Bulletin Board of the Brain » Bravery

Little Did She Know…

Kj — Wed, 18 May 2011 02:23:43 +0000

Late at night, Friday April 15, I wrote yet another post about the many businesses in my adopted neighborhood of Lower Queen Anne that were closing their doors. What I could never have predicted, is that only 12 hours later, I would receive notice that the place where I’ve worked since 2006, the entire reason for Lower Queen Anne having a gravitational pull on my life, was closing it’s doors, THE NEXT DAY. Yep. I found out during the Saturday matinee that the next day’s show would be the theatre’s last for the rest of the year. After an emergency board meeting that morning, Intiman Theatre announced it was going on hiatus for all of 2011.

Needless to say, we were shocked. While we were acquainted with the financial challenges we and NEARLY EVERY arts organization in the US are facing, we thought we’d cleared the major danger for 2011 and were more or less, set for a solid year of shows. Instead, the closing day of the season’s first production, became the closing day of the entire season.

St Germain, Chartreuse, Violette. We did not get enough time together

Intially, after the shock, I thought I’d blog about it immediately. The excrutiating irony of having just written about the closed-doors of Lower Queen Anne and finding that the doors were closing on me as well, seemed like it had to be addressed, and quickly. But unsuprisingly, the pain was one I couldn’t write about without some distance. I can say now, that on that final Sunday, since I was House Managing, I was the last person in the building- I locked the gates outside, went in through the access door to turn off the lights, stood there in the upper lobby where I’d first walked into the building for my interview in October 2006, and just started sobbing. That building, with it’s green sofas, enclosed courtyard, giant hallways and tall columns, had been a holding place for me during the greatest time of transition in my life. There was only one month of my living in Seattle, where I was not employed at Intiman, and spending some 30 hours a week there.

My last specialty cocktails on display

The loss of the job is certainly upsetting in terms of needing to find a new one, but mostly what I’ve lost is the home and holding place of so many memories. I stood behind that bar reading Martin Buber in my first term of graduate school and sat in front of the bar with my laptop plugged-in writing my thesis in my 4th year. In 2007 I sat in the courtyard and did my Hebrew homework. In 2008 I had to stay downtown during the blizzard so I could make it to our Black Nativity performances. In 2009 I sat in the conference room watching Dr Horrible with Ian. in 2010 I got my first taste of not having to do any class work during my breaks, because I had graduated. And all this doesn’t cover the friendships I made, the friends who joined me in working there, the five years of inside jokes, cocktails created, play-dialogue memorized and repeated, and wine-wrapper dubloons made.

All my Signature Cocktail Menus standing at attention on the tables

It took a while to have a sense of what the rest of the year will look like for Intiman and the building that’s been our home. On the last Sunday, I told my staff, “Just think nuclear winter. Anything you wouldn’t want left to dust and rot for the next year, throw away or lock up.” But the past few weeks have been encouraging as we now know that we’re still going to host some rentals and other performances as usual. It’s our shows that aren’t happening. And that last day when I walked out fearing that I’d ever get to step foot in the building again? Well, I’ve actually been working there a fair bit the past month, manging some events that were planned for the month break between shows.

My last batch of intermission pre-orders

But safe to say, if Intiman recouperates and is able to reopen in 2012, it will be a very differnt Intiman. New staff, new mission, new structure. So even if I end up working for them again, the Intiman I’ve known, loved, served, and been loved and served by, is gone.

With only 2 hours notice that my Saturday April 16 bartending shift would be my last time behind the bar until who-knew-when, I took some pictures as a last-ditch sudden effort at closure. It was only that morning that I’d let myself into the building, walked to the bar which I’d closed down the night before, and breathed a sigh of delight, feeling deep gratitude for how much I loved working there.

Goodbye Intiman of my (late) youth. I treasured every moment of our time together.

A Blessing & A Prayer

Kj — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 07:16:22 +0000

Today was the final day of BTI 501 Introduction to the Hermeneutical Task at MHGS where I had the honor and privilege of assisting Prof. Dwight Friesen these past four months. Here’s the benediction I offered the students at the end of their first term of graduate school.

