April 17th is Poem in Your Pocket Day

The American Academy of Poetry has deemed today "Poem in Your Pocket Day", as part of National Poetry Month.

Whereupon I will share my favorite poem with you:

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light!

Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Also, in the spirit of the day, two poems I can remember my father reciting,

at the slightest provocation:

As I was going up the stair

I met a man who wasn't there

He wasn't there again today

I wish like hell he'd go away.

-William Hughes Mearns

(the last line is supposed to be "I wish, I wish he'd stay away."

I like my dad's version better.)

Chicken in the car.

The car can't go;

That's how you spell Chicago.

-apparently an "old Trini saying", whatever that means.

Quickly! Share your favorite poem, with me or anyone, and mark this day on your calendar for next year...

Mommy, Read to Me

"Mommy, read to me" is a phrase I hear maybe fifty times a day. In addition to the guaranteed three at bedtime, I probably cave and read another fifteen to twenty books daily to my three year old. It's not that I mind. A love of reading is something I definitely want to cultivate in my children. But recently Cassidy has become aware that the letters on the page combine to mean something, that the words stay the same every time it's read. That means a lot of sounding out, and keeping pace with a little finger that indicates each word individually. And I can forget about skipping over things ( I personally hate reading aloud books about dinosaurs, with all their unpronouncable names, and would just pass over all the technical bits. The kids love these books, though, the drier the better).

What this means is that a good portion of my day is spent reading children's books aloud, so I thought I'd give them a bit of attention here. I love fishing through the children's room in the library, looking for good new reads. I love reading old childhood favorites aloud. And, as we all know, I love the sound of my own voice.

Keep in mind- reading to kids is a much richer experience for everyone involved (the child in question, the reader, other people in the room listening to Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? for the eighteenth night in a row) if you look for books that flow smoothly, and lend themselves well to dramatic presentation.

For example, Cass has suddenly fallen head over heels for Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman. These are a lot of fun to read! I made the "mistake" early on, of incorporating lots of silly voices and singing; now I have to do that every time. This eliminates any chance of pawning off the reading to Daddy or older brothers, becuase "they don't do it right". That's OK. There is nothing better than a kid who wants to hear a story over and over, that's how they learn to read; more importantly, that's how they want to learn to read. Cass "reads" to her plush animals all the time, and sometimes to real animals too.

Even if you don't have pushy, rhyme-addicted kids, I highly recommend reading a Dr. Seuss, any Dr. Seuss, out loud every once in a while. Whether it's to your dog, your houseplants, or your mailman, do it just for a general sense of well-being:

The more that you read,
the more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
the more places you'll go.

You might learn a way to earn a few dollars.
Or how to make doughnuts...
or kangaroo collars.

You can learn to read music
and play a Hut-Zut
if you keep your eyes open.
But not with them shut.

-Dr. Seuss
I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

There- doesn't that feel good?

On the flip side, Cass will want a book because it has a character from one of her TV shows on the cover. Sometimes I would buy them from Scholastic because they're inexpensive, and I want to support the Scholastic program in the classroom. Don't do it! These books are selling a product, and that product is not reading. I know many people say that it doesn't matter what kids read, as long as they're reading, but I whole-heartedly disagree. These books are often nothing but synopses of an episode, the language is overly simplistic, they do not flow well at all, and I don't like reading them. These books should be considered like candy; pretty and fun, OK for once in a while, but really not good for you. Exceptions to this, of course, are character books where the books came first: the Max and Ruby books by Rosemary Wells and H.A. Rey's Curious George spring to mind. I still buy from Scholastic, but I stick to titles I recognize.















Anyway, here's the Top 10 for this week:

1. The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, by Mo Willems
2. BooBoo by Olivier Dunrea
3. David Gets in Trouble, by David Shannon
4. What Makes a Rainbow? by Betty Schwartz
5. Inside Mouse, Outside Mouse by Lindsay Barrett George
6. Froggy Learns to Swim, by Jonathan London
7. Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman
8. Time to Pee! by Mo Willems
9. Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss
10. Max's Dragon Shirt, by Rosemary Wells

I think I've read Green Eggs and Ham twenty times in five days. But I vividly remember the crushing disappointment I felt as a child when my Uncle George- the only adult in my life that would read to me- refused to read it to me "just one more time". So, I will read it here and there, I will read it anywhere, I just hope she moves on to another book soon.

