The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

I was in a slump, a creative slump, and then I read The War of Art. I didn't think much of it when a friend offered to lend it to me one day. I was in the middle of, oh, four of five other books, and because I work in a book store, I buy, on average, two more books every day. Books, books, books! My life was filled with books, so this particular one slipped my mind until, one afternoon, my friend produced it from his backpack and placed it into my hands.

Folks, let me tell you, I snapped to attention at the first paragraph, and hungrily read until the last. I do not exaggerate when I say that everyone who considers themselves an artist (whether they be a painter, a writer, a musician, a playwright, etc.) should read this book, and read it now! Perhaps you, like me, have dreams of accomplishing creative projects, but you procrastinate, awaiting grand bursts of inspiration that never come. This book is for you.

Pressfield takes a no-nonsense approach to art. On the very last page of the book, he asks, "are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it." And that, my friends, is the summation of this book. "Do it or don't do it." And if you choose to do it, Pressfield can point you in the right direction.

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher

I've always had the feeling that I should read Reviving Ophelia, that perhaps I needed to read it. Not too many years ago, I was an adolescent girl with my fair share of issues, and since making it through that dreadful stage of life, I've always felt the need to process the experience, or at least try. So when I came across a cheap used copy of this book at The Dusty Bookshelf (which just so happens to be my place of employment), I snatched it right up, and I'm glad I did.

It turns out that my inklings were not far-fetched; this was an important book to read. It was like therapy for me, and I'm only exaggerating a little. Mary Pipher has had extensive experience counseling all sorts of adolescent girls, and at times, their stories hit a little close to home, their problems seemed a little too familiar. Most people, unless they have gone through it themselves, cannot fathom what the world is like for the modern adolescent girl. Our culture bombards girls with mixed signals. Be sexual, but not sexy; be smart, but not too smart; be thin, but not too thin. Television and music are filled with images of sex and violence, drugs and drinking, meanwhile adolescents are (hopefully) coached by adults to avoid these things. Yet, there is no avoiding them in daily life; they are everywhere teens are.

Mary Pipher discusses numerous past clients who have had a multitude of issues, from drug and alcohol abuse to physical abuse, from eating disorders to unhealthy sexual encounters. Her incredible insight into the strange and desperate, ever-vacillating, ever-spinning, swinging, shifting, apparently nonsensical world of adolescent girls never ceases to bore the mind.

This is an important book for anybody to read. Though it was published in 1994, it is still just as relevant, if not more so. Culture is growing increasingly crude and unabashed, and young people, sponges that they are, keep soaking it in. Though it has been less than ten years since I was an adolescent, I find myself appalled by some of the things children are watching and listening to now. Perhaps my awareness has been heightened since I was young, but I don't doubt that culture has changed as well. Thus, anyone who cares about the future generations and what we can do to help them should pick up a copy of this book.

OK, I Lied.

In my last post, I stated that I was no longer frightened by thunderstorms. I think, perhaps, that I had forgotten what Kansas thunderstorms are capable of, even though I spent an entire paragraph marveling at their power.

Thunderstorm number two struck Manhattan, Kansas this evening, and this was one was not pussyfooting around like that last one. Let's just say I would not have been caught pedaling through this one if my life depended on it. Uprooted trees, branches coating the streets, trash cans upended, power lines down, power outages all over town...perhaps the only upside was that, without power, there wasn't much to do at work. Thus, a night off!

The aftermath:

About Bicycling and Rain

Thunderstorms don't frighten me anymore. I'm not sure when it happened. I suppose it was a slow, inevitable process. Sometime throughout my years in Kansas they must have stopped seeming threatening and turned into something normal, second-nature, even a little comforting.

The first Kansas storm that I witnessed, back in the summer of 2007, was a complete shock to me. Let me tell you, I thought I knew thunderstorms, but I had no idea what they were capable of. The storms I experienced growing up on the coast of Maine were so much more subdued, if you can imagine a storm being described as such. The thunder is muffled, the lightning seems always to be somewhere else, though that didn't stop me from harboring an irrational fear as a child that if I so much as stepped out the door during a storm, I would instantly become the target for the next bolt of lightning.

So, I wasn't prepared, during that raucous thunderstorm back in 2007, for the golf ball-size hail, for the winds that knocked fully-intact branches from trees, for that clap of thunder that sent my heart leaping for cover and that burned my poor, unsuspecting ear drums. As you can imagine, my irrational fear was amplified. The landscape of the Flint Hills allowed me to see everything that was happening in the sky. Skeletal bolts of lightning leapt out of boiling clouds right in front of my eyes! It was so real, so immediate. Good Lord, I wouldn't even stand a chance out there!

Yes, the thunderstorms here are amazing and bizarre, and in that first year or so of my living in Kansas, they were also kind of terrifying. Yet, as often happens over time, I grew acclimated to them, and perhaps even a little impervious. They became so normal that I forgot to pay them the awe and fascination they are due...that is, until today, when I was pretty much forced to.

For the past week, I have been putting off going to the store to get some essentials that I was running rather low on (soap, shampoo, etc). It has been so STINKING hot that nothing sounded worse to me than riding my bicycle in the blazing heat, sweat sticking to my back, only to fill up my bag with heavy objects and do it all over again. Yuck.

But I finally dragged my butt out the door, and not two seconds after pulling my bike from the garage, I heard thunder. Upon looking up at the sky, it was confirmed: a storm was definitely rolling in. To the east was blue sky, but to the west a gray mass slowly moved overhead.