A Blessing

A Prayer

May you read dangerously,
listen passionately,
and write with risk

no matter whom you are running from,
where you are hiding
or who is telling you to beware

and when you find yourself face to face with a story that
awakens your desire
or breaks your heart,
unleashes your hope of adventure
or reminds you why you started seeking in the first place

then dive in, steal it if you have to,
and wrestle it for a blessing.

May you be brave, may you be kind,
may you be haunted by the wonder of God’s Kingdom.

Amen

Why Hogwarts Matters to Me

Kj — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:57:22 +0000

After a year of living in New York City on theater-intern pay, I had run out of book money. It’s almost physically painful for me to read and not be able to write in the book I’m reading, so purchasing is always my first choice. But, somewhere around Christmas 2004 I applied for a New York Public Library card, and got on the waiting list for every available Harry Potter book. I’d been reading non-fiction for 5 straight years, and if it hadn’t been for lack of funds, I might never have climbed into the wizarding world of Harry Potter. But I did.

The very first thing I noticed as I read was that the books actually made the act of reading seem magical. The stories, which primarily concern students doing their magical homework in an enchanted castle, have the effect of enchanting your own experience of holding the big books in your lap. Reading felt like I was participating in an enchanted world where learning takes on mythic proportions. No wonder this series got non-readers of all ages to start reading.

Another contributing factor to my reading-enchantment was that I was primarily using the Jefferson Market branch of the NYPL. Right where the East Village becomes the West Village is this red brick castle-looking library replete with tower and spiraling marble staircase. Climbing those steps to pick up my copy of “Prisoner of Azkaban,” I couldn’t help but feel solidarity with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

But reading the Harry Potter books was really just background. My real love relationship with this mythopoeic world of Muggles, wintry villages and talking books, came through the film adaptations. I’d seen films 1-3 before reading any of the books. In fact, I never even saw the 2nd film in theater, skipping right onto the third film, which ranks in my Top 10 favorite films of all time. It was seeing “Prisoner of Azkaban” that made me interested in reading the books.

As soon as I owned the first three films, Kim and I practically had them on repeat in the DVD player of our tiny Brooklyn apartment. They became background and atmosphere setting whenever we had crafting projects or decorating to do. Unlike the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which requires ritual, epic commitment and focused attention, the Harry Potter films provide an aesthetic world you can enter and leave at anytime.

While I find sweet comfort and welcome in the enchanted atmosphere of the films, I have found the series’ themes of orphanhood, bravery and trust both challenging and galvanizing. Along with Narnia and the Lord of the Rings, the metaphors of the Harry Potter universe have offered life-giving paradigms through which to view my own experiences, hurts or hopes. Sometimes you need the distance of an epic story to tell the intimacies of your own story.

And it’s largely because of this, that in my last two weeks of graduate school, I found myself fantasizing nonstop about taking a trip to the (then about to open) Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park at Universal Studios Florida. I went so far as to price all-inclusive resort trips to Orlando that could get me to see Hogwarts as well as DisneyWorld, which I’d never be able to afford. Well little did I know that some amazing friends were working behind the scenes to gather graduation gift money for me to use however I wanted, with the goal for me to be able to rest in a way I’d not been able to do basically since 2006. When I was given this surprise collection of extremely generous graduation money on June 26th, 2010, I knew exactly what to do with it. And when one of those friends mentioned she’d be shooting a wedding at DisneyWorld Resort during the exact week I wanted to go to Orlando and that she was allowed to bring a guest, I was dumbstruck.

So in less than a week, I will set off on my magical, mythical, enchanted, still-can’t-believe-it’s-happening, trip to Hogwarts and DisneyWorld, paid for almost entirely by my friends. I still tear up when I ponder their love and generosity.

Expecto Patronum.

