’ fronds crashed raucously like youth unconquerable, and poppies bobbed and bowed as though it were only a friendly breeze. The way the ocean spray became the air and the whole beautiful golden day was washed in unruly joy.

-R.E.A.

A swallow stirring

Having spent the first large chunk of my last entry discussing my feelings on how little I regard seasons other than Summer, I would like to begin this entry by saying that I have begun getting the stirrings of Autumn in my sinews and they always spark a special kind of excitement in me. I admit that I find myself a little angry at Summer this year. September sixth is entirely much too early for Fall and I wonder what Summer’s rush is. I am frustrated with myself, too, for the excitement that I feel. This happens to me every year. The changing seasons work a magic on me and I am ready for whatever comes. Especially Fall. But it is also with Fall that I regret the most. Because several weeks or a couple months, or even sometimes only a day or two in, I think back longingly upon Summer: warm feet and boogie boarding and...well, you know all about that, and I spend the rest of the year missing her. So there, that’s just how it is. I am angry and frustrated and sad and yet somehow tentatively inspired by the Autumn smell that keeps blowing in my window this week. As Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself... ”

If I could, I would let the seasons change every three months, as is their wont, but each time they would change to a new season for merely a few weeks and then they would faze right back into Summer. It’s bland of me, I know. And ungrateful. Peter Spier wrote a children’s book called People in which he talks about how boring it would be if everyone and everything were all the same, lacking different cultures and tastes. And doubtless, seasons fit into this concept as well. It is boring and unenlightened of me to want it to be Summer all the time. Perhaps it is immature. But in this, I concede to being childish. I don’t think I can help it. You see, I’m love struck.

But that being said. There is something old that awakens in a young soul at Autumn’s dawn. It is timeless and pecular and sage. Perhaps it is Fall itself, unfolding inside us and greeting her other half without. It whispers of nostalgia, and of a deep-rooted and unyielding joy as boundless as the world itself. It’s a swallow, and a wild rose, and a misty grey mountain, and a falling russet leaf. It is unsettling and invigorating both at the same time. It is greater and stronger and older and wiser than I, but it is in me, then, at the turning of the seasons, for a brief spell, while Fall emerges.

And then there is the sound of football playing on the TV, the only time I can appreciate ambient television noise while I am going about my everyday life. And really, if it’s Fall time, something is sorely missing without it. It’s the sound of the cheering and the whistles that makes you think of huddling around the screen, waving Terrible Towels and munching on football snacks and sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows and tiptoeing outside in a scarf to feel the blustery chill of pre-dusk and the smell of cold that reminds you that you are alive and makes you love everything. It’s the sound of yelling from the next room that makes you jump out of your seat so high that you hit the ceiling and then in the same motion bolt out to catch the replay of whatever you just missed. And for me, now that I’m out of school for the time being, it’s the free and beautiful feeling of not having to bury myself in school work just at the moment when I feel most like curling up under a blanket and indulging in my own personal thoughts and enjoyments instead of some aggravating instructor’s incoherent syllabus.

Don’t get me wrong, Fall, this message goes out even to lovely you, I am yet unwilling to wave the Summer of 2010 farewell. The sand was still warm when I roamed on the beach yesterday and I can still smell bonfire some nights wafting down PCH from Huntington. We are barbequing burgers tonight, Summer dear, and my boots are tucked artfully away in my closet for another day. It’s still only preseason. All I’m admitting is this: in the days ahead, when my feet turn numb and hunker down into the wool hiking socks that I stole from Jason for the rest of the year; when the Summer beach tourists fade away and parking on Main Street is no longer impossible and damp wind sweeps in from off the ocean so strong and chilly that it numbs the nose in the crash of a wave; when my heart comes to that sad, sad, sadness of Summer gone and that restlessness wedges in my bones and makes me miss things I have never had; when lady Autumn is truly upon us, you’ll find me perched on my bed by the window, breathing in the crisp, sweet air, with a good book and a cup of tea and perhaps a foxish little cat sitting on my feet; and I will be okay.

-R.E.A.

An impertinent title that has nothing to do with the entry that follows

Yesterday evening was the last Band at the Beach performance of the year and to keep my sanity, I had to remind myself several hundred times that just because September is here and school is back, and it gets dark way too early, Summer is not technically over yet. People can rave about the beauty of Autumn, and how Winter probably has the best holidays, and hurrah for lusty scarf and hot chocolate days; and I know the wildflowers bloom in Spring, and there is certainly something mysterious and lovely in the changing of the seasons, but nobody could ever convince me that Summer isn’t the most inspiring, joy-inducing, wonderful season of them all. Summer is the barefoot, free-spirited, sunshine, fresh-cut-grass Queen of the Year and I love her. And so, after her three months fly by, it is always hard for me to let her go. As an homage to Summer, I made a list of some reasons why:

• Bare feet in the warm sand is the simplest form of happiness.
• Flip flops, and sweet tea, and fruit smoothies, and sunbathing, and the windows down.
• Long days.
• Summer memories.
• The ocean. And ocean water, the best skin-toner and hair-shiner I have ever found.
• Blissfully warm toes. (From approximately late September until late May, my feet are in a perpetual state of coldness. In the Summer, they come out from their wool sock wrappings and layers of blankets and, for three fleeting months, are warm again.)
• Humidity.
• Fireflies.
• Homegrown tomatoes.
• Fresh berries. (And fresh berry cobbler).
• Bonfires.

