From The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard:

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. In the democracies, you may even write and publish anything you please about any governments or institutions, even if what you write is demonstrably false.

The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls a day. Your freedom is a by-product of your days' triviality. A shoe salesman—who is doing others' tasks, who must answer to two or three bosses, who must do his job their way, and must put himself in their hands, at their place, during their hours—is nevertheless working usefully. Further, if the shooe salesman fails to appear one morning, someone will notice and miss him. Your manuscript, on which you lavish such care, has no needs or wishes; it knows you not. Nor does anyone need your manuscript; everyone needs shoes more. There are many manuscripts already—worthy ones, most edifying and moving ones, intelligent and powerful ones. If you believed Paradise Lost to be excellent, would you buy it? Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?

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Why would anyone read a book instead of watching big people move on a screen? Because a book can be literature. It is a subtle thing—a poor thing, but our own. In my view, the more literary the book—the more purely verbal, crafted sentency by sentence, the more imaginative, reasoned, and deep—the more likely people are to read it. The people who read are the people who like literature, after all, whatever that might be. They like, or require, what books alone have. If they want to see films that evening, they will find films. If they do not like to read, they will not. People who read are not too lazy to flip on the television; they prefer books. I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

There is a woman at work, a writer, who has offered, like many smart and engaging women in my past, to mentor me. It is tempting, but I have read about writing before, I am not unwarned. I know not to take such a thing lightly. It's exciting, to think that I could do this, I could pursue such a beautiful and intricate thing. But I'm weighing the costs. It is a 24-hour-a-day job, a constant attention to everything, a pondering of all the angles at all times, a willingness to try things and work for months writing pages only to discard them because you finally recognise that it is not working and you need to start again.

But then I read this, also from The Writing Life:

A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, "Do you think I could be a writer?"

"Well," the writer said, "I don't know... Do you like sentences?"

The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, "I liked the smell of the paint."

And then I remember why I started my degree in English, and then in Linguistics. I thought at the time about how I believe in perfect sentences, and had read a few of them, and that I wanted to know why they were perfect and how the author had known to write it that way. Was it the syntax? Was it the discourses it drew on? Metaphor? The rhythm of those words together? Would Linguistics tell me such a thing? In the end, no. Linguistics taught me many fascinating things, but I still haven't plumbed the depths of how words combine to make beauty. Maybe I need to learn it from the other direction. Maybe I need to write sentences and fail to make them beautiful for ten years until I stumble upon something that works, until I gather a sense for how such things are done.

I'm letting this thought marinate for a while.

Linda with her two-week-old daughter, Ada:


Linda nursing Ada, Christopher "nursing" Calvin (an always-starving kitty):


Life is good. :)

I really like The Show by Ze Frank, and well, everything else Ze has ever done. This episode about happiness vs. circumstances yesterday was particularly appropriate for me right now. I've been feeling frustrated lately, especially because I'm trying to make so many decisions right now (what job to take, college?, grad school?, decisions regarding moving in with Chris, etc.) and I always want to make the Right Decision. (Hint: does not exist.) So, I hem and haw, and get all worked up about stuff, and have dreams where I'm always angry or frustrated, and find myself bolt awake at 5am every day and/or exhausted and grumpy all the time. I need to just pick something and do it and work on being happy with whatever I end up with. Why is that so hard for me?

Maybe it's not the choices I make that make me feel dissatisfied with things, it's the fact that I always suspect that I could be doing better, having more fun, making more friends, doing more interesting things, making more money, etc. I have to stop suspecting and start looking around appreciating what I do have.

Because, what I have is pretty great. I live in a city that I find absolutely fascinating and beautiful. I live in a country that I'm proud of and comfortable in. I have a job. I have good roommates. I just finished a degree in a topic that I find incredibly interesting, and I finished at the top of my class. I have a lot of student debt, yeah, but I got to go to university! I've had great jobs. I live in a time of wireless internet, endless accessibility to more information than I'll ever be able to consume! My parents make me laugh more than most people on the planet. Two of my friends just had a gorgeous baby daughter. I'm moving in with a boy who I can't get enough of and his darling kitties in just a few months!