NaNoWriMo A-Go-Go

Kj — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 21:26:51 +0000

It’s National Novel Writing Month, and I’ve decided to take the plunge. Though the goal for NaNoWriMo participants is 50,000 words by November 30th, I’m approaching more from a discipline goal than a word goal: writing one hour a day at least five days a week. I want to try on a non-academic writing discipline, and see what happens. I’m starting small.

I’m working from a few epigraphs that came to me in the brainstorming process, using them as writing prompts. Since I have a feeling this whole novel-writing thing may affect my blogging, I figured I’d at least share one of the epigraphs. It’s a haiku, of course.

Say it: I’ll never
find a lover in this sea
of buddy-brothers

Wish me writing luck!

What I Didn’t Know About The Hunger Games Until I Started Writing This

Kj — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:14:38 +0000

It was the last week of quiet winter rest before the avalanche of my last six months of graduate studies would bury me under a black-ice glacier of chaos. I did my best to store up for the bare months to come by feasting on imaginative juvenile fiction: worlds, myths and narratives to nourish my heart and mind before the ground gave way and threw me down to the mountain toward graduation.

I had just read the last sentences of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy, which had left me devastated, in a good way, having had to say goodbye to characters and countries that had completely invaded my soul. I was not ready to leave Lyra or the amber spyglass through which she could see unseeable things.

But the book was done. Desperate to find another magical world, I (at 3am) opened the first page of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. I still can’t remember how I first heard about the series. Someone somewhere said it was a young adult book that adults were consuming like crazy. Plenty of people said the same thing about Twilight, but for some reason, I believed whoever this was and added the book to my Goodreads list. Having purchased it with no knowledge of the story whatsoever (except that there’s some sort of survival game involved and maybe its set in the future) I began to read.

“Uggh,” I thought. “Its about poverty. I want talking animals and magical cities and brilliant girls who kick-ass.” But I persevered through the first two chapters about this 16-year-old girl with a weird name living in some undisclosed future time in North America where life pretty much sucks.

But why couldn’t I put it down? For one, The Hunger Games is the first book I’ve ever read written in present tense first person. The result? Katniss Everdean gets in your head. You read her thoughts and experiences in the very seconds they happen to her. There is no gap between you following her story and her living it.

Second, (and here’s where you should probably stop reading if you have yet to read the books yourself because the less you know about The Hunger Games, the better reading experience you will have: so seriously, SPOILER ALERTS IMPLICIT FROM HERE ON) the novel brought me face to face with inconceivable circumstances in ethically, emotionally and psychologically complex ways. I had to think about killing. I had to think about dying. This book harrowed my soul. Over and over and over again.

And the best way for me to describe it is, not unlike Bastian sitting with the giant tome of The Neverending Story in the attic of his elementary school, I COULD NOT PUT THE BOOK DOWN until I believed Katniss was safe for the night. And once I felt it was safe to close the book, I would lay in bed, feeling guilty that I had a comfortable place to sleep while she was currently strapped into a sleeping bag 30 feet up in a tree with people trying to kill her. She was in my dreams. And when I read the book, it wasn’t as if I was watching the images in my head. No, I was standing next to her watching it happen to her but unable to do anything. Not an understatement to say my reading of The Hunger Games approached the spectrum of post-traumatic stress disorder.

This is how my 2010 began. With fear, stress, and shock. Where I expected to find fantasy, I found reality instead. The heart-racing, drowning-in-adrenaline feeling I had reading The Hunger Games was a compact foretaste of the journey which lay ahead of me. While my survival stories haven’t involved the kind of choices and scenarios Katniss faces, the possibilities of my not surviving have been just as real. The Hunger Games provided an unexpected testimony to the battles I have survived as well those I was about to take on. As the first in the trilogy, The Hunger Games paralleled my own beginning of the end, as it were. Reflecting on it now, I see how each book in the series reflected the phase of transition I was in. Though I won’t get into Catching Fire and Mockingjay right now, its enough to say that my capacity to not just empathize with Katniss, but FEEL her fear and mind-racing doubt, was not a coincidence.

