I'm not much of a Hallowe'en person to begin with. And when I am, it's in a good old fashioned light-the-lanterns, set a big fire in the yard and contemplate death kind of way. With chocolate. And I do like the costumes.
And I like the historical notion. I like the idea that this tradition came out of a time when there were no streetlights, and to get together, hoist your lanterns and go out into the Dark, Dark Night was an astonishing thing. The night was the domain not only of things that go bump in it, but the criminal element. If you were out after dark, you were obviously up to no good. (Or were about to have no good done up to you. So to speak.) But for one night, you took over. You put faces and names to the things that frightened you and owned you all the rest of the year - all the scary unexplained world given masked form and paraded about for everyone to see. You mocked that which frightened you. As one Blackadder would say, you dropped ice cubes down the vest of fear. A sort of take-back-the-night.
We would seem to be in a different place, now. I remember when Hallowe'en lawn displays were just getting revved up, when I was little, and a little gore in the form of a dead body strewn on the porch or dangling from a balcony was controversial, and most kids actually avoided those houses (the logic being: What kind of a freak would you have to be to do that?). And now it's all par for the course: the staged car accidents, the hangmen dangling from trees, the dismembered bits and pieces, the endless police tape, the men in the shadows playing pretend with real deadly implements.
Sure, you could say that our scary unexplained world is made up of serial killers, horrific accidents, suicide, gore and violence. But I wouldn't want to be the one to tell history that we have cornered the market on horror. Ghastly murders and inescapable tragedy - these have been with us much longer than we like to pretend. And yet people of the past didn't dress themselves up in their greatest miseries. Consider that crucifixion (even a really famous one) wasn't represented for hundreds of years until after the Romans had stopped doing it all the time. Too many people knew someone who had been there. Some things you can't quite mock properly. You can try, but the horror leaks through. There is nothing defiant here, nothing in the display that suggests a lightness or a will to laugh through your fear for one night.
I'd like to know what the little costumed candy-trolling tykes pick up from this. Are they getting a free pass to laugh at everything scary? Or are they just seeing the reality of the nightly news trotted out, preparing them for what the grim future has in store?
I'd like to know even more about those people who put the hangmen up in their trees and car crashes (with corpse-bearing booster seats) on their lawn. How fortunate they must be to be spared these things in their own lives. How lucky not to know anyone who was brought there - by their own will or not.
I hope that it's all part of the same tradition, part of scaring the night before the night scares us. But I have my doubts. I wouldn't be able to string the shape of a person up onto the gallows, no matter who tells me it's all pretend and shows me the stuffing to prove it.
And I wonder which is worse: to live in fear of the sinister unknown that lies outside the edge of your lantern-light - or to see the world in all its streetlamped detail, knowing exactly what that bump in the night was, and precisely what it bodes for you.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Dance, Dance (Revolution)
There's a platitude that regularly circulates online and off in the form of chain e-mails, powerpoint files embellished with sparkly fairies, friendship cards, magnets, and decorative tiles. You've probably seen it. The lines vary, sometimes including "Love like you've never been hurt before" and "Sing like no one is listening" and "Live like it's heaven on earth". There are a few other variations, but the one that's always in there is "Dance like no one is watching". It's become something of a new age catchphrase of positive self-esteem, individuality, and freedom of spirit.
It has taken me a long time to put my finger on what is amiss with the sentiment.
The idea is that when no one is watching, you are released from your public persona - you can let yourself go, dancing with reckless abandon without fear of embarrassment or negative judgement. And that feels fantastic, in theory. But in practice, picture yourself dancing like no one is watching. Do you see the critical flaw with the promised joy of this statement? If you're dancing and no one's watching, then you are dancing alone.
