Learning in progress…

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This week I feel like I am still processing what I learned. I have had so many ups and downs- it was in many ways for me a very hard week and I am still not quite sure why…

So I am ruminating over what I learned this week and frankly it is not all that clear yet. I learned, for one, that I need to take things less seriously. It is very easy for me to wrap myself up in distress over things that are not worth it. I learned that I need to learn to take my own advice- I am much more calm and reasonable when dealing with other people’s issues, but sometimes I let mine seem impossible. I also learned that time outside and time exercising is invaluable and I can’t try to pretend that I don’t have time for it- when in fact- I don’t have time not to do it.

So today we went out for a long walk and we played and we looked at flowers and insects and snakes and such- and I cherished cool breezes and the sweat rolling down my neck… and now this week- I relax. All will amazingly get done- or it won’t and either way it will be ok.

This Week I Learned Many Things…

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I am participating in Shimelle’s Learn Something New Everyday Class again this year and it has been lovely… Here are some highlights from the week….

September 1st- Sometimes, especially when grades are due I think that I assign too much writing.

September 2nd- If I keep moving-it keeps getting easier…

September 3rd- The things I dread doing are often quite enjoyable… (I dreaded parent- teacher conferences this week- because it is so tiring, but I do like hearing from parents and talking to students one on one…so it turned out to be quite good)

September 4th- It is all a matter of perspective, truly.

September 5th- Flowers, chocolate, and books never cease to make me smile.

All in all a wonderful first week of September. It was a very busy week at school, but I made it through… Yesterday Jon and I went to Tallahassee for the day and had much of the fun. I got a lovely, new, super short hair cut, some birthday books from Jon, and some lovely treats from their small, but lovely downtown market. Then once we got home we had dinner with friends who presented me with lovely birthday treats of flowers, chocolate, and an amazing vegan, hot fudge sauce cake (OH MY GOODNESS- IT WAS WONDERFUL).

So loveliness- I can’t wait to see what next week’s learning will bring.

Jumping In

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I love this picture- I took it last week when I was sitting at the park… at first there were several turtles sitting on the rocks, but slowly they all started to jump back into the rushing water below them. I have felt like those turtles this past week- I was sitting and sunning myself and looking at the rushing water below- wondering can I handle it? Can I handle this rush- or should I just sit here and wait a little while longer? And I have decided that it is time- much like the turtle above to jump on in.

I am looking forward to this fall and September. I turn 32 next month and I am looking forward to that age and what it might bring. I have gotten more comfortable in my skin lately, but more than that I am starting to realize that I can push myself a bit more then I have been. I am capable of more- I am not fragile- I can do whatever  I set my mind to… now I must simply set my to it.

I will start that this September in many ways, but one will be to participate in Shimelle’s Learn Something New Everyday. This will be a good month for me to stop and document what I learn through this process of pushing myself a bit more… and to remember that everyday I learn something and everyday I make progress- even when it feels like I am inching ever so slowly on land- even when it feels like I am being tossed about in a wild rush of current.

one hundred years of solitude

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I now consider it quite unfortunate that I have not read any other novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez up until this point. This is one of those books that I had been meaning to read for quite some time, but some how had never managed to do so. Fortunately, I have now corrected that and plan to read much more of his work in the future.

This magical novel, set in the mythical town of Macondo, follows the rise and fall of the Buendia family. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran are the heads of the Buendia clan and founders of Macondo. They inhabit this book and the town of Macondo with a fierce tenacity set on the survival and success of their clan. But while the Buendia clan does seem set on survival its members somehow always end up striving for this on their own. In life, love, war and death this is a family of individuals fighting their own very personal battles.

Each Buendia lives in a world that is self created. Amaranta looses her one true love  and lives in a world of bitter jealously and resentment, never allowing another into her heart. She never finds peace even when she eventually accepts that she will die before her rival and sister, Rebbecca.  Colonel Aureliano Beundia who fought 37 battles and won none retreats into his own world saying “I am sorry, but the war has done away with everything.” Melquiades, a traveling magic man of sorts, haunts the novel even after his death. But that is not so unusual for death in this world is never the end of things– it is merely a different way of being.

Too vast to pin down to any one place this novel takes over and envelopes you into its world. Taking much care that you enter alone- for it is the only way to truly grasp the heart-wrenching beauty of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The Bookseller of Kabul

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In this work Asne Seierstad managed to lift me out of my own reality and into Afghanistan and a reality so very different from what I know. A world where many different ruling factions have made selling books a crime and yet a man, Sultan, persists in doing so- because he feels strongly the need for books and history in his society. He is a free thinker and a modern man, but in his home he rules with an intensity that makes me shudder. It is so hard for me to grasp a place where as a woman you have no options, as I think of them now, no freedom to follow your heart or to walk your own path. A place where it is tantamount to adultery to accept letters from a boy and where a woman is most honorable if she expresses no will of her own.

Don’t misunderstand me- this is a slice of life from Kabul and does not represent the whole, a whole that I have very little understanding of… but this slice is mesmerizing. Seierstad artfully creates a space for you to sit with her as she observes this Afghani family trying to survive and thrive in the impossible seeming world that they live in.

Simply put this work is amazing.