So back to Band at the Beach, yesterday evening, and the Elm Streetband playing songs like “Summer of ’69,” and “Brown-eyed Girl,” and “Hotel California.” We were sipping wine and snacking and looking out at the ocean and the palm trees and the American flag at the foot of the pier, and watching the day turn to dusk and loving life. It got me thinking about one of my favorite Ty Herndon songs where he says, “Tell me something, who could ask for more / than to be living in a moment you would die for.”

I had just spent the day poring over my CSET study materials at the bookstore. Too much air-conditioning, too much sitting still, too much eye strain, too much stress (I really am stressing out a lot about this exam). And the only thing that kept me at it so diligently was the knowledge that I’d spend the evening draped on a blanket at the beach, listening to good music, sipping wine with some of my favorite people, at one of my favorite places in all the world. And sitting there, in a moment that represented all the things I value most, a moment “I would die for,” unwinding, I got that sense of satisfied exhaustion that the best little and big events of life bring me.

I think it’s that exhaustion that makes the memories. That moment after the Moment (or sometimes during) where you contemplate it, let it sink in, and truly realize how good it made you feel. It comes in all forms in life: physical, emotional, intellectual, perhaps even spiritual. It seems to me that some of the best feelings in life come in these still moments of exhaustion: the times that I feel healthiest, and happiest, and strongest, and most secure and certain, when my perspective is the clearest.

There are times, after a good run, after I’ve worked the kinks out of my legs and my breath is coming a little easier, that I lay flat on my back on the driveway, against concrete warm from the day, and look up at the sky, usually sprinkled with a few stars or Venus or the moon – and this is going to sound really new age and hippie and maybe a little creepy, but I can feel the Earth working. I can feel the natural world moving and growing and struggling, I can feel peace and war, and I can feel the skeleton of the world, the rocks and mountains and minerals, solid and strong. I can feel God. And sometimes, I even catch little glimpses of my place in the scheme of it. My blood is flowing and my skin is glowing from the run and my body’s exhausted and somehow my brain is clearer and I feel healthy and strong in body and mind and I am totally grounded.

The same thing happens when I spend a day in the ocean. My irrational fear of crabs aside, I love everything about the seashore. They say if you are born by the ocean it is in your blood and I believe it. One time, I went surfing. For a little while I floated on my stomach on the board over and between the waves, getting the feel of the board and the tide. My confidence mounting, and Jason instructing me from the water, I decided to ride a wave, just on my stomach, nothing heroic. I picked the wrong wave. An experienced surfer might have been able to ride it, but probably wouldn’t have bothered. It wasn’t the type of wave that carries you gracefully toward shore. It was that temperamental, ornery sort that slaps hard against you and tumbles you under. I didn’t know it was the wrong wave until it was on me. I watched Jason’s face turn from focused attentiveness to a look of concern. Then he yelled something un-encouraging. The look on his face, his response to my completely hopeless situation was too much for me. I went under laughing. Laughing is all well and wonderful, but it doesn’t give you much of a chance to hold your breath. I came up scraped, bruised, choking…and laughing. I couldn’t get his face out of my head. I left the beach scraped, bruised, breathless, laughing, and tired. Salty, water-logged, and exhausted, that is the only healthy way to leave the sand. A run, a swim, going on a walk with an over-exuberant dog, a long hike, horseback riding, they all bring on the physical version of this exhaustion I’m talking about.

But there are other kinds. For a couple years, I worked at an elementary school in downtown Long Beach as a teacher’s aid. One of my favorite things that I’ve ever done in my life. I generally worked with kids in small groups or one-one-one and helped them with everything from reading (my favorite!) to math. Some of them had actual behavioral issues (products of drug-using parents and stuff like that), some were just too young (six is way too immature for the valuable knowledge you are expected to gain in first grade), nearly all of them lacked basic manners. I spent less time teaching kids the alphabet than I did teaching them how to sit still long enough to hear it recited. If I had thirty minutes to spend with a small group, I could expect that at least fifteen of them would be spent getting them to keep their feet off the table and their hands to themselves, and at least five of them would be spent at the end getting them to line up in a quiet row to leave. That left ten minutes to teach five struggling children to read Is Your Mama a Llama? (Or, as one of my favorite students, Geraldo, insisted on calling it, “Is Tu Mama a Wama?”)

So on group days, I would start by going through my rules. Now I’m a rather organic person – the type who gets uncomfortable around Bonsai Trees and has some new-fangled notions on how children should be treated – so it took me perhaps longer than most to realize how important these rules were. As a compromise between upholding my beliefs and maintaining my sanity, I kept my rules simple and few, but I stressed to the kids that they were critically important.