So what is this statement telling the individual? It says you cannot dance when someone is watching without fear of being mocked or insulted. It says that by necessity, when we dance we dance with caution, and that the only escape is to pretend that no one else is around. We absolve ourselves of any cultural opportunity to promote the idea that people should be dancing - with frequency and great abandon - even if someone is watching. This does not seem to be an unreasonable ambition. People manage to dance this way in other cultures. Music and dancing are two of the most powerful symbols of a free society, in fact, and populations that suffer under oppressive regimes often illustrate their liberation (after a messy revolution of some kind) with dancing in the streets - either to popular western music twenty years out of date, or to indigenous songs that have been dusted off after a generation or two, somehow managing to survive.
What we should be striving for is not to develop a society of people who are proudly able to shut out everyone around them in order to express themselves. Art has a twist of defiance in it, always (otherwise it's propaganda - or dreck). What if we came up with a new age catchphrase that encapsulated the need to dance, even when people are watching and perhaps disapproving, all the while managing not to care?
People, I give you the wedding reception. This is what we should aspire to. The big cheesy dance-off wedding reception. All the songs you know all the words to, but would never admit enjoyment of under any other circumstances. The music that grabs you by the belt loops and drags you from the safety of table 8 into the spinning disco ball illumination of the dance floor. The kind of dancing that you should only be able to do when fantastically drunk, but really you only had one glass of champagne and that doesn't nearly justify the kind of unstoppable groove that is provoked by "I Will Survive". A completely un-aesthetic, unrelenting, hands-in-the-air, "Oh my God they're playing 'Call Me'! Hold my drink until I get back!", lyric-miming, release of the inner Bo Jangles.
That, friends, is reckless abandon at its finest. And what makes it the finest? The fact that not only is everyone watching, they are committing to precisely the same philosophy! A mob mentality takes over, and you are swept up in an infectious disco fever that you can't get in any other socially sanctioned environment today. It's cheesy. It'll look terrible in the wedding video - but nobody cares, because you just got a lineup of "Dancing Queen", "Rebel Rebel", "Macho Man", and "A Little Less Conversation", and if you stop to think about it, you'll realise you can't breathe and have to sit out for "Tainted Love". And nobody wants that. We must put aside the spectre of the early iPod marketing campaign, featuring candy-coloured images of people dancing wildly – but only within the safety of their own headphones. Instead, let us embrace the less pristine image of improvised jigging at midnight with a crowd of strangers to "Home for a Rest" while make-up runs and painful shoes are kicked aside. It's not pretty, and it certainly isn't glamorous. It is joyful defiance of everything we are told we should be.
As you go out into the big wide world which, let's face it, is full of horrors and tragedy and the end of hope, put down that charming, well-intentioned coaster.
Don't dance like no one is watching.
Dance like everyone else is dancing too.
It has taken me a long time to put my finger on what is amiss with the sentiment.
The idea is that when no one is watching, you are released from your public persona - you can let yourself go, dancing with reckless abandon without fear of embarrassment or negative judgement. And that feels fantastic, in theory. But in practice, picture yourself dancing like no one is watching. Do you see the critical flaw with the promised joy of this statement? If you're dancing and no one's watching, then you are dancing alone.
So what is this statement telling the individual? It says you cannot dance when someone is watching without fear of being mocked or insulted. It says that by necessity, when we dance we dance with caution, and that the only escape is to pretend that no one else is around. We absolve ourselves of any cultural opportunity to promote the idea that people should be dancing - with frequency and great abandon - even if someone is watching. This does not seem to be an unreasonable ambition. People manage to dance this way in other cultures. Music and dancing are two of the most powerful symbols of a free society, in fact, and populations that suffer under oppressive regimes often illustrate their liberation (after a messy revolution of some kind) with dancing in the streets - either to popular western music twenty years out of date, or to indigenous songs that have been dusted off after a generation or two, somehow managing to survive.
What we should be striving for is not to develop a society of people who are proudly able to shut out everyone around them in order to express themselves. Art has a twist of defiance in it, always (otherwise it's propaganda - or dreck). What if we came up with a new age catchphrase that encapsulated the need to dance, even when people are watching and perhaps disapproving, all the while managing not to care?
