MiscellAnnia « SacredWilderness.Net

December 27, 2016

Guest Essay: Lord of the Rings vs. Harry Potter

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Tags: Harry Potter vs Lord of the Rings, JK Rowling, Lord of the Rings vs Harry Potter — Ann @ 10:03 am

Recently my brilliant friend, Rowyn Peel, posted on Facebook: “To my friends who haven’t read Harry Potter (which is still shocking to me), THESE BOOKS ARE SO IMPORTANT. Read them. Cherish them. Pass them on to little children. Harry Potter is life, y’all. (Also, JK Rowling is the sass master on twitter, she is the queen omg).” I Commented in response: “I haven’t read them. I learned about friendship and bravery and love overcoming evil from ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Does HP do that better, or differently enough to warrant the expense of buying them?”

Rowyn’s response was so thoughtful, well-crafted, and helpful that I asked her permission to share it on my blog. Permission granted, here is her reply:

I grew up reading both series, and for probably a variety of reasons, I connected to Harry Potter much easier. It’s third person, but limited omniscient into Harry’s mind, so it’s easy to connect to the individual character. It’s placed in modern times, with normal people and things, to make it that much more relatable. It probably has a lower lexile score, so it was definitely easier to read as a kid. I don’t know what other reasons there may be (nostalgia on my part, but I’ve heard people love it even if they don’t read it until they’re adults), but Harry Potter is kind of my life.

I like LoTR well enough, but the world and the writing style are very different and I enjoy it in a more fictional way, if that makes sense. Harry Potter feels so much more real, and the messages are much more subtle and in some ways more complex. It’s not just good vs. evil as in LoTR, it’s we-try-our-best-to-do-what-is-right-and-good-instead-of-what-is-easy vs. they-have-different-priorities-and-a-warped-sense-of-mind-try-to-pity-instead-of-hate-them. Also the overarching theme of Harry Potter is that love is the strongest magic of them all.

Harry Potter: kids trying figure life out, they happen to be witches and wizards: relatability score 8/10
LoTR: epic quest in a fantasy land, oversimplified good vs. evil: relatability score 1/10

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Now I may have to go out and buy all the Harry Potter books. After all, given my love of food, I’m pretty sure I’m more hobbit than ranger, but how else am I going to figure out whether I’m wizard or muggle?

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November 30, 2016

Joying

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Ann @ 9:50 am

Yesterday after a massage, I thanked my bodyworker and she murmured, “So you can rejoice again.” My mind lingered on that word….”rejoice”…and has been lingering on it ever since. We don’t use it so much in daily conversation or even in formal writing – I think because it’s considered a religious word. (Multiple sources say it appears 192 times in the King James Bible.) It means, “to feel or show great joy or delight.” To feel it, yes, but emphasis on the showing. Ask someone to demonstrate rejoicing with their body and they just might throw their arms wide open, smile broadly, and tilt their chins to the sky. Or they might dance. Or do a cartwheel. It can be conceptualized, then, as the verb form of “joy.” Rejoicing is joy in action. It’s one thing to feel joy, but to act out joy takes joy to another level. “She was joying all over the place.” Being joyful can be silent and imperceptible; rejoicing is large and energetic and seen. Rejoicing is joy made visible. Let’s do more of that.

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October 29, 2016

Wrestling with a dilemma burns no calories

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Ann @ 8:21 am

This is not cake.

To be (eating cake) or not to be (eating cake)? That is the question. While other humans are focused on actual problems, I’ve been stressing over whether to celebrate my birthday, as is customary, with a hunk of cake. I do so love cake. But I don’t eat cake (or donuts or pies or scones or bagels or ice cream or pastries or brownies or potato chips or Nutella) and haven’t, for a very long time. Nevertheless, my body has turned against me this year – packing on ten pounds in ten months and five pounds this month alone despite feeding it only healthful amounts of healthful foods. Now I’m afraid to have a damned piece of birthday cake.

“Throw caution to the winds!” say the wise (and, often, short-lived). But if my body packs on pounds eating protein shakes and broiled chicken, what’s it going to do when I sugar-shock it with a celebratory confection?

Meanwhile, people with real problems are not thinking about cake at all.

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August 28, 2016

Friends Don’t Let Friends Go Pixie

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Tags: Judi Dench, pixie cut, short hair, true friend — Ann @ 3:04 am

Measure of a True Friend:

If, in a fit of hair despair, you are heard to say, “I HATE my hair and I’m getting it chopped off!” a True Friend will hear this as the cry for help that it is. A True Friend will rush to your side bringing dark chocolate, the latest issue of American Salon magazine, and statistics on how many inches one’s hair grows back per year. She will talk you down from this crisis, assuring you that this, too, shall pass, and walk you around the block for hours, if necessary, until you come to your senses. Truly Awesome friends will drive you to the mall to have you try on short-short wigs until you suddenly cry out, “What was I thinking!?” and drop the whole idea.

If, on the other hand, you threaten to have your hair chopped off and a friend, regarding your Rapunzel locks with a gleam in her eye, murmurs “You’d look GREAT in a pixie cut!,” run away. This is not a True Friend.

Postscript: Human hair grows at the glacial speed of 1/2 inch per month. Put down the scissors.

Post-postscript: This was written in the spirit of fun, born of my own moment of “I hate my hair” and threatening to go Full Judi Dench. My women friends are unfailingly supportive in all ways and have been my greatest blessing.

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April 26, 2016

Hair Style

Filed under: MiscellAnnia,The Healing Project — Ann @ 8:32 am

Yesterday a 20-something co-worker said, “You have such stylish hair!” and my inner 16-year-old’s heart leapt in exaltation. In the past few years, I’ve started playing with my hair, using it as a canvas of tonsorial delights. Yesterday, I’d pinned in red and orange streamers, fastened with a gold butterfly. Sometimes I tie a big red bow in my hair. Or decorate it with multicolored bejeweled clips. I also have hair chalks so I can paint it to match everything I wear. I’ve developed somewhat of a rep at work for doing crazy things to my hair, and what I love most about it is the fun I have doing it.

Because it wasn’t always this way. When I was coming of age in the 60s, long, straight hair was all the rage and my naturally curly locks were considered anything but stylish. I HATED my hair. Trying to tame it, I used giant frozen orange juice cans as rollers (try sleeping with those jabbing your scalp). I ironed it until it steamed. And while those desperate attempts may have worked temporarily, the truth would always come out. I remember one day in 9th grade getting stuck in a rainstorm at Juan Crespi Jr. High while waiting for the school bus. We all got into the bus, drenched, and on the trip home, as I watched classmate Linda Hart’s long, straight dark tresses dry into shiny perfection, I felt my own drying hair frizz up and stick out until all I needed to be Bozo the Clown were the big floppy shoes. I was mortified as only an adolescent girl can be.

That’s why, these days, every hair decoration feels like an honor well-deserved. And when I say now, honestly, that I love my hair, I mean “love” as a way of honoring and caring for it — making it as beautiful as possible. We can “love our bodies” in a way that means we think we have the most perfect hips, the best waistline, the greatest legs — or we can “love our bodies” in a way that means we treat it tenderly, giving it the most healthful food, making sure it gets exercise, and dressing it in a way that makes us feel authentic. So when I say I love my hair, I don’t mean that I think it’s the most beautiful hair ever. I mean that I treat it as if it were. Adornments, decorations, color, bling.

It’s been a long journey from hair-hatred to locks-love. My teen self would have been horrified at the thought of drawing attention to these unruly curls. My grown-up self smiles triumphantly with every purple streak I paint.

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October 10, 2015

What I learned from watching “Friday Night Lights”

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Tags: competence, Friday Night Lights, impostor syndrome — Ann @ 8:23 am

Coach Taylor knows a thing or two about football, and life.

Did you ever have one of those life moments when you observe someone — perhaps a colleague — doing something in a manner so gobsmackingly competent, so extraordinary, so mindblowingly awesome, that it reduces you to a puddle of “oh my gosh, what do I think I’m doing here, I’m not worthy”? Well, I have. And one of those moments happened this past week. I shouldn’t admit it, but learning how this person managed a triple-headed crisis with absolute grace and perfection — the workplace equivalent of Indiana Jones rolling under a descending wall, dodging poison darts, and swinging from a rope to land to safety — reduced me to questioning my place in the universe. Am I the only one who has self-conversations like, “Should I really be doing this?” Well, I can’t be the only one because there’s an actual name for it in my field: impostor syndrome. Caltech defines it as “…a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence.”

And mostly, I don’t have it. I love this work and I generally feel competent and successful. But in that moment, I could feel myself collapsing into a full-blown impostor syndrome attack. So I did what I do — processed it, took a long walk, talked it over (without details) with a trusted friend, and continued to fret a bit.

And then yesterday I was watching an old episode of “Friday Night Lights,” and if you’ve never seen this Texas drama of love and football, you need to stop reading this blog post now and go stream it on Netflix. In this particular story, the long-time team quarterback is replaced by a new, young, talented up-and-comer, and this sends the replaced Q1 into a tailspin of self-pity and self-loathing. And as I was watching it, I said to Neal with all the passion and outrage of a person who has All the Answers, “This kid needs to be told that there is ALWAYS going to be someone who can do some things better than you can, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to strive to be excellent at what YOU do best!”

And then I stopped dead in my tracks. Yes, that fictional kid needs to know that. And this real live person needs to know that. It was one of those “do you hear yourself?” moments that hits you over the head with the full force of its raw truth.

And, really, it shouldn’t surprise me that the most important lessons I learned this week was one that I learned from observing and processing someone else’s pain (even if that someone was a television character). After all, one of the reasons I love my counseling work so completely is that I glean more insights about myself by engaging with my clients than I’ve ever learned on my own. It’s part of what makes this the best job on earth.

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September 27, 2015

Faces of 62

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Ann @ 7:25 pm

All of these people were 62 years old at the time these photos were taken. This is what 62 looks like.

Aggravated Battery Suspect

Anna Winour Vogue Editor in Chief

Breast Cancer Survivor

Cathy Skott Biked 2300 Miles

Diana Donofrio

Florida Woman Stuck in Swamp 4 Days

Folorunsho Alakija-Richest Black Woman in World-Nigerian

Genny Chapman-Missing Albany Oregon Woman

Meryl Streep

Murder Suspect

Olivia Newton John

Patricia Janowski, Embezzler -Texas

Ronnie Wood-Rolling Stones

Geoff Higham, Bodybuilder

Savitri Jindal Top 10 Richest Women

Sigourney Weaver

Sold Alcohol to Minor

Suzanne Somers

Twiggy

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July 28, 2015

Time On My Hands

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Tags: Facebook, Sacred Wilderness, time on my hands, wasting time — Ann @ 6:58 am

I’ve been a heavy user of Facebook since its inception. There are many reasons for this, among them: I love to write. I love to keep in touch with friends. In decades past, when letter-writing and phone calls were our only options for staying connected over long distances, I was a passionate penner of missives. I kept up correspondences with Camp Seabow mates, family, friends who moved away and, after I met so many new people through this blog’s namesake, Sacred Wilderness, I had letter-writing relationships with countless people from all over the world, including one guy who was in prison for environmental terrorism. Social media’s raw beginnings — Bulletin Board Systems and Usenet — were like catnip to me. Additionally, I was a member of a number of Yahoogroups communities, so making the jump to Facebook was easy — it was the same thing, but with pictures and attachments. The other reason it was such a draw for me is that when my partner’s illnesses and medications kept him sleeping 16 hours a day, checking in with virtual friends was a much-needed remedy for loneliness.

Recently, however, I’ve started to experience diminishing returns. I’ve realized that too many hours have slipped into dull oblivion as I’ve scrolled through Friends’ Status Updates, read shared articles or viewed shared videos, or Scrabbled and Crushed until my legs ached from sitting. Just as I was deciding that I needed to spend less time online, yesterday morning a thought shook my center: I literally couldn’t remember how I used to spend my free hours before Facebook. So, deciding to pretend that Facebooking wasn’t an option, I paid close attention to the choices I made instead. This is what I did:

1) Cleaned the weeds and leaves out of the front planter boxes, then swept up the mess so that the front of the apartment looks neat and tidy;
2) Tended to all of my indoor plants — repotting, adding soil, loosening soil, trimming off old brown parts, dusting leaves;
3) Read several chapters in my neuroscience book, sharing all of the most exciting information with Neal;
4) Sat outside in a patio chair…..just, sat;
5) Organized all of my piano sheet music and books, and played the piano for over two hours.

All of those tasks left me feeling rosy, accomplished, and filled up. Playing on Facebook rarely provides such deep satisfaction. Message received.

As I started to write, “This is my second week of an at-home vacation so I have more time on my hands than usual,” I became fascinated by the concept of having time “on our hands.” I’ve never noticed before what a beautiful little visual that conjures, the idea that we hold precious time in our cupped hands as gingerly as if we’d hold a fragile flower. We hold possibility, we hold energy unleashed, we hold our very lives and futures in the time that we have yet to spend and the choices that we make about how to use that time.

I can’t wait to find out what I decide to do today with all that glorious potential.

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July 17, 2015

A Conspiracy of Delight

Filed under: Feel-Good Story of the Day,MiscellAnnia — Tags: doughnut, Sonoma Market, surprise, treat — Ann @ 6:46 am

Score!!!

Several months ago Neal became enamored of a certain pastry sold by Sonoma Market — a “cakey” doughnut with lavender-colored icing containing bits of blueberry. We started calling it “the Purple Doughnut.” The thing is, whoever delivers the Market’s goodies every morning provides just one Purple Doughnut, and it must be very popular because, though we’re at the store several times a week and Neal checks the pastry display-case regularly, it’s seldom there. Since I’m up and about earlier than he is, running errands or heading out to work, I, too, started checking the pastry shelves and whenever I scored I’d sometimes tell the clerks, who know us, that I’d been happy to find the rare and elusive Purple Doughnut to take home to Neal.

This past Monday I stopped at Sonoma Market on the way to work. As I peered at the pastry shelves trying to spot the tell-tale lavender icing, a deli clerk rushed over to help me. I explained I was looking for the special doughnut to surprise someone. Though his English was fragile, “treats” and “surprises” are universal communications facilitators and he smiled at me triumphantly, pointing towards the hot bar across the aisle. Puzzled, I walked over and, sure enough, set out among the other breakfast offerings was a sampling of their baked goods — including the Purple Doughnut. The clerk seemed immensely pleased with my gasp of delight.

Four days later I stopped in to buy coffee on my way to work and, though it was later in the morning and the chances were slim, I checked for the doughnut. Immediately, the same deli clerk who’d helped me on Monday approached. “The doughnut?” he asked with a big smile. I nodded and started to walk over to the hot bar but he stopped me — “No, no, no. Come, look.” He pointed at the pastry display-case and explained, “Here. So no one could take it. Look.” And he showed me that he had tucked the doughnut way in the back, where it was hard to see. He’d been saving it for me. My child-like glee must have been contagious because he was grinning from ear to ear as I lovingly placed the treat in its white bakery bag.

As I checked out and was fishing for my debit card I told the clerk what I had in the sack so she could ring up the right price. “That’s a doughnut in the bag, Diane. A one-holed doughnut.” She broke into a huge smile. “Oh, is this the Purple Doughnut as a surprise for Neal?” “YES!” I exclaimed, astonished, and we both laughed. She said, “He’s going to be so happy.”

All the way to work I thought about these people, certainly with busy lives and busy jobs and probably families, and their own worries and concerns and priorities and maybe even aches and pains (we all have them), yet the deli clerk put time and thought and energy and heart into helping me get a silly doughnut to surprise someone, Diane bothered to remember that I liked to bring Neal his favorite doughnut, and both were rejoicing with me that I was able to do so.

I really, really, really love people. Maybe even as much as Neal loves his Purple Doughnut.

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July 2, 2015

In Their Honor

Filed under: MiscellAnnia — Tags: Charleston murders, Christianity, Forgiveness, grievances, grudges, petty — Ann @ 2:57 pm

Something I’ve been reflecting on since the Charleston shootings: there are some who hold on to petty gripes, grudges and grievances against their own friends or family members for years, yet the people of this Church came together and decided to forgive a murderer. As San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll wrote in a recent column: “Because their faith told them that was what you did. You rose above. You shone your light so all could follow. And love won again.” May their shining example inspire all of us to let go of old slights, snubs and injuries so that love continues to triumph in all our hearts.

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