One typical day, Louisa came in “tattling” about how Louis, who I had already observed had an obvious head-over-heels crush on her, had called her a despicable name. I looked over at Louis, one of those students who just breaks your heart because he is so smart and capable and so much stubborn trouble, and he was making an obscene face at Louisa and her voice was getting louder and louder in complaint. I knew there was no way for me to win because everyone was fully prepared to deny everything against them and claim unbridled innocence, so I did the only thing a good teacher can do. I copped out. Looking at Louisa, I asked, “What is my number one rule?” She rolled her eyes and recited it, Louis mouthing insolently along with her, “always be nice.”

I’ll be honest, I wish it were more pithy. I love words and something like, “To err on the side of kindness is seldom an error,” or “The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid” would have made me feel much better, but I’ve learned that witty anecdotes are unappreciated by most first graders (although it is delightful to talk to those ones who understand them), so the rule was just “be nice.” Be nice because I don’t want to referee between you. Be nice because we have a hard book to read today and there’s no time to argue. Be nice because I abhor meanness, especially when it is petty. Be nice because you will need it later – because the more difficult your life is and the more un-niceness you encounter, the more you will require it. Be nice because there is too little of it in the world. Be nice because, more than you know, even more than I can understand, I want you, sassy Louisa and stubborn Louis, to be twenty five years old and kind.

With kids, you can’t ever only be paying half attention, not only because you will find, when you turn around, that they have slingshotted all your erasers around the room and stuck pencils to the ceiling, but also because you will find that the moment your mind wanders just the littlest bit, to lunch, or the errands you still need to run, or that story you’ve been working on, they will hit you with a question so poignant and relevant that the entire universe stands still to carefully await your response. (And trust me, there is nothing like the pressure of knowing the entire universe is awaiting your response to leave you tongue tied, unless it is a small earnest first grader staring you intently in the face). Better yet, they will tell you a story.

“My brother came home yesterday,” Christopher, aged five, told me as we sat at a table in the back of the class with a book opened in front of us. “Really, from where?” I asked naively. “They got him in jail,” he told me, unabashed. “The police came and they put handcuffs on him, but he’s back now with his girlfriend.” His unhesitating words were accompanied by hand gestures and there was no chance for me to be embarrassed by my question for the earnestness of his response. Besides, I was busy trying to come up with a smooth way to transition from criminal family members to rhyming words. I could practically hear the universe snickering at me.

I only worked short five or six hour shifts three days a week at the elementary school, but those hours left me drained. The hours I spent, and spend, thinking about those kids: the things they said, the ways I wanted to treat them, what I hoped they would learn from me, and what I had learned from them, far surpassed the time I spent in their presence. It made me laugh and cry, it inspired me, it made me think, it left me exhausted.

You know what I think it is? It is an exhaustion borne of an utter lack of apathy. As an aside, I will tell you that I abhor apathy. I think it is a despicable quality, particularly for a race of animals that is supposed to be self-conscious and aware. You can disagree with me, you can be uninformed, or unintelligent, or aggravating in a hundred other ways, but you only really become worthless when you become apathetic. Those moments of healthy exhaustion grow, I think, from caring. From working your body or your brain or exercising your emotions. From feeling. This is the kind of exhaustion that I hope for in life. There is a quote from Albert Schweitzer that plays through my mind at both my most and least ambitious moments: “The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.” And so, I think, these moments of exhaustion are, ironically, our chances to become renewed and re-inspired, to last another day, another hundred days, another hundred years. For me, a day well spent, a successful day, is one that ends in utter exhaustion. The invigorating exhaustion of knowing that you cared, that you gave it all you had, that you took as little as possible fore granted, that the joyful awareness of this Moment is a happiness that you have earned.

-R.E.A.

A roving book gathers no dust

It’s amazing how peaceful and still a bookstore can be early in the morning, a few hours after the closing booksellers have locked up, trickled into their respective homes, and tucked their aching feet into bed; before the front door has unlocked for the day’s customers and all their human joys and problems. It’s the kind of amazing you can only really understand if you’ve worked in a bookstore and been cured of the misguided notion that they are calm, orderly places to begin with, stocked with friendly, fashionably dusty books, or stately classics standing sentinel on shelves awaiting passionate and slightly nerdy readers to pull them off, smell their pages with secret delight, and take them home to sit on nicer, wooden bookshelves and grow old with the thumbing of eager fingers. If ever all my dreams come true and I find myself owner of my own small bookshop on Main Street, this is the way my books – and my customers – will be. And I shall reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who doesn’t have proper book etiquette.

Most bookstores, however, hope to at least scrape by with a semblance of a profit and will take any customers they can get. And so the modern bookstores – at least the ones that survive – are corporate and trendy, a marketer’s dream, and sit in strip malls next to restaurants and movie theaters where people who find themselves with time to spare between the two can wander in, collect dozens of magazines from their proper places on the shelves, and plant them stealthily throughout the store, behind books, under tables, and in the bathrooms, as an amusing pastime before the movie starts. In the modern bookstore, the doors open and awaiting customers rush in to buy the latest self help or “How to Become A Millionaire on 20 Cents a Day” book to the whir of the blender mixing up frappuccinos and lattes in the cafe where not even a small tidy bookish cat is allowed to show so much as a whisker for fear of violating some health code or another. For this, the rest of the store suffers too: no cat napping on a stack of books, no singing canary or tended geranium in the window to let you know you are in a place of beauty and truth and excitement and intellect, a place of kindred souls, and paradoxically opinionated harmony.

