Thoughts on your stories

I would just leave comments in the Word document and then send that back to you, but we are cheap and don't have Microsoft Word on our computer. So I will leave my comments here.


Party Planning

Should I know what a Moynihan is? I'll wait and see. :)

Oh, I see now. It's important to know she is a Moynihan because her brothers have disappeared.

Yesss. Enter Ringo Starr.

"He has seen that I don’t want to talk about it anymore. But as I lie there in the dark my mind is laboring hard to churn out the final word. I can feel the time passing, the moment slipping away, after which it will be too unnaturally late to say anything else on the subject." I do this with Daniel all the time. It's amazing how you are able to capture the intensity of that tiny moment in time. especially in the dynamics of a couple relationship. 

I'm at the end now. Woah! Riveting. I'm still trying to figure out what it is about. Her relationship with her parents? Her relationship with her husband to be? Class differences? Her parent's relationship with each other? The fact that she and her mother have moved on and her dad hasn't? The moral wrestling Harrison subjects her too when he questions her moving on? The many things in life that don't resolve but we each deal with in a different way? For example, her brothers' disappearance is not resolved and each family member deals with that in a different way. She and her mother move on, her dad continues obsessively looking for them. Her parents have an unresolved disagreement about how to deal with the disappearance but both seem to exist in each others' presence well enough. How do humans do that? Her mom drives him to dialysis. Her dad seems to accept that his wife has given up. These are both pretty big sacrifices to make for one another, and they are able to do both of them despite their fundamental disagreement on the purpose of the rest of their lives.

It is interesting that this story is centered around a party celebrating another year of life for her father? To me this provides a stark contrast to the ghost status of her brothers. Also, her father is on dialysis. He soon will fade away. Death for her parents seems very distinct especially because her father appears to be terminally ill. Her mother states at one point, "Someday we are going to be dead, and you're going to have to sell this house...." The author confirms "few things she could say would have been truer." But it is so uncertain whether her brothers are dead or not, that this statement seems ironic when you go back and read it. And with the death of her dad dies the search for her brothers.

Also, how did you know my grandpa and his brother were named Peter and Ollie? Did you scour the Johnston history books for those names?

For having such a highly unusual event occur in this story, you introduce it very convincingly. I feel like this type of gut-wrenching event could happen to everyone. By the time the fire rolls around I don't bat an eye. Yes, naturally, the house was consumed by a fire and they never found remains. Factually it makes it even more unlikely that her brothers were kidnapped, because the whole kidnapping plot seems elaborate at this point. Why light a house on fire to kidnap two boys? But as a reader you don't think that, you just take this as another element to the story which as already unfolded before you. I think the flash back structure of this story helps with that. Maybe I'm just super creepy, but I was on a kidnapping Wikipedia kick the other month and I happened upon this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance. Did this inspire your story? The reason for my kick was because I watched the movie Room. Have you seen it? Really good, depressing, and hopeful all at once.

After writing this commentary, it seems strange to me that Harrison is so classy and a concert violinist. This story has so much going on that the class distinction between her and Harrison seems more of a distraction than an addition to this story. I know Harrison has to do something for a living, but I honestly thought he was an athlete or management consultant of some sort because of the allusion to traveling all the time. The leap to violinist seems too far.

House Shopping
 "Levi suggested they come back home, where they could be lost again in middle America just like they had been at the start of it all, and Levi’s parents could watch the children days." Do you  mean to say watch the children during the day? 

When I sat down to write my thoughts on this story I was feeling a little dissatisfied. I had the feeling you have when you might have said something mean to someone and you are waiting to see how they took it. You are uncertain of their feelings and how your next interaction with them will turn out. That's how I feel about this story. I feel like I don't really know how the marriage between Levi and Celia is and I don't know how they are both dealing with the blowout of his plagiarism. Do they still like each other or have they just settled into a rhythm of married life? It appears that before the plagiarism was exposed they both just orbited in their own worlds. Levi knew nothing of Celia's yoga and she knew nothing about his struggles with writing. Now I wonder if their worlds are overlapping a bit more because they have to push and pull for one another in their current situation or if the utter but brief penance of Levi was not enough to bring them permanently closer. And why is Celia not worried about Levi having an affair still? I left this story with lots of questions. Gossipy questions, haha. 

