We need more movies about chastity and casseroles.

Have I really been away from the ol' blog for almost two years? What is wrong with me? Have I forsaken my delusion that blogging somehow makes me a Published Writer? (No.) Have I tired of the sound of my own typing? (No.) Have I gone out and acquired a social life too full to accommodate my cyberblather? (No.)

I have simply become lazy. I think of something I could write about, and suddenly my fingertips feel heavy and my brain gets foggy and I just want to daydream of winning a Pulitzer. I am an Olympian sloth. Facebook requires so much less in the way of coherent thought.

But just so Blogger doesn't shut me down for inactivity, here's a blog entry from February 2009 that I never posted.

It's fluffy.

It's wordy.

It's a complete waste of your time.

But not a waste of my time--all I have to do is click "Publish Post" and then go back to my daydreaming. The prophets really were wise when they counseled us to store up some extra blog entries for use in times of winter and famine.

***********************************

From February 2009:

~~I hereby propose an alliance between the Backward State of Utah and the Backward State of Minnesota.~~

I love it when I forget what's in my Netflix queue and get a surprise in the mail. When I opened the most recent arrival I had a vague recollection from a couple months back: emotionally exhausted by the depressing documentaries I'd been watching through the winter, I'd dropped into my queue a little independent film--a romance--that the Netflix Taste Gods prophesied I would like. It's called Sweet Land. Sweet, as advertised--not great cinema, but charming, well-acted, and gorgeously filmed. I'm guessing it was recommended based on my deep and abiding love for the movie Lars and the Real Girl, for it is a sort of Lars set in 1920. In both of these movies (caution: spoilers!):

1) a conservative, churchgoing, steady, SilentSolitaryLutheranNorwegianMinnesotanBachelor, living sparely but self-sufficiently in the harshly beautiful north, orders woman through the mail

2) a VibrantFemaleOutsider intrudes

3) desiring to do the right thing, SilentSolitaryLutheranNorwegianMinnesotanBachelor proposes chaste housing arrangements that involve him sleeping in the garage/barn while MailOrderWoman sleeps in quaint and cozy room inside the old family home

4) the TightKnitNorseLutheranCommunity struggles to accept MailOrderWoman, especially as they assume that SilentSolitaryLutheranNorwegianMinnesotanBachelor is living in sin with her

5) ultimately the TightKnitNorseLutheranCommunity proves to be the good sort of religious community* and warmly welcomes MailOrderWoman after some difficult what-would-Jesus-do-ing

6) SilentSolitaryLutheranNorwegianMinnesotanBachelor also struggles, at first wary of VibrantFemaleOutsider's effect on his safe and predictable life

7) at key dramatic moment SilentSolitaryLutheranNorwegianMinnesotanBachelor startles audience by taking his frustrations out on the wood pile with an axe

8) SilentSolitaryLutheranNorwegianMinnesotanBachelor slowly opens up to the exotic ways of VibrantFemaleOutsider and embraces life

9) a beloved character dies

10) kindly Lutheran women bring casseroles and concern

11) warm-faced Lutheran minister gives sincere eulogy that makes it all okay

12) wedding and babies implied, but not seen

13) happy happy, the end.

So I've been hearing all this recent local chatter about the need for Mormon Cinema to step up and offer something cleaner than Hollywood fare for the religious/conservative population of the U.S........but my now-extensive knowledge about Minnesota culture makes me confident that Utah and Minnesota are natural allies in these dark cinematic times. Regrettably I was once heard to say that Minnesota and North and South Dakota were essentially useless and should be donated to Canada. I hereby retract 1/3 of that unkind declaration** and proclaim that Minnesota is the new Utah.***  I think we should pool our state arts funding and hire Ryan Gosling and Amy Adams to play a SilentSolitaryLutheranNorwegianMinnesotanBachelor and a BubblySweetMormonUtahnCoed thrown together by fate at a non-denominational charity raffle. After chaste pratfalls and compromises they meet each other halfway....in Nebraska.

Hot casseroles o' love ensue.

* Meaning not the sort of religious community that is ever featured in a Hollywood film--but I'll leave the rest of that rant for another day.....as long as you don't make me watch that hideous Chocolat movie again. Gag, blech, retch.

** If the Dakotas wish to be spared Canadianization, they should apply for my affections in similar fashion.

*** That is the highest compliment I can offer Minnesota, so you can just put those Utah jokes right back in your pocket, wiseguy.