Back in the children’s section, some disobedient child or another strings books and plush across the floor in clear sight of its conveniently near sighted parent who has some newfangled opinions about never telling a child “no” and who apparently never learned manners from the child’s grandparents. Some blasphemous faux-author has published a book called Pride and Predjudice and Zombies and it sits shamelessly on the shelf next to J.R.R. Tolkien, pretending not to hear Jane Austin rolling over in her grave. And some young teenager who will never know the joys of Wuthering Heights or Gone With the Wind picks it up and walks around the store with it until she either buys it or deposits it on a shelf somewhere in the travel section. The globes are plastic, not metal, and nobody ever looks at them.

And by midnight, because corporate retailers don’t have the decency to close at a godly hour, the store is a veritable mess, with manga, and sex books, and magazines, and crummy children’s literature lying in heaps thither and yon and Poe and Shakespeare forgotten on a shelf somewhere. The computers are whirring, and the air conditioning, and the florescent lights. And booksellers are marching back and forth like sleepy ants collecting and replacing and tidying here and there.

The few dark hours that the bookstore catches to itself are, I suspect, more peaceful than any I have seen there. I observe it only at the end of these dark hours, when the booksellers come trickling back in, only a couple at a time, and set to work again. But the store feels rested. Rested and renewed, and the books do stand rather like sentinels, proud upon their shelves. Though by tonight, they will lie again, haphazard and bent, this morning they represent anew the truths within them, they recall the paths they have forged and lighted. This is the time when I walk between the shelves, my feet soft against the carpet, and the store is a place for books again: not uncouth children or negligent adults, or movie-goers or complainers, or caffeine junkies, or thieves or Playboy purchasers – though true readers can be all of these things. When you strip away all the corporate retail “charms,” you find that after all there is something innate in printed volumes that remains intact despite all these things. And it is amazing to find, in those few early hours, that you can still hear their quiet, timeless strength and wisdom.

-R.E.A.

Study shows that lowering minimum-wage could end world hunger

A recent scientific study has honed in on the problem of obesity in America and in a mindboggling show of scientific and social expertise has determined that low income is the culprit. The argument begins with the supposition that poorer people generally have less access to fresh, healthy food options which can contribute to poorer health. Now I agree that this is generally true, although it’s important to differentiate between rural and urban poor communities (as rural populations are more likely to grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables, whereas inner-city communities are more likely to get their only semi-fresh, hormone-enhanced greens at the 99 Cent Store – us city folk always get the short end of the deal). Nor do I rule out the possibility that lower-income populations are more likely to be obese. What I have trouble believing is that the lack of healthy food options, as brought on by an inadequate income is responsible for the obesity problem. It’s very convenient, don’t you think, that our country’s obesity issues have been found to not, in fact, be an effect of eating too much crap and having too little exercise, but rather the fault of...big surprise...the rich people. It’s only part of America’s growing awakening; in the past several months, we have apparently come to realize that, indeed, all of our problems have been brought on by the wealthy.

What I love best about the study is its solution to the problem: raising minimum-wage. There are so many problems with this conclusion and the way it is drawn that it must be some kind of fallacy, if only I could ever remember the list. To begin with, the study found “that minimum-wage employees are more likely to be obese than those who earn higher wages, adding to growing evidence that being poor is a risk factor for unhealthy weight.” “Being poor is a risk factor for unhealthy weight,” is a rather obvious statement, except that it seems to me that having no money would more frequently lead to unhealthy weight in the negative, rather than the positive (if you will) direction. Furthermore, anyone who has worked in retail in any kind of shopping center can tell you that a thirty minute lunch at a place like that doesn’t leave you much opportunity for eating anything other than greasy fast food, unless you are of the enigmatic and dying race of people who somehow have the time and energy to take a sack lunch to work every day. As such, I would be inclined to believe that it is the greasy fast food, and not the minimum-wage that packs on the pounds.

According to the study, raising minimum wage “could increase purchasing power enough to expand access to healthier lifestyle choices.” The rhetorician in me notes the use of “could” instead of “will,” as in “the sky could fall tomorrow, but will it?” I wonder what the likelihood is that raising minimum wage will actually make people living in poor communities rich enough to travel farther away to get healthier food. To begin with, if all the places that currently pay minimum wage had to pay their employees more, they would also have to raise the cost of whatever it is they are selling. Since a lot of jobs that involve getting different kinds of food to different populations require large volumes of minimum-wage employees, the cost of food would necessarily go up. Is it beneficial to a person to raise both their income and the things they purchase simultaneously? Of course, the alternative is to raise minimum-wage and put a cap on the cost of food. We all know that businesses are evil anyway. This would cause most grocery stores to go out of business, making unhealthy food for minimum-wage employees more difficult to obtain. Obesity problem solved! Except for the small fact that it would also make healthy food for minimum-wage employees more difficult to obtain. With the obesity issue in low-income populations solved, perhaps nobody would notice the correlation between minimum-wage incomes and starvation?

