bits and bants vol.35

you can't control a lot of things, have you watched Bridgerton?, and some other stuff

Dearest gentle reader,

I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. It just feels like I’m compelled to write that on a public missive after the amount of hours of Bridgerton I’ve consumed lately. Do I recommend it? No. Is it a compulsive watch that you can’t turn away from? Yes. Also; give me all your thoughts.

But seriously. Hello.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful week, it’s still inconceivable to me how it is the official first days of summer because we have had almost zero heat at all and it still feels fairly Baltic around here.

We had a light frost over two nights this week where the temperature dipped to 0 degrees Celsius. Most of my plants are still alive, but the consternation the entire weather system produced in me was at a critical level. I just want things to grow! And I already have less than 100 days a year to do it! Frost in June is just too depressing.

Sidebar: I’m aware that it’s really hot where you are. I understand the science of climate and weather. I have the internet. No need to tell me that it is hot where you live thousands of miles away!

I have been reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek this month and one Dillard’s themes as she ponders nature is its inherent violence. Now our truly cold spring hasn’t been outwardly violent, but it has brought to the forefront of my mind how precarious it can be for plant life to actually sustain itself. I guess it’s because I live on the edge of the tundra, but there needs to be the perfect alchemy of sunlight, water, and heat to make things flourish. We’ve been blessed with rain, but with only a tiny bit of sunlight, and nothing to speak of for heat so things just don’t grow. They stay alive, but growth just doesn’t happen. It is the opposite of violence, but a lethargy.

I’m sure Annie Dillard could have written a similarly lengthy book talking about the very slow, subtle, and tedious tendencies of nature and how so many natural events need a perfect confluence of elements to occur, but for me it has me thinking about all the different parts of our lives that require just the right amount of different things in order for marvellous and small events to happen. Maybe we’re missing something in our relationships? The growth we wish to see in ourselves needs more time, more sunlight to develop. If work we’ve planted hasn’t developed maybe some moisture is needed?

All of which to say, there are a lot of things out of our control that we can need at any one time and they are not guaranteed. But also, we’re not always meant for maximum production or perfect growing conditions. The unnatural world says our trajectories can only and ever be one line going up, when the natural world gives us a trajectory of life and growth that looks more three dimensional.

bits:

• Here is a really insightful review of Why Do The Heathen Rage? A Behind the Scenes Look at a Work in Progress by Jessica Hooten Wilson. I’m currently reading the book alongside a Collegium Institute workshop course running all month and I still have so many thoughts about it. I think my opinions are right in the middle of Professor Arbury’s review and Wilson’s presentation of O’Connor’s work. I appreciate Wilson’s work, but I also find her opinions about Flannery’s dealings with racism to be a lot less nuanced than I think they were in reality. I hate judging an author by work that they themselves didn’t think was finished product, and I hate judging a person’s entire moral imagination based on unfinished work. I’m very verklempt over the whole thing.

• But also, let’s judge dead writers. And by judge I mean, let’s just stop with the whole Shakespeare wasn’t written by Shakespeare thing. It always flares me to rage whenever I hear the arguments so I appreciated this defence.

• I’m not going on a beach vacation this summer(it’s fine, I don’t think I even like the beach? I’ve had one true beach vacation in my life I think…) but if I did go on beach vacations one of my top favourite things would be seeing what people are reading on the beach so I enjoyed this report!

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reading, watching, what have you:

• Picked up Amor Towles’ new book of short stories and a novella this week. While the stories are definitely charming I’m a bit annoyed at the length of the book. It should really be two books: one a book of short stories, one a novella. The two jammed together makes me feel like I’m going to spend weeks reading one book for my Goodreads list and this somehow causes me a lot of angst. Am I a weirdo?

• My book club for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was weeks ago and yet I think it will take me the entire summer to finish it.

• Is the summer killing what little focus I already have??

• In addition to Bridgerton, which I still haven’t finished the last episode of—I know annoying stuff happens, I’m prepared. I watched Surprised by Oxford the other day with the girls and it turned out to be a nice romance/conversion story. It’s based on a book of the same name, would have been better with some better actors, but of course the scenery of Oxford was worth the price of admission. The admission being Amazon Prime.

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come to Ireland!

We are getting so excited about our pilgrimage to Ireland coming up in October! It’s actually coming quickly so if you’ve been thinking about coming on this adventure with

Katie Marquette

and I, please please please sign right up. It’s going to be the Ireland trip you’ve always wanted, with everything taken care of: we’ll take in holy sights, cultural sights, the beauty of the natural landscape, and visit ancient abbeys.

If you’re on the fence for any reason, message me about it! Let’s talk it over, there is nothing I like more than excavating our travel concerns to get to the heart of what we’re concerned about.

We’re going to do a circle of the country and we’ll visit Our Lady of Knock Shrine, Croagh Patrick, Galway, the Cliffs of Moher, The Rock of Cashel, a literary pub crawl of Dublin, plus whiskey tastings, and the Guinness Factory tour, and much more. Doesn’t it sound like the best??

For all the details click right over! And here’s the direct page to sign up because I know you want to!

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The sun is actually out today and allegedly for the entire weekend so I’m over the moon! But I also have to drive kids in a million directions so there goes my life. Have a great weekend!

without sunscreen,

Christy