I am torn between just posting on this site, reviews on books that the kids love, or that I love to read to them, or actually launching another site entirely for kids' books. Thoughts?

Tax Day is Almost Over

Money doesn't talk, it swears.
-Bob Dylan
"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"

Really, I don't know why I put it off; better to see the bottom of the bank account, I think, and begin planning how best to fill it back up, than to spend two months in agony, dreading the day I have to write out those big checks.

Which is, of course, today.

But now, a tremendous sense of relief. I even, in a fit of goodwill, purchased my husband real Coca-Cola instead of store brand (although if I had bought store brand, he could have had an extra liter for the same price).

I read somewhere recently (wasn't I going to stop saying that?) that you're supposed to aim, shoot, and run towards the enemy. It's not enough to hold them off, you need to make progress.

So, no more putting things off. I swear! I am adding "Run Towards the Enemy" to "What Are You Waiting For? Do It NOW!" on my imaginary wall of motivational signs. Which maybe I will make not-imaginary, now that I'm not using all my free time to obsess over our tax bill.

"Get bent! TAX MAN!!!"
-Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger Than Fiction
Another good movie to put on your Netflix list!

Book Review: This Year I Will...How to finally change a habit, keep a resolution, or make a dream come true

We are our habits, yes? I have lots of bad habits. Unfortunately, most of mine are psychological rather than physical, and not so easily broken. It was not so hard for me to quit smoking, even though I smoked for nearly two decades (that's quite a bit more than half my life, people, ugh, I'm so ashamed). It was also not so hard to make a conscious decision to clean as you go, wake up earlier, or spend an hour every day doing whatever my three-year-old wants to do no matter how mind-numbing it is.

For me, it's much harder to stop being so negative and hyper-critical or stop worrying so much.

Almost impossible to remember that sarcasm is not the same as humor.

(Getting easier, though: write every day, tread lightly on our earth, and find time to be happy.)

How lucky for me that M.J. Ryan wrote a book to aid me in my quests, with the admittedly awkward title This Year I Will...

First off, I feel that this title seems to imply that I have committed to a New Year's resolution, which I have not and never will. But I was so intrigued by the notion that someone had written a whole book about how to change a habit or keep a resolution, that I had to give it a quick read. And it is a quick read, lots of short chapters, not terribly taxing, just perfect for before bed.

As it turns out, This Year I will... is not the piece of fluff that I suspected it would be, but full of good advice and practical information, inspirational quotes (my favorite!) and testimonials.

It is divided into into three major categories:

Section One: Preparing to Change. You have to be committed to the change or you will make wishy-washy excuses not to do it. This will happen in spite of the fact that you are perfectly aware that it will happen. These are the bits I found most pertinent to my situation:

"No Time is the Perfect Time to Begin". I know that I am guilty of thinking, I'll write when all the kids are in school full-time. We'll really start saving money after we pay off this bill. I'll start sewing things to sell in a shop on Etsy after I figure out all the functions on my sewing machine. But the truth is, I can procrastinate like nobody's business. There is always going to be something I can find to fill my time or fritter away money on. So, from now on, it's all about today. Leo on Zen Habits has a sign that reads "Don't Talk. Type." Maybe I should post something that screams, "What are you waiting for? Do it NOW!"

Ryan uses this quote to illustrate her point:

Every successful person I have heard of has done the best he could with the conditions as he found them, and not waited until next year to be better.

-E.W. Howe

I think this is just as apt and much more elegant:

In American lives, there are no second acts.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

This one is nice too:

Do not delay;

The golden moments fly!

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"You Can't Get Fit By Watching Others Exercise." Ryan says that we "confuse reading and thinking with doing"; also that "we're all experts at reading and talking about change and beginners at putting change into action." Ahem. Ok. Guilty as charged. Let's move on.

Talk does not cook rice.
-Chinese proverb

Section Two: Getting Into Action. Here we find the advice and motivational skills to get off our butts and get started. I found lots of useful info here; most importantly:

"It's Going to Feel Awkward at First." Ryan points out, "When you first begin to do something new or different, you are not very good at it." Oh. Wait. That's true for everybody? I can't tell you how many things I've abandoned or not even started because I wasn't very good at it or didn't make measurable progress right away. This was the epiphany moment for me, and it's so stupid and little, something you hear all the time. Practice makes perfect. Rome wasn't built in a day.