Besides this, the only way I can figure to calculate how much raising minimum-wage could directly expand access to healthier lifestyle choices is to:

1. Calculate how much it would cost for the average minimum-wage employee to travel to buy healthy food.
2. Calculate how much it would cost this same person to actually purchase the healthy food.
3. Add 1 and 2.
4. Calculate how much it already costs the average minimum-wage employee to travel to buy healthy food.
5. Calculate how much it already costs this same person to actually purchase unhealthy food.
6. Add 3 and 4.
7. Subtract the answer to 5 from the answer from 3.
8. Determine how much more each minimum-wage employee would need to be paid per hour to equal the answer in number 7.

As a side note, if the answer to number 8 requires that minimum-wage be raised from $7.75 to $20.75, should we consider any of the problems that might arise from a $13 raise in minimum-wage?

As a preface to what I am about to say next, I would like to mention that ever since my AP Statistics class in high school, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and no, I’m not being sarcastic), I have frequently argued that the greatest thing about statistics is that it means absolutely nothing. If the world were a vacuum, perhaps a perfect statistical study could be achieved. Since it is not, statistics is entirely bogus. It is my opinion that you could conduct the same exact statistical study and very convincingly and successfully draw two opposite and true conclusions from it. The secret of statistics is not that it can give you insight into a particular topic, it is that you can use it as fake proof that your own personal insight on a topic is true. This particular study had a sample size of a mere 6,312 people who were supposed to be a representation of the approximately 300 million people who actually live in the United States. But that’s not the best part. The best part is that 85% of those 6,312 people were men and 90% were Caucasian. So basically what the study can say with honesty is that out of a population of mostly white, mostly men (which does not exist in America), of the ones who were heads of households, those ones who were making minimum wage were mostly fatter than the ones who were making anything other than minimum wage. And what the study is arguing is that poorness leads to fatness. Mild disconnect? Maybe it’s just me.

In support of the argument that poorness leads to fatness, the study states that, “People living in the southern United States – where state minimum-wage levels are among the lowest – were more likely to be obese than people in other regions.” But I wonder, could this have anything to do with fried chicken? Baking chicken should cost about the same as, or less than, and use fewer resources than breading and frying it and yet somehow the poor minimum-wage earners in the southern states are growing obese off of it. Can we honestly blame minimum wage for this? What I’m saying in a mildly offensive and unpolitically correct way is that the study seems to completely leave out the effects of a person’s culture on what he eats. Canned corn, for example, should be reasonably available even in low-income areas where fresh vegetables are not available. Although canned corn is not as nutritious as fresh corn, it is significantly more nutritious, and probably cheaper, than, say, Taco Bell. Could convenience factor into bad eating habits? Could taste? Could education?

In keeping with the kind of thinking behind this study, I have come to the conclusion that if raising minimum wage would directly improve obesity levels in America, then lowering minimum wage would actually allow the starving populations in America to gain weight. The implications could even be global. Who would have thought that the solution to world hunger was as simple as lowering income levels? Now Americans are faced with a very difficult decision: should we raise minimum wage and save the obese people, or should we lower it and save the starving ones?

-R.E.A.

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?"

I saw lupines growing wild for the first time in my life last month, something to check off my List of Things to Do Before I Go. It may seem like a small thing to make a big deal out of, but ever since I read Granny’s Miss Rumphius and then found out that Lupines are California natives, I have dreamed of seeing them growing wild. Poppies of various types we have in abundance and they are one of my favorite flowers of all time. But an unfarmed field strewn with wild poppies and lupines both...I suspect you aren’t quite a real Californian until you’ve seen one. I spotted my first glimpse of purple in the Grapevine and something in my soul basked golden. Every Spring since time immemorial, the Grapevine has wakened to the golds and oranges and amethysts of the poppies and lupines tucked away between meadow grasses and mountain rocks, heedless of me. But this year, I was there to see it.

We had a beautiful time in the Central Valley: roaming around the City of Trees (which is not as lovely as, say, the countryside just south of it, but which is nevertheless quite charming as far as cities are concerned); coming around to the surreality (not a word according to the red squigglies on my computer – squigglies, according to the red squigglies, also not a word) of Jason going to med school there, and all that that implies; spending time with beloved friends who also happen to be good people; and jogging along the Stanislaus River (whose name alone can make you forget the my-legs-are-about-to-fall-off, I’ll-never-breath-again, why-can’t-I-just-be-fat feeling of what they tell me is the “best” kind of jog.)

There is a smell that comes up over a river in the gloaming with all the lush shrubbery growing by its banks breathing softly and the animals of the day settling into their nests before the animals of the night begin their stirrings, and a million insects, individual in their own rights, of the thousand billions of their kind. There is a smell that comes up over a river who has seen a season of good rain and decades of unchanging changingness. This is not unique to one river in particular. I think it is kindred of all rivers, though to a practiced nose the scent is subtly different, like nectarines from peaches. If I had to guess, the Stanislaus River smells slightly of almond blossoms, but I cannot speak with the certainty of a native of its banks. And doubtless much like the ocean, its smell alters with the ground against which it washes and the breeze that wafts above it, and the trees – or rocks – that grow along it and turn to mulch – or sand – over the course of many tomorrows.

