Books:
A Marginal Jew
. This is a series of four books, actually, and I’m on the second. They are dense reading, with the end notes to each chapter taking more space than the text, and it is ponderous and takes real mental effort to get through. Yet the level of detail in Meier’s analysis brings to light connections I’ve never seen before in the Gospels. Brace yourself for some heresy. 🙂 I’ve often felt like Jesus is kind of tiresome and deliberately obtuse in the way he talks (an impression that really is underscored this Easter, listening to the entire Last Supper discourse in John day after day after day after day). But as Meier sifts through history and context in order to determine what parts of things were actually said by Jesus, and which were later additions, he ends up distilling the essence of passages in a way that brings humor and emotion and exasperation to the front. It helps me see Jesus as, well, a real person.
T
he Language of Flowers. Just enchanting, and heartbreaking, and mesmerizing.
Music:
Love. This. Song.
Food:
Steel cut oats. (Thanks, Kelley!) With dark chocolate. Although I’m less than enamored of the way they overboil in the microwave.
Miscellaneous:
Manual Mode on my Canon Rebel. The pictures have so much character. They’re often not worth much, while I’m learning, but I’m newly cognizant of just how bland and generic that “auto” setting I’ve been leaning on is. I went out to the Pinnacles again this week. The last time I went, it was still late winter, and I hadn’t started playing with manual yet when I took the pictures for that slide show. Here’s a sample of this week’s pictures.
(Can you guess which ONE of the above pictures was taken with the camera’s auto settings?)
My new novel. I am in love. Is it naiveté to whisper in my head that I really, really think this might be The One, at long last? Or is that still second-draft talking, before I hit the “love-hate” stage? The above song is my theme song for this book. And I’m using the Pinnacles for a setting. I just feel like everything is coming together. If I could sit down and work on it all day, I would be a happy woman indeed. But it’s probably fresher and more efficient because I have to stop and think. Stare at your own words too long and you start to get in love with the sound of your own prose. Distance helps me ask questions that need asking.
There are my happy places for this mid-May Friday morning. What’s making you happy today?
Kathleen M. Basi 