Tom & Alissa

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
I was at Angela’s place on New Year’s Day and saw this on the shelf and decided it was high time I finally read it. It really is rather good, though it didn’t shatter my world as I expected it to. It may have if I’d read it ten years ago. Still, a great portrayal of disordered thinking. [4/5]

Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews - George Plimpton (ed.)
A collection of Paris Review interviews with various female writers, including (but not limited to) Eudora Welty, Katherine Ann Porter, Anne Sexton, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Parker, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, and a bunch of other hard-working, successful women. I’d actually read only a few of them before, but now I want to read them all. They have lots to say about work, writing, family, culture, and life. [5/5]

On the Road - Jack Kerouac
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But Kerouac’s writing is so wonderfully full of life and craziness that even if I hadn’t know the historical significance of the book, I would have enjoyed it. Its fiftieth anniversary was last year. [4/5]

River Grace - Makoto Fujimura
It doesn’t appear that you can buy this online yet. Mako is a friend and mentor of ours, and my review of this book should be popping up sometime soon. But it’s lovely and elegant and lyrical and so insightful. An account of his growth as a painter, a husband, and a man of faith.[5/5]

Crowded Skies: Letters to Manhattan - Tara Leigh Cobble
(Psst, Tara Leigh: why is this not on Amazon yet?) Tara Leigh Cobble, an independent singer/songwriter, Christian, newly minted New Yorker, and friend wrote Letters to Manhattan as a follow-up to her first book, Here’s to Hindsight. It’s funny and friendly and basically a lot like TLC herself. (Oh, and Tom and I show up early on at a party!) My review should be popping up of this one as well. [4/5]

Chasing Francis - Ian Morgan Cron
I’d been hearing about this book for a long time and just finally read it. It’s a fictional account of a pastor of a fairly standard large evangelical church in Connecticut who experiences a crisis of faith in the pulpit and ends up on a forced sabbatical in Italy with his uncle, a Franciscan monk. While he’s there, and with the help of other monks and a lot of discovery about Francis of Assisi, he begins to understand the ways that his tradition has rejected the communal and compassionate Christian lifestyle that Francis preached from the life of Jesus. Really wonderful and so inspiring. I’m still challenged by it. [5/5]

I am in the midst of Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson still (hey, I’m taking it slowly, it’s not a long book), and I’m also reading the Slow Food book. And I have about five or six books to plow through before February 20 for a RELEVANT article, several about which I’m very excited. Right now I’m working on Ron Hansen’s upcoming book, Exiles, which is sort of about the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. This guy can write.

We both got an email this morning from Amazon, telling us that someone had purchased a gift “from your baby registry”.

Needless to say, we have neither baby nor registry. Sleuthing on Amazon reveals no clues or recent purchases from something that would make sense, like our wedding registry.

Is someone out there trying to play a practical joke on us?

(To those who will find it clever to comment say “Maybe it’s a sign!”: just don’t.)

I chatter a little about books at Conversant Life.

It took about five hours of work, but our apartment is now clean, relatively brick-dust-free, and has half a brick wall on one end (which was intended - it’s the chimney). Our landlord stopped by and we got to talking about the building. Apparently it was built in 1890, and at one point in the past there was a family with seven children living in the building, both apartments. Even with both apartments, though, you’d have to be impressed. That totals about 800 square feet. For nine people.

The brick is very old and all different colors, probably because bits have been replaced in the last hundred-and-twenty years, but I love it. It has so much character and it looks great against the blue walls and adds a lot to the room. Maybe I can get a picture up at some point.

Tonight I have class. I’m looking forward to it. The readings this week were long and arduous but interesting, and I’m one of the few who doesn’t have a background in art history, so I think this seminar format really helps me learn and explore what I’ve read. Also, having class around a table is so much more fun than a lecture hall or one of those hideous industrial classrooms at RPI (which gratefully did NOT include the IT building, but unfortunately did include pretty much everywhere else I had class).

As part of next week’s work for class, I have to make it either to MoMA or the Met. I really need to go early in the week so I have time to write about it, but unfortunately they both close at 5:30 pm until Friday, after which they are opened in the evenings and more crowded to boot. I’ll probably end up at the Met on Friday night or Saturday morning. It’s just bigger, and therefore less annoying when it’s crowded.

I’m reading Slow Food: The Case for Taste (by Carlo Petrini) in my spare moments, and I’m really enjoying it. , I think you’d really like this book. It’s not a cookbook. It’s a history of the slow food movement and a case for thoughtful, flavorful, healthful meals and eating as a communal activity, which is a rather Biblical idea, when you get right down to it.

