one continuous mistake

One of the books I'm spending time with today is One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers. And what are those truths, you might ask?
1. Writers write.
2. Writing is a process.
3. You don't know what your writing will be until the end of the process.
4. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is to not write.

I was particularly struck by a quote the author chose from a biography of Vladimir Nabokov:

"If only we refuse to take our world for granted, we can detect something artful lurking at the heart of life, inviting us deeper into the world, allowing us to penetrate further and further into the mystery of its creation, perhaps even promising us a new relation to everything we know."

book of the day club

Since my outside-of-work life is relatively consumed by books these days, I thought I would share one of them with you

Today I am working on a syllabus for a class that teaches students how to develop a portfolio, which is the capstone piece to their master's in humanities program. The book, Developing Portfolios in Education, provides some background information, structure, and support to their work. It's a little dry, but generally quite useful. This book will be complemented by a couple of other books that are more hooked into the creative side of the book, but I'll save them for next time.

another reason to choose pie

Thanks to John for leading me to a blog called Cake Wrecks, which is indeed all that and more. My personal favorites are the grammar literalist cake decorator's masterpieces:

i call fowl

I went on a 35-mile bike ride today. Yes, I am amazing. That's beside the point, however. My friend and I were cruising along the Sammamish River Trail, an extension of the Burke-Gilman trail, and I hit my brakes pretty hard. I holler up to her "Chickens!" There were about a dozen wild chickens milling around the side of the trail. Some were near a line of parked cars, others were sitting under a tree on the grass. We heard a few roosters from the bushes as well. I was completely captivated. These weren't little white chickens, either. They were very colorful and had puffy tufts of feathers around their legs and necks. Now, that's not something you see everyday. But Googling around just now I discovered many articles that confirm that the chickens have been there about 10-20 years. Confirmation can be found here, here, and here.

books that changed my life

I was reading John's blog this morning and read his post on books that changed his life (sort of). I immediately thought of a book that most certainly changed my life profoundly. And then another. And another. So, I thought I would co-opt his idea and write my own list.

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.
One summer while in college, I stayed in Spokane to work before taking off to spend the last month of summer in Berlin. Dale Soden, one of my professors and favorite people to this day, supplied me with books to read that summer. I had a job working at Mead High School on the grounds crew. In the mornings we would work diligently so we could find a hiding spot to read and work on our tans in the afternoon. I hung out behind a tall hedge and read that summer. Dale lent me Pirsig's classic book and I read it in a breath. It changed everything for me. I began thinking about the way I approached things differently. Through that book I understood that my way of thinking was not just a string of thoughts but that I had my own philosophy. I was so influenced by that book that I won't go back and read it in more than bits because I know it will never be the same as that first time lo those many years ago.

2. Selected Poems by Mark Strand.
This is another book that I discovered in college. I took a contemporary American poetry class from Laurie Lamon, another beloved professor and dear friend. Laurie had studied with Strand and so he naturally made his way into her course in a direct way. I remember the first poem I read of Strand's. Wow. Then I got this book of selected poems and I wrote my first and only fan letter to a poet. I couldn't get over the beauty of his language and the way in which he was able to capture images and put them on a flat page so effectively. It was as if he had figured out how to bottle beauty. My lifelong love of and connection with poetry began right then and there.

3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.
These books go together because they did roughly the same thing for me. Borges' story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in this volume revealed to me the world of "what if." Kundera's books have done the same, starting with this one, but more profoundly in the book Identity. I love hypothetical questions and largely live in a world of what ifs. What if this were possible? Or that? It sometimes is an unpleasant place, but largely that way of thinking has allowed me to develop my potential. Chicken or egg? I am not sure, but I know that I didn't realize this about myself until I read these books. It's as if Kundera and Borges had written in order to show me that it was ok to imagine the bizarre, unlikely, and obscure could be real.

That's enough for now, but there are more. I won't tag anyone directly, but you know who you are. What about YOU?