One thing that really struck me about this story is how much Celia's voice is coming through. I can really envision Celia. I can guess how she would react in certain situations and I am looking at the world through her eyes. Then I realized the reason I am probably confused about Levi and Celia's relationship is probably because Celia is confused about it as well. She doesn't know exactly where they stand, or where they are going. She seems to have lost her ability to meaningfully communicate with Levi, as evidenced by her explanation of yoga and why she likes it. I see the situation through her hazy lens and that is probably why the relationship dynamic seems confused. You've really stayed true to the narrator's point of view. But I think if Celia were a rational person she should still be concerned about Levi having affairs. Obviously it was on her mind a lot in the past since her first gut reaction when she sees her husband and the realtor is "Oh no! He seduced her," but then the doubt of Levi's fidelity completely vanishes when his plagiarism is revealed. If I were Celia I would still be obsessing about my husband's possible philandering behavior. Maybe she is not worried about it anymore because she knows he feels really sorry about his plagiarism and would never have an affair after the news broke because he already has hurt her enough. 

Things we would do if you came to visit

I've kept a running list in my head of things we would go do/see in Berkeley if you were here and now I'm going to write them down for the next time you are here.

Day 1:
1. Go to this place: https://universitypressbooks.com/ It's a bookstore called Ten Thousand Minds on Fire. Apparently it is one of the few academic bookstores left in the whole country. They do awesome stuff like read essays of Montaigne around a dinner table on Saturday nights, while eating and drinking. It appears to be the nerdiest of nerd bookstores. I couldn't hold my own there, but with you by my side we would be alll right.

Our minds would be alight with new ideas after we visit this bookstore!

2. Then when we would feel like we need a spot of tea, we would pop into The Musical Offering next door. This place is a cafe-bistro that always has "early music" playing. I think that is a fancy way to say classical music. They are also a CD and records stop, so we could peruse their music collection once we've had our lovely hot drink.

3. The in the evening we would put on our best frocks and have a night at the theater! There are several old, historic theaters to choose from in Oakland. One of them is the Paramount Movie Theater which shows movie classics for $6, Wurtlizer organ included! Other fancy theaters include The Grand Lake Theater and the Alameda Theater. Grand Lake Theater has $5 movies on a Tuesday night and the Alameda Theater also has a movie classics series.

 Alameda Theater. This theater is from the Art Deco period.

Classic Movies shown at Alameda Theater.

 Grand Lake Theater. It's 90 years old.

 Paramount Theater.


3. Depending on how late our movie got out, we would take a stroll around Lake Merritt in Oakland, which is nearby the Grand Lake and Paramount Theaters. Aah. Isn't it heavenly?

Day 2: Beach!
1.So far my favorite beach has been Ano Nuevo state park. It's rather isolated and not that far from Santa Cruz. Also Ano Nuevo State park has elephant seals, and during the mating season apparently things get pretty crazy. Bull fights, pups being born, mating. Tour guides take you to various vantage points of the beaches and you get to see the circle of life before your very eyes. There is a beach free of elephant seals that seems fun to hang out on and have a picnic, and unlike Monterey or Santa Cruz, it is not overrun with human tourists.

Tourists getting some sun.

2. If we wanted to grab some lunch, we could stop in Pescadero and get tacos at Mercado y Tacqueria De Amigos. This place is THE BOMB. It doubles as a Mexican mart and tacqueria, and believe me, only the most legit tacquerias are run out of mexi-marts. I know from experience. This is because in order to find the tacqueria you have to know that tacquerias sometimes exist in mexi-marts (or you Yelp it, like me, haha). This way the tacqueria weeds out all the hipsters who only go to places that are aesthetically pleasing and would never go to a convenience store for their one of a kind culinary experience. No my friend, in Mercado y Tacqueria De Amigos you will only find construction workers, old white people who popped in to buy a soda and then stayed for lunch once they realized "Why, yes. I think a taco sounds good right now," and us. Do not be fooled by the unassuming store front! So many people pass Mercado up for the Pinterest-inspired "country market store" down the street that has artistic chalkboard menus and sells $12 kale sandwiches or whatever trendy people are eating these days.

