Down to business

I just launched my shiny new website for my freelance editing.  www.esledit.org I offer professional editing, specializing in serving non-native English speakers.

“Writing in English isn’t always easy even for native speakers.  It is a complex language, with more exceptions to the rules than rules themselves.  Whether you are writing an application essay, a term paper, a thesis or a journal article, you want your writing to clearly express your thoughts.   Grammar mistakes and structural flaws distract the reader, bring down your grade and diminish professional credibility.  My mission is to help you express yourself in perfect English that allows your ideas to shine.”

La resistance

I’ve been thinking, as I often do, about how we develop our identity — how we think of ourselves and how we try to appear to the world.  I’ve always found that decisions against something tend to be as strong an incentive for me as decisions towards something.  A friend in college, for example, who talked about herself all the time and never asked about me is a big reason why I try to be a good listener to this day.  Legalism in any context but especially in my own religion has defined by contrast my concept of God and grace and compassion in general.  I think that’s okay, I think that’s how we learn about the world and how we continue to develop our thoughts and opinions.  But ultimately I don’t want my answer to, “Who are you,” to be, “I’m against insensitivity,” or “legalism” or even “injustice,” as important as resistance to evil is.  I want to be positive, not in the sense of cheerful and perky necessarily, or even optimistic, but in a more basic, even mathmatical sense.  +Jessica.  I want not just to fight evil (in whatever form); to reduce the bad.  I want to add good, to be good, to be truth and beauty that stands on its own, not that’s defined as what it’s not.

Think about your response to questions about politics, religion, society, humanity.  If you can only answer what you dislike about Republicans (or Democrats), religious  fundamentalism (or atheism), separatism (or integration), free will (or predestination)*, then do you really have an opinion, an identity?  What if all the “bad” suddenly disappeared?  Would you know who you are?

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*I’m not listing these pairs as opposites, only as disparate.

Migraines, dancing

I find that migraines make it really difficult to maintain a long term focus.  Or short term, for that matter, but that’s to be expected.  But for all the things that require dedication and passion over time, it’s hard to have that consistency.  I feel like I am swimming just below the surface of the water, the air above representing all the things that I think are most important in life: Passion, creativity, prayer, deep thought, deep conversation, caring for others, making a difference in the world.  Under water life proceeds and can be coped with, hours follow hours, days follow days, another week brings the work days, the weekends, the new episodes of a good T.V. show, the meetings, laundry, food shopping and preparation.  Life goes on, which is a degree of success and functionality that I don’t take for granted.  But every once in a while, or even often, my head breaks the surface and I realize that I’m not writing, I’m not reading very much, I’m not praying in the ways that I want (prayer goes on, as breathing does, a function of life as a creature in relationship to her Creator; prayer never stops, but it doesn’t inspire the way it used to).  I’m not teaching English, I’m not leading a book study, I’m not even IN a class or book study.  Right now, at the end of a free day, there are books strewn across my bed that I started to read but didn’t, headphones for when I started to listen to music and then stopped, there is this blog entry open, which I may or may not finish and post.  All day I’ve been trying to find focus and passion but all there is is the dull ache, the dizziness, the light sensitivity.  I can’t even get lost in thought like I used to, building a world in my mind, finding excitement in the mere functioning of my mind.

I don’t know if any of those things will ever come back.  The best advice I’ve gotten in the miasma of the past couple of years is to live in the moment and not worry about the future.  I try.  But then I imagine a future of living in the moment, which obviously is breaking the rule, but…  I want so much to have something to work toward, even an non-tangible something.  There’s only so much satisfaction to be gotten out of doing my laundry every week.  But, like I said, after the past couple of years I don’t take clean laundry for granted.  Standing up is no small victory, and walking — both figuratively and literally — is a daily victory.  Just, if it’s always going to be one plodding foot in front of the other, then will I never again dance?

Pippin

I waited five years and am now rereading the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I love rediscovering my favorite parts.  They’re usually little, even incidental to the plot, just comments either profound or funny.  The whole section on Frodo waking up in Rivendell (the first time he wakes up in Rivendell) is wonderful, but this is my favorite interaction, when Frodo sees Merry and Pippin for the first time since their flight from the Ringwraiths.

`Hurray!’ cried Pippin, springing up. `Here is our noble cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!’

‘Hush!’ said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the porch. `Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor, whose power is again stretching out over the world! We are sitting in a fortress. Outside it is getting dark.’

`Gandalf has been saying many cheerful things like that,’ said Pippin.

The second time Frodo wakes up in Rivendell also has one of my favorite quotes, but I’ll wait till I get there to share it.

Swans

Look how excited I was!

This has nothing to do with the above picture, but I wanted to say a prayer for my friends who are feeling the darkness of the season — Seasonal Affective Disorder, they call it, but I call it, “Why are we still living in New England when there are so many warmer, viable options?”  But, here we are, and the gorgeous autumn that we just experienced as a perk of the region is being followed, as it always is, by months of dark and cold.

Hang in there.

Spring will be here in a few short months, and in the meantime, God loves you as much as he did on the most brilliant summer day, even if your tan has faded and you have gained ten pounds and don’t get out of your pajamas for days at a time.

I never thought this place could be beautiful

One of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books, Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.  Ben made me think of it again.  A boy has gone with his father to find his grandfather’s grave, and after an arduous journey they have arrived.  His father has made the journey out of guilt, sadness and obligation, and a desire to somehow reconcile with his own dead father and find forgiveness. 

“Every prayer seemed long to me at that age, and I was truly bone tired.  I tried to keep my eyes closed, but after a while I had to look around a little.  And this is something I remember very well.  At first I thought I saw the sun setting in the east; I knew where the east was because the sun was just over the horizon when we got there that morning.  Then I realized that what I saw was a full moon rising just as the sun was going down.  Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them.  It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them.  I wanted my father to see it, but I knew I would have to startle him out of his prayer, and I wanted to do it the best way, so I took his hand and kissed it.  And then I said, “Look at the moon.”  And he did.  We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up.  They seemed to float on the horizon for quite a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn’t get a clear look at them.  And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them, which seemed amazing to me at the time, since I hadn’t given much thought to the nature of the horizon. 

“My father said, ‘I would never have thought this place could be beautiful.  I’m glad to know that.'”