This Week's Book for Fun

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

My favorite quotations thus far:

"I was as helpless as the female victim of arranged marriage who, upon seeing the horrible visage of her chosen mate, shrieks in vain."

"His world was filled with copulating inanimate objects and people getting their faces ripped off."

"The mortgage traders emitted such evil vibes that I carved a wide loop around them every afternoon...They were known for hurling phones at the heads of trainees and were said to have installed extra-long cords to increase their range."

Tagged by Tony

Carrie in her Froggie Pajamas. 

I generally pretend not to notice when I get tagged to participate in blog-games like this, but this request came from Tony (Sand in the Gears), who I strongly suspect is a bit of the Real Deal and so I happily comply. 

Here are the rules:

Link to the person who tagged you.

Post the rules on your blog.

Write 6 random things about yourself.

Tag 6-ish people at the end of your post.

Let each person know he/she has been tagged.

Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. My favorite smell right now is Carrie's breath. I can smell it when I go into her room and it makes me feel very deeply contented. When she was in the NICU, her nurse changed her clothes and stuffed her little froggie pajamas into a cubby under her crib. I found them and held them to my nose and smelled that little new baby and wept and wept and wept. 

2. My favorite hobby right now is making up answers for the question my father-in-law will undoubtedly ask me when I see him at Thanksgiving. So, what ARE you going to do with this degree? Right now, I plan to say "Well, I've always wanted to live in an Airstream trailer," because the more of a non sequitur my answer is, the better to elicit that flummoxed expression of which I've grown so fond.

3. It occurs to me that the best things in my life (except for Carrie) were used and discarded by someone else.

4.  Every time I see her husband I think she got what she deserved. 

5.  My husband brought my coffee in my Santa mug this morning and it was a greater expression of love than any jewelry or expensive gift could ever convey. (Especially when he covered Santa's eyes and said "Where's SANTA?!" And I said "THERE he is!")

6. I am learning to tend my own fire. And trying to tend to other people's fires is the number one thing I confess each week before Holy Communion.

I don't know if I'm allowed to link to all of these people, but I tag:

Jason

Carla Jean

David (David has been including some of his market-color as of late. He is brilliant. And he is mine.)

Penny

Amy 

Suz

I have lived, all this time, with a Carrie-shaped hole in my heart.

Things That Made Me Feel Rich Today

1. A kitchen full of groceries.
2. White and fluffy towels, monogrammed and folded.
3. A well-behaved dog.
4. A laughing baby.

Head Flush

I've a string of random thoughts running through my mind this morning. Half of them are remnants from the conversation I had with myself this morning at 4 am when I sat in the dark, nursing my baby and feeling grateful for my grandmother's fuzzy white house-shoes and her black-and-white chair both of which I still use when I'm nursing my baby at 4-am. 

I read Eugene Peterson's "The Contemplative Pastor" yesterday. (There is a lot of time to read when one nurses a baby in the midst of a growth-spurt.) This is the primary question I have for Mr. Peterson: When did our pastors start to hate us? To read his words is to be impressed that his congregation sits in the pews Sunday by Sunday spitting sunflower seeds in the floor and farting smellily while he tries his best to exegete some truth into their thick and unrefined headspaces. He also completely misquotes not only Herman Melville, but Ralph Waldo Emerson as well compounding his error by referring to him only as "Waldo." And so, I leave doubly offended, both as a church-member and as a student of American literature. Please, if you ever write a book, don't quote something you haven't read. Because rest assured, someone has and they will beg you return so they may taunt you a second time. And perhaps even catapult a cow in your general direction.

My second random thought revolves around the sweetest (non-religious of course) words I think I've ever heard at church: "We need some more men in leadership." These words are made sweeter by the able men who stood up to volunteer. When men and women work together good things happen. 

And now, this session of head-emptying must come to an end as the baby is hungry. Again. Amen.

To share just because I feel like it.

a happy day for us

Quiet.

Alabama has famously tricksy weather. Every September, just as you start to believe that the scorching heat of summer has begun to submit to the soft hands of autumn, the temperatures reverse and you find yourself slogging through a pumpkin patch in eighty-five degree heat in a sweater and jeans. But this is my thirty-second Alabama autumn, and I won't be fooled again. I am on to you Alabama. I am as wily as leviathan and you can't catch me.

My roses are blooming again in the cooler weather. Two climbing red Don Juans are exploding on either side of my porch steps as I speak. My rambunctious Sir Thomas Liptons are putting out leaves and fragrant white blossoms. Two Marie Pavie shrubs are making clouds of soft pink flowers that smell like heaven and my lone Cecile Brunner is trying to keep up. A yellow climber has shot up past the baby's window and out a hole in the eaves. It's blooming on the roof giving my cottage a kind of elegantly ramshackle appeal. How I perceive this particular effect depends entirely on my mood. When I'm confident and happy, it's the epitome of shabby chic. When I'm depressed and tired, it's just a hole in the roof. Nevertheless, I'm happy that the baby can look at those happy flowers as she drifts off to sleep.