So, things are good, and I need to step back and realise that more.

discussion on ze's boards here

So, here's a rant about Christianity. Again.

I was watching this evangelistic animation because someone linked it on Doug's blog and I was curious, and something about the way that evangelicals present the gospel really struck me.

It's always this:

God loves you. No matter what. No matter if you're a homosexual or a murderer or someone who bites the heads off of kittens (because obviously, being gay is just as bad as those things!). He just gosh darn loves you!

But! The bible says that if you do any of those things, you have to die and go to hell forever and ever and be separated from God and get tortured for eons! Oh noes!!! What is God going to do??!?!?! This is a real pickle for God to be in!

So he sent Jesus and he died and somehow that made it all better even though Jesus didn't spend eternity in hell so he didn't REALLY take your place (you get to die anyways, maybe even in a nasty way like Jesus!), but whatever, yay!, the end. Oh, except if you don't say a certain set of words, then you still go to hell! Oh no, you made God have to send you off to be tortured just by not saying some words! You must be super-powerful! The end.

So, here's a question that really bugged me and was one of The Questions That Led To My Deconversion: Why the hell is God stuck in a system he doesn't like? I mean, is he in control or not? It seems... not? Isn't that weird? And who got to make up this system if not God?

I know the drill, "God had to give us free will or we'd be robots, therefore there has to be sin," blah blah blah... but couldn't he have dealt with it in a better way than just automatically throwing EVERYONE into hell FOREVER? I mean, this is the dude who is supposed to be a father figure? I believe there are some laws against that style of parenting...

Some days I just shake my head and think, "Wait a second, I used to believe WHAT?? And it took me HOW many years to notice the math didn't add up?"

P.S. HEATHER: There are so many Dutch people in Nova Scotia! There is even a town called Dutch Settlement! But there are Germans there too, perhaps more of them, and there is confusion because the German word for 'German' is 'Deutsch', and people get them mixed up. But yes, there are many people there who sing "hoppy birdsday" once a year. :)
P.P.S. MARCO: Dude, who are you? You comment all the time, and I haven't got a clue. Please email me.

So, I haven't been feeling like blogging lately. I think it's because I've been very busy and pre-occupied with unbloggable things. Work-related things. Things that involve other people's private lives. Things that I'm not ready/willing to say in public. Oh, and I've gotten some strange emails from people who have found my blog lately. Mostly of the Return to God! I haven't read your whole site but I totally understand everything about you and here's a five minute solution for your many years of thinking and observing! And now I'll project my own issues onto you and conclude that because you don't think exactly like me, you must be horribly depressed and addicted to drugs/alcohol! variety. Um. Yeah, no.

Oh, and the "you just say that you don't believe in God because you KNOW that Jesus is real, but you think that Christians are stupid and you're being snotty" emails. Those are real winners. Mixed in with comments about how amazing I am and how sad it would be for me to miss out on JESUS, they're the epitome of passive-aggressiveness.

There's also the angle that I, an introvert, have been with other people 24 hours a day for the last two weeks, and this makes me very very quiet. This makes my boyfriend concerned that he has done something wrong (nope!) because we're having dinner and I'm silent instead of talking his ear off. I just want to sit in my room and putter for an evening. This is just me when I need to step back and recharge.

I'm waiting for TV to start again so that I can download the following programs: Alias, LOST, The Sopranos, Veronica Mars. Chris and I are also currently working our way through the first season of Six Feet Under and I declare it to be double-plus-good. As of January, I will not have a TV. I will not watch commercials, and reality TV will not exist in my home, nor will Oprah or soap operas or crime dramas that bring rape and murder into your home every night and call it entertainment. Eventually I will become ignorant of all of these trends, just like I am ignorant of the popular bands on the radio right now. I am strangely proud of the fact that I can't name half the bands on the rock/alternative radio stations anymore. But I can still identify a Nickelback song in the first 2 seconds because they ALL SOUND THE SAME. Give me variety! Give me music that is original and not so over-produced and target-marketed that it is the equivalent of musical airbrushing! Give me Bright Eyes screaming off-key any day over that crap. At least there's passion there.

