Tennessee January

It's winter. January covers the browned hills in soft bluewhite, colours the sky a tender, rosy gray. The short walk over to Grammy's house next door turns into a fairytale trek; the muffled, hollow sounds of the trees, the boys in the trees, my boots crunching on the dead grass make my steps seem innumerable. I hunch over against the cold, see yesterday's shallow puddles frozen at my feet. Snow falling onto the ice has frozen into silver star shapes, delicate flowers, like a hand-beaded vintage dress. The cows in the field beside me are dressed in their own winter coats, snow powdered. They hunch over, shaggy and massive like buffalo. Stolidly ignoring the chill wind, while their winterborn calves frisk behind them like so many delicate fairies. At thirty degrees, the sky above is blank and tender, and every indrawn breath traces itself inside me, cold and sweet.

A Visit To The Des Moines Botanical Center

Outside looks like everywhere: great slabs of white snow marbled with dirt and gravel. Gray pavement glazed over with pitted, grimy ice. Colourless, cold sky. Everything is flat, blank, bleak. The geodesic panes of the greenhouse rise from the parking lot with science-fiction strangeness.

Inside the dome: whorls and curlicues and tendrils. The air is exuberant, heavy with pollen and the lemony smell of growth. Green unfolds and uncurls itself, presses into every centimeter of space. Fullness of stems and fronds and buds and lacebitten leaves. Cursive scribbles of moss fill the spaces on the treestems; aggressive ferns push up beneath broad, spiral palms. The flowers are profuse and jubilant. They lack the decorous beauty of garden flowers, exploding in unnatural, chemical-bright splashes of scarlet, orange, fuchsia, magenta. Their shapes are exotic: frilled, curled, spider-legged, flat alien disks. Not ornamental, but aggressively, unmistakably sexual: anatomy-book closeups, unshy, flamebeautiful.

We few refugees from winter wander two-by-two, wide eyed. Unconsciously our fingers hover near jewelbright leaves and petals (don’t touch!). Human sparrow-pairs, drab in this peacock garden.

An elderly, besuited gentleman, very round of shoulder, very pink of skin, very white of hair. His fluting tulip-wife beside him, immaculately groomed, tastefully brooched and suited. 

The longhaired child, elflike even in her denim jumper, darting and peering: purple orchids (look mom! my favorite color), scary cactus, goldflashing carp. Mom, dumpy and solicitous, smiles.

A peroxide mane, 1980s smear of eyeshadow, cell phone glued to her ear. This woman is ludicrously obese, triple-chinned. Her stretch leggings (look twice, three times: still true!) painted over her lumpy, enormous behind. Thirty years ago she was smacking her gum, gossiping with the same girlfriends about the same (white—harmless?) trash. Ah—behind her, the longtime biker boyfriend, his badboy looks settled now into grizzled, shaggy self-confidence, stuffed into the same Harley tshirt and acidwashed jeans. These two belong together: middle-aged, unglamorous now, unbeautiful. They hardly look at one another; she smacks into her cell phone (she what? Gawd!), he strides behind his proud beerbelly, jingling in his boots. Leaving the greenhouse their arms drift around one another in an unplanned, habitual tenderness.

A thin girl, roundfaced and spectacled, in a little boy's black tshirt. She links hands with her boyfriend, listens as he crouches down to peer at the variegated undersides of leaves, points out the bunch of infant bananas (we had a banana tree once, the fruits fingerlength, thickskinned and bitter). Near the artificial stream there is a creaking, unsteady bench, baking in the sunwarmth trapped by the glass ceiling. Turtle-like, she sits and closes her eyes. Green presses through the thin skin of her eyelids: in great lime-coloured whorls, in sharpedged blades, in saucers and curls and chartreuse tendrils. 

All other love is like the moon:

For your reading pleasure, a late Medieval lyric. Always provided my modernisation of the language is not hopelessly obscure. This is one of my favourites.


All other love is like the moon:
It waxes and wanes, like a meadow flower
That buds, and blooms, and fades full soon,
Like a day that runs swiftly, and ends in rain.

All other love begins with bliss,
But ends in weeping and in woe:
No love can offer perfect solace
But that which rests in heaven's King,

Whose love is daily fresh and green,
And ever full, and never wanes.
His love is sweet, it has no sting,
His love is endless and unfailing.

