Bethany | Bethany Bassett

Author: Bethany

Clean-Up on Aisle Five

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

“if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.”

One of my English students, a kindly middle-aged man who shares equal enthusiasm for Coltrane and capocollo, just introduced me to Charles Bukowski’s poem “so you want to be a writer?” He wanted to make sure the grammar was right, and I stumbled over my tongue a few times before answering yes. What I really wanted to answer was Grammar has nothing to do with it.

I well know the feeling of rushing to find a scrap of paper with which to mop up a sudden spill of words. That experience of diving head-first into creativity is why I created this blog. It’s why I started a book, why I spend dreary mornings curled over my keyboard for warmth, and also why I haven’t written lately. There has been no word spill on aisle five in a while. I keep sitting down at my desk to wring creativity from my brain drop by drop, but the results evaporate before I can compile them into something meaningful.

It sucks.

A few lines down in his poem, Bukowski continues,
“if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it”

…and I wonder if that’s the problem, if trying to sound like somebody else has been plugging my word-leaks before they have a chance to become glorious waterworks. Each time I’ve sat down to write over the last several days, I’ve had to contend with the taskmaster’s voice prodding me to whip out new content (and make it snappy!), the inferiority complex reminding me that I don’t have half the natural talent of my favorite authors, and the drone of despair convincing me that even if I had their ability, I still wouldn’t have anything to say… and if emerging from that clamor unscathed isn’t hard work, I don’t know what is.

While I could certainly power through the noise and post something (first-edition grocery list, anyone? or perhaps a treatise on toothpaste flavors?), it would have all the authenticity of a vegan cheeseburger, and I wouldn’t end the day feeling any more artistic accomplishment than I do on days when I eke out three sentences and give up.

What I wanted to say to my English student is that the poem has nothing to do with grammar and everything to do with unplugged leaks, a torrential mess best sopped up with a blank page. However, Bukowski already said it best, so I let the student discover its meaning for himself while I cling to the last stanza like a life preserver, trusting that the sea will follow.

“when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.”

15May

Chai and Dry

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 7 Comments

Raindrops are rolling out of overfilled clouds and scattering evenly into our balcony planters from which seedlings slurp and spring skyward. The daisies are practically giddy; I, meanwhile, am tucked up inside with a mug of peppery chai trying to stave off nap-envy. As much as I would love to doze away the afternoon in a nest of flannel sheets, the results would not be pretty:

Exhibit A: Hungry children’s pleas for supper wake up my brain but otherwise fail to lodge it out of rigor mortis. (I have heard rumors that naps actually make some people less tired rather than more, but I’ve never come across any supporting evidence.)

Exhibit B: Mothering instincts eventually drag me out of bed by the ear; however, they do nothing to diminish my ill will toward mankind, specifically the portion of mankind requesting me to make pasta for them.

Exhibit C: I slump to the kitchen with all the motivation of a dead leaf and then realize how late the time is, how little I’ve accomplished today, and how very much I dislike existing.

Exhibit D: I stay up three hours past bedtime trying to accomplish more, more, more but really just stirring up dust and aggravating my rigor mortis… and then, when I finally lay me down to sleep, I can’t (see above re: nap).

I get that rest is important, and our gentle Italian life has helped me to see relaxation as a treasure rather than a waste of time, but I haven’t yet reached the stage of self-actualization that will let me wake up from a nap as anything other than an obsessive-compulsive corpse. So sorry rain and flannel and Siren-soft afternoon, but there will be no surrender today.

10May

7.8 Years In

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

[2 months after the wedding]

I keep trying to write about this and surfacing steeped to the bone in inexplicable feelings, the words evaporating off my skin into the night, so I’ll stop trying and simply say this:

I love him.

Still. More.