But I'm impressed with HBO's shows, and with LOST and Veronica Mars. Less so with Alias, but I'll admit that any chance to see Jennifer Garner and Michael Vartan running around being sneaky is something that I'll invest some time in. Plus, I'm really hoping that they'll tie the series up nicely and answer some questions. I know, it's not going to happen. They're just going to add more and more twists until you can't unravel the plot anymore, and then it'll end because of something unrelated to writing, and they'll do the same thing with LOST because it's the same writers. But I fall for it, I always do. I get into the plot, I like the characters, I curse the unfortunate direction of the writing (This makes no sense! It'll throw everyone off! Excellent, let's include it!), and I hope that things will get better next season. They say that insanity is doing something the same and hoping for a different result, so maybe that sums that up.

Oh, and Achewood making fun of sysadmins and other geeks. Beautiful. ;)

I started a temp job this morning. I had to wear make-up and a suit jacket, and my hard-won feminism stomped her feet in frustration.

Comment from Chris today regarding office conversation about Canadian Idol/Survivor/etc.: "Want to know the funny part? If you say you don't even have a TV, they'll think YOU'RE boring."

I've been travelling with other people, staying in beds that aren't my own, meeting a million new and old people and being on my best behaviour for two weeks straight. This introvert is tired.

P.S. Ada's cuteness has been verified, pictures to come.

Well, I'm back! Photos from the trip are here in a Flickr set.

I have a cold and we're going to my parents' for the weekend, so no blogging for a while. I'll start talking to you all when I'm not sneezing, blowing my nose, and wanting to sleep all the time.

Yay! Linda managed to go into labour on Labour Day! Baby Fuerth entered the scene four hours ago, and she's a girl! Hi Ada! :) So, so exciting. Chris and I are going to spoil this kid rotten. Many many congratulations to Jonathan and Linda!

I'm off to Nova Scotia today, a land of great-aunts and great-uncles and limited Internet access and fresh lobster and shrimp and crab and tides and The Ocean I HAVEN'T Touched Yet This Summer, a land where my mom and I will eat way too much seafood, visit lots of family, and play in the Bay of Fundy. :) So, I doubt I'll be able to post until at least the 13th. And then I will come back and finally get to say hi to Ada in person!

1. It's been two years since it was reported that homeless women between 18 and 44 in Toronto are dying at 10 times the normal rate. Who's doing what about that? Has anything changed?
2. If I became homeless, where would I find pads? Tampons? A place to sterilize my menstrual cup if I still had it?
4. Would there be accessible birth control?
5. Would there be anything I could do to protect myself from STIs from a rapist? I might be able to prevent pregnancy (see #4), but I can't very well make him wear a condom.
6. How would I get treated in a walk-in clinic? An emergency room?
7. Would the shelters be safe? Would I be at risk of violence and/or rape?
8. If I feel nervous walking by myself at night, how scary must their home be for a woman to choose to live on the streets?
9. Why can I sponsor a child in the Third World, but not one of the one in three children in Toronto who live below the poverty line?

Chris and I walked out of his building the other day only to find a homeless man curled up on the floor in the doorway. He had no socks on. There were cuts on his feet. He smelled bad. It was raining outside and he had found a dry place to sleep. We walked by, but he's been stuck in my head. What if we had given him socks? Offered him the use of the shower? Cut his hair? Would that have been too risky, or just the right thing to do? Do we reject that idea because it's dangerous or because it's inconvenient?

I think I'm going to carry packs of warm socks this winter. And work on my growing stash of yarn by crocheting toques and giving them away, like I've intended to do but never actually bothered with for three years.