"Yes, You Can Find the Time." I've been working on this; I get up at 5:45 in the morning and I'll shoot for 5:30 soon now, I'll start getting up at 5:30. I liked the quote:

Time is a created thing. To say "I don't have time" is to say, "I don't want to."

-Lao Tzu

"When You Don't Know What to Do, Channel Someone Who Does." Ryan relates the story of her friend who grew up very shy, and learned to present herself as Katharine Hepburn to pull her through social situations. I was tickled by this because, having grown up painfully shy myself, I will channel Audrey Hepburn to suffer through social situations. However, while Ryan's friend is channelling the traits she sees in Katharine- courageousness, honesty, and generosity- I will physically dress as Audrey and put on a show, so to speak. For me, it is easier to play a role and be remembered as the weirdo who came in costume, than to be myself and be judged on those grounds.

I was also struck by the irony that I have always seen myself as already being too much like Katherine Hepburn- tomboyish, horsey and brash, with perhaps a tendency to talk a bit too loudly. I've always seen it as a Hepburn vs. Hepburn scenario, with Audrey clearly winning out, for who wouldn't want Audrey's poise, simple elegance and delicate beauty? Reading this chapter made me realize that perhaps being compared to Katharine Hepburn- and make no mistake about it, this comparison is only in my own mind!- is maybe not the worst thing in the world.

Section Three: Keeping Going. Now that I've decided I need to change, and made the push to just do it, how do I keep the momentum rolling, day to day, for the rest of my life?

"Don't Let "Them" Bring You Down." Yes, I am continually being teased at home for being a booknerd and a hippie. Really all it took was a mental mindshift for this to stop getting in my way. I quit seeing it as a personal attack and chose to view it as affectionate teasing. Slowly, I realized that's probably what it was from the beginning.

This also applies well to the day-to-day stresses of parenting. If my three year old is whining up a storm at Happy Harry's, because she wants all the toys and coloring books and bubble blowers that are so helpfully lined up right next to the waiting area in the pharmacy, where we have to sit for ten minutes to get antibiotics that she has to have because she is sick, remember, and older women start exchanging pointed glances and muttering about how they would never let a child act like that in public, well, I'm giving myself permission to blithely ignore them. Because M.J. Ryan told me not to let "them" bring me down.

"You Can't Change What You've Done, Only What You're Going To Do." Ha! I think I'll print that out too, and hang it next to my "Do it NOW!" sign. Maybe with this quote for further inspiration:

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

-L.P. Hartley

"Ask for Help from Invisible Hands." Around these parts, we (and by "we", I mean "I") call this "the universe provides" and "the karma effect". Yes, I am vaguely embarassed to publicly admit to such a New Age-y concept, but I can't dismiss it. When I am positive, good things happen. When I am negative, bad things snowball, until I hit bottom and look for help from any quarter. And then something coincidental and wildly unlikely will occur to bail me out.

This has happened to me so many times that even my husband, Mr. Skeptic Meany-Pants, has accepted it as some sort of weird personality defect. As Ryan points out, you don't have to understand or believe. It just happens, and when it does, I like to step back and be grateful for a second. And whenever I can, I try to do something kind to send a little of that positive energy back into the universe.

In summary:

This Year I Will...How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True. Odd title, full of solid advice and positive thinking, nice inspirational quotes, not preachy or touchy-feely, a fast before-bed read, highly enjoyable, now available at your local library. "What are you waiting for? Do it NOW!"

Your beliefs become your thoughts.

Your thoughts become your words.

Your words become your actions.

Your actions become your habits.

Your habits become your values.

Your values become your destiny.

-Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
-Joseph Addison

Life is short and we have not too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.
-Henri Frederick Amiel

I think you're very nice. I think twinkle's a nice word. So's viridian. I knew a woman once who had an imaginary fish.
-Neil Gaiman

I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.
-Oliver Edwards

Book Review: America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-Susan Ertz
Anger in the Sky

OK, technically I have not "read" this book, but holy cow, do we use it. A team of chefs allegedly cooked every recipe in this cookbook a billion different ways, using different techniques, ingredients, and cook times; they then selected the one that is the best combination of flavor and ease, and delivered unto you this holy grail. Thank you, test chefs.