Rejected poem.

Divided, Beautified

Granite cracks, cries
For rain
Ice!
A wider wound
A seeping, silting, softening
For first roots
For newborn hooves
For tender feetlings
Then waits for the seed to heal the ravine
For the night to deliver the day

Little poem for an Easter weekend.

MightI

Lord
not withstanding Thee
I stand
still
tousled, and after
shaken, and after
singed, but
I wait upon a rock---
wait upon a whisper
upon wings



Isaiah 40:28-31
1 Kings 19:11-12
Psalms 46:10-11

"The strong, honest, ugly, patient shapes of necessary things."

I went on a splendid date last week, during which we discovered a mutual affection for G. K. Chesterton: his boundless humor, his faith in the face of depression, his bemoaning the dearth of cheese poetry.*

So a couple days later I was stalking Chesterton online and came across information about his wife, Frances Blogg. They were a very devoted couple and doted on each other until his death. Among the Chesterton relics related to Frances is a letter he wrote to her during their engagement. It is long despite my heavy editing; if you don't have time to read it all, read just the last five paragraphs. It is funny and sweet: even as I laugh my heart melts into a pink puddle on the floor....





* Turns out Chesterton was wrong on this point, as my date then introduced me to the appallingly prolific James McIntyre, Cheese Poet of Canada. This cheese poem was my favorite. Read at your own risk.

Mormon artists confess: kids are harder than they look.

Today on The Almost-Dead Blog: really old news. (Nothing like stale material to liven things up.)

Over a year ago was the most recent triennial LDS International Art Competition Exhibition. I meant to blog about it then-ish. I didn't.

But now I am.

Fear not: I won't blog about the entire show, though it was for the most part very good. (The exhibitions get significantly better each time, i.e., fewer cheesy Norman Rockwell knockoffs and more quilts

depicting the Orion nebula. Yes, really. See the picture? It was so friggin' cool! Pioneer handicrafts shot warp-speed into the Twenty-Fourth-and-a-Half Century!)

The pieces related to parenthood in particular caught my attention, given how Mormon culture tends to paint children as pure delight and consequently paint parenthood as a sugar-cookie-baking joyride. Not that most LDS parents won't admit to you one-on-one that their experience deviates from this ideal most days, but in public church forums we like to be "uplifting" and focus on the sunny bits of family life with children, as we consider these families to be central to human social organization through eternity. So these public, Church-sanctioned displays of artistic honesty regarding life with little people were a bit startling, and very refreshing.

This is a piece by a Chinese Mormon sculptor. The tree is a representation of a family: the human figures' heads, hands, and feet have been removed -- the torsos and arms of the intertwined father and pregnant mother make up the trunk and two main branches of the tree and the headless bodies of dozens of children weigh heavily on them. There is a real feeling of joy to the piece -- the tree's twigs are the cheerful waving arms and legs of the children -- but you get a sense of the strength and endurance required of the parents to make that joy possible. (And the slightly creepy headless people give the piece an edgier feel than is normal for the LDS International Art Competitions.)

The caption on this piece explained that it was a

depiction of the artist's grandparents as carefree newlyweds. Their joy was later diminished when their first two children were born dead and then they had a severely disabled daughter who required constant care her entire life. The couple's earthly experience with parenthood was dimmed by the burden and sadness of this circumstance, but they looked forward to the resurrection, when their family would be together and physically whole.

The main figure here is a mother and the little people scrambling over her and chasing through her hair (with faces of monkeys, dogs, and other savage critters) are her children. She's a sort of longsuffering Mother Earth, unable to move much because they're twined around her legs. She seems happy that they're enjoying themselves, but a bit weary and frazzled nonetheless. This piece makes me kinda glad to be single, frankly.

This one was probably my favorite of the parenthood pieces. If you look closely, you can see that the mother is slowly unraveling her own pink sweater and knitting it onto her daughter. An honest and rather lovely depiction of the sacrifices of parenthood. Neither of them is smiling and they don't make eye contact -- but the gesture itself is the evidence of love. The mother is intensely focused on her task of giving up comfort for her child, who looks maybe a little cranky and impatient with the process. ("I don't want this lame homemade sweater! Take me to the mall!")

Hooray for good art. Two years to the next International Art Competition -- can't wait to see what they give us next......I hope someone crochets a giant 3-D supernova. And maybe I'll tat the head of Donny Osmond!