6May

Not[with]standing

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

The afternoon had started so full of promise. I had already wrapped things up at work, gone for a [reluctant] run, and picked up my favorite two offspring from school. Homemade pizza was on the agenda as was writing an insightful blog post about mothering… but first, story time. The backyard was decked out in a golden-green sunswath, newly-clustered cherries gleaming like crown jewels, so we scooped up an armful of books and the picnic blanket to go revel in the finery. I laid the blanket out on a mattress of daisies, we plumped ourselves stomach-down to read, and BAM—my old arch-nemesis the allergy swooped in for the kill.

Within twenty seconds, I was ready to take a pick axe to my inner ears, a power sander to my eyeballs, and a double-edged Microplane zester to my nose. Shortly thereafter, my brain’s functionality began shutting down as it tends to do in these situations, and by the time we finished meeting the infamous Nellie Oleson, I was only two sneezes removed from a zombie.

The blog entry was clearly not going to happen. I moped a bit about the turn of events while sifting through the brain fog for any usable scrap of intelligence, but I finally had to give up. How can a gal compete against airborne forces of darkness that simultaneously wipe out her energy and her motivation to make coffee? She simply can’t. So after a mere hour of brooding through prickly eyes at a blank page, I shut off my computer.

Instead of writing, I played Wii with Natalie and enlisted her help in the most giggle-intensive freezer defrosting ever. I snuggled Sophie and let her use her magic touch on the pizza dough. (Hint: Sophie’s magic touch involves a lot of pummeling.) We tried on hats and thoroughly ignored the house’s pleas to clean it, and the afternoon of not-so-very-productive fun with my girls ended up far better than the one I had neatly mapped out in my head, allergies notwithstanding… even if I didn’t manage to get an insightful post about motherhood out of it.

5May

Eucharift

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 12 Comments

Our church doesn’t officially celebrate Christmas. I’ve heard of other churches that choose not to as well, most citing pagan or consumerist holiday origins as the reason, but ours shies away from it for the opposite reason: it’s too religious. More specifically, it’s too Catholic.

I sympathize with their need to differentiate themselves from the national religion. Here in Italy, the Pope is held up as truth incarnate, and the small Brethren congregation with which we share Sunday mornings is anxious to dispel the notion of religious royalty. In fact, we don’t even have a paid pastor. All church members are seen as equal participants among each other and with God, and the inclusive environment is incredibly welcome for those like me who run screaming from the word “orthodoxy.”

I’m not sure how welcome a Catholic visitor would feel though. While it isn’t often said aloud, the general consensus seems to be that Catholics do not know the real God; they base their lives on superstition, worship idols, and enslave themselves to greed (the clergy) or fear (the parishioners). They need to be saved just as badly as Buddhists or even Wiccans do.

However, I simply can’t make the stereotype match up with the Catholics I personally know. It’s easy enough to say a certain denomination (or religion, depending on your viewpoint) has it all wrong, but can I honestly make that verdict about my Catholic friend who prays regularly for me and launches heart-to-hearts about our life’s passions? What about my ex-fundamentalist friend who finds solace from her oppressive past at Mass every week? What about the devout family friends who uprooted their lives to keep a mentally disabled relative from losing her inheritance?

How can I say that I, with my ever-evolving doubts and struggles, have exclusive rights to the God we all seek?

I twice attended Mass when I was living in the States, and both times, I stayed conspicuously in my seat while the rest of the church filed to the front for the Eucharist. I reasoned that I was merely an onlooker of a foreign religious ritual and that participating would be on par with apostasy. (Never mind that my own church’s monthly communion service was essentially the same thing, give or take a priest.) If I were to go back now, though, it wouldn’t be as a tourist. Rather, I’d go as a fellow believer, doubter, stumbler, and seeker. And while I probably wouldn’t agree on a lot of doctrinal points, and while the reverent liturgy of the service might chafe my nonconformist sensibilities, and while my current church could have some strong opinions over it (thankfully, we don’t do excommunication), the slot vacated by my superiority complex would be just about the right size for a concept called loving my neighbors… and maybe even learning from them too.

[Joining the Rally to Restore Unity going on this week on Rachel Held Evans’ blo g. Want to play along?]