There is something about a narrow green footbridge across a river that makes the person jogging across it feel important somehow, in the best kind of secret and humble importance, as though the river wants you there above its banks, and as though all the storms and quakes and ferocious winds of its history have deemed it all right that you be there simply by not bringing it down before you got there. Like the bend in some random road that brings you up on a field of wildflowers. They weren’t put there for you, certainly, but somehow you’ve been granted the privilege to partake.

There is a place called Alpine, Wyoming that boasts the only stop sign within forty miles. I think to myself that I should be very happy living somewhere just outside of Alpine, Wyoming, somewhere where the stop sign is not too much of an inconvenience, a place that will be sufficiently overlooked when people travel to observe the Alpine landmark, somewhere only secretly, humbly important by Alpine association. Should I ever move there, you will find me sitting somewhere on a narrow footbridge, surrounded by native flowers, feeling important in my obscurity. Don’t feel badly for me; I have been 23 years searching for important obscurity. I suspect it will be a good deal longer until I find it, but I know it can be done. Cowboys have done it, and some sailors, and perhaps those questionable people you see backpacking along the side of the road sometimes, with an old happy dog following along on a string. When I doubt it, I simply contemplate all the out-of-the-way footbridges I have never seen, all the silvery creeks, all the wild lupines, all the lone, rocky outcroppings upon which I have never perched. I think of sitting on a quiet hill in Buchanan, Virginia surrounded by Black-Eyed Susans and cows and blue country sky. Important obscurity. It exists. You just have to find it.

-R.E.A.

The Story of a Mollusk and What Did Not Happen Because of Him

I am not going to talk about healthcare. Instead, I am going to talk about mollusks. One particular Mollusk, in fact, who just happened to be a mussel and to live in a gentle River that wound and twisted between the low hills and through the woodland forests of a very beautiful country indeed. Here is the story of that Mollusk and what didn’t happen because of him...

Chapter 1: What Happened When the Eelgrass Grew Over

“I absolutely cannot do a thing about it. I haven’t the time.” argued the Otter, standing on the riverbed with his hands on his hips. “It isn’t as though I’ve had an easy time of it. The large fish were terribly low this year. And the small ones certainly seemed to be snapped up quickly.” He gave the Owl a rather accusatory look, as though owls, and this Owl in particular, were all to blame for his inferior fishing skills.

“Well,” said the Owl, ignoring the Otter’s stare, “Then I don’t know what to do now. I’ve tried but we owls aren’t very good at flocking together. We’re rather solitary creatures, you know.”

The Otter barely waited for him to finish. “Well, the River absolutely must be cleared,” he said firmly, “If the Eelgrass gets any thicker this Spring, the fish won’t even be able to get through. Then what are we supposed to eat?” As though the Owl didn’t know the situation.

Suddenly, the Otter snapped his fingers. “We’ll have the Mollusk do it!” he said eagerly, surprised that he hadn’t thought of it before.

It was the Owl’s turn to stare, “The Mollusk?” he said, “But the Mollusk hasn’t ever done a single thing well.”

“Yes,” said the Otter proudly, “But he has done a good many things poorly.”

Chapter 2: The Brackish Water Fiasco

“But we don’t want this done poorly!” exclaimed the Owl sharply. “It’s a very important matter. Don’t you remember the Brackish Water Fiasco?” The Owl didn’t wait for the Otter’s response. He took quite a delight in monologue once he got started. And so he began his retelling...

“When the Brackish Water came in, the catfish were the first to notice. ‘Gather together our best thinkers,’ they said, ‘If something’s not done, we’re all in for a great deal of trouble.’ But our best thinkers could come up with nothing in agreement. Some of them thought we should deal with the Brackish Water as we had dealt with similar things in the past. Others thought that new actions were required for the changing times. In the midst of the great arguing and upheaval that ensued, a lone mollusk stepped forward.

‘I will come up with a solution,’ said the Mollusk selflessly. And suddenly, everyone was silent. ‘But I will need time,’ he said. ‘I haven’t fins, like you,’ he said, inclining toward the catfish, ‘nor brains, like you,’ he nodded at the beavers. ‘So I need time. But I will find an answer.’ The Mollusk spoke with such confidence and the animals were so tired of arguing and arguing and getting nowhere that they agreed. They designated the Mollusk the Official Solution Finder for the Brackish Water Influx.

The Mollusk went under a rock and shut himself up and didn’t come out for six months at least, though the animals grew impatient and knocked several times on his shell. Those were the days when the Eelgrass first began infringing upon the River. Finally the day came when the Mollusk inched slowly out from under his rock. He wouldn’t say a word until he got to the center of the River and then, slowly, he opened his shell and revealed a tiny pearl. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, and ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he said again, ‘our grave problem, for which I went into hiding for six months at least, was Brackish Water. Ladies and gentlemen, I have taken our problem, and I have created a Pearl.’ And he opened his shell wide for all to see. And that was all he said.

