Dear Oscar

Dear Oscar,

It's been a year since last I wrote to you. Another year, another night of longing from afar. Where do we stand now, one more year gone by? In this past year, have I come any closer to holding you in my arms?

Well, I'd like to think so.

It was when Tina Fey and Steve Martin took the stage that my heart truly began to flutter. Not only because I adore them both (now, don't be jealous, love), but because as the page from a screenplay rose majestically behind them, it felt familiar. The format. The courier typeface. The line breaks, the spacing. These are the pages that I so often stare at, filling them with my words and stories, hoping that someday, they might catch your attention.

I've realized, though, that you are not the only tiny little statue over whom I swoon. I do have other crushes... Tony, Obie, Pulitzer... I feel that I should come clean, confess this now rather than making things awkward down the line. But you were my first, and for that, as well as for your sheer glamor factor, you will always hold a special place in my heart. (And let's be honest - you get around, my dear, and are not always entirely discriminating in your selection of consorts.)

I've also realized that, even if our love goes unrequited for years to come, well, not to bring up the not-always-discriminating thing again, but - my heart will go on. You're just sitting there, waiting. Though it's not usually my way, I know that I have to make the first move here.

I'm working on it.

Yours,

Beth

The Actual Temperature

While I was deciding what to wear today, I turned on the weather report. On the main screen, it said in giant letters: "Today's high will be 57 degrees." The monotone voice reading the words onscreen repeated the same: "Today's high will be 57 degrees."

But then the small ticker at the bottom of the screen caught my eye: "Current temperature: 66 degrees."

So. The station continues to report that the high will be only 57, even when their own equipment is simultaneously feeding the information that, in fact, it is already five degrees warmer than the projected high temp.

Hmm.

There's something off about this. New evidence is right there on the screen, and yet the powers that be are unresponsive. No, no, they seem to say - our prediction was 57, and come hell or high water (or higher temperatures), we're sticking with it.

Hmm.

I don't think this issue is limited to weathermen. [Live or automated.]

It's a problem I've had. Staring at that tiny 66, while the authoritative high projection of 57 loomed above it, my mind began cataloging times that I have made decisions, stayed in situations, took action - or didn't - based not on the 66, but on the 57. It's an important reminder: though sometimes harder to see, scrolling along the bottom of our proverbial screens, sometimes, quietly, there's been a shift. Things didn't go the way we thought they would; initial forecasts were inaccurate. Rather than continue to work with the older information, the theoretical projected high temperature which we've been planning for, expecting, clinging to -- we need to periodically look around, and see if more accurate information has become available.

It's hard, sometimes, when we were so confident that things were going to go one way, to accept that our projection was wrong. But it's usually better to make our decisions, take action, and, when we need to, get out of situations ... or get into them... not based on what our original forecast was, but based on the actual temperature.

...blocked...

When people think of "writer's block," they tend to think of nothingness. No ideas. No clue where to go next, how to fill the page, what to write about. They don't really mean "block" - they mean "blank." I posit that most cases of "writer's block" are misdiagnosed (or at least, misnomers): most are actually referring to Writer's Blank.

I can't remember the last time I suffered from Writer's Blank... but lately, I am absolutely chronically afflicted with a more literal writer's block: like a clogged sink, or blocked arteries, my problem is not one of nothingness but one of being overwhelmingly stuffed. Stuffed so chock full of ideas that they cannot flow from me; like a backed-up pipe, I am unproductive not because of vacancy but because of crowding.

I see inspiration all around. It's getting suffocating... but mostly in a good way. Thus, I can't give it up. I'm having trouble focusing because I'm so grateful for so much rich material, I can't let any of it go. I take notes here, there, everywhere. Characters, slips of dialogue, whole storylines. I jot down notes and try to not lose any of these ideas... and now I have so many just-begun projects that I fear I will never finish any of them.

