anne lamott on seasons

Spring is sweet, the baby season; summer is the teenage season – too much energy, too much growth and beauty and heat and late nights, none of them what they are cracked up to be. Fall is the older season, a more seasoned season. The weather surrounds you instead of beating down on you. Clouds bobble across the sky, and there are fresh winds, and misty salmon sunrises, and then cool blue skies. The weather is lighter, marbled, and it makes you feel like striding again, makes you glad that so much works at all.

_from “loving your president: day 2″ in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.

monrovia

If you can awaken

inside the familiar

and discover it strange

you need never leave home.

Braided Creek, _by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

books and memory

Thanks to Mike for reminding me that Cormac McCarthy won a Pulitzer on Monday for The Road.

Speaking of literature, I have the poorest memory. People ask me “what’s your favorite book?” and I can’t do it. I cannot mentally recall the books I’ve read, let alone pick a favorite or list my top five. On Facebook I wrote “Lord of the Rings”… and don’t get me wrong, I love Tolkien. But I chose it primarily because it was all I could think of. To me, this is deeply bothersome. troubling. wrong.

What to do? what to do?

So here’s my plan: I’m going to create an Excel speadsheet listing every book I’ve read… and each record will contain the title, author, genre, and my personal rating. Then I can tell Excel to sort the list according to my personal rating, and I’ll automatically have my books ordered from best to worst. It will be so nifty!

Now to stop writing about it and actually do it…

What I read while at Peet’s Coffee

To command the wheel of an open car with a girl on the seat beside you was to be established in a condition that only a fool would hasten to end.

_Tobias Wolff, in the short story “Two Boys and a Girl”… from The Night in Question

Saturday

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

work

Yesterday, I got the chance to offer someone a job. I expected a mild response, something like, “Great… well, I’ll have to think about it.” Instead she was clearly excited, which got me excited. It was contagious! I could tell she felt grateful for the chance to be a teacher with our school.

All this made me reflect on the nature of work, something for which it’s easy to take for granted. Maybe I’m young and idealistic and in 30 years I’ll talk about how much work sucks. But days like yesterday help me think about the amazing opportunity we have to use our skills to earn a living. I’m reminded of how many in the world are longing, desperately, to work…. to have a job to do. I think it’s something that as a teenager it was difficult to appreciate. Now it’s different. Now work as an idea, as a reality… it’s good.

On girls and beer

There’s something attractive about a girl with a beer in her hand.

A girl drunk, however… definitely a turn-off.