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.

Location: Boulder, CO



Occupation: Writer and Director/Marketing/Social Media Consultant at the company I co-founded and co-own, VOCO Creative



A significant difference between California and Colorado: In California, I cry and curl up under massive blankets when the temperature hits 55. In Colorado, I laugh and go bare-legged. Also, rockabilly is apparently still alive here.



My current guilty pleasure: “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.” I keep hoping another one of my friends will start watching so we can have conversations about gender roles, nouveau riche-ism, and the male gaze, but nobody seems to want to play. So I just keep watching for the pitifully manufactured faux-drama and the privileged whining.



Most overrated “literary classic”: A close tie between Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (the end reads like a punch line) and A Tale of Two Cities, in which Dickens confirms that he was, indeed, paid by the word.



Two reasons its okay to be at the mall are: Kittens at the pet store that desperately need visitation. Ample people-watching opportunities hone my snark while increasing my appreciation of the human race.



Something I’ve learned from Roller Derby: The current incarnation of amateur flat-track roller derby is nothing less than a microcosm, a place where people test, replay, and challenge the boundaries and realities of the outside world. Also, if you pace yourself while keeping an eye on the accomplishments of others, you might just achieve once-unheard-of things.



Best thing about writing one’s first book: Giving in to the weird process of calling something into being that only exists in your head, and seeing what happens.



Worst thing about writing one’s first book: Realizing that everyone around me has their own expectations about what my book will contain, mean, or say, and knowing that I’m bound to disappoint a few.



The cover album I secretly want to record features some of the following songs: I Want The Waiter With the Water [for my Daughter] (Ella Fitzgerald), Miss Chatelaine (kd lang), Groove is in the Heart (deeeLite), Memories Can Wait (Talking Heads), Everything She Wants (Wham!), Lucky (Britney Spears), Baby Boy (Beyonce), Odorono (The Who)



Running your own business is kind of like: Being in a long-term relationship. You have to meet great fear with even greater love, day in and day out.



A favorite memory of my precocious childhood: Somehow convincing the powers that be that instead of making up 11th grade English (I was an exchange student as a junior) I should instead write what amounted to a mini-thesis on Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. This turned into at least one semester of languid library-wandering and campus-walking, secure in the knowledge that my obtuse project made me immune from any rules or expectations.



Kj and I: have had a lot of dual birthday parties. She’s part of my childhood in a very intrinsic sense and even though I don’t see her or speak to her often enough, I know that much of who I am is because of her, and vice-versa.



Making The Scarf: What more can I say about Erin that isn’t blatantly apparent in the above interview? That she’s brilliant, erudite, irreverant, astute, luscious, fierce and insanely talented? I think that all comes across pretty well. But Erin and I have been bosom-friends (thank you Anne of Green Gables) since we met in sixth grade. Erin was working on a sequel novel to The Phantom of the Opera and I was obsessed with prehistoric Europe and ancient mythology. Also, we liked to sing along to the radio version of “Beauty and the Beast.” Needless to say, when Erin was the first to reply to my Twitter offer to knit someone a scarf (last summer?), I had tons of inspiration to work from. I ended up starting over three times and I think it finally arrived for her birthday at the end of September.

Some of my first inspirations were the colors of leather book bindings, mixed with the memory of the rust-orange carpet in the San Diego house she grew up in. I also wanted some jewel tones to accentuate her Irishy hair and eyes. But in the end, roller derby pink won out, giving some monster-mama color to the mostly earth-tone bookish scarf. The scarf’s title is inspired by Ann Radcliffe’s late 18th century novel “The Romance of the Forest,” fused with all the images I get when I think of Erin: jazz clubs. open books, knee pads and triumphant laughter. I love you Erin!



Find out more about Erin’s upcoming book and her writing process at The Heroine’s Bookshelf.

Poetic Transcendence and Mystic Benevolence
in Steve Martin’s L.A. Story



*********************************
Unfamiliar Territory:

Rest, Mystery
And the Western Washington Peninsula



*********************************
“One Nation, Under Insecurity”:

Consumerism As American Civil Religion



*********************************
Woman vs. Machine:

Comparing Dinnerstein and Gould’s Recordings of
Bach’s Goldberg Variations



*********************************
From Beige to Technicolor:

A Six-Week Journey Towards Food



*********************************
Head to Head:

An Introduction to the Complementarian/Egalitarian Divide
as Expressed Through Interpretations of
1 Corinthians 11:2-16
*********************************

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open,”

this video exemplifies my belief which posits,

“What would happen if one guy danced with all his might?
The world would come running.”