The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook is full of pictures (over 1500), including clearly illustrated how-tos. It offers up 1200+ recipes, variations on those recipes, emergency substitutions, and helpful tips. It alerts you to the best equipment- the best slow cooker, the best cookie sheets, whatever. It tells you how long to boil hard-boiled eggs (start raw eggs in cold water- bring to boil- remove pot from heat- steep for 10 minutes) and the best way to cook corn on the cob (add sugar to water to enhance sweetness- hold the salt to prevent toughness)-the sorts of things other cookbooks assume your mother taught you. I have not come across a loser recipe yet. We will regularly flip through because we have a spare chunk of time, select a recipe because we have those particular ingredients on hand, go ahead and make it, and it will be delicious.

Case in point: yesterday, to warm up the house on a rainy Sunday morning, we made monkey bread (I like to call it "monkey bread, monkey bread", in a singsong voice, for no good reason). Here it is in all its golden sticky glory:



And yes, it is super yummy, although a lot of the caramel goodness ran out of the pan (our Bundt has a removable insert, and it leaked through) and smoked up our oven. I now recommend a solid pan for monkey bread, monkey bread; the one William-Sonoma sells is a thing of joy and beauty forever.

The one complaint I have about the Test Kitchen Family Cookbook is that it consists of a binder with rather thin pages, and in our oafish enthusiasm (think frantically flipping pages with oven mitts on) we have ripped a number of pages out of the binder. I've remedied the problem with hole reinforcers, but really, I don't think I should have to bust out the office supplies while making Sunday brunch. I suppose if they made the pages of a heavier stock, it would make the binder heavy and unwieldy. So, another recommendation: if you are not a crazy office supply collector like myself, pick up hole reinforcers if you buy the book. You will need them sooner or later.

In summary: The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Better than The Joy of Cooking. That's right. I said it.

An Oddly Relevent Thought from my Father

UNTIL ONE IS COMMITTED

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do,

or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius,

power and magic in it.

-Goethe

Found in my mass of binders, this one: my father's.
The Issa quote from the previous post also comes from this binder.

Book Rant: Change of Heart

I have mixed feelings about Jodi Picoult.

Everything about her plotlines scream "Ripped from the Headlines!" and "Destined for Bestseller's Lists and Fiesty Book Club Discussions!" Generally I find this kind of sensationalism and guaranteed popularity to be a turn-off. In fact, if more than two people recommend a book to me I will mentally take it off my must-read list. Of course, this is me being a pain and a booksnob and in no way a sign of discerning taste.

To some extent, Jodi Picoult is formulaic. All of her novels that I have read are Moral Dilemmas, and the plotlines require a bit beyond your normal "willing suspension of disbelief". She likes multiple narratives that reveal all sides; often the truth is obscured, and you may find yourself sympathetic to an unsympathetic character.

As a result, every time I begin a Jodi Picoult novel, I do so with reservations. And every time I get about halfway through, I look up at the clock and realize that I've been reading for three hours straight, and it is too late to start anything decent for dinner.

On Picoult days, we eat pasta for dinner. With a salad on the side.

I read this book in two three-hour sittings, the second session by solar flashlight (it was the evening of Earth Hour). I woke up the next day tired, with a crick in my neck, and very excited to discuss this book with my non-existing blog readers.

The problem with reviewing Change of Heart is, I do so want everyone to read it and enjoy it as much as I did. But I think that to get the full experience, it's best to walk into it not knowing any relevent plot points.

So I'm not telling you anything about the book's plot or characters. Instead I'll tell you what I thought of it, and what I took away from it. Hence: Book Rant and not Book Review.

Interestingly, I don't really feel the plot or the characters are this novel's greatest strengths. That designation goes to Picoult's ability to force the reader to ask themselves difficult questions. Specifically, the Picoult formula provokes these questions:

• Who do I believe?



• Where do my sympathies lie?



• What would I do in this situation?

The beginning of the novel is highly reminiscent of Stephen King's The Green Mile, almost plagiaristically so. The fact that Picoult refers to this similarity within the dialogue ("Hey, Green Mile," he yelled as he was wheeled off the tier, "how come you didn't save me?") does not excuse it. If you are familiar with The Green Mile (and if you are not, you should definitely put the movie on your Netflix list), then you will be unsurprised that this novel also delves into a bit of mysticism.

Change of Heart relies heavily on Picoult's interpretation of a series of accounts of Jesus' life, called the gnostic gospels. For me, this is what really made the novel worth reading.

A happy digression into the nature of the gnostic gospels:

These scrolls were discovered in 1945 in Upper Egypt. They were found to be contemporaries of the texts we find in the New Testament, and contain many of the same sayings and events of the New Testament gospels, but within a different context.