Which, of course, I say as I’m about to finish up at work and wolf down a Clif bar on the way to class. But though I long for a really yummy meal, prepared with love and served around a table with friends, I’m okay with the Clif bar for now. It’s just a phase of life.

We’re all checked out of the hotel, but I’ve yet to see what the apartment looks like. On Friday night we dragged everything to the other side of the apartment, then covered everything in plastic and taped it down to try and minimize dust. Our landlord said they could leave the chimney brick instead of plastering over it, which sounded like a fantastic idea to us (LOVE brick), so hopefully it looks good. Lots of cleaning tonight.

Our weekend in the hotel was kind of surreal - we were in our neighborhood, but didn’t have our stuff. Very strange. We did have some good meals out since we couldn’t cook. I also came down with the Massive Headache of Death on Saturday night all of a sudden. That’s just dandy.

But, on the bright side, I had my new Blackberry around, which meant I didn’t have to touch a computer all weekend and could still keep on top of things. Hurrah!

We don’t have anything too out-of-the-ordinary lined up for this week. Tom is location scouting all over, and I have class, and we have a screening of In Bruges on Thursday. Otherwise, I’m hoping life is settling into routine a bit. Last week was just way too much. Can’t wait to be back in our clean apartment (+ brick chimney!).

It’s been . . . a week. Tonight we have to move into a hotel for a few days as chimney work is done on our building (no, we didn’t know about this until yesterday). The hotel is in Brooklyn, and we’re obviously not paying, but the inconvenience is still frustrating.

Last night we both needed a break. Being us, that meant we ordered sandwiches from Press195 and watched Se7en, which probably wasn’t the best choice, being a bit gruesome and heart-pounding, but was very good (and it was the first time I’d seen it).

I have a weekly readings summary due on Sunday; this week has been such a nightmare that I only just finished the readings on the way to work today (plus, they were all very wordy philosophical readings). We get three free passes in this class, and though it grates against every fiber of my overachieving little being, I think I may just take one this weekend. I can’t imagine trying to write it tomorrow morning.

On the bright side, my Blackberry came today. It initially didn’t work and rebooted every three seconds, but my boss (who also got one today), seeing my distress at having to wait another week when I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get to work at any reasonable time on Monday, graciously offered to switch out our SIM cards. So now I have one. And wow, this one is about a billion times nicer than my last giant clamshell-style. It’s a red Blackberry Curve and matches my phone, ironically. Wonderful to think that I’ll be able to walk away from my computer when I’m waiting for an email from someone.

With that, I bid you adieu. Have a wonderful weekend, and let’s hope next week is a bit more on the cheery side.

I didn’t even have time to think about blogging yesterday. I guess the beginning of the January semester is busier around here than you’d expect.

But, backing up, class was good. I will like it, I think. It’s a lot of reading and writing, but that’s to be expected, and it’s all art and philosophy and that kind of good stuff.

Last night after work I ran uptown to meet Tom for the release party for Mako (Fujimura)’s new book, River Grace (review forthcoming). Also being released was Rob Mathes’s new CD, Orchestral Songs, and he was there to perform. And we had a good time.

I’m kind of stressed out. More when my to-do pile has shrunk a little.

Oh my word.

Edit: It gets a little weirder - according to the updated article, he was in Mary-Kate Olsen’s apartment.

Edit #2: Oh, now they’re saying it’s not MKO’s apartment. Sort of a strange mistake to randomly make, though.

I reviewed 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days, one of the best films of the year (and sadly snubbed by the Academy).

Oscar noms are out. There are some travesties in here (particularly in Best Foreign film), but I like the Best Picture nominees, which includes four of my top ten films of the year - I haven’t seen Atonement yet.

Today’s the one holiday we have this semester (besides spring break), and I’m spending it at home hacking away at three reviews (two books, one film) and an essay. I’ve finished one review, finally blasted through my block to get a framework for the essay set down - thankfully it’s not due for a week - and I’m about to finish the second book and hopefully start each of those reviews before the day is over.

We went to Tom’s wrap party on Saturday night. It was in a two-room downtown place that looks like it’s a rather nice restaurant/bar/cafe spot in its normal hours. We were hanging out in the less crowded room for a while and talking to people, when someone mentioned that there was food in the other room. As we made our way through the crowd, I looked up, and whoops, there’s Clive Owen. Ha! I giggled fangirlishly and Tom asked me what was going on. “I don’t get to see famous people every day at the university, you know,” I said. I may be a New Yorker, but I don’t see my most favorite actors all the time (well, except Philip Seymour Hoffman, for some reason.) Other familiar faces were in the crowd as well. I felt very chic for a few hours, at least.