All other love I leave for thee;
Tell me, tell me, where thou liest?
"Such love may be found, full free
In Mary mild -- but more in Christ."

Christ, I did not find you -- you found me.
Hold me to yourself with all your might,
Give me that my love may be steadfast,
And not turn, again, so soon aside.

Whenever now my heart is sore,
When, indeed, foes spill its blood --
God kens my life, I care no more--
My hope is this: his will is good.

Alas! What may I do at Rome?
But only say, by law of love:
"I were undone by man's just doom,
But he is my Helper, that sits above."

A Lot About Austen

A friend invited me over yesterday to watch Sense and Sensibility (the BBC verison, not the Ang Lee). I'll admit it--I love Jane Austen. I've read her novels and watched the film adaptations multiple times, and they never get old! 

My husband, on the other hand, is not a huge fan. Like my brothers--OK, like most males--sees Jane Austen as something to be endured for the sake of "the girls." I remember Movie Night bartering growing up. A war movie was definitely cause for a "girl movie" like Sense and Sensibility the next weekend, but it took a LOT of "boy movies" to equal the six-tape-long Pride and Prejudice!

Although a few men do appreciate Austen's characterization and wit for its own sake (Dad, you are a rare jewel!), I can understand why her novels and the film adaptations appeal mostly to women. Her interest is in the experiences and perspectives of women of her own class, and the expectations and limitations placed on them by society. She writes of domestic concerns, primarily love and marriage.

So, in a way, any Jane Austen is a sort of "chick lit" or "chick flick." One thing that sets her far above the mass of romantic movies and novels aimed at women, though, is the kind of relationship she portrays as desirable. After growing up with Jane Austen, I find it difficult to believe in or care about romances that follow what I'll call the "Disney Formula" -- where True Love is an undeniable, static, often instantaneous Feeling. You know: instant attraction, plot complications, realization that you are Soul Mates, cue violins, Happily Ever After, The End. The focus is on the attraction, that undescribable connection between the principal characters.

In Austen's novels, however, the relationships that follow the Disney pattern usually prove unreliable. The perfect example is Sense and Sensibility's Marianne and Willoughby, who, after only a few days together, feel that they are "one soul in two bodies." Both characters "follow their hearts" instead of being guided by convention or practicality--yet their relationship turns out to be a false one. Instead, the relationship that is validated at the end of the story (by marriage, of course!) pairs Marianne with the more reserved and conventional Colonel Brandon. Although Marianne at first disregards Brandon as old and boring, she learns to feel respect and gratitude for him, and finally to appreciate that his passionate, devoted personality is married to a commitment to virtue and wisdom. By the time she accepts Brandon's offer of marriage, Marianne is deeply in love with him.

I love this about Jane Austen! Her romantic heroes, the ones who "get the girls," are as different as their partners. They may be witty and charming or proud and reserved; older, younger, poorer, richer. But without exception, they are admirable. Austen's heroines are all matched up with men with whom they are deeply, sincerely, and passionately in love. Yet their love is grounded on more than whoosh-and-gush, violin-drenched Feelings. Mr. Darcy, Edward Ferrars, Colonel Brandon, Edmund Bertram, Mr. Knightley--all of them are men whom Austen's heroines can respect and trust.

I think that's a much more realistic picture of love than the Disney model--maybe even a more Biblical picture? To return to Sense and Sensibility--Austen never portrays feelings as bad. Marianne remains Marianne, of deep "sensibility" and strong passions. Yet she finds true happiness not with Willoughby, her romantic other half, but with Brandon, who deserves her true affection and whom she can trust to protect and cherish her "sensible" love for him.

OK, this post has turned into a monster! I've read a couple of frustrating "chick lit" novels over the past week, and watching S and S with Jody set me off, I guess. What do you think?

Small Blessings

Yesterday Dennis and I woke up and discovered that our water had been turned off.

Oh, the joys of living in older housing. It can be an adventure at times!

We were a little grumpy at missing morning showers, etc, but God was taking care of us. There was EXACTLY enough water left in the kitchen pipes to make four cups of coffee. EXACTLY. No more, no less.