Finally a timid sole spoke up. ‘But what does it do?’ asked the Sole.

‘Nothing,’ said the Mollusk with an odd look. ‘But it is beautiful isn’t it?’

‘But how will it solve the Brackish Water?’ asked a frog, who didn’t much care about the Brackish Water, but was still curious to see what would happen.

‘Yes,’ said a small trout, ‘it has very little to do with what we needed.’ But the Trout was only being polite. The pearl had nothing whatsoever to do with what we needed.

The Mollusk was offended, ‘I should think this beautiful Pearl would be sufficient for you, considering what I had to work with,’ he said stiffly. ‘Work requires gratitude and I should think I am entitled to some of that.’ And the Mollusk was so hurt that he inched back to his rock and didn’t come out for several days. And,” said the Owl taking a deep breath, “we still have Brackish Water to this day.”

Chapter 3: The Only Thing To Do Was To Put It To A Vote

The Otter cleared his throat politely. He, after all, knew the story and he didn’t care. At the sound of the Otter, the Owl came out of his reverie with a start. “How do you expect the Mollusk to clear the River, anyway,” he asked practically.

“He is very good at delegating responsibility,” replied the Otter, who had an answer for pretty much everything, though it wasn’t always a very good one. “It’s perfect. This way, we shall have none of the responsibility and shall be able to do all of the complaining if things go awry.”

“When things go awry,” answered the Owl sternly.

But the only thing to do was to put it to a vote. All the animals who cared about Brackish Water gathered, except for the many that did not. The votes were tallied. Then all that was left to do was to ask the Mollusk.

Some of the animals were surprised when the Mollusk agreed to take on the responsibility after what had happened the last time with the Pearl. The Mollusk was brave and inspiring and did not so much as hint at the incident. The animals felt very kindly and grateful toward the Mollusk and many went home that evening thinking that the Mollusk really was a stand-up a fellow after all, and that they could all learn from him a thing or two about forgiveness.

There could have been others like the Owl but they did not speak up. He suspected that the Mollusk had only agreed to the task for want of a new pearl to covet.

And that is the story of the Mollusk and what did not happen because of him.

-R.E.A.

word'i-ness (n.): using 676 words when 55 will do

One of my creative writing profs back in the day introduced me to this book called, The World’s Shortest Stories. Steve Moss, the compiler of these stories has (or had) a contest each year to see who could submit the best stories in 55 words or less. Here’s an excerpt from Moss’s introduction:

“How short can a story be and still be considered a story? Charles Shultz had an answer to that question several years ago in his ‘Peanuts’ comic strip. Crabby old Lucy was once asked by Linus to please, please, please tell him a story. Lucy grudgingly obliged. Said she: ‘A man was born. He lived and died. The end.’

That’s the shortest story I’ve ever read. But, like Linus, I was left somewhat dissatisfied.

So maybe the question should be asked differently: How short can a story be and still be considered a good story? What’s the briefest possible narrative that still allows for a satisfying read?”

Without a doubt, there is a difference between a story and a plot and most of the time we (or at least, I) expect both out of anything I am going to take the time to read for pleasure. E.M. Forster uses this example to define the difference between story and plot: “’The king died, and then the queen died,’ is a story. ‘The king died and then the queen died of grief,’ is a plot.” For him, the difference is causality. While both sentences have a time sequence, it is the plot that introduces an explanation. He writes, “Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story we say, ‘and then?’ If it is in a plot we ask, ‘why?’”

I would like to add to Forster’s plot distinction. Being of the old-school lit critic class, I find theme drastically important not only to my life, but also to the literature that I enjoy. I think James Thomas would agree. Moss quotes Thomas in his intro: “Like all fiction that matters, their success depends not on their length, but on their depth, their clarity of vision, their human significance – the extent to which the reader can recognize in them the real stuff of life.” Needless to say, if writing a story in 55 words or less is doable, writing a story with a plot in 55 words or less is something more of a hassle.

You may be wondering at this point why I am writing what appears to be a rather shoddy sort of Literature 101 essay. In fact, you may have traversed so far into the realm of boredom that you have passed that wonderment entirely and are now simply wondering why you are still reading. I can only really answer the former of your wonderments. For one thing, I admit that I truly miss my days of writing shoddy lit essays. But the real reason is because of how the 55 word story relates to a quote by Josh Billings that I read a katrillion years ago. I was pretty young when I first started writing stories and I didn’t understand most things (some things never change) but even then this quote spoke to me because I had (and still have) an enormous problem with wordiness. Billings says, “The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.”

Writing short stories has become a way for me to practice "knowing when to stop." The 55 word short story takes this practice to a whole new level. Up until now, the shortest story I have succeeded in writing, and still loving, was 118 words over the limit. So after significantly more than 55 minutes of writing and many many more than 55 words erased, I have come up with two elementary attempts at the 55 word story, plots included (or at least attempted). They came out very differently from one another and with varying flaws. Here they are. I encourage you to try some yourself. They are surprisingly intriguing and surprisingly frustrating - part work of art and part logic problem.

First attempt (52 words)

Determined to Start Over

When Calvin turned ninety six, he decided his life had been miserably unsuccessful and determined to start over.

