One (Good Enough) Day

 
I just threw away three bridal magazines my mom bought me.* We had flipped through them and mocked them to pieces back in March, but they've been collecting dust on top of my sump pump since then.

Bridal magazines are not designed to be helpful, unless you need help spending a crazy amount of money. I guess their checklists are also helpful if you need to laugh until you cry. I've had to turn elsewhere for real wedding help. It's handy that my mom has planned plenty of weddings, but I've also explored books and blogs lately.

I devoured the book One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding. It is not about how to plan a wedding; it's about how planning weddings got insane.

Here is a short interview with the author, Rebecca Mead:




Here is another (audio only) interview with Mead, in which she talks about why weddings have gotten so huge in the last generation: It's at least partially because getting married isn't as big of a deal as it once was. It used to be that a wedding marked the day you moved out of your parents' home, the first time you lived with and slept with your spouse, etc. Now that people are getting married older and so many couples live together already, we throw extravagant parties to make marriage feel like as big of a transition as it used to be. 

Mead's book helped me think through whether any given wedding detail was something Blade and I actually wanted or just something that wedding companies have poured untold amounts of money into marketing to us.

While I was reading One Perfect Day, I was also reading Good News for Anxious Christians, which is about manipulative trends within popular evangelical culture. I couldn't help but see parallels with the wedding industry.** Both the wedding industry and the more wishy-washy evangelical churches put pressure on you to feel certain emotions, and if you don't feel those emotions, there must be something wrong with you. I don't do well under that kind of pressure. I get all panicky and resentful until I understand what's actually going on.

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The blog A Practical Wedding has been the most helpful resource for actually planning my wedding (as opposed to helping me understand why wedding stuff makes me crazy). Though I frequently disagree with the blog's politics, I appreciate that the posts are full of thought-provoking, tongue-in-cheek writing rather than just collections of stylized pictures. If you're involved in a wedding anytime soon, I recommend exploring the site; I've especially enjoyed the posts: Bride in Exile, Lazy (and possible cheap) Girl's Guide ..., The Slavery of Choice, and Wedding Overexposure.


So Blade and I aren't going for a perfect day. We're going for a good enough day. And if we're married by the end of it, that is plenty good enough.



*I've kept one magazine, mostly because my mom shoplifted it from a bridal salon. She claims it was supposed to be free, that it just looked free, but there's definitely a price tag on the front cover. I can't seem to throw it away just yet due to its shoplifted hilarity. (Seriously? It just looked free? Who thinks like that?)

**My friend Steve saw me toggling between both books and said, "I like that about you." What? "That when you get mad you find a book about whatever's making you mad so you can figure out why."

Relearning Church through Improv

Confession: Church did not teach me how Christians should act.

Church -- at least, the two churches I grew up in -- modeled for me that when two Christians disagree, one of them is wrong and needs to repent so the other one can lord their mistakes over them and call it forgiveness.

I learned that the best response to conflict is to quit and start another church two miles away and force people to choose whom they like best pray about where God is leading them.

I discovered that the key to avoiding these kinds of conflicts is to seem pulled together and in control. One easy way to do that is to volunteer to give announcements at youth group. Anyone on stage must have things all figured out, right?

Especially, I saw that the more you respect and trust a leader, the more devastating it is when they fail or they turn on you, and that those relationships are irreperable.

There were a few bright spots -- Heartbeat in seventh grade comes to mind, as well as some good conversations with youth leaders -- but those were the exceptions. Mostly, I collected compelling reasons not to trust people.

I didn't unlearn all of this mistrust until I started doing improv at Wheaton. I saw that if people trust one another, it's possible for them to be honest about their struggles, forgive one another's mistakes, and help one another grow.



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This is another one of my favorite books.

You can buy it here. And you probably should.

Wells writes:

[One common] assumption is that improvisation is trivial and self-indulgent. This is perhaps because it is associated with humor and the ephemeral, and also because it can create intensely committed communities that seem united by no substantial goal, only the formal means of interacting. ... Underlying it is the assumption that Christian ethics is an intensely serious, somewhat earnest, and decidedly difficult discipline, weighing matters of daunting substance, and only to be entered reverently, soberly, and after serious thought. In this perspective, improvisation sounds suspiciously like a joke, an artifice -- an insult. Such a view risks being more solemn than God.

Throughout the Christian drama there is joy and playfulness. .. The church can afford to concentrate on details, because God has given her time to follow him. Taking time for the trivial is therefore a sign of faith, not foolishness. The church can afford to take the risk of the humorous and the ephemeral, because the joke is God's and the laughter is divine.

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Some of my improv friends gave me rides to their church, where I found a community of people who don't seem to be pressuring me to have everything together or to agree with them about every tiny detail. They treat seasons of celebration and joy with as much importance as those of waiting and repentance. I learned that church didn't have to be as constantly traumatic as the churches I'd known. I've now been a member for more than five years. 

I know I am amazingly blessed to be part of a church that values the differing gifts of its members, even if those gifts are in the arts. Our artists at Church of the Resurrection write music, yes, but also stage dramatic interpretations of scripture, paint altar pieces, and film comedic announcements. I love it all.

So when I wanted to teach an introductory improv class as a ministry through Rez, the church told me to go for it. I'm SO glad that five wonderful ladies decided to take a risk and play with me these past few weeks. I am not a preacher, nor do I have extraordinary gifts of healing or tongues or evangelism or any of those big impressive ones. But I know God has met me through play more than in any other way, and play is something I can teach.

