Day-to-day life has developed exciting certainties lately:

--> I will forget to buy at least one item at the grocery store, even when I have a detailed list.

--> My apartment will be untidy, regardless how few things I own.

--> I will miss people without stopping to call and let them know.

--> There will be a fox in my rearview mirror when I drive home late at night.

--> I will say something stupid to somebody I love.

--> I will think in poetry all day, then go home and go to sleep without writing anything down.

Actually, that last one isn't entirely fair. Plus, I calm my writing anxiety with the thought that I might have a child someday. I think if that happens then I won't worry anymore about making great art before I die.

The Prodigal Son

(Side note: I just read Harold Bloom's 2000 review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and it was deliciously entertaining. Find it here.)

I was surprised when, in a recent conversation, my father mentioned the parable of the Lost Son. I've been thinking a great deal about this parable, about both how it speaks to my own life and how it exemplifies a conviction I have that the Bible contains enormous philosophical value even to those who believe neither in Yahweh nor in Jesus Christ.¹

I suppose I had always taken the parable to be a commentary on Jewish Christian attitudes toward Gentile Christians. However, like any half-decent literature, the story invites multiple interpretations.

What the Bible doesn't get to here (at least explicitly) is the emotional struggle of the elder son after being told by the father that he doesn't understand. What is his understanding supposed to look like? What is he meant to do next? How does he get past being so intensely indignant, and what becomes of the material relationship between the two brothers?

That is the prevailing emotion for me in my own life--"indignant." Having displeasure at perceived injustice. Of course the grace of my spiritual and physical parents is inherently unjust. That's the point. I just wish the parable came with simple instructions on repairing weathered emotional fortitude and reclaiming absent compassion and understanding.

Really, I'm amending my life goals:
1) Become a better friend/daughter/sister/employee/human
2) Stop pretending to know things I do not or cannot know
3) Devise a way to consistently beat 10-year-old Adrian at racquetball even though he has an insane baseball-arm serve that physically frightens me

¹ Though I am hesitant to share this with my classmates and professors, I am continually amazed at how much of the instruction I've received and the theories I've read on teaching could have been lifted verbatim from Scripture. For instance, I read a very interesting article by Julie Lindquist on how teachers should strategically listen to their students to find out who their students need them to be that had a palpable "become all things to all men" feel about it. Interestingly, I might be able to meet her next year at the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) should I be presenting, and I'm curious to ask her to what extent she thinks it's fair to draw that connection.²

² My proposed project is entitled "Feeling Oriental: Teaching Postcolonial Theory Through Student Empathy" and will deal with how to delicately inspire certain emotions in students that can be instructive in student understandings of "othering." For instance, imagine if a teacher openly "offered" extra credit only to students who had brown eyes. Perhaps students' visceral reactions to arbitrary injustice would help them understand the historical relationship between the West and the East and the East's subsequently internalized oppression. Cool stuff.

Oh, Ally McBeal. You are so wise.

(Of course I think that guys worth marrying do exist in the world, but this is still a pretty helpful little exercise.)

Ally: Listen to me.  Here's a little game I play when I get lonely.  Close your eyes. 

Whipper: Why, Ally?

Ally: Just close 'em!  Okay.  Think of a guy, the perfect guy.  Even on your wedding day, maybe, the suit, the smile, the night back at the hotel, and now make a little sound that goes with it.

[Whipper moans.]

Ally: Okay, now think of that man in his entirety.  His habits, his hobbies, his friends, the things he thinks are funny, the things he thinks are important.  And now think of having to live with him every single day for the rest of your life.

[Whipper shrieks.]

Ally: Exactly.  We're not only wired to want what we can't have, but we're wired to want what we really don't want!

I've been told by many people that I have poor taste in television, specifically concerning my ongoing interest in VH1 reality television. I've stopped explaining this affection in detail to my friends, simply saying that those shows are "genius," and I do believe they are.

What is television supposed to do for the viewer? Certainly there are programs designed to challenge the viewer, to give the viewer an opportunity to confront his or her prejudices and preconceptions, to shake the viewer's, uh, view. Of course VH1 is not trying to do that. VH1 is trying to sell advertising space. (I'll bet they're making a killing, too, and I'm very alright with helping them.)

Why, after having my worldview challenged all day every day would I want to include that as my leisure activity? I guess you could call that a Marxist false consciousness, but the very fact that I immediately look for some sort of theory connection is evidence that I need some VH1 at the end of the day. I'm only human. Of course, that assumes an essential 'humanity'... See?!

I wouldn't call Rock of Love Bus or Charm School with Ricki Lake or Daisy of Love a guilty pleasure because, frankly, I don't feel guilty. My real guilty pleasure is Twilight. So there. Bella 'is' a clear interpellation of weak and wispy 'female' 'subjects'.

I'm being strangled by scare quotes.

Save me, Bret Michaels. Let's drive off into the sunset in your bus full of shapely, alcoholic strippers and likely transvestites.

Last night I drove home from Alaina's house at about 2:30 a.m. after a marathon viewing of Ally McBeal. We're midway through the third season, which means Billy is about to drop deal in the middle of a trial.

I was heading east on Prospect when "American Pie" by Don McLean came on the radio. He was well into the second or third chorus when I turned onto Whedbee.

I shut off my engine on the curb outside my house to wait for the song to finish, but it had put me in such a good mood that I didn't want to think of it as ending. So I just turned the key and took it out in the middle of a long note.

That note was playing in my head all day, in a good way.

I've done a lot of emoting to my friends and family about some of the sad things in my life in the past year, and I think I'm actually ready to move forward from these things. That nothing is permanent in this life is sad, yeah, but it sure is happy, too.

If God is real, He is preparing me for something wonderful. I just hope I've listened well enough for His voice through these long, crappy months.