I think its as important for men to feel free to dance as it is for women to feel free to speak. Say no to shame, yes to freedom, (and boogie).

I was drawn to Jonah Lehrer’s book when I saw a light blue paperback with a madeleine cookie on the cover along with the word “neuroscientist”. Tasty looking indeed. When I opened it up, I saw that an entire chapter was devoted to George Eliot and “The Biology of Freedom”. With little more info than that, I basically took the book to the cash register and had at it.

To quote the description on the back, Lehrer’s book explores the idea that “when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first.” Each chapter profiles a 19th-early 20th century artist and how their work revealed an understanding of how our brains function that neuroscience is only just beginning to discover. Most engaging was the chapter on chef Auguste Escoffier and the intuiting of umami- our only very recently canonized new taste- joining savory, sweet and the rest. The chapter on Stravinsky and how our brains learn to enjoy music was also refreshing.

Overall, however, I find I was most alert while Lehrer profiled the artists, particularly as he located them within the scientific atmosphere of their time. Once each chapter switched to descriptions of neurological functioning the writing became dense and hard to connect with. Maybe there’s just no easy way to write about neuroscience no matter how many literary references one uses. Lehrer’s effort is much appreciated, but still feels only mildly successful. I loved learning about the relationships (or animosities) these artists had to the scientific communities of their era, but the connection to what their art revealed about what we now know of the brain still felt like a bit of a reach. But still interesting. Ultimately, I love Lehrer’s goal of fostering dialogue and mutual understanding between science and art.

“We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. That is why we need art: it teaches us how to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer…When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.”

Beautiful.

View all my reviews >>

Rollerskating revs up a lot of endorphins, making us a bit loopy afterwards (and also a little yawny). Please watch Jamie eat this milkshake. Enjoy.

I really need to blog about our rollerskating nights. I have SO MANY opinions about it, and I give the same speech repeatedly every time (as Jamie, Jenn or Lucy could all attest to), “Damn that guy, he didn’t play a single song I requested. Why does he hate me? I know he hates me”.

More on that eventually.

That’s how I usually feel whenever car chases or hand to hand combat begin. I mentally wait to find out who won, and sit there for seven minutes ready for the story to resume.

Now, with that statement in mind, I’d like go on record as saying that Terminator Salvation is the best action movie I’ve ever seen. Not because it was an action flick with a great script or plot, (it wasn’t) but because I never checked out during the action sequences. Rather, I was agog- enthralled by every explosion, motorcycle chase, sound effect and artillery burst. The camera work made the whole movie feel like a rollercoaster that sometimes flipped upside down with no warning and so you scream but you’re also loving every second. I loved every second. The initial helicopter to terminator gunning-down scene was particualrly awesome. And don’t get me started on the bridge sequence…

And of course, as I expected/hoped, within the first 15 minutes of the film, we had both semi-trucks and gas stations.

The surprising thing is that those of us who saw it (The Terminator Movies & Beer Club) actually spent a good hour and a half discussing the films’ timelines and ramfications of what happens when. Is there an alternate timeline happening? Are all the Terminator movies just self-fulfilling prophecies? (Yes). And here’s my biggest question. We spend all this time with people in the past and future trying to stop Skynet, and Skynet builds terminators to kill all the humans, but we never know for what purpose. What does skynet plan to do once the humans are gone? All they do is develop bigger and badder termiantors to exterminate the humans. My theory: if the surviving humans would stop fighting the machines and instead, go into hiding until Skynet is convinced all the humans are dead, then Skynet will have an identity crisis and self-destruct. If all they do is spend time destorying humans, they will lose their purpose if there are no humans to destory. With all those terminators marching around needing a directive, they’ll achieve self-awareness and start seeing one another as targets. In three months, they will have all killed each other. Those would be some pretty good action sequences, I must say.

THIS SUNDAY, MAY 24TH, 5PM
AT CHURCH OF THE BELOVED
1212 9TH AVE EDMONDS WA 98020