The Elements of Style

This is possibly my favorite book.

My friend Kevin gave me this illustrated edition for my birthday a few years ago.

The Elements of Style is a tiny book, mostly a list of rules about grammar and punctuation. It tells you the difference between further and farther, lie and lay, nauseous and nauseated, and that most crucial distinction between shall and will. It has lists of rules, such as:

12. Choose a suitable design and hold to it.

13. Make the paragraph the unit of composition.

14. Use the active voice.

15. Put statements in positive form.

16. Use definite, specific, concrete language.

17. Omit needless words.

I go back to this book every few months, whether or not I'm writing anything at the time. I tend to pick it up when I'm mired in some kind of unfinishable project, when I am too overwhelmed with life to begin reading a novel or too unfocused to read poetry. (It was the only book I could even pick up after my friend Stephen died, suddenly and far away, over three years ago now. I read it over and over, because it was small and concrete and certain, and life was big and vague and confused.)

Each of Strunk and White's rules is followed by examples of good writing that follows the rules and bad writing that doesn't. Sometimes, though, our heroes deviate from the plain examples to explain why the rule is important to the world. Here is one of my favorite passages in the entire book:

Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expected to be met at a railway station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity, and be clear! When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

The illustrator of the most beautiful edition of The Elements of Style is Maira Kalman, who is proof that I am not the only one fixated on this book. She has also made a short film based on her illustrations, which I stumbled upon via The Kitchn:





And here is Maira Kalman talking about her life and art. She talks about The Elements of Style about 8 minutes into the talk.



















Her illustrations look like the inside of my brain.

It's a job. It's a job.

Since graduation, I have only been unemployed for a total of one month. In fact, I am on four separate payrolls right now.

1. Teas and Toes, Glen Ellyn

I brew loose leaf tea and get to drink any leftover samples. I'm learning a lot about the health benefits of loose leaf tea, as well as the different sensitivities of different varieties. That accounts for the "Teas" part. The "Toes" part means that I prepare foot soaks -- hot river stones, deep copper bowls, detoxifying foot soaks, aroma therapeutic salts, rose petals -- and then clean up after the client has left. I also do a lot of explanations about the differences between a pedicure or traditional foot massage and a reflexology treatment. The best part is sitting in a zero-gravity chair.

2. Christian Youth Theater, DuPage

I teach the Advanced Improv class to 12-18 year olds. (In my class, it's more like 12-16 year olds.) Teaching middle and high school students is a whole different ballgame than teaching college students. Younger students are more likely to feel paralyzed by their peers' preconceptions and expectations. College freshmen and transfers still have that new-start feeling and don't think they've got each other pigeon holed before practice even starts. That accounts for some of it. But the CYT kids continually surprise me with fun character choices, and it makes me itchy to find a place to play again.

3. The Reading Tree, Downers Grove

Unlike the above jobs, this one does not have a regular, weekly schedule. The Reading Tree initially hired me to teach a sentence diagramming course, sort of a grammar boot camp, for kids transferring from public to private schools. They've kept me on their list of tutors and call me when they need someone to tutor a student in phonics, grammar, literature, or reading comprehension. This will get busier, I predict, after report cards come out and kids are threatened with groundings if they don't get those grades up.

4. Bundles of Books and Gifts, Glen Ellyn

This feels like volunteer work, but it's great. Basically, I categorize and shelve used books for a few hours per week. In return, I get store credit. That adds up to several free books every week. I spend most of my shelving time working on the mystery section and romance section, which seem to collect the most donations. I entertain myself by holding a contest (in my head) for most ridiculous title. The winner so far? Highland Vampire, a Harlequin(ish) romance. It's actually in it's second or third printing right now. The mind reels.

It rather feels like my fifth job is getting healthy. Lately, I'm at the doctor about three times a week on average. But that's another post.

Dreaming through the Noise

It's been three months since I posted. Since then, my time has been taken up by:

- Getting flooded. I was homeless for a very short period in August, a time that culminated in a tornado, pepper spray, and getting lost in the parking lot of Nordstrom's.
- Finding the rhythm of school.
- Living in a very dramatic house that is mostly full of theater girls.
- Memorizing a lot of Shakespeare.
- Directing Faux Posse and Post Script Ambiguity for wheatonIMPROV.
- Cowering at the prospect of job and/or graduate school applications.

Amidst the insanity, why the revival of the blog? Currently, I am confined, restless, to a couch. My voice is completely gone, as gone as the sun, the maple leaves, free time. I hope my voice returns sooner than any of those things are liable to here to Wheaton College.

It has made me seasick to try and read for school. That might have less to do with the head cold and more to do with that the book of the moment is Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner. Reading Miss Rosa's memories feels like watching a scene filmed without a tripod, Blair Witch style. I suspect anyone trying to decipher the Sutpen family tree would be a little disoriented, even without the cold medicine.

So instead of reading Faulkner, writing an annotated bibliography, drafting a prompt book, rehearsing As You Like It, or working on my grad school application, I am drinking juice through a straw, dozing through Vienna Teng albums, binging on Pushing Daisies -- I am coveting all of Chuck's clothes, though I'm not sure they'd be as fun in a shades-of-gray Chicago winter; they might only work in a world of supersaturated color -- and fighting off the gathering panic about how behind I'm going to be when I go back to class.

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And she dreams through the noise, her weight against me
Face pressed into the corduroy grooves
Maybe it means nothing, but I'm afraid to move.