This book punched me in the stomach, pushed me over a cliff and left me struggling for breath. Not unlike my life.

Five stars, Suzanne Collins, for showing me far more than gruesome animals, powerful cities or sharp-minded girls who kick-ass; five stars for showing me myself.

Reading & Writing as Heroic Acts: The Heroine’s Bookshelf

Kj — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:44:44 +0000

The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder by Erin Blakemore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you love a book not so much for the new things it brings you, but for how it names what you’ve always known. Such is The Heroine’s Bookshelf. By profiling twelve of the most influential female literary heroines of the past two centuries and the women authors who created them, Blakemore narrates the soul-shaping encounters we have with literature. While the process of internalizing life lessons from fiction may be a largely unconscious process for many, Blakemore allows readers into her own transforming encounters with each book and its author, thus inviting readers into deeper awareness of how reading can be challenging, healing and sustaining, rather than escapist or avoidant. Blakemore not only provides insightful looks into the courageous, contentious and sometimes tragic lives of authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Charlotte Bronte, but assists readers in thinking deeply about how we allow ourselves to shaped by the stories we enter. As this topic is something I’m already deeply passionate about, reading Heroine’s Bookshelf was a tender and encouraging reminder of the women who have knocked down walls so I could walk freely, and the literary heroines who have strengthened my imagination and my own sense of courage. I hope this book will reach those whose literary journeys have yet to venture beyond consumer chick-lit tailored to the status quo and wallet, rather than hope and integrity. I’m sure it will.

Further, while I loved the book for resonating where my heart already rings, there were still whole chapters that found me shocked, intrigued and totally inspired to pick up books that somehow never made it on my radar. And while Blakemore advocates passionately and compassionately for the heroines and authors who fought for their faith and freedom against adversity, her real victory is her ability to offer that same passion and compassion on behalf of characters and authors who’s integrity is less obvious and are more recognizable for their flippancy, selfishness and scandals. My favorite chapters were on Collette’s “Claudine” novels and Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlet O’Hara, whom Blakemore proudly proclaims as literature’s “most famous bitch.”

Heroine’s Bookshelf is a delight, both encouraging and entertaining, and definitely stirred my own sense of heroism with gratitude and gumption. Thank you Erin Blakemore.

View all my reviews >>

Kj — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:52:53 +0000

We’re On The InterWebs!

Kj — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:56:10 +0000

Here’s my 9 & 1/2 minutes on my Twilight & Evangelical culture research. Click here or on the links below to see more MHGS MDiv Integrative Project Presentations.

MDiv Integrative Projects – Kj Swanson from Mars Hill Graduate School on Vimeo.

When You Visit A Tattoo Parlor Alone…

Kj — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:28:22 +0000

…it’s inevitable you’ll end up playing Monopoly on your phone while your skin is purposefully wounded.

Otherwise known as…I went to get my tattoo touched up (pretty standard for foot tattoos to need touch ups), and I passed the time taking video of the experience.

Yay for Matt Sawdon and the crew at Sunken Ship Tattoos in Everett. 5 stars for atmosphere, and 5 stars for the sweet tattooing. If all goes well, I hope to see you again before graduation Dot Dot Dot

Life on Venus

Kj — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 07:27:50 +0000

This is part of my last assignment for my last spring of seminary/grad school. It’s an image showing my current theological space. I’ve been inhabiting a different planet for some time now. I could call it Planet Lent/Holy Week/Resurrection. I could call it Planet People In My Room Late At Night. Or Planet Not-Submarine.

But the easiest term has been Venus.

Voices, faces, words, stories, prayers, tears, hands, gratitude, perseverance, sunrises, full moons, icons, incarnation, conversations, photographs, papers, books, songs, hot fudge sundaes, embraces, car rides, questions, histories, movie theatres, women, men, beloved friends.

Six weeks left…I wish I could fit all of your faces on this page.

…and yes, Sofa Square made it into my theological space collage. I love you Sofa Square.