A professor once said to a whole class of writing students,
"You want to write? Then read. Read it all. Read everything."
Sounded kind of daunting.
But she went on: whenever anything you read is particularly good,
notice it. Try to find the exact moment it's good and then listen.
Listen hard and you may hear just what the writer is up to.
They'll be your best teachers, she said, if you listen closely
enough.
So today I was lucky enough to listen to Joel Lovell who wrote a piece on the
short story writer George Saunders in The New York Times online.
I wanted to lean in and listen all afternoon, the article had so much to say about Saunders, about his life and his work and what writing is and even, what it means to be us, people just trying in every way to get by and the grace of connection books can give us. It was one of the most thought-provoking and tender pieces of writing I've read in the longest time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html?hp&_r=0
The Times had many beautiful pieces in its annual "The Lives They Lived" Sunday magazine, paying tribute to people who died in 2012. Sandra Cisneros began her tribute to singer Chavela Vargas this way: "Once, when Mexico was the bellybutton of the universe, Isabel Vargas Lizano ran away from home and resolved to make herself into a Mexican singer." How could I not read what came next - a piece as vibrant as Vargas seemed to be. http://nytimes.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
I passed this wry mural in Chicago, around the corner from a nifty
little coffee place/donut shop. Looking at the photo today, I smiled
at Rosie the Riveter, not because the shop had her hawking donuts,
but I was thinking of the convening of the 113th U.S. Congress this week
and the 100 women who are members, the most ever.
Rosie came to represent all the women who walked into workplaces they
hadn't necessarily been before, at least in those numbers back during
World War II. They were women who had to roll up their sleeves, learn a new
trade and, for many, a new way of life. Their rallying cry? "We can do it!"
and they did.
I wonder about the 20 female senators and 80 members of
the House of Representatives in our newly seated Congress.
Will "we can do it" be the phrase that defines them? We can...move forward,
make change, begin to solve some of our nation's most challenging problems?
What I'd hope for is a slightly different mantra, something like
we can try together.
"The street is chic,"
said the cheerily tattered sign
on the rugged storefront
on the pretty street.
Fearless Felix.
Now there’s a nickname. How can you not pause when you hear it, take note and wonder?
Fearless? Fearless how?
Well, as we know in the case of Felix Baumgartner, utterly fearless.
I thought of Felix today when I saw a commercial for Google. The ad was encouraging us to search and, of course, to use Google to do so. But I saw another message for the new year in the montage of moments from 2012, as each sped so quickly by: reach, stretch, go, try. And if you sing a song or
dance a little kooky when the moment strikes, all the better.
I hadn’t had Felix Baumgartner on my radar earlier this year; I was half listening about his attempt to break the speed of sound. Then, ha, I Googled him, and I saw what he was up to and started listening. He was going to travel up to the very edge of space in a balloon, 24 miles into the sky.
On October 14, 2012, he would step off the platform built for his attempt and fall , as it has been described, "into the arms of the universe." He would be jumping/flying/hurtling to the ground at speeds of 833 miles an hour with no plane. He’d have a specially designed pressure suit and helmet and a parachute for protection. He knew all about the risks: his blood could boil; his bones could break; the balloon taking him up there (with plastic described as thinner than most sandwich bags) could falter, the suit could rip. I get trembly at times in rush hour on I-95.
What he also knew was that he had science behind him, that this wasn’t just a stunt, that five years of research and practice and teamwork had gone into it. Great minds merged, just as others had to create the Curiosity rover, still roaming about on Mars. Even Joe Kittinger, who tried to break the sound barrier back in 1960, collaborated on the project and was in mission control that day to support him.
Who dares to take such a leap? Felix did. He stood there, alone, all that way up. He stepped off. He started spinning and had to use all the skills he had to figure out how to stop so he’d stay conscious and he did.
He road the air at about 300 miles an hour faster than a typical passenger airplane and he landed in a New Mexico desert. He knelt there in the scrub grass and sand and raised his fists. Millions of people around the world watched.
The purpose of the jump? To transcend human limits. In my list of resolutions this year, none will transcend human limits! But some require me to transcend my own. That’s what’s cool about a new year, that chance.
Later Fearless Felix said, “Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are.” Or how grand. He – and his team - stretched toward something that wasn’t quite possible
and then it was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_MUB8adEQ