 Say what, there is a tacqueria in here?

Oh yeah there is! And they have the best tacos ever!

Avoid avoid avoid! Don't be fooled by it's cuteness. Pescadero Country Store will charge you out the nose.


Day 3 (Pretending we have infinite days together, let's keep this vacation going).
1. We would take a secret stair walk detailed in this wonderful book:

We would walk up stair cases that look like this (this is literally 1/2 mile from my apartment!)

And see views like this once we get to the top of the staircases

So fun!
2. Then we would take our ease and go to Bette's for a late brunch:

or if we were feeling in the pie and pastry mood, swing over to Fat Apples, a bakery that sells apple pies that look like this.

3. In the evening we would revel in civic engagement and attend one of Albany's free "Music in the Park" nights. Sadly, they don't have bagpipes, but they do have this really cool band playing on Sept 21 (so if you could make it by then, that would be great). https://www.reverbnation.com/kickinthemule
From the program:
Kickin the Mule is "Old school New Orleans R&B witha  twist of blues and '50s rock 'n roll."

Aa! So much more to do, so little time. But for now dear friend, here is an idyllic three day itinerary of all the little nooks and crannies I've been wanting you to see. Come visit soon!

Music

There is this guy in my ward named David Bradford who loves music. He writes a music review every couple of months on his website and it reminds me of that Jazz class you took in college and how wonderful you were at writing music reviews. So here is his April's music review. I was so pleased at how it held my interest. https://dbradmusic.com/2016/05/02/five-quality-tracks-april-2016/

This lady popped up on my Pandora the other day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Kent
She also seems pretty cool.

In other news, I decided I'm going to write on this blog more often because I like talking to you. But not just talking to you, writing to you.

My mom is in Cuba right now. She decided she wanted to go, so she found a tour group to go with and left my dad and brother at home. Hahaha. Whoa Nelly.

Daniel and I watched Going Clear this weekend. It's a documentary about Scientology. I had mixed feelings going in. The way other people view the LDS church (I use the LDS acronym because later I talk about the Church of Scientology, so things can be confusing) has been on my mind almost obsessively because of my cousins leaving the Church, so I wasn't too eager to watch a documentary that lampoons a church and casts it in a bad light, even if it wasn't a documentary about the LDS church. But I have come to the conclusions that Scientology is actually pretty bad and also profiting unfairly off of people. But I did ask myself some questions: 1. Am I purposefully ignoring unpleasant aspects about the LDS church that are harming people currently? 2. Is my membership in the LDS church harming people? They are kinda the same question. I know the LDS church does not have a spotless history, but I believe it's progressing towards good. I don't think the LDS church is on a power trip or harming others through its practices or doctrines. So I feel like the answers to those questions are no.

I really like what you had to say about agency the other night when I was in Provo. Even leaders of the LDS church have agency and sometimes they use it to make poor decisions on the church's behalf. One reason the church isn't perfect is because God gives us humans the ability to choose. I feel people often demand a perfect institution and also members who have complete freedom to choose anything. I think those two requests are a paradox. If the institution was perfect, the members of the Church would have to be controlled. But people should not be controlled, so the Church is imperfect. Some people are displeased with this conclusion, so they abandon religion all together, which is what I feel was my cousin's thought process.

On a different note, have you listened to Hamilton? I know I'm a few months behind the Hamilton boat, but I am BLOWN AWAY. Daniel and I listened to it while we were driving to and from various places at my family reunion in Seattle. By the end I had a few tears rolling down my face and I was trying really hard not to let anyone know I was crying because we were in the car with my cousins who were not aware the most amazing piece of work had just ended. I looked over to Daniel and he was crying too. Hahahaha. Oh my gosh, but it's so good. Daniel says he feels like it's like the Book of Mormom when you are on a mission. You try and tell people you have just found the BEST THING EVER and you want them to experience it themselves. And the people you are telling this to don't understand you until they actually read the book. And then they are converted. You cannot comprehend how wonderful Hamilton is until you have listened to it yourself. Now I understand missionary work better. The musical moves me on several levels. It really evokes strong emotions of patriotism and rekindles belief in the American dream: "How does an orphan, bastard, son of a whore... become one of the most successful people in American history?" ( I couldn't remember the whole line, so I just ad libbed.) And when you think about the Revolution and the odds they were up against your heart starts to beat a little louder. And you realize that the Founding Fathers did not all get along, but they all had a dream of the United States, so they worked through their differences and accomplished something amazing. And when you think of politics today, some tears escape your eyes and you wonder how it's been reduced to bickering parties with no common goals (and Donald Trump!). And the story is so moving on a personal level. Eliza and Alexander! Phillip! Oh, it's so good.

