When I Have A Little Money ...

"Monet Refuses The Operation" - Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no halos
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rowen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

I love Monet. I think he's my favorite painter. I'm not enough of an art aficionado to make an informed decision on who the greatest painters are, but in my humble opinion his works are among the best. I guess I just like Impressionist paintings in general. It might be because they depict such startlingly vivid scenes and yet are so blurred around the edges. If I ever get my own place I'm going to have an Impressionist gallery on one wall with as many Monet and Cezanne prints as I can get my hands on. Currently all I have is a greeting card with Monet's Agapanthus on the front. Of his paintings that I've seen, that one's my favorite. Unfortunately, the flat print on the card really bears very little resemblance to the original at MOMA.

Anyway. That's neither here nor there. I just read that poem and was looking at my Agapanthus card and felt like having an art moment. Speaking of cultural-ish moments, I have developed a compulsion in the past several months that I feel very strangely about. I don't think it's bad necessarily, but it certainly won't be good, at least not fiscally, in the long run. I read a quote over the summer that I have since adopted as something of a mantra due to the fact that it resonates so deeply with me: "When I have a little money, I buy books. If I have any left over, I buy food." This was spoken by the great philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, who lived back in the 16th century. Great though he was, he fell victim to a common ailment of the compulsive reader - his life became all about the attainment of knowledge, and ultimately his spirituality was swallowed up in intellect. I never want that to happen to me, but I admit that to some degree I am prioritizing books more highly than certain basic necessities. Not food, of course, but less immediate needs like savings ... technically I'm "budgeting" for books, but I go outside of that every month. I'm a Borders Rewards member, and that means that 5% of my purchases comes back to me in the form of holiday spending money. I've earned almost $18 toward this total since I became a member in May. I'm not a math teacher, but I know what that means.

There are several reasons I'm sort of befuddled by this. The main one is that I have been an avid reader my whole life, but this whole buying books thing has never been part of that. I know I used to love buying books as a kid, but the majority of those were three-dollar paperbacks, and I basically lived at the library anyway. In college I started buying books more, but mostly through Ebay and used book sellers on Amazon. For some reason, since I've graduated, I have been totally dissatisfied with anything less than a brand new book with my name in the front cover. I honestly can't think why. It might be that I just sort of started my own life when I moved in May, and since my life has always been at least partially lived within the pages of a book, building my personal library represents my new-found independence. I don't know. The numbers speak for themselves, though: when I moved from Georgia, I brought with me about 40 books that I couldn't part with (the rest are still at my parents' house and I'll get them when I have room to store them; this number excludes the two big boxes of adolescent-level books I brought for my classroom). Almost double that amount is now on my bookshelf, which is not going to hold many more.

The types of books I'm buying/reading, has also changed. I attribute this at least partially to where I'm living. New York as a city is very literary (although the irony is that the part of town I teach in might have one of the highest concentrations of functional illiteracy in the country), and more books have been written about New York and by New Yorkers than just about anyplace else, it seems. I used to restrict myself to books written mostly by Christian authors. In high school I discovered contemporary fiction by fabulous writers like Pat Conroy, and so I owned a few of those as well. And in college I expanded my repertoire a bit further to include slightly less conventional spiritualists like Madeleine L'Engle, Anne Lamott, and Donald Miller. Still, my library was pretty safe. A cross-section of what I brought with me from Georgia includes: Beach Music (my favorite Pat Conroy book, which I read for AP English my senior year of high school), The Journey of Desire (my favorite John Eldredge book, an example of "Christian living" - the genre of a great percentage of my books when I first moved), Traveling Mercies (my favorite Anne Lamott book - liberal Christianity, if you will), Ruthless Trust (my favorite Brennan Manning book, another Christian living), and Disappointment With God (my favorite Philip Yancey book, a very practical and realistic look at why life doesn't turn out the way we think it should). You'll notice that these books make up half my "top ten" list, so clearly they're still very near and dear to me. What's changed isn't so much the kinds of books I've loved over the years but the kinds of books I've been buying and reading lately. Of the books I've bought since moving to New York, I'd say about 3/4 are novels (not written by Christian authors - I only have one or two of those on my shelves at all and have honestly abandoned it as a genre) or memoirs. The rest probably fit more or less into the Christian living genre - I still read Manning and Yancey rabidly.

I don't know why I'm expanding my repertoire so much, but it has been nothing short of thrilling. Honestly, my feelings about authors, artists, musicians, etc. that are labeled "Christian" are mixed at this point. None of my favorite novels were written by Christians (at least, not in the conservative sense of the word). And while several of my favorite bands fall in the Christian contemporary category, none of them are top-selling artists. L'Engle's book Walking On Water, which I read about a year and a half ago and which sits on my shelf now, was part of the literary turning point I've recently experienced. Her book is all about faith and art and how they relate to one another. She argues that Christian art is too sanitized, and I agree. I feel that there is a sub-culture of Christians who will buy anything with Jesus on it, and this group has driven the standard of excellence for believers way down. We should ask ourselves why the world is not interested in our art. I'm sure that it has at least something to do with the fact that they are offended by the gospel, but I think another, and perhaps larger, part of it is just that our art is not as good.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant against Christian art. A lot of believers are every bit as talented as unbelievers. I guess the unfortunate thing to me is that they are often shunned by this sub-culture because they choose to tell the truth instead of make things comfortable. It's a tough balance, because reading too much from the perspective of the world definitely sears your conscience. I don't believe that we are called to immerse ourselves in the world to the point that its values become our own. I do believe, however, that honesty is one of the most important ways to deal with life, and I find a strikingly refreshing honesty in art by a lot of unbelievers. I still haven't landed on a definite answer as to what's best in this area. Like I said, I'm not interested in letting the lines blur so much that the painting goes completely out of focus and truth ceases to exist. But I also think that trying to paint everything in such stark relief that one's own experience is not taken into account is self-centered and foolish.