People, I give you the wedding reception. This is what we should aspire to. The big cheesy dance-off wedding reception. All the songs you know all the words to, but would never admit enjoyment of under any other circumstances. The music that grabs you by the belt loops and drags you from the safety of table 8 into the spinning disco ball illumination of the dance floor. The kind of dancing that you should only be able to do when fantastically drunk, but really you only had one glass of champagne and that doesn't nearly justify the kind of unstoppable groove that is provoked by "I Will Survive". A completely un-aesthetic, unrelenting, hands-in-the-air, "Oh my God they're playing 'Call Me'! Hold my drink until I get back!", lyric-miming, release of the inner Bo Jangles.
That, friends, is reckless abandon at its finest. And what makes it the finest? The fact that not only is everyone watching, they are committing to precisely the same philosophy! A mob mentality takes over, and you are swept up in an infectious disco fever that you can't get in any other socially sanctioned environment today. It's cheesy. It'll look terrible in the wedding video - but nobody cares, because you just got a lineup of "Dancing Queen", "Rebel Rebel", "Macho Man", and "A Little Less Conversation", and if you stop to think about it, you'll realise you can't breathe and have to sit out for "Tainted Love". And nobody wants that. We must put aside the spectre of the early iPod marketing campaign, featuring candy-coloured images of people dancing wildly – but only within the safety of their own headphones. Instead, let us embrace the less pristine image of improvised jigging at midnight with a crowd of strangers to "Home for a Rest" while make-up runs and painful shoes are kicked aside. It's not pretty, and it certainly isn't glamorous. It is joyful defiance of everything we are told we should be.
As you go out into the big wide world which, let's face it, is full of horrors and tragedy and the end of hope, put down that charming, well-intentioned coaster.
Don't dance like no one is watching.
Dance like everyone else is dancing too.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
More Marketing
Further to my post about the marketing of "Castle", I've just discovered that in the DVD set for the second season of "Brothers and Sisters" (to which I am totally addicted), a clever soul inserted an envelope of recipes, ostensibly belonging to Nora, the matriarch of the family. They've been designed to look like someone uses them (with blotches, corrections, and notes on them), one looks like a newspaper clipping has been attached, one is an e-mail sent from one family member to another. Best of all, they're recipes for things on the show - an allusion to a particular salsa, a birthday cake for Kitty's birthday, the strawberry shortcake from the Infamous Strawberry Shortcake Incident...
Hats off to you, marketing team at ABC (both "Castle" and "Brothers & Sisters" run on this network, I doubt it's a coincidence that they both have some innovative marketing going on). Now work up a "McCallister for [Insert Government Office Here]" t-shirt, and we can be best friends.
Hats off to you, marketing team at ABC (both "Castle" and "Brothers & Sisters" run on this network, I doubt it's a coincidence that they both have some innovative marketing going on). Now work up a "McCallister for [Insert Government Office Here]" t-shirt, and we can be best friends.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Loss and Recovery
More people experience feelings of loss than are usually accounted for. "Loss", in our terms, almost invariably serves as a euphemism for death. Coping with loss, counseling for loss, sorry for your loss. But as far as I can tell, it's more unusual to find someone who doesn't feel that they are coping with some feelings of loss, and those people aren't necessarily grieving over the death of a loved one.
There are degrees to the feeling, as there are degrees to any feeling. Perhaps a relationship or a job has ended, perhaps a friend has fallen out of touch, or a valued possession has been destroyed. Maybe a favourite place can no longer be visited outside of one's memory. Health is sacrificed to illness or injury, and dignity is sacrificed to humiliation.