Last thing. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Have you read it? I read it for Berkeley book club and I really liked it.

Famous

Just a thought that popped into my head. After we both pass away somebody will find this blog, and since you will have been a famous writer, our blog will be IMMORTALIZED. Similar to the Adams-Jefferson letters. The only catch in this plan is that I will not have been a famous writer, so my end of the letters might be a tad boring to your fans. But still, I'll be a tiny bit famous!

Hi

Hello. I'm full of nothing to say but I want to talk to you. So here's a blog post. 

One of the things I miss the most about living with you is that I had so many opportunities to divulge the most insignificant details of my life to you and that in itself was a lot of fun. Some examples: talking to you about people in my English class that I really didn't like (or talking about the English professor I had a mega crush on), or describing the time when this guy asked me how old I was and when I said "18" he said, "Never mind, too young." Haha. I wouldn't really go out of my way to tell people those things so nowadays they mostly are kept to myself. But I still really want to tell YOU! Because I feel like that's how we bond? We just weave this web that we both are so familiar with and the same things are funny to us, and the littlest events have some sort of significance because the are placed in this context of a million back stories. 

So just some weird little things I want to tell you that don't really solicit a Skype session or phone call, but that I would tell you if we were roommates. 

Writing this on the bus. Oh yeah, being so productive on my 30 minute commute. 

Guess who snapchatted me yesterday. Kelen Capener! I don't know if you remember him, but he's the guy in a rock band who I met in my econ classes sophomore year. He left BYU after my sophomore year so I haven't seen him for awhile. It was the weirdest thing. I rode the BART on Saturday into the city and I started thinking about how Kelen is from Walnut Creek, which is on the BART line and wouldn't that be weird if we randomly saw each other on the BART one day? And then a few days later I get this snapchat. So I think we are going to hang out this weekend. Except there is the snag of being married. It's makes socializing awkward sometimes, not because I'm in love with Kelen or anything like that. It's just weird to bring people from two different time periods together. Like, should I bring Daniel along because why would I leave him at home? But he doesn't know Kelen at all, so I don't think it would be very fun for any of us if I forced Daniel to come. Remember when I brought Lincoln to the cabin? That's how I'm imagining this could go, haha. In my mind mashing people together who don't know each other seems like a fine idea, but in practice it's awkward for all parties. 

Second thing I want to talk about. ZUMBA. Zumba is worthy of its own blog post, but we'll start with a paragraph. I have the zaniest Zumba instructor. He's this lurpy Jewish guy who's wears cotton gym shorts and a fanny pack, but he is so cool that those seem like the coolest gym clothes ever. Our hour long Zumba class turns into a crazy social experiment every week. He gets everyone so pumped up on Lady Gaga and Katy Perry that we lose all abandon. We are all just dancing like we are the last people on earth and no one is the least bit self conscious and the whole time he's screaming, "You're beautiful, you're gorgeous, you're a model! POSE POSE POSE POSE." And then we all unashamedly strike model poses for the imaginary camera. ALL OF US. It's so crazy. And then he'll make us "freestyle" around the room and hi-five 3 new people and EVERYONE DOES IT. It's like a hairspray movie. "Hi, I'm Carla," I say while I'm doing jelly-fish legs. One time a girl collapsed mid-Katy Perry song and when she was able to get up and walk herself out of the room, the class erupted in cheers. And we were all chanting, "She'll be back, she'll be back," like we were one mega dance team. No one knew her, but in a way we all knew her because we were her, dancing our hearts out almost to the point of a frenzied collapse. And the best part of all is this instructor made us dance to "Having the Time of Our Lives," and I truly felt like we were the Dirty Dancing cast at the closing scene of the movie. Magical.