I think if I were to lay on a metaphorical medical table, and a team of Doctors of Composition were to do a little biopsy, they would be astonished at the findings. Upon opening me up, they would rush to page all their colleagues.

"My God! Get down here! Hoo boy, you have GOT to take a look at this writer! She's suffering from extreme playwrightitis; her novel cavities are filled beyond belief; she has multiple outbreaks of character infection, and the worst case of one-liners I've ever seen! I keep cutting and cutting, and it just keeps on coming out... I can't staunch it... get this woman a laptop, some caffeine, and a year of her time being her own, STAT!"

That, folks, is a serious case of writer's block.

The recommended cure is hard to come by. Keep me in your thoughts. I may never recover.

The Year of Reading Frequently

[***Warning: first-ever Bethweek book review***]

This year, one of my resolutions was to return to my roots, and become a bookworm once again. The time has come; I'm nearly two years out of graduate school now and no longer need to recoil at the thought of picking up a book. I used to love books. I need to rekindle that love. Thus, as a starting point to my year of reading frequently, I began with The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.

The book, written by cheeky Esquire columnist A.J. Jacobs, is an interesting journey. Jacobs does not begin the quest as a religious man; he describes himself as a Jew who is "as Jewish as the Olive Garden is Italian." He is confounded by the religious fervor that permeates our society, and decides to explore it for himself. However, rather than taking on contemporary or mainstream religious practices and incorporating them gingerly into his life, he decides to dive in to a full year of literally carrying out every law, no matter how obscure, found in the Bible. (Hey, makes for a more intriguing premise than The Year Of Gradually Trying to Understand Religion by Joining a Congregation and/or Incorporating Daily Prayer Time Into My Schedule, or The Year of Reading a Lot of Dusty Religious Tomes.)

Clearly, literally following all of the commandments found in the Bible is impossible. (Jacobs spends the majority of his year focusing on both the Hebrew Bible, though the last few months are dedicated to the New Testament.) However, even exempting the laws having to do with the ancient Temple, animal sacrifice, and so on, Jacobs has plenty of fodder for exploration. Some of his anecdotes are laugh-out-loud funny; some poignant; some borderline insane.

Jacobs himself is a neurotic narrator, alternatively likable and frustrating. His dry wit and tongue-in-cheek observations place the reader in a position of understanding what it must be like to be a generally-sensible, modern person living out generally-considered-archaic, ancient daily practices. However, his constant self-referential examples and interpretations, coupled with his frequent references to his obsessions with pop culture and the success of his writing (including this book) occasionally took me out of the narrative itself.

Nevertheless - his book benefits more than it suffers from his self-involvement. Jacobs' stories of his family members' reactions to his quest are priceless. Halfway through the book, I decided that his wife, Julie, is possibly the most patient spouse on the planet. Make no mistake - she fights back aplenty (one of my favorite passages is when, in observance of the laws of purity, Jacobs informs Julie he cannot touch her, or anything she has touched, while she is menstruating, because she is "unclean"; she promptly sits on every usable space in their apartment), but she sure puts up with a lot as her husband winds his way deeper and deeper into a life of literal Biblical living.

Clearly, the "spectacle" is what sells the book: the trials and tribulations of The Beard, the stoning of an adulter, the stereotypically-ancient-Israelite practices are the images conjured by the book's title. But what, really, is the thrust of the book? One individual's social experiment? A modern commentary on ancient customs? It's classified as a "Humor" book - so at the end of the day, is it all a big joke?

Ultimately, the book steers clear of providing any answers, which I think is wise. But even without offering answers, and even while quickly seasoning most of the touching revelations with healthy dashes of humor, the book raises important questions. It didn't leave this reader raring to go take up religion, but it did leave her thinking about spirituality, community, finding ways to consider incorporating tradition into our lives in meaningful ways. We don't live in biblical times, but we do live in complicated ones - and taking the opportunity to consider ways old and new to sort through the chaos seems wise. (Even if we don't take all the fashion risks Jacobs does.)