But this is what is exciting: Olafur Eliasson is doing four installation waterfalls into the East River this summer. Further digging revealed that he’s also got a show at MoMA this spring. We’ve been totally fascinated by Eliasson after reading a piece in the New Yorker about him last year; he does simultaneously abstract and naturalist pieces, including the Weather Project at Tate Modern in London. So excited.

Sorry so posty - last one for the day.

The New York Times “Reading Room” blog (subtitle: “Conversations About Great Books”) is discussing Walker Percy’s quirky first novel, The Moviegoer. This promises to be a great discussion.

Last year I started doing “what we watched” capsule reviews, but I got bogged down and forgot about it after about a month and a half. We watched over 150 movies last year, so I think I’m justified; however, it had been a big hit, so I’m going to try and keep up this year.

The Lives of Others
A re-watch. One of the best films of the last few years.

The Page Turner
Wonderfully nerve-wracking film; think a French version of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Deborah Francois is fabulously blank.

Charlie Wilson’s War
See review here. We really enjoyed this film.

La Vie en Rose
It jumped around chronologically far too much, which made it confusing. Following two parallel tracks might have made for a stronger story. However, it is fabulously acted and really lovely to look at, and Marion Cotillard is sensational.

Also, Tom’s been working, so I’ve watched a couple of movies on my own (something I rarely do). Here they are:
Run, Fat Boy, Run
David Schwimmer’s directorial debut, which is a male-driven British romantic comedy starring Simon Pegg, Hank Azaria, and Thandie Newton. Not earth-shattering but still a lot of fun. My review will be in Paste.

Sleepwalking
A much less cheery film; Charlize Theron is great, but there’s some holes in the plot. I plan to review it when it gets closer to its release.

The Business of Being Born
Reviewed this for WORLD.

Chocolat
Somewhere I’d gotten the wrong idea about this film. Despite a handful of small flaws, it was lovely, sweet, well-told, and beautifully acted. An interesting parable on Pharaseeism, forgiveness, grace, being human, and joie de vivre.

U2 3D
I mentioned this here. If you’re a U2 fan, you’ll love it.

Tom has been watching a load of Westerns in his free time (from the silent era to more recent work), and maybe if you’re terribly lucky, he’ll share a few when he’s all Westerned-out.

What a brilliant idea!

Thursday evening’s re-discovery: the very best cure for a swirling mind is twenty minutes with J.S. Bach on the piano. I’m slowly learning the Goldberg Variations and re-learning my old Prelude & Fugue in Bb Major, and it’s just wonderful. Bach straightens out my tangled mind even better than Mozart.

I am, indeed, getting a Blackberry through work. Hopefully this will keep me from going crazy. I had one for about a year while employed at the Bank Which Must Not Be Named, and discovered that I’m one of the few who can cheerily set down the peripheral and walk away from it when necessary, so I’ve got high hopes of keeping that part of my life neatly compartmentalized.

Our long weekend is fairly crowded with wrap parties and family and hopefully catching Woman on the Beach. I love long weekends.

I talk a little over at Radiant about a website you don’t want to miss.

Also, boo, I really want to be at Sundance.

We heard through a reliable grapevine that New York, I Love You is going into production. We greatly enjoyed Paris, je t’aime last year. This film’s list of directors is intriguing; it includes a few fairly obvious choices (Woody Allen, Zach Braff) and a couple of oddballs (Scarlett Johansson?).

If you’re in New York, keep an eye out on the street!

I muse a bit on internet aesthetics and online kindness, prompted by this week’s New Yorker article about the MySpace-prompted (sort of) suicide of thirteen-year-old Megan Meier.

Last night Tom had to work late (he got home around 12:30am, and had to be back up at 5am - good thing this job is nearing its end), so I nabbed Alisa and we headed to the U2 3D screening. Well! It was pretty awesome. It wasn’t gimmicky - more like you were watching everything on the highest-definition TV you can possibly imagine, but with image layering. If you don’t like Bono’s take on politics and religion, you probably would get annoyed by the concert - it is pretty preachy around the middle - but the music is sublime, and with a great set list (that included “Beautiful Day”, “Vertigo”, “Yahweh”, “With Or Without You”, and a bunch of other great ones). I hope more bands try this 3D concert thing. Very cool.

It’s Wednesday. We can get through it.

I reviewed The Business of Being Born.