• So, our first interesting insight: Some editing took place when compiling the works that made up the New Testament. What else was left out? On what criteria were these works selected or not selected? How much of each is true?

Gnosis is a Greek term meaning "knowledge"; at the core of Jesus' message in the Gnostic gospels is man's capacity within their lifetime to achieve self-knowledge, insight, to find God within one's own self. When this insight is achieved, we are the same as Jesus. We are divine.

• Interesting insight #2: This sounds a lot like Buddha finding Enlightment under his lotus tree. I like it when religious and spiritual philosophies overlap like this. It makes everything seem a lot more like an natural conclusion.

Naturally, the Catholic Church dismissed this as heresy. The Church teaches us that God is "other". The nature of original sin ensures that we will always be less than God and the best we can hope for is divine intervention and forgiveness. Jesus, as son of God, was also "other". He was born without original sin to save us.

• Why all this need for "other"? Is it to create a need for guidance, for saving? When we are taught that life is the greatest miracle, doesn't it make sense to examine our own lives for signs of divinity and redemption?

The New Testament was holy propaganda, crafted for the purpose of conversion, as were many of Catholicism's central Holy Days. It is no coincidence that Easter and Christmas fall so near to the summer and winter solstice; all the easier to assimilate those pagans. This was the work of Paul, converting the masses with all the religious fervor of a converted zealot. Paul was not only not one of the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus to be "fishers of men", but did not even know the man. And yet one could argue that he built the Church as we know it today.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John- the personal accounts, or gospels- had not yet been written when Paul was doing all this converting. What did Paul even know about Jesus and his message? How did he hear it? Did the version of Christianity he was preaching dovetail with the actual preachings of Jesus?

And yet, of the 27 books in the New Testament, thirteen of those attribute authorship to Paul!

Why didn't Sister Roseann mention any of this in first-period Religion class?

Please note, I am not knocking Christianity. I was born and raised Catholic. (My mother was a converted Buddhist and was fierce about Catholicism. My father was a practicing Catholic with Buddhist leanings. I like to pick and choose; I think what bother people is that I think I'm allowed to.)

I have a healthy interest in religion, how it affects people, how it is shaped by the culture it is born into, how it evolves over time; to the point where I took a class on The History of Christianity that met twice a week for three hours a class. Much of what I've discussed here is coming from my notes from that class ( I knew it would come in handy someday! Totally worth hanging onto for ten years).

• A quick digression-within-a-digression: Belief and religion are not the same thing. Think about it this way: Religion is like a car. I choose a model based on how I drive, how much, the extent I value safety vs. speed vs. cost. Some people arrive at the same conclusions I do and buy the same car. But ultimately it's just a vehicle to get me where I need to go.

I think it's important to question. I think it's important to know about other religions, other forms of belief. We need to question and do research, if only to force us to clarify what we think we believe, hold that against how we live our life, and adjust either our beliefs or our actions accordingly. If life is our greatest miracle, then we need to really live it.

How do we do that? By not accepting without question the beliefs handed down to us, by our families or our region or our church. We use that as a starting point, as a foundation. We look for evidence. We look at the lives we've lived so far. We think to ourselves, Why am I here? Seriously, all joking aside, how often do we think, Why was I put here, on this earth? But if you don't ask that question- again, with utmost seriousness- then you're not living. You're sleepwalking. Getting through today to get to tomorrow, over and over, until it's over.

As Henry David Thoreau so elegantly puts it:

Always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow,

and dying today.

Another application of this particular idea, I think, is when Jesus says in Matthew 18:3,

Verily I say unto you,

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Children have no sense of tomorrow and only a vague sense of yesterday. Children are mostly about right now.

When we fix our beliefs firmly in our minds, and consciously apply those beliefs to our actions; when we stop living for tomorrow and instead look at our lives as a series of right nows; when every action consciously reflects what we believe, that's living.

• So now, an interesting line of thought, one that I'm not really going to get into: if everyone lived their lives this way, would we all be better people? If everyone took some time to put their beliefs under intense self-scrutiny, does it necessarily follow that everyone would act in a way that would be commonly thought of as "good"? Are there people who really, at their core, believe in things that are "bad" or "evil"? How much of our lives are coincidence? How much is Fate?