If that's not a particular Providence, I don't know what is.

And I still need help with yesterday's question. Please leave a comment if you haven't already!

February FAIL Syndrome

I don't trust New Year's resolutions.

Whenever January rolls around I remember the harsh smell of chlorine. I can almost hear the muddled roar of yells and splashes echoing over the indoor pool where, as a teenager, I used to practice with a small swim team. Most of us complained about the workouts, the battle to finish just one more grueling butterfly set, the bathwater temperature of the pool and (for the girls, anyway) the way it made our hair take on a greenish tinge. Solemnly, Coach B. would assure us his heart was bleeding in sympathy for our pain. Then he would tell us to swim another 200 fly.

Really, though, most of us loved practice. What we really hated was the annual invasion of Resolutioners who were sure that this year, this year, they were finally going to lose twenty pounds, get six-pack abs, run a five-minute mile. We Flying Fish met at the YMCA every Tuesday, Thursday, and often Saturday to swim for two hours. Many of us cross-trained with the treadmills and weight machines, too, pushing our bodies week after week. And now, in January, suddenly we had to crowd into two tiny lanes of the pool. Getting a decent workout in the weightroom was almost impossible.

Kicking one another, waiting ten minutes for a turn in the pool, was wretched. The only reason we didn't go crazy was that we knew February was only a few weeks away. And then we would have room to breathe again; by March, everything would be back to normal. We would have all the space we wanted, we could go back to complaining about pushups and sprint sets and the other teams.

We just had to wait until February.

John Bunyan

Here is the article I was working on last week. It is my first published nonfiction outside of school work, and part of a series on Reformers and other significant figures in Christian history written by members of Grace Community Church, which I used to attend in Union City. I have to say, it is REALLY HARD to write an article that is only 600 words and still say everything you want to. But researching the life and works of John Bunyan in order to write this article was tremendously encouraging to me. You may have read his classic allegory of Christian life, A Pilgrim's Progress -- if not, READ IT. It is one of a handful of books that has actually never gone out of print. I also encourage you to read his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, as soon as you can. It is a quick read despite the older language. This website actually has the complete works of Bunyan available to read online for free. Awesome!

Observations in Iowa

Well, it's been a couple months, and so far I LOVE Iowa. Oddly enough, it reminds me somewhat of home -- a very agricultural area. Des Moines is great because it has capital city amenities -- nice restaurants, cultural activities, international food ingredients available (!) -- but is still pretty small for a city. There are lots of farms around and many people seem to hold to more conservative, agricultural community values.

With that said, I thought I'd share a few things about Iowa (or Des Moines, really) that have stuck out to me as DIFFERENT.

1. POP. Not "coke," "pop." I thought it was kind of a joke that people farther North called all soda "pop," but they REALLY DO. Nobody says "coke" unless they mean brand-name Coca-Cola. I asked a store associate where I could find the store brand Coke last week. He gave me a really funny look and told me, "All of our pop is over there." I don't know why I find this so funny.

2. HY-VEE. Speaking of stores, I love this one. It is a lot like Iowa's brand of Kroger, and the stores are EVERYWHERE here. Tends to be a bit more expensive than Wal-Mart, but they usually have really good sales going each week. AND the one close to our house comes complete with a Helpful Produce Guy.

3. ALCOHOL. This sounds kinda bad, but coming from a dry county, it is REALLY COOL to be able to go to Wal-Mart, Hy-Vee, or Target and choose from at least a whole aisle each for wine, beer, and more serious alcohol.

4. TATTOOS. Since we're talking about Wal-Mart ;) Seriously, there are a lot of tattoos here. I didn't really notice till Mom came to visit and remarked on it. And she's right. I'd say I see a good four times as much tattooed flesh here as "back home." And I was listening to a Godless Rock Station on the way to work and apparently there is an Iowa Tattoo Festival coming up.

5. SKINNY PEOPLE. Not everybody is skinny, of course, but there are a lot MORE people walking around who are NOT significantly overweight. I guess what they say about the South is true.

6. CORN. Yep, corn. I shouldn't be surprised that fresh corn tastes SO much better here.

I have a couple more, but DH tells me that our salmon is done, so I will close, with love to my readers!