Have finally located the perfect cup of coffee to actually produce a jolt in my system: our office coffeemaker, “strong French roast” packet, brewed on the “strong” setting. First time in years I’ve actually felt the effects of coffee. And I really don’t drink coffee that often, I promise.

Cheerily registered for class yesterday (the “Art Worlds” one - lots of thinking about high & low culture! I’m excited!) and bought my textbook online, which is apparently a classic in the field and only cost $17 new. Am also warily considering some editorial work with the Draper interdisciplinary journal. I can do most of it on my own time, and I am nothing if not good at doing a million things at once, but of course, I am a busy chickie. I figure going to the information meeting won’t hurt. Restrain me!

Tonight am going to a screening of U2 3D (Brandon, have confirmed that this releases next week, so keep an eye out). Sounds absolutely fascinating. I’ve always wanted to go to a U2 concert, but everyone knows that’s pretty much an impossibility. And who couldn’t be excited about a 3D movie?

Tom gave me an early Valentine’s present last night (early, because he couldn’t wait!): All three seasons of Arrested Development on DVD. I’m more convinced of the genius of this show every time I watch it. I think it didn’t do too well with audiences solely because it’s impossible to catch everything on the first watching. Love having fun, smart TV shows on DVD to throw on while I’m cleaning or cooking.

I really need a Blackberry.

I just discovered that Paste’s Art House Powerhouse issue has hit the newsstands. Go get a copy.

You can see some of the Art House Powerhouse feature here - I wrote the bits on Laura Linney, Josh Brolin, Joel & Ethan Coen, and Ken Loach. (Harder than it sounds.)

I AM IN SHAPE
round is a shape

I found this article at Radiant, about playing it safe, fear of failure, and how it can dictate our lives, to be incredibly encouraging and challenging. And timely.

Now what? I love my job. I enjoy my students, I enjoy teaching at my college, I have the time to write, I feel that the work I’m doing is, in fact, pleasing to Him. He has blessed my life abundantly this past year. But over the past few months, I’ve started to ask a very, very challenging question: Is this how I can best use God’s gifts in His service?

As I prayed about this a few days ago, I came to understand why it’s a scary question for me. I realized that part of what I’m afraid of is—you guessed it—failure.

Via Jeffrey Overstreet -

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while.

I got home quite late on Wednesday night. I’d been at back-to-back screenings (Run, Fat Boy, Run and Sleepwalking) in midtown. The first one ended about an hour before the second one started, which meant I had an hour to kill in possibly the most boring neighborhood in town. I elected to stay in the waiting area of the screening room, which meant that everyone assumed I was the PR person and asked me all kinds of questions when they came in. Whoops.

But! This place had four nice plushy leather easy chairs in the back of the room (and very nice theater-style seating in front of that), so being early meant I got a good seat. Twice. More comfortable than my own living room. All I lacked was a cup of coffee and a blanket.

Yesterday was a crazy day at work. We’re finally pushing a new product into production, which means my group is busily finishing the training manuals and documentation. Thus far I’d been blissfully uninvolved in the project as my boss and co-worker worked on it, but now he’s gone on vacation, so I’ve been editing and fixing things. Not difficult work, and pretty rewarding. People are so nice to work with here. But in any case, I was up early working on the document, then uptown for a meeting, back here to finish the document.

I left early for me (about 5:30) and went home, where Tom was watching Days of Heaven after a day that started very early, meaning he got home at a decent hour. I finished watching it with him - when it got to the end, we both simultaneously realized why neither of us actually remembered what happened at the end, and if you’ve seen it, you know what I mean - and he went to bed pretty early because he had to be at work at 4:30 this morning.

So here I am, working half a day before running off to catch a train to Albany. My grandparents are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary tonight. Fifty years! So wonderful to see people stay together for fifty years, through thick and thin. My grandparents are very different people, and they’ve certainly had their share of rough times, but it’s good to watch them still having fun after fifty years.

I’m staying in Albany tomorrow to hang out with my mom, who’s back to an empty house now that Sean is back at Messiah. Sometimes it’s hard to go home. We miss Dad a lot. But I’m so glad I’m close enough to go home for twenty-four hours.

I’ll come home Saturday night, and on Sunday, I’ll probably come home right after church for some relaxation. I’m feeling burnt out this week. I have a bunch of movies and Six Feet Under discs from Netflix, and a host of great books to read (I’m reading On the Road right now), so I think an afternoon with a cup of tea sounds great. Then again, plans change.

