nola jams

Nola loves to play her tiny piano… she’ll do it for a long time. I can almost finish debriding a heaping sinkful of crusty dishes before she finishes a little recital. Check out the video for a sample.

Yesterday, Ossian picked up Bird By Bird, written by Anne Lamott, settled into a cozy valley between laundry pile ranges and announced that she “just wants to read this book for a little while I think”. She then lowered her sunglasses, adopted an exaggeratedly grown-up thinking expression and “read” this 237 page book for nearly a half hour.

This is a great book, by the way, for anyone working on the business of writing something. Though I haven’t gotten very far into the book, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of her advice to just write what you can see through a one by one picture frame in your mind. It’s a concrete method of breaking things down into writeable pieces rather than being hijacked by overwhelmedness.

I tend to read multiple books at a time and periodically I try to break myself of this tendency by getting very strict, directive, and linear – with myself. During these periods, I decide that multiple book reading is not methodical enough and that finishing one before starting another is the higher ground. Then I feel a little oppressed and slowly I stop reading altogether. Thankfully, about this time, I alway encounter someone I respect describing the 4 books they are currently nibbling at and I let go of my little fascist exercise and resume reading books again.

I just finished Obama’s auto biography, Dreams from My Father and now, in an attempt to be fair, I am reading Hillary’s, Living History. I was hoping these books would give me fuller picture of how these two potential world leaders think.. what they’ve been through, what they value, how they are motivated, etc. I want a better sense of their personal experiences and inner workings to understand what drives their political wills. I love that Obama was a driven community organizer – he’s seen and responded to the institutional injustice around race and socio-economics that is so obviously emblazoned in communities burdened by poverty. He’s been on the ground, viscerally experiencing the shortcomings, power, and need for responsible domestic policies. He has struggled with his relationship to race and has not shyed away from hard questions he’s sought to answer for himself as the nation aired its dirty racist laundry for all to see. Hilary’s story is so different, but like Obama’s, tells the story of a potent historical era. Hilary, a baby boom girl, coming of age as feminism stepped up its march. All the dreams and hopes of her mother and generations of women before her strapped on her back – all their work and suffering having paved the way for a slightly broader future for her. It reminds me of my mom and the responsibility she has carried throughout her career – early on, to prove she could do it like a man and later, to cheer lead for other women – to bring them along and now, to relax a little and find a sustainable way to balance self, career, health, politics, and baggage.