The Familiar
’ve decided to ignore it and make peace with the familiar. It comes down to personal preference, I guess, but do we really need an adventure every other day of our lives? That sounds exhausting.
Reverse Culture Baffle
I was Reverse Culturally Baffled last week walking through my sister’s trim, manicured neighborhood. The playground sign near her house advised Indiana suburbia: NO guns or hunting allowed.
Things to Think About
In some ways, that’s exactly what art is—a way of showing the extent to which one understands about people, the world. When we think, for example, of the world’s greatest writers, we list those who have done this well—those who have understood something about people, and put that something into words.
Moving
In Chicago there are people called “apartment finders.” There’s probably a technical term, like a “broker” or a “realtor”, but who cares. You tell them what you’re looking for and they hunt it down.
Cast Iron Love
I like Talia because she has a bumper sticker that proclaims, “The Day of Non-Judgement is Near” and she buys all her clothes from a thrift store. I once told her that I still found someone who once broke my heart irresistibly attractive. She told me, “There is nothing wrong with seeing beauty where it is.”
Traveling on Trust
Everyone knows the basic concept: stand on the shoulder with a thumb in the air until a driver pulls over. But that alone will get you glares, pitying glances, and head shakes. Through online research and personal experience, I have discovered a few tricks to effective thumbing, so you, too, can hit the road.
In Community
Something about studying words at Calvin was special. The camaraderie and community among faculty, staff, and students in the department was tangible. I was taught, but I was also nurtured.
The Pawnee Grasslands or the 51st State?
Fellow Calvinites, if you, like my unfortunate college roommate and Michigan native have never been farther west than—what did he say?—Iowa!, then you have never lived.
Drivers Ed
Imagination can lead further than empathy, though. If I act upon empathy, if I stop grumbling about that huge SUV or the car that just cut me off and instead consider my fellow drivers as people with legitimate fears or beginners somewhat shaky on the road, then I accord them some grace.
Make it new
In order to reframe our writing, we need to see the world through a writer’s frame. What experiences, once put to words, will make compelling literature? Or start a discussion? Or, in their tedium, force readers to confront their boredom and test out what “counts” as art?