It's quiet in the house. In fact, I've been studying quietness. It's a lesson coming to me. I perceive it with my spiritual rabbit-ear antennae and I am swaying and twisting in the window to shake off the snow of distraction and fatigue to get better reception. (Silly Literary Device. Metaphors are for poets.)

In his commentary on First Thessalonians 4, Matthew Henry writes that it is a most desirable thing to have a calm and quiet temper and to be of a calm, quiet behavior. Satan, he writes, is very busy to disquiet us and we have it in our own hearts that which disposes us to disquiet. I'm afraid that in the wake of the worries aroused by the current economic difficulty we seem to be experiencing (or more accurately, in the wake of all the Media Coverage of the current economic difficulty we seem to be experiencing) and the lack of confidence we seem to have in the pair of boneheads running for President, it is more difficult than Henry could have imagined to ward of the disquiet of our souls. (One word of political advice: when faced with a pair of boneheads, choose the one who isn't a Communist. I'm just saying...) Surely, William Wordsworth would recognize all of this insanity as the revenge of the "Savage Torpor" with which we have been overrun.

But I feel it, nonetheless. It's an urging and a pulling of the Holy Spirit to be quiet. To be calm. Not of speech, perhaps, but of nature. I'm perceiving the message in various places and I raise my aerial high on the rooftops of my mind. (That was even worse than the first one.)

What I had hoped.

Suffice it to say, the internets isn't getting my best writing these days. I need a break from the whole buzz of this particular blog scene. It makes me tired. And I need a break from you, dear readers. But just because I can, and just because it isn't often a girl can present the world with a photograph that would have captured all her adolescent hopes, I give you this representation of the life I'd always hoped I would lead.  (Thank you jd wilson.)

Nice

Weird Fact of the Day

If you google "Mei Lei Massacre" my blog comes up fourth. (???)

Swollen like the Cahaba River last week.

My contribution to the Greater Birmingham Community this year was to show what a girl looks like after an emergency C-section and a week in the hospital. Sitting for the photograph was not as brave as say, storming Omaha Beach, but it was my Iwo Jima.

You can't see the photograph, but you CAN read the essay here Got to buy the magazine to see Su Su Puff Face.

Thank you for another opportunity to force myself upon the world, C.J.

(Look for Kristen's essay, too.)

Lonely

I have spent more of my life being lonely than not. Maybe that's why I love lonely places--summer camps in September, empty sanctuaries, the beach when school started Monday and a hurricane is coming. And that's where I find myself today. Nobody is on the beach. Nobody is in the restauraunts. Nobody clogging up the shops. And I like it. But it feels a little lonely.

I have a friend with a new baby (newer than mine by a month) in the NICU at Children's with an infection spread by some nurse who didn't think it worth his or her time to wash their hands before handing a little baby too new to be home from the hospital. I'm angry about it. Is that not the first friggen thing you LEARN in nursing school?

Having a baby in the NICU is the worst thing that can happen to you short of not having a baby in the NICU. I can't fathom this. I can't understand this. And I'm sad about it.

The Gospel According to Tennyson

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate but strong in will

To strive to seek to find and not to yield.

-A.L.T.

I put this quote from Tennyson's "Ulysses" on my family site. There aren't a lot of critics looking Tennyson or at the old thrice-named "Fireside Poets" these days, and I'm inclined to believe it is because of the influence of some of the post-modern critics. They've sucked the cool right out of celebrating the human spirit. It's better, they say, to try to find some meaning in the unintelligible. And no one has taken the time (the risk?) to say that makes not one damn bit of sense. But, and herein lies the proverbial rub, human beings haven't moved past the era of needing to celebrate the noble aspects of their character. I know that I haven't, and that's why I relish this quote almost as if it were scripture.

These days, I feel my strength diminished by the events of my life. I'm not who I was in this picture. I'll never be that person again. To be honest, that used to scare me. It used to scare me a lot, actually. But then I started taking inventory of my life and realizing that in my early 20's, I made decisions with an aim to keep my options open. I didn't want to do anything that might keep me from doing something else. And then, I got married and in one day closed down many of my long-cherished (but little used) life options. I realized after a while doing so allowed me to focus on a profoundly meaningful and rich relationship with my husband. We both sacrificed freedom to be with each other for the rest of our lives. We're not so broad in our acquaintances anymore, but we run deep. And that's a good thing. Take that same principle, ratchet up the ante about 100 percent, then add it to the concept of making a baby...you see where I'm going with that. I have (maybe) three things in my life that are important to me these days and I don't have time for much else. What I lack in variety I more than make up for in richness. And that, I believe, is what your 30's are about.