Anyway. I guess the reason I'm not too disturbed by this recent obsession with buying books is that my whole job is centered around valuing reading and writing and passing that value on. That's probably a big reason why I've become an even more passionate reader and writer as I've been teaching. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. I think my kids can tell that I think reading and writing are just about the most important things a person can do and even if they never love it like I do, maybe ten years from now when they're trying to make it in the world they'll have just a little bit better chance because of their crazy seventh grade English teacher who made them read like it was as crucial as breathing. There are surely worse things a person could compulsively purchase besides books. But, in the interest of keeping myself somewhat under control, I am officially banned from entering bookstores until I finish all the books on my shelf. Which could be several months because I'm buying them much faster than I'm reading them. Sigh. Hopefully I'll still be able to afford food between now and my next paycheck.

Here is everything I'm currently reading: I have subscriptions to People and New York, which are both weekly magazines, and both of which I'm completely addicted to. I read those in bed at night, a few articles at a time. I also read a couple pages out of two books that are really too dense to be read linearly like novels: The History of Knowledge, which is exactly what it sounds like, and John Piper's Desiring God (which I'm finally almost done with). And then last I read the day's entry from Listening to Your Life, a collection of Frederich Buechner's more insightful passages. I just bought a whole load of books for my classroom (fortunately I get a teacher discount on those), and I intend to charge through Go Ask Alice and/or maybe The Outsiders in the next few days. I'm always reading both a non-fiction (the one I usually take out with me and read on the train) and a fiction (typically read at home) book at the same time. Currently my non-fiction is Manning's The Importance of Being Foolish, which is pretty intense and by far more affecting than the last book of his I read, A Glimpse of Jesus. My fiction is Nicole Krauss's The History of Love, a genre-bending book about writing and long-lost loves. So far I find it to be fabulous. Other books I've read and loved since becoming a New Yorker: Bill Bryson's A Walk n The Woods (mentioned in my October 9th entry), Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain (I can't say I LOVED this one, but it had its moments and the end was really great), of course Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale (my favorite novel of all-time now), and Anne Lamott's Rosie (the first novel of hers I've read). And I am looking forward to the following: Dave Eggers's memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; two very Helprin-esque novels, Pete Hammill's Forever and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife; Frank McCourt's memoir of teaching in New York City, Teacher Man; two Nicholas Sparks novels (for the irrepressible sap in me), Dear John and Nights in Rodanthe; Forever After, subtitled New York City Teachers on 9/11; and Philip Yancey's latest, Prayer. An ambitious lot. If it's possible, I might be reading too much for my own good.

Those of you who are utterly bored by my reading list can stop yawning now. Here is a long overdue list of things I'm thankful for: a very socially and literarily (decently sure that's not a word) satisfying evening on the Upper West Side, Christmas music of all kinds, peppermint mochas, the last colors of a gorgeous fall, my wonderful new schedule at work, every single one of my kids, tennis shoes (which I wear to work and then sometimes forget to change out of), my writer's notebook, city lights, staying late at work on Friday nights (I feel so accomplished by the time I leave), what brilliant artists my kids are, mulled wine and pumpkin bread, my Saturday morning TV line-up (Step By Step, Full House, Boy Meets World - they make me nostalgic), my gorgeously organized classroom library, all the gray skies and rain this week, a great Bulldog upset, Butter Cup Bake Shop, Rachmaninov's Vespers (I am overwhelmingly thankful for these), lying on my bed, sitting in Riverbank early on a Sunday morning and feeling like the only person in the world, deciding to be very content with the way things are, finally being financially organized enough that I can support friends in the ministry (one part of my budget that cannot be usurped by the whole book-buying thing), the math teachers at my school (my gratitude for them goes beyond words), a return to journaling, my new headphones, pumpkin pie shower gel, the exhausting work of speaking Spanish, the only recently established rapport I have with certain kids in my class, coming home happy, being able to face my failures full on knowing that I am drowning in grace, whitecaps on a windy river, direct deposit finally kicking in, all the girls in my Bible study, finally having friends in the city outside of the Harlem House, the A train, New York City history, Pilates, sleeping in, an extremely helpful test-prep seminar, the West Village (always), coffee with Kristen, and, of course, bringing home brand new books.

Song In My Head: "Breakfast at Tiffany's" - Deep Blue Something - playing tonight while at Barnes & Noble - fortunately I resisted the urge to purchase that particular book.