But wait, you say. I didn't sign on for this. I wanted to hear a Jodi Picoult story. Instead I get a dissertation on gnosticism and all this nonsense about the meaning of life and measures of goodness. I'm not sure whether I'm inspired or bored.

And that, dear reader, is exactly what reading "Change of Heart" is like.

Remember our Picoult formula questions?

• Who (or what) do I believe?



• Where do my sympathies lie?



• What would I do in this situation?

I think we would do well to ask ourselves these questions all the time.

I think that if you got this far through my rant, you should definitely read the book.

Purging the Paper

Over a hundred books have moved on to greener pastures this week. I have about two hundred more that are destined to be packed up for Goodwill when I acquire more boxes. Quite a few are earmarked for handing down to other people's children. Three boxes full, with any luck, will sell on Half.com. I'd say the lucky ones that have earned a permanent home here on the homestead number around five hundred. That seems like a lot, but what remains can be comfortably shelved, and these are books that I know will be read or referenced. (This does not take into account kids' books, which will be dealt with as they outgrow them. However, I do think I will utilize the "one in, one out" rule- anytime they buy or receive a new book, one gets put into the donation box.)

There are about two dozen of my father's books that I am having a hard time emotionally letting go of, and I have decided that I will reread them (or, for some, guiltily read for the first time) so that they may have a proper send-off into the world. And these will truly be released into the wild: I plan to register them on Book Crossing so I can monitor their travels. The hope is that my father's notes and cross-references will bring meaning to some other avid reader, some other wandering soul.

Which brings me to today's decluttering/ emotional overhaul crisis:

Like my father before me, I read with a pencil and paper. In an effort to capture those things I find meaningful, useful, or just interesting, I write down quotes, thoughts, and cross-references as I read. Where my father and I differ is that he would generally write in the margins, whereas I cannot bring myself to deface a book. What this means in the long term is that I have piles and piles of paper and notebooks. Whenever my cleaning brings them to my attention, I tend to read them over, and I still find the bulk of it amusing, or touching, or whatever. So back into the box or drawer or book it goes.

Every once in a while I make an effort to sort through all these bits of paper, putting them into binders or files. What that means is I have a lot of binders and files. (There is a file in my file cabinet labelled, in my father's hand, "Papers". I kid you not. This file is specifically quotes from books I read in high school or just random things I wrote down, and they have survived the cleaning out of my childhood bedroom, two moves, and a basement flooding.)

What to do with these fragments? The first step was to locate the two boot-size shoeboxes (bootboxes) that I keep all my high school letters in. Back in the early 90s, there were no "free minutes" or "fave 5", and long-distance ran a dime every sixty seconds, more if you had urgent mid-day gossip to share. To survive those never-ending summers, and avoid the wrath incurred by $150 phone bills, my friends and I resorted to good old pen and paper. And cringeworthy as it may well be, we were damn funny. Over the years I have gone through these letters and discarded those that were boring or from people I don't particularly care for or about anymore. From people still on the "good" list, I kept only the very best of the best. And still: two good size boxes.

We had lots to say. So much, in fact, that I also had to keep the envelopes, as we would often think of things after the letters were sealed, and hastily scrawled them on the outside.

This morning I went through them one last time. I read through maybe three, looked at the pile, and thought, no way. I do not have time to read all these. And into the recycling bag they went.

So easy! So liberating!
Why didn't I do this before?

And now I have two more empty boxes. As I come across the scattered ghosts of books past, I'll toss them into these boxes, and every day I'll post two or three or ten. This plan has multiple benefits:

1. The paper gets slowly thrown away;



2. The thoughts get documented for future use;



3. Perhaps someone else will enjoy them as well;



4. I now feel obliged to log in and daily and write something, anything.



5. These pieces of me will be there for my kids to access, to help shape their understanding of who I am and how I think, without the future burden of having to get rid all these bits of sentimental flotsam.

Today's quote? I believe it was the copy for a Guess jeans ad. I found it emblazoned multiple times on the envelopes. A tribute to the embarassing, but ultimately empowering, aspects of high school memories:

Walk away when you must.

Walk the goddess walk.

( April 5th: I found this quote today in one of my binders. It is
actually from a Calvin Klein ad, 1992. In case you were really, really
wondering.)

Look, Look, My Heart is an Open Book

Spring is here, and I am spring cleaning with a vengeance.

To begin, I am decluttering. I figure it is easier to deep clean with less stuff in a room. I also do not do things halfway.

Zen house, here I come.

