I have a face I cannot show

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I read this the other day (on the myspace of a band I was researching, strangely) and it resonated with me, both as a writer and a Christian. 

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves…

They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for all by all the circumstances of their individual lives.

They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in circumstances utterly alien to their own.
 
They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else’s experiences or write somebody else’s poems or possess somebody else’s spirituality.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Politics or love can make you blind or make you see

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Things I learned on the campaign trail:

  • You know how a word starts to feel meaningless if you repeat it enough times? Waving is the same way.
  • A lot of people talk on their cell phones while driving. I mean, I do too. But wow.
  • 65 degrees really is cold to a lonesome waving hand. (It took mine at least half an hour to defrost. And yes, I’m a big baby.)
  • Making eye contact with people, smiling, waving and engaging them as they drive by feels strangely like flirting. Except I think I’m much better at engaging strangers in passing cars than men in real life.
  • Standing on a corner for three hours creates ample time for prayer.
  • Set your campaign to music and you’ll find yourself waving to the beat. (And, OK, occasionally thumping on your sign in time, and resisting the urge to dance.)

Politics or love can make you blind or make you see
make you a slave or make you free
but only one does it all

–Love is Not Against the Law, Derek Webb

I was born in a state of grace

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

One of the (many) ways I know Birmingham’s home:

It doesn’t matter where I’ve been or why. I’ve been to West Texas for a job interview and fought the urge to kiss the red clay dirt when I returned. I’ve spent a week vacationing in New York and longed for Southern accents. I’ve lounged around Florida with my parents and siblings and wondered if that’s really where I was raised.

Every time I return, I am so glad to see my sweet home, Alabama.

The names are changed but the constellations are still fallin’

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

More from September… or, a peek into my disjointed mind

Personality “muscles” I haven’t flexed in a while:

  • Latin dancing: Intimacy with strangers, risk, the ice queen at work
  • Dating: I want a boyfriend, but I don’t want an insta-boyfriend. Slow is the only speed I move at, at least right now.
  • Dancing: I forgot how shy I used to be. I’ve always said that cheerleading, and then dancing, drew me out. I guess it’s true.

… 

I’m sore today. My lower back is tense. I used both hands to grip the railing of the circular staircase at work, easing myself down into the lobby or up into the breakroom. I went to a dance class last night, and it feels like the first time I’ve used those particular muscles in years.

I feel like I’ve been learning a lot about myself lately. I’ve never been 26 before, but it seems like the way to spend this year. I’m always growing up, I know that, but 26 seems so adult. I’m on the brink of my late twenties,

… 

Two years ago I started “talking”* to Fly Boy just before his 29th birthday. Thirty still lurked a year away, but he was looking forward to it. Your twenties are a time for confusion, for struggling to figure out who you are and what you do in life. But your thirties are a time to embrace the resolution of those questions, he hypothesized. It’s a time to become established.

I was only 24 at the time, but suddenly 30 sounded pretty good. (A friend in his thirties later told me that Fly Boy was full of it.)

*Speaking of talking—isn’t it funny that everyone has different definitions of these terms? A friend and I were trying to pin a label on a relationship recently. I suggested dating, except this couple had actually only gone on one date. She proposed talking, but immediately tabled the idea. Talking, she said, involved making out at least once. Funny—I thought it simply meant talking, with a degree of interest implied.

 

…now, back to 2008…

It’s OK when there’s nothing more to say to me

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I’ve got to make a confession. Instead of writing (or rather, writing when someone isn’t paying me to do so), I’ve been cooking and watching CNN. This election stuff has its hooks in me.

So now, old notes from September 2007. I carried these around on scrap paper for months, trying to mold them into something cohesive, but it never happened.

I don’t need a man to rescue me. I’m not a damsel in distress, or a trophy wife in waiting. I’m self-sufficient (or at least, that’s what I tell myself). I can manage on my own.

But I want a white knight to save me—or if not to save me, exactly, to root me on, to be my “easy silence.”

… 

There are so many conflicting ideas of who a 26-year-old woman should be. Lately I’ve been hyper-aware of other people’s expectations of me—or what I think their expectations are—and have quietly become more determined to grow more and more into who I am.

I guess I’m in a very psycho-analytical place right now.

…more to come…

O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches?

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

This is a double cheap shot–a no longer seasonally-appropriate story copied from an email. But I’ve brought this tale up in conversation even as Christmas fades in the rear view mirror. It’s too fun–and too illustrative of what happens when you put me and Jamie together–to keep from you.

——————————————————————-