So that's why I love this quote. I'm over needing the glory. I'm beaten and broken and tired and older. But I'm brave. And I'm not finished here yet.

She Sleeps

This is exactly the position she was in for the last month of my pregnancy. I could feel her bum pressing into my side. This mama stuff is hard people.

It occurs to me that I missed two of my favorite things: Tom Waits and the 4th of July. That fact makes me feel lonely. Like a bit of a Rain Dog, actually.

But, I think she might be worth it.

My family website

more pictures of Carrie...and stuff...

Carrie-Berrie

I'll be making another update as soon as I can— but in the meantime—here's my little one, the Queen of the NICU. Safe and sound and pleased to meet you.

I will try not to worry you, I have seen things that you will never see...

I woke up this morning feeling lonely. The first real boyfriend I ever had always laughed at me for announcing my feelings like some sort of overly emotive train conductor abusing the loudspeaker. I don't think I've grown out of that habit because as soon as I had identified the disquieted feeling I woke up with, I cried out "I'm feeling lonely!" and D. abandoned his Wall Street Journal to come and see what new pregnant weirdness I had to share today. As I'm writing this, I realize what a basic need is met when you can cry out into the void (even if the void only gives way to your kitchen table) and have someone answer. It keeps you sane in a sense. They say that you should never ignore the cry of a newborn baby because that baby somehow needs to know that you're going to respond. After nine months of never being separated from their mother, they don't understand what it is to be alone. I think that after being created to enjoy the constant presence of God, we don't understand loneliness either.

All of this made me think back to one of the few times I've ever felt absolutely alone and the desperation I felt to connect with someone, something. The sad part about it was that I couldn't manage to do it. My mind jumped from topic to topic so fast that I couldn't carry my part of a decent conversation. I didn't understand my own feelings well enough to share them. I couldn't even manage to find comfort for my physical body. My favorite chair, my bed, my sofa all felt foreign and uncomfortable. I ended up sleeping wrapped in a quilt on my floor. I even stopped bothering to turn on the hot water in the shower. When it was all over, I had a little kerosene lantern light of understanding to illumine the nature of human desperation and what it does to make us unravel our lives in search of one ounce (or gram) of comfort even knowing it to be short-lived and ultimately destructive.

And then, I thought of her. Some of my long-term readers might remember the story of my neighbor who I watched disintegrate from being a single mother with a good job to being arrested for prostitution and possession several times over the course of a spring and summer before she was finally extradited to Florida to face a drug charge. 

If you don't remember, here's a starting point.

And here's another.

She is, it occurs to me, a perfect example of loneliness and what it can do to derail a life. The last time I saw her, she was coming out of a Southtown housing project stuffing something into her pocket and looking around anxiously. The need for heroin must be that intense. Once, I saw a man sit down on the curb across from the downtown post office and cook up not even bothering to pull his fix through a ball of cotton to filter out visible impurities before he tied up and nodded off into the gutter. He licked his lips when he hit a vein and saw the blood register and threw his head back in satisfaction before rolling into the street. And I think it's loneliness. I think it's that kind of crazy loneliness that doesn't even respond to human interaction, but crowds out every memory of past pleasantness all the while screaming for some kind of chemical satisfaction in the face of certain destruction. I know that kind of loneliness and there but for the grace of God I go. Wasn't there any grace for her?

Every now and then, I try to find her online, just to see if she's clean or if her name shows up on internet logs of local newspaper crime blotters. For a while, I didn't find anything. But last week, she was arrested for passing a counterfeit $50 at a water park. When the police searched her motel room and found another $50 with the same serial number, she admitted to having received the money in exchange for sex. I'm heartbroken for her if not surprised. But the thing that I can't get out of my mind, despite my desperation to articulate something deep and meaningful about this happening, is the literal life lesson inherent in this fable. She traded herself for something, and got paid in fake currency. And that, it seems to me, is the root of Evil in the world. The seduction of something sweet that takes your life and demands more only to satisfy its debt with worthlessness.

Where is mercy?

Maybe I can make something of that when it isn't so fresh.

Though my body is 31, though my mind is an Old Thing.

Looking at my class schedule for the fall, I start to feel excited in a new-pencil, fresh-notebook, starting over kind of way and I remember a yellow lunchbox with a picture of a brown horse.  I remember autumn and the idea that good things happen in the fall. I am always beginning the world. 

Aren't you bursting with butterflies

On the fourth of September

Like you'll have to get on the bus

in your tartan dress

with your lunchbox?

Though your body is 29, 

Though your mind is an old thing....

Doesn't it make you sigh?

Karen Peris