Now things get complicated. I am determined to keep as much as possible out of the landfill. So, we have boxes for recycling. We have boxes for Goodwill. We have boxes of baby things to be passed on to those with babies. Slowly the mess has begun to subside and I can begin to breathe again.

Our hallway is clear. The living room now takes only two minutes to clean at the end of the day. The children are resigned to tidying up their own rooms, and I luxuriate in a cup of tea before bedtime, in the twenty minutes that used to be dedicated to daily pick-up.

Friends, I can avoid the books no longer.
Oh, the books.

I have so many. They line shelves in our living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, upstairs, downstairs. There is a stack on my desk and a stack by my bed. My husband cannot understand why it is so hard for me to let go when I pitched things from every other part of the house with determination and glee. I've read them all already. They are collecting dust. I've not opened many of them in months, years. Why not cast them out?

They are old friends. They are pages in my book. They are bricks in my foundation. Some I have seen every day that I can remember, are such a part of my surroundings that I dread the hole they will leave in my life. A great quantity of them belonged to my father; now that my father is gone, they are my anchors, my conscience. I can see, in my mind's eye, my father reading this very edition of the Tao te Ching. These are his notes in Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. His dog-eared copy of Catch-22. In this overstuffed binder we have every short story, almost, of J.D. Salinger, that my father sought out and photocopied, from the library archive copies of the magazines that originally published them.

Then there are my copies of the Trixie Belden series, my favorites from middle-schoolhood. I am waiting for my three-year-old to hurry up and learn to read so she can enjoy them as much as I did. (My boys find Trixie to be too girly.) All the Ramonas and Henry Huggins and Bunniculas, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Choose Your Own Adventures. I know my kids have their own, newer copies, but I love having the very books I read as a child, my name scrawled inside the front cover.

Not to mention the complete works of: Thomas Hardy. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. F Scott Fitzgerald. Doestoevsky. Salinger, in multiple editions and languages. Austen. Bradbury. It goes on and on.

Oh, my gosh. The Alice in Wonderland books. Jabberwocky. Different editions, different illustrators. Biographies of Lewis Carroll. Coffee-table books of his photography. Scholarly interpretations. Jigsaw books and pop-ups.

My children's books. Board books that my oldest passed down to his brother, who in turn bestowed onto his sister.

This is my heart on display- yes, in my living room, in my bedroom, in my kids' rooms, in my kitchen, upstairs, downstairs, waiting to be seen, opened, loved.

And yet.

Sometimes enough is enough.

Perhaps rather than giving my children the gift of me as a child, trapped in aging, yellowing, dusty pages, perhaps give the gift of me now.

So I am weeding my book garden. Early childhood parenting books were easy enough to let go of; my youngest is a preschooler now, although we still call her the baby. I passed them and the board books for the littlest readers onto a friend blessed with a newborn. I posted all my Gaimans and Pratchetts on Half.com at 99 cents apiece; these were happily snatched up by fellow sci-fi and fantasy geeks, and I am happy to ship them out to be enjoyed. My classics, I reason, are available at the library, and so I drove them off to Goodwill today. (I am still sitting on my beautiful Everyman's Library editions. Some things take time.)

Now I am left with the books that are a very real part of me, and it hurts. Every time a Lewis Carroll or a Salinger sells, I gamely pack it up, but something deep inside whispers, "There must be a better way!" But I know I do not really need twenty copies of Through the Looking Glass, or even five copies of Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, and we need the money, and I tell myself I am sending it off to start a new life. This grieving process allows me to revisit myself at an earlier time, to remember who I was, to remember my father, to take this bits and pieces of who we were, what makes us good, and send it out into the world. Hopefully, in some ridiculously small and trite way, I make it a better place.

I think I am writing to preserve these parts of me. To physically take stock of who I once was and what aspects of that person I want to include in how I see myself today. To help me assess my present self. To find room to breathe.

There is a quote swimming around in my mind, but I cannot for the life of me recall where I read it. I'll post it nonetheless, as closely as I remember it, and when I find its source I will post that as well.

To own more books than one can perchance read, is nothing less than the soul aspiring to greatness.

I Blog, Therefore I Am

Testing the waters. Boldly going where everyone else in the world, including my ten year old son, has gone before.

Gentlemen, perhaps the only reason I regard myself as an intelligent man is that I've never in my whole life been able to begin or to finish anything.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground

"Begin at the beginning," the king said, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
-Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland