A Dog’s Life
I know this should say “Happy New Year,” but it’s the picture I have on hand.
Having just finished reading Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home (see the Washington Post review here), which is all about friendship and death and dogs, I am in a doggy kind of mood. Additionally, last night I made a midnight run to Arlington to pick up daughter #3 and I took Pabu with me, so my Tibetan Terrier (that smart and sensitive lad) and I spent an hour and a half hanging out in close quarters together. Daughter #3 (who never seems especially glad to see me) was glad to see Pabu, and I was happy.
It takes so little to make me happy. And so much.
Then, this morning, I came across this blog, Musing: A Laid Back Lit Journal, which originates from Parnassus, the indie-bookstore in Nashville, Tenn., owned by author Ann Patchett, et al. The dog-theme continues there (see their greeting card on Dec. 20), but also some political musings from my tribe members, and book recommendations. I thought I’d share it all with you.
Last night Emma and I saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and we thought it was epic. And heart-breaking. But as always happens when a writer watches a movie (at least it always happens to me), I found myself thinking about what got me invested in each character — especially Jyn and Cassian, and Cassian’s (at first) annoying droid, K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) — and how the parts were woven together. If it starts as merely someone’s vision, someone’s wild idea, and then becomes words on screenplay pages, and then camera angles, etc., what makes it come together, what makes it come alive and tick?
and Productive Writing Practice, by Jordan Rosenfeld, and I came across a page about the folly of multi-tasking. Rosenfeld refers us to an NPR story citing neuroscientist Earl Miller, who explains that the brain is not good at doing more than one thing at a time. What the brain is good at is “deluding itself” (qtd. in Rosenfeld, 31). I noticed last quarter that young people, especially, believe that they are the multi-tasking generation. Nevertheless, their minds often seem miles and miles away from whatever task is at hand. At breaks, all 29 of them whipped out their cell-phones and began tapping and staring intently. When, during class, I’d see a student on his cell phone, I made a point of asking a question of him (or her). Looking up at the sound of his name, looking a little dazed, the student would say, “What?” Not good at multi-tasking. As I told them, in a few years we will all be in 12-step programs trying to break our fierce dependence on these devices.