Eulogy for a loyal phone.

I think my trusty five-year-old phone is fading away.

It had to happen eventually, but it still makes me sad. For three years Verizon has been sending me slick "New Every Two" mailings that feature the flashy, feature-heavy phones I can get free or almost-free, but I've tossed them all.

For you see, gentle reader -- those supermodel phones are not my phone. My phone is special, and they don't make 'em like that anymore.

Can I tell you why I love my phone, as part of the grieving process? Yes? Thank you.

1. It is very small and very light (it fits discreetly in my bra when I'm out walking in a skirt that has no pockets).

2. It is sturdy and very tightly constructed (to resist bosom sweat when it's riding in my bra).

3. It has a flashlight feature that I use all the time (does YOUR phone have a flashlight feature? as in an actual lightbulb on the end of the phone? didn't think so!)

4. It holds a charge a very long time and recharges lightning fast.

5. It has exceptional reception and sound.

6. It has a way better speakerphone feature than any other cell phone I've seen. A couple years ago when a group of female relatives were gathered around my aunt's (much newer) phone to hear my cousin's exciting engagement news, we couldn't understand what she was saying. We resumed the call on my homely phone and heard every word crystal clear.

7. Its candybar style means that if you sit on it there is no hinge or sliding panel to break (I would've broken dozens of hinged phones by now).

8. It had exactly what I wanted (and those features were exeptionally well engineered) and because it didn't have a bunch of extra junk it was a reasonable price and so I didn't have to continually fear damaging or losing it.

9. I once stabbed it with a pitchfork (hard) and it kept on ticking.

10. I don't care that I can't add any ringtones.

11. I don't care that it has no picture capabilities.

12. I don't care that it has no camera.

13. I don't care that it can't access the internet.

14. I don't care that it can't do my taxes or direct me back to Kansas or tell me the name of that song, for it is a PHONE, and it does all phone-ish tasks beautifully.

Rest in peace, lil' phone. You have served me well.

(In lieu of flowers, please send chocolate.)

I'm afraid of Jesus.

In downtown Salt Lake City, in a beautiful old building, is the Hope Gallery. The owners specialize in the Scandinavian masters; they own and display many originals and sell beautiful reproductions. They also have the exclusive rights to sell prints of Danish artist Carl Bloch's moving paintings of the life of Christ, which are great favorites in the Mormon community. I love Bloch's paintings as much as the next Mormon.

Two Novembers ago the Hope Gallery had a sale on all their reproductions of Carl Bloch paintings. My mother requested a print of Gethsemane (Castle Version) for her birthday, and while I was in the gallery I was enticed to buy a canvas reproduction of my favorite Bloch: Casting Out Satan. It was expensive by my standards (over $200, even on sale), but I felt it was worth it. I love that painting. I love how Christ looks fragile and weary from his long fasting, his backlit robe revealing the shape of his slender arm, but his gesture of authority over Satan is confident, powerful. I love how he is removed from the busy context of crowds and synagogues and transported for a moment back to his primal confrontation with the enemy of our souls. I love the bare, rugged montaintop setting -- like my memory of the top of Mount Sinai. When I held my breath and wrote out the fat check I imagined my favorite Bloch painting hanging in a central place in my home for many years and even the cheapskate in me felt it was a good thing.

The particular size I wanted was not in stock, so they told me they'd call when it was ready to pick up. However, during the week or two that I waited for their call, I realized what I'd done -- I'd passed over the Woman at the Well, Christ and the Children, Healing at the Pool of Bethesda, The Doubting Thomas, and all the other warmer, more forgiving scenes. I'd chosen my favorite Bloch painting, but hadn't considered what it would be like to look at it, large, on my wall every day. To every day see a muscular Satan -- beautiful, like my favorite sins, swirling in a vibrant red robe. To feel that Christ's bold gesture of reproach was directed toward the dark corners of my life that I'm not ready to confront. To not be able to close the church magazine and make my favorite Bloch disappear when it became a too bright for comfort.

I still don't know what I'm going to do. The gallery has long since stopped calling to remind me to pick up my print. My only options are to go claim it or take store credit and use it to purchase some other print.

If someday you come to my apartment and see on my wall a fancy canvas print of The Daughter of Jairus or of little Danish girls picking wildflowers, I hope you won't judge me. It's crazy to be afraid of Jesus. NO ONE is afraid of Jesus. Except that I appear to be. I'm working on it.