But the deepest sense of loss - the kind that stabs you in the gut at 2 a.m. - is the sense that something has been taken away. It feels personal, as though forces beyond our control have reached down and selected that which is most precious, most valued, most desired, and plucked it out of our life. Something we worked for, something we clung to with every ounce of duty or denial we possess, has nevertheless been pried out of our hands. We have been robbed. Something has been stolen. And nothing can repair it, nothing can set right the feeling of injustice.
So we have a choice between carrying on and not carrying on. Most of us choose the former. But we carry on with the compulsive feeling that a gap - which must be visible to everyone around us - should be filled. It can't, of course. Like any more trivial loss, we never find a replacement exactly like the old one; it doesn't look quite right or feel quite right, or doesn't have the right history behind it. And perhaps that's the most difficult thing to swallow: there is no replacement strategy that works. We can find new, different, even better in some contexts. But not "same". Because people react when they feel robbed - they expose feelings that they may not even have been aware of. People themselves change, so even if the possibility existed of finding the same thing to replace the old, it wouldn't work - even if the same beauty could be found, the beholder has altered.
And maybe that's progress. Maybe that's evolution, when we stop seeking the replacement and start looking for the thing that complements what we've discovered.
There are degrees to the feeling, as there are degrees to any feeling. Perhaps a relationship or a job has ended, perhaps a friend has fallen out of touch, or a valued possession has been destroyed. Maybe a favourite place can no longer be visited outside of one's memory. Health is sacrificed to illness or injury, and dignity is sacrificed to humiliation.
But the deepest sense of loss - the kind that stabs you in the gut at 2 a.m. - is the sense that something has been taken away. It feels personal, as though forces beyond our control have reached down and selected that which is most precious, most valued, most desired, and plucked it out of our life. Something we worked for, something we clung to with every ounce of duty or denial we possess, has nevertheless been pried out of our hands. We have been robbed. Something has been stolen. And nothing can repair it, nothing can set right the feeling of injustice.
So we have a choice between carrying on and not carrying on. Most of us choose the former. But we carry on with the compulsive feeling that a gap - which must be visible to everyone around us - should be filled. It can't, of course. Like any more trivial loss, we never find a replacement exactly like the old one; it doesn't look quite right or feel quite right, or doesn't have the right history behind it. And perhaps that's the most difficult thing to swallow: there is no replacement strategy that works. We can find new, different, even better in some contexts. But not "same". Because people react when they feel robbed - they expose feelings that they may not even have been aware of. People themselves change, so even if the possibility existed of finding the same thing to replace the old, it wouldn't work - even if the same beauty could be found, the beholder has altered.
And maybe that's progress. Maybe that's evolution, when we stop seeking the replacement and start looking for the thing that complements what we've discovered.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Castle Market
On the one hand, we have the total failure of advertisers all over the world. They give us pop-up ads, not realizing that when most of us see such an ad, we go out of our way to avoid that product/service in future, because it has behaved in an irritating and invasive manner. Or they try to trick us into clicking on their ad by having it appear really quickly and unexpectedly when we go about our business elsewhere online. Or they redirect our searches, endangering the more innocent surfers among us who may not want their search for Dora the Explorer to result in a site explicitly describing exploration of a less wholesome kind. There are of course the television advertisers, who have cunningly increased the volume of commercials to such a degree that you are craning to hear the dialogue of your favourite series, and deafened the minute the ads come on. Telemarketers call us in our homes so frequently and illogically that we feel hunted and harassed. In fact, all told, if we find out who they are, they will probably be made to feel very uncomfortable.
But sometimes... sometimes there's a genius out there. And far be it for me not to give credit where credit is due.
I am, of course, a rabid fan of "Castle", a show that premiered and took viewers by sunnily pleasant surprise last fall. I've talked about it before. The premise, as noted, is that a cheesy detective mystery fiction author decides to team up with an NYPD detective - against her will - in order to feed his own authorial needs for a new series and end his writer's block.