Next week is exciting. I have an advising meeting with my department (first actual personal contact with Draper!) on Monday, after which I should be able to register for class and will officially be a graduate student. I believe I’m going to a screening of U2 in 3-D (yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like!) on Tuesday night. And on Thursday I have an orientation of some sort at Draper. And then, joy, a three-day weekend.

And then I start school. I’ve been looking forward to this for, oh, about a year, so it’s surprising to me that I’m only starting to freak out about it now. I’ll admit it, it’s a bit nerve-wracking. I haven’t been in any kind of intellectual setting in which I’m being evaluated on my performance since I graduated in 2005, and it’s a little scary. I’m fairly confident, but then again, I’m totally not. What if I screw up? What if I fail? What if everyone in the class knows exactly what’s going on except me?

But what I am confident about is that I’ve been led this far, and I can trust that I’ll be given enough grace to keep going.

We live in a world impoverished of story; so it is not surprising that many of us have picked up the bad habit of extracting “truths” from the stories we read: we summarize “principles” that we can use in a variety of settings at our discretion; we distill a “moral” that we can use as a slogan on a poster or as a motto on our desk. We are taught to do this in our schools so that we can pass examinations on novels and plays. It is no wonder that we continue this abstracting, story-mutilating practice when we read our Bibles. “Story” is not serious; “story” is for children and campfires. So we continuously convert our stories into the “serious” speech of information and motivation. We hardly notice that we have lost the form, the form that is provided to shape our lives largely and coherently. Our spirituality-shaping text is reduced to disembodied fragments of “truth” and “insight”, dismembered bones of information and motivation . . .

It takes the whole Bible to read any part of the Bible. Every sentence is embedded in story and can no more be understood accurately or fully apart from the story than any one of our sentences spoken throughout the course of the day can be understood apart from our relationships and culture and the various ways in which we speak to our children and parents, our friends and enemies, our employers and employees - and our God.

- Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book

My review of Charlie Wilson’s War, which we really did enjoy.

We’re in this mode of eating all the stuff in our cabinets, mostly because we’ve both been too busy to go grocery shopping during the last few days. The co-op is a wonderful place to buy groceries, but you do have to plan your trips strategically, lest you end up in line for half an hour. I try to go when they open at 8am, but haven’t been able to make it.

In any case, when I got home last night, we rooted through the cupboards and decided on minted peas (frozen peas + sauteed in a little butter + add chopped fresh mint), garlic-parsley-butter pan-fried shrimp, a couple pieces of breaded cod from Whole Foods, and half a package of orzo (rice-shaped pasta that cooks up fast). I am finding that I really enjoy cooking lots of random things at once. It’s kind of fun to do mentally.

In another life I probably spun plates on sticks balanced on both my hands, feet, nose, and forehead.

We watched La Vie en Rose - well-acted, lovely to look at, and overall well-made, but a little confusing due to a really scattered narrative structure, but then again, I’m not French and don’t know much about Edith Piaf to begin with.

Today is heart-breakingly lovely outside. I can hear someone playing saxophone on the sidewalk, and everyone’s out in just a sweater (which is really unnecessary, but it is, after all, January).

I’m heading out in a couple minutes to rush over to Film Forum and see I’m Not There at long last. This is the good thing about January - all the good films are out and there aren’t a lot of must-see new releases, so it’s time to backtrack and see everything I missed in the fall and early winter. We’re also hoping to see Atonement before it leaves theaters, which shouldn’t be hard since it’s probably going to be nominated for a bunch of Oscars.

I’m about to finish my book (Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews), which has been fascinating. This morning I read interviews with Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates. I’m a bit ashamed that the only author besides Joan Didion that I’d read in any kind of recent past was P.L. Travers, whose most famous work is the Mary Poppins series - much darker than the movie, of course, and containing many books, all of which I read somewhat uncomprehendingly as a child. But I shamefacedly admit that I have not read anything by Toni Morrison, or Dorothy Parker, or Eudora Welty (aside from a few short stories in high school), or Maya Angelou, or Elizabeth Bishop, or Susan Sontag, or Joyce Carol Oates. My list is slowly growing.

It’s also interesting in the interviews to see the three authors that everyone cites as the best or most influential: Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. I’ve read a book or two by each, but they merit more attention. Joan Didion actually said she was “paralyzed” by all the possibilities that James’ books presented to her.

I feel so young.

I’ve done some tweaking of the Books and Film pages here. Most notably, I’ll be trying to track with our film viewing as we go along; I’ve also added some extra links to both pages. Check it out.

I babble a little bit at Conversant Life about my most anticipated or intriguing movies of 2008.