The doctors said they could do nothing.

Philosophers promised him it was impossible.

In desperation, Calvin prayed.

Came a voice: “You’ve started over thirty five thousand, sixteen times. How many more do you need?”

Second attempt (55 words):

Words Like Brushstrokes

Twenty years, words like lashes fell so forcefully upon her she supposed they were who she was.

Until she read somewhere, “All the world’s a stage,” – Words like brushstrokes on a painted scene – And she made her exit.

Looking back, she views the painting from afar, espying a raven perched above it. Quethes he, “nevermore.”

-R.E.A.

My New Year’s resolution is to be more like my mom

I have said elsewhere on this blog that I don’t make New Year’s resolutions but this year that turns out not to be true. My New Year’s resolution is to be more like my mom. This may sound strange. I have heard that as girls get older they spend much of their time trying to avoid becoming their mothers, usually to no avail. I, however, have wanted to be like my mom since I was very little and the feeling only grows each year.

My mom is the least judgmental person I know. The only time she bashes people is if they have hurt someone she loves and even then she listens more than she bashes. The exceptions to this are, of course: anyone playing against the Steelers, and people with extremely unintelligent political views. (But after all, there is only so much one person can take quietly, particularly if she is a Kaufman and football or politics are on the line.)

Mom’s faith in things from God to earthworms inspires me all the time. She says “All shall be well” and she believes it. She also believes in grace. When she believes in something, she believes in it all the way through. I don’t know if she has her own doubts. I’d be surprised if she didn’t. But something Mom’s taught me is that having doubts is not the same thing as lacking faith. Here are some of the things Mom has taught me to have faith in:

• God
• rain, compost, and the wisdom of nature
• good books
• things built to last
• people
• conscience
• roots
• wings

Don’t even get me started on the kind of mother Mom is. Mom sang me “Would You Like to Swing on a Star,” and “Que Sera Sera,” and “Joanie,” and read me “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” and “The Runaway Bunny,” and “The Chronicles of Narnia.” I can still remember sitting in her lap with my big stack of books and her arms wrapped around me. Or laying under blankets by the fireplace before bed and listening to her read - some of the most comforting memories of my life. Mom nurtured in me a love for reading, writing, country music, mountains, and a hundred million other things. And when I am stupid and boring and wrong, she tells me that she knows I’ll make the right decision and that everything will be okay. She’s not faking. She really believes in me and in the world. Mom has always wanted to hear what I have to say, or at least pretended to. And trust me, once I get started, I don’t stop easily. Never once in my entire life has Mom not had time for me.

Mom doesn’t care when you cry or how you cry or why you cry or whether you’re being a big fat ridiculous baby. She always gets that soft sympathetic look in her eyes and holds you close. Even if you’re not her kid she’ll do that. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hold a candle to her as a mother, but I know my kids will be okay because they’ll have Mom as a grandmother.

I bounce ideas off Mom almost before I bounce them off my own brain. That’s because Mom is one of the smartest people I know. I know I’m probably biased, but I think Mom may be one of the smartest people in the world. Mom knows things: useful and otherwise. There’s no enjoying Jeopardy when she’s in the room; you only wind up feeling badly about yourself. Alex Trebek gets to read the cards, but Mom knows the answers. Mom’s also a talented thinker. She doesn’t mind people questioning her beliefs. She’s thought them through and she can defend them. And she knows there’re some things she doesn’t know. She’s willing to think about those things too. Mom knows history and current events and how to pronounce words and scientific concepts and how to grow a hundred different plants and what they’re named (common and scientific). There’s a difference between intelligence and wisdom and Mom’s got both.

More than anyone else I know, Mom knows how to put things into perspective. I was on the phone with her the other day concerned because I was calling to tell her how I had spoiled a plan she had made. Mom just laughed. She never tells people they should have done what they should have done. She lets the silly stupid things that happen pass without making people feel badly about themselves. Mom can make a meal for four turn into a meal for ten in the time it takes for the front door to open and close six more times. And when you’re not there when you said you were going to be, she doesn’t grudge you the leftovers. Mom knows how important it is to feed the soul.

I’ve heard that it’s impossible to fathom the depth of the love you will have for your children before you have them. I’m sure this is true. But I know from experience that it is impossible to fathom the amount of love you can have for your parents even when you are in the midst of that love. I could say that to have parents and a sister such as mine nearly sets me up for failure – so much do I have to live up to and so great is the pressure. But it’s not true. To have parents and a sister such as mine is to have all the tools and guidance needed to make a life worth living.

(Disclaimer) I have tried, in saying what I have been trying to say, to avoid clichés fit for Mother’s Day greeting cards, none of which do Mom the credit she deserves. I know that I have, for the most part, not given the other influential people in my life their due in this entry. This one’s for Mom. She deserves that. And truthfully, I have not halfway gotten to the wonderfulness that is Mom. If you know her, I’m sure you’ll agree. But if 2010 gets me one step closer to possessing the grace and strength of my mother, it will truly be a successful year.

Taylor Swift's "The Best Day": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4_6eQm7RTQ

-R.E.A.