3May

Liturgy

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

The storm hits, and I have been too distracted to notice the boiling clouds or cobble together a shelter until it’s too late. I am drenched in a fury outside of anyone’s control, at the mercy of merciless elements. Unwelcome memories soak me to the bone. Doubts thunder, and anger illuminates my universe in stark flashes. It is simply too much. My feet give out from under me, and I let the torrent sweep me away.

In these times, I don’t know which way is up, much less whether or not God exists. All I can see is the pounding blackness of my immediate reality, and I start to think that disavowing religion altogether might keep the storms at bay.

But my soul doesn’t actually want a retreat; it wants a fight. It wants a shouting match with someone who can stand up in the force of all my turmoil. It wants a defense from the one I sometimes believe orchestrates the storms, and it wants to be convinced that I’m blaming the wrong things. It wants answers for now and answers for then and answers tucked into the pockets of my future. It wants a way of belief that validates my logic and my experiences, my ever-racing mind and my ever-tired heart.

Above all, it wants peace… and here in the darkness of cloud cover, the anchorless tumult, and the weary absence of intention, I catch an unexpected glimpse of it:

“May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you wherever he may send you;
may he guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm;
may he bring you home rejoicing at the wonders he has shown you;
may he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.”
(from Common Prayer)

2May

Sanity at its Handiest

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Here is my mantra for the day: “I am going to blog today, dangit, I AM GOING TO BLOG.”

Principalities and powers and double-part-time* working hours have conspired to keep me away from the blank page lately, and they probably would have continued unabated had my husband not looked straight into my crazed eyes over the weekend and reminded me that some cultures value sanity. The man makes a convincing argument, and not just because he accompanies it with freshly-brewed espresso. I mean, I’ve gone so long now without catching you up on our Easter camping trip that both it and Princess Beatrice’s hat are old news. (But will that keep me from doing so anyway?)**

* Doesn’t count as full-time because I’m a freelancer and also like deluding myself.
** No.

Two Easters ago, we went on an impromptu camping trip that was so magical and life-infusing that we dubbed it a new family tradition and went back the next year. This Easter, we decided to expand our horizons a bit and head north to Lake Como from whence not even a rainy forecast could deter us. What did deter us, however, was our car, which fainted rather suddenly in the middle of a roundabout mere hours before our scheduled departure. It was Friday evening; the holiday weekend had already begun. No mechanic shop would be open until Tuesday, and even that was doubtful as traditional Italian Easter feasts require several days of recovery. Como would have to wait.

Just in case you ever find yourself in this situation, I’ve put together a handy guide gleaned from our experience – What to do when your car breaks down in Italy negating your anticipated Easter camping trip:

Set up the tent on your balcony, avoiding eye contact with the neighbors. Stock it with My Little Ponies. When your preschoolers ask if they can sleep out there by themselves in the rain, shrug and answer, “Eh, why not?”

Ride the bus downtown to chase pigeons. Purchase giant parmesan pretzels from an Austrian entrepreneur. Chase pigeons with giant parmesan pretzels. Sample every single shade flavor of lip gloss at The Body Shop. Invent the extremely safe and socially acceptable sport of escalator racing.

Have a pizza picnic on the floor. Have a strawberry picnic on the floor. Have a banana split picnic, not on the floor. Discover that your children do not like banana splits (“My ice cream and bananas are touching!”) and ease their distress by eating the rest for them.

Hurl football-sized chocolate eggs at your unsuspecting spouse and complete a nutritious breakfast with the fragments. Host an Easter egg hunt in the backyard so as to have enough candy on hand for a nutritious supper as well. If running out of chocolate, dine on green eggs and ham—just so long as eggs are somewhere on the menu.

Sleep in until noon, build nerdy Lego contraptions, watch music videos and talent shows and hilariously awful infomercials, impersonate cows, play a very pink version of kickball, and if you hit a lull, go with the failproof Granny Pants Dance.

There you go. Sanity has been restored, my blog is marginally more up to date, and a new wisdom-packed vacation guide is out in the world. And who knows? One of us might even get a new Easter tradition out of it.

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