Had it been a few years earlier, I would have said to heck with biking anywhere, but I had the sense that this wasn't going to be too serious. What was a little thunder and rain? What was a lightning bolt here and there? I shrugged and hopped on my bicycle, hoping to at least arrive at Walgreens before the downpour began. Lucky for me, I made it just in time; an insistent sprinkle began to fall as I pedaled into the parking lot.

So I shopped around and got what I needed and, sure enough, when I stepped back out of the sliding doors, rain was falling in sheets. It was an entirely different world than the one I had left only ten minutes earlier. I sat on a lonely bench underneath the awning and watched as people ran from the shelter of their cars and into the store, back and forth, back and forth, scuttling across the sopping pavement. And the rain, how it bounced off car roofs and pounded on flimsy umbrellas.

When it finally died down a little, I took off for home, and instantly began considering the benefits of fenders. You see, in a matter of seconds, my back, legs, and shorts were drenched in muddy water that was rapidly flying off of the tires. And then another burst of rain came from the clouds, and before I knew it, I was dripping from head to toe.

In truth, I was pretty annoyed. I was soaked and dirty and people were speeding by in their convenient little cars, spraying me mercilessly, and blah blah blah, woe is me...and that's when I looked up at the sky. Ah, the sky. Abruptly, my inner monologue of complaints went hush. The sky was doing all sorts of weird things. Half of its vast expanse was gloomy and dark, and the other half was a powdery blue, with fluffy clouds and sun peering down, and on the ground trees glistened, and then the thunder rumbled and rolled around like some majestic beast. And just like that, I never wanted the bicycle ride to end, no matter if my cell phone was ruined or not, no matter if my clothes became so overwhelmed with mud that they would never be wearable again. The rain suddenly felt wonderfully silly, skating down my arms and dripping from my forehead. I wanted to laugh, but there was nobody to share it with.

Oh, of all the things I worried about on a daily basis, how I rushed to and fro so easily overlooking moments like these, and all the stunning sounds and smells they were filled with. But at that precise moment, there I was, living and active, quite marvelously awake.

So I listened to the thunder and I tasted the rain and for a little while thought of nothing else.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

At first I didn't understand why Joan Didion titled this book the way she did. The Year of Magical Thinking. What is so magical about your husband of almost forty years dying? I thought it more than a little bizarre.

As I made my way deeper into the memoir, though, I began to understand what she meant by the term "magical thinking." There is something that happens when your life changes in a big way, when someone that used to be there every day is no longer. There arrives an acute awareness of the world around you, of the places you used to go, the things you used to do. Along with this awareness comes a lilting sadness, a quiet chaos, and in Didion's case, a certain inability to accept the missing person's absence. Though it is not a happy feeling, there exists something oddly, well, magical about it.

To add to the devastating situation, at the time of her husband's death, Didion's daughter, Quintana, happened to be lying unconscious in the ICU. Thus, instead of mourning, Didion was fretting over her only child, terrified of the possibility that she might lose her as well.

This memoir by Joan Didion is a journey, beginning at the moment of her husband's death and ending a year later. At the start is a woman clinging to memories and moments and maybes, and nearing the end, a woman who can, perhaps, go on.

In short, it was a powerful book, moving me to feel grateful for what has thus far been a pretty wonderful life. I have heard it described as "detached" and "cold," but I think these people are misinterpreting Didion's openly frank style of writing. What we have here is a most intimate account of grief, written by someone who couldn't have done it any other way. I will openly admit that I feel humbled for having read it as it has reminded me of the intense fragility of life, temporary at best, and subject to change at any given moment.

Travels With Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

In the fall of 1960, with his french poodle, Charley, John Steinbeck set out on a journey across America. His reason: "In America I live in New York, or dip into Chicago or San Francisco. But New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I did not know my own country. I, an American writer, writing about America, was working from memory...In short, I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so-called writer this is criminal."

Thus, Travels With Charley came to be. The trip was made in a three-quarter-ton pick-up truck that had been rigged with a well-equipped camper top on the back. Steinbeck named the large contraption "Rocinante" after Don Quixote's horse in the classic Cervantes novel. (Side note: Rocinante now resides at the Steinbeck Center in Salinas, CA). Starting from his home in Long Island, New York, Steinbeck first headed for Deer Isle, Maine, where he visited with some friends for a few days, before cranking that great beast of a vehicle west. Across upstate New York, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, he drove, becoming something of a sponge as he soaked up the country's details and slowly digested them.

Perhaps the most thoughtful account of the country I have yet encountered, Steinbeck's memoir is not the light read I was expecting. His observations were at times hilarious, at times depressing, at times heartwarming, but always so acute, so careful and complete. With startling depth and magnetic prose, Steinbeck managed to leave me feeling altogether bizarre every time I set the book down. I was uplifted, yet I was melancholy; the world appeared beautiful to me, and it also appeared sad.

And don't we all have some half-born idea of carrying out a feat such as this? To leave our own lives behind and see our country, I mean really see it? To experience the changing landscapes, to hear the thoughts of our people, their visionary ideas and clashing dreams? This book is a window into what that would be like. It is not presumptuous or self-important; it knows, humbly, that it is only one man's journey. Had it been anyone else's, well, it would have been entirely different. So read with pleasure, read with care, for this book is worth your undivided attention.