What some brilliant individual has come up with? they're writing the books. If you're a theatre buff, we are breaking the fourth wall. If you're an MA student, this is, dude, totally meta. If you have any appreciation of clever marketing when you see it, this is genius. Not only are they writing the books, and doing so under the pseudonym of the series protagonist Richard Castle, but they are maintaining his endearing, no-holds-barred cheeseball nature. Observe the summary:
"A New York real estate tycoon plunges to his death on a Manhattan sidewalk. A trophy wife with a past survives a narrow escape from a brazen attack. Mobsters and moguls with no shortage of reasons to kill trot out their alibis. And then, in the suffocating grip of a record heat wave, comes another shocking murder and a sharp turn in a tense journey into the dirty little secrets of the wealthy. Secrets that prove to be fatal. Secrets that lay hidden in the dark until one NYPD detective shines a light.
Mystery sensation Richard Castle, blockbuster author of the wildly best-selling Derrick Storm novels, introduces his newest character, NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat. Tough, sexy, professional, Nikki Heat carries a passion for justice as she leads one of New York City's top homicide squads. She's hit with an unexpected challenge when the commissioner assigns superstar magazine journalist Jameson Rook to ride along with her to research an article on New York's Finest. PulitzerPrize-winning Rook is as much a handful as he is handsome. His wise-cracking and meddling aren't her only problems. As she works to unravel the secrets of the murdered real estate tycoon, she must also confront the spark between them. The one called heat."
Self-aware, self-parodying marketing like this is a breath of fresh air. Why? Because they are working with the product, not against it. They want to promote the series and make a little extra coin. But rather than develop products vaguely associated with the series but which fail to capture the flavour that makes the original product successful (I seem to recall that "Buffy" was particularly guilty of this), they have decided to stay in character. In the show, Castle is supposed to be among the honour guard of clichéd mystery writers; they have not turned him into a literary grand master. They even gave him a self-consciously phrased author bio.
And like all the best spin-off products, this one provides a little extra for the fan who takes that extra step to participate. After all, the journalist character in the book is obviously Castle's own Mary-Sue version of himself placed into the book (the transparent "Rook" substitute for "Castle" is charming in its silly and frankly accurate depiction of genre). One can anticipate that he will be rendered in an absurdly flattering manner, and that his partnership with the detective will be delightfully warped in the image of Castle's own delusions of grandeur.
A show at once continuing to satirize the pulp detective novel genre and itself at the same time?
Bravo. Bravo indeed.
But sometimes... sometimes there's a genius out there. And far be it for me not to give credit where credit is due.
I am, of course, a rabid fan of "Castle", a show that premiered and took viewers by sunnily pleasant surprise last fall. I've talked about it before. The premise, as noted, is that a cheesy detective mystery fiction author decides to team up with an NYPD detective - against her will - in order to feed his own authorial needs for a new series and end his writer's block.
What some brilliant individual has come up with? they're writing the books. If you're a theatre buff, we are breaking the fourth wall. If you're an MA student, this is, dude, totally meta. If you have any appreciation of clever marketing when you see it, this is genius. Not only are they writing the books, and doing so under the pseudonym of the series protagonist Richard Castle, but they are maintaining his endearing, no-holds-barred cheeseball nature. Observe the summary:
"A New York real estate tycoon plunges to his death on a Manhattan sidewalk. A trophy wife with a past survives a narrow escape from a brazen attack. Mobsters and moguls with no shortage of reasons to kill trot out their alibis. And then, in the suffocating grip of a record heat wave, comes another shocking murder and a sharp turn in a tense journey into the dirty little secrets of the wealthy. Secrets that prove to be fatal. Secrets that lay hidden in the dark until one NYPD detective shines a light.
Mystery sensation Richard Castle, blockbuster author of the wildly best-selling Derrick Storm novels, introduces his newest character, NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat. Tough, sexy, professional, Nikki Heat carries a passion for justice as she leads one of New York City's top homicide squads. She's hit with an unexpected challenge when the commissioner assigns superstar magazine journalist Jameson Rook to ride along with her to research an article on New York's Finest. PulitzerPrize-winning Rook is as much a handful as he is handsome. His wise-cracking and meddling aren't her only problems. As she works to unravel the secrets of the murdered real estate tycoon, she must also confront the spark between them. The one called heat."
Self-aware, self-parodying marketing like this is a breath of fresh air. Why? Because they are working with the product, not against it. They want to promote the series and make a little extra coin. But rather than develop products vaguely associated with the series but which fail to capture the flavour that makes the original product successful (I seem to recall that "Buffy" was particularly guilty of this), they have decided to stay in character. In the show, Castle is supposed to be among the honour guard of clichéd mystery writers; they have not turned him into a literary grand master. They even gave him a self-consciously phrased author bio.
And like all the best spin-off products, this one provides a little extra for the fan who takes that extra step to participate. After all, the journalist character in the book is obviously Castle's own Mary-Sue version of himself placed into the book (the transparent "Rook" substitute for "Castle" is charming in its silly and frankly accurate depiction of genre). One can anticipate that he will be rendered in an absurdly flattering manner, and that his partnership with the detective will be delightfully warped in the image of Castle's own delusions of grandeur.
A show at once continuing to satirize the pulp detective novel genre and itself at the same time?
Bravo. Bravo indeed.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Crisis Point
I admit the possibility that I spend a little too much mental energy unpacking platitudes that show up on mugs, aprons, and decorative coasters. Consider this one: "Women are wonderful. Like tea bags, they never know their strength until they get into hot water." I've seen this attributed to Mary Cooper Jewett Glaser and Eleanor Roosevelt, so they can fight for the credit, but I'm pretty sure it's the former.
On the surface, one thinks "Ah. How true. Women are capable of surmounting the odds and finding inner strength in desperate situations." I suspect that's how this is supposed to be taken. But is it actually saying that? What it actually states is that a woman is unaware of her strength until she is challenged in an extreme way. This leads to all kinds of unpleasant speculation, especially since this notion is framed as "wonderful". Is it "wonderful" to suggest that half the human race only reveals its strength when it is in trouble? What kind of trouble? To "get into hot water" usually indicates a complicated situation of one's own making - though not invariably.
Why shouldn't women know their strength unless they've gotten into trouble? Surely the women most worthy of admiration, feminist sloganizing, and distribution on fridge magnets are those who are inherently aware of their strength. I think, if closely questioned, most women would prefer a foundation of confidence to the ability simply to prove one's strength in dire straits. In fact, isn't the slogan really suggesting that it's not women who are "never" (never?) aware of their own strength until they're in trouble, but other people? That it's other people who are surprised to find that women are able to overcome difficult situations?
I'm not against the idea of being good in a crisis. I happen to be pretty good myself, when the chips are down and it's an actual make-or-break, keep-a-clear-head crisis moment. It's not an uncommon quality. But perhaps we place too much value on that quality. You could view life as a series of massive emergencies, but for most of us, the majority of time is spent on small joys and troubles. And how many people can say that they're good with the everyday? How many people can keep a clear head when there's no pressure to do so, or show compassion when it's not a high-stakes moment?
I've had my metaphorical 3 a.m. phone call moments - I'm usually on the receiving end, but we all have our crisis point. And sometimes I've been very fortunate to have people come through for me. And I don't want to malign the importance of people stepping in to be supportive when you call out the alarm.
But the most valuable to me are the in-between times. The people who are kind when there's no emergency, when there is no glory in it for them, are the most important people in my life. It is in many ways easier to provide comfort for the one-time tearful phone call than to try to be a positive presence at every encounter. Because where was crisis-person when everything was falling apart slowly, in small increments, over a long period of time (as it usually does)? Where is crisis-person when you're rebuilding what has fallen apart?
The people in your life who keep you going, who keep you treading water so that when the big wave does come, you're a little more prepared and a little more likely to resurface - those people are of unspeakable value. They don't get a lot of credit, and not much in the way of glory. If you happen to know some of those people, as I do, I hope you say thanks. Buy some flowers. Bake some cookies. And recognize strength even when the water's fine.
On the surface, one thinks "Ah. How true. Women are capable of surmounting the odds and finding inner strength in desperate situations." I suspect that's how this is supposed to be taken. But is it actually saying that? What it actually states is that a woman is unaware of her strength until she is challenged in an extreme way. This leads to all kinds of unpleasant speculation, especially since this notion is framed as "wonderful". Is it "wonderful" to suggest that half the human race only reveals its strength when it is in trouble? What kind of trouble? To "get into hot water" usually indicates a complicated situation of one's own making - though not invariably.
Why shouldn't women know their strength unless they've gotten into trouble? Surely the women most worthy of admiration, feminist sloganizing, and distribution on fridge magnets are those who are inherently aware of their strength. I think, if closely questioned, most women would prefer a foundation of confidence to the ability simply to prove one's strength in dire straits. In fact, isn't the slogan really suggesting that it's not women who are "never" (never?) aware of their own strength until they're in trouble, but other people? That it's other people who are surprised to find that women are able to overcome difficult situations?
I'm not against the idea of being good in a crisis. I happen to be pretty good myself, when the chips are down and it's an actual make-or-break, keep-a-clear-head crisis moment. It's not an uncommon quality. But perhaps we place too much value on that quality. You could view life as a series of massive emergencies, but for most of us, the majority of time is spent on small joys and troubles. And how many people can say that they're good with the everyday? How many people can keep a clear head when there's no pressure to do so, or show compassion when it's not a high-stakes moment?
I've had my metaphorical 3 a.m. phone call moments - I'm usually on the receiving end, but we all have our crisis point. And sometimes I've been very fortunate to have people come through for me. And I don't want to malign the importance of people stepping in to be supportive when you call out the alarm.
But the most valuable to me are the in-between times. The people who are kind when there's no emergency, when there is no glory in it for them, are the most important people in my life. It is in many ways easier to provide comfort for the one-time tearful phone call than to try to be a positive presence at every encounter. Because where was crisis-person when everything was falling apart slowly, in small increments, over a long period of time (as it usually does)? Where is crisis-person when you're rebuilding what has fallen apart?
The people in your life who keep you going, who keep you treading water so that when the big wave does come, you're a little more prepared and a little more likely to resurface - those people are of unspeakable value. They don't get a lot of credit, and not much in the way of glory. If you happen to know some of those people, as I do, I hope you say thanks. Buy some flowers. Bake some cookies. And recognize strength even when the water's fine.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Commonplace
The best news I had all week came from Tapestry, one of the great surviving programmes on CBC radio. During the interview, Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer described his concept of a “Do-It-Yourself Bible” - which amounts to what many of us antiquated people call a “Commonplace Book”. Rabbi Brian's explanation can be found here. The gist of it is this: “Instead of starting with the Bible and removing the parts you don't like, I want to you start with a blank book and build a book of wisdom and words you consider to be beautiful, divine, glorious, godly, hallowed, heaven-sent, holy, insightful, inspirational, inspired, numinous, profound, sacred, sanctified, spiritual, sublime, or venerated.”
Obviously this delights me. I've been doing this for years, and I thought I was developing some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder.
Please note that henceforth book-related posts are going into a bookblog: http://bookhandler.blogspot.com
At the moment it's mainly cross-posted stuff from here (including this one), some polished or edited a bit. Enjoy :)
Obviously this delights me. I've been doing this for years, and I thought I was developing some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder.
Please note that henceforth book-related posts are going into a bookblog: http://bookhandler.blogspot.com
At the moment it's mainly cross-posted stuff from here (including this one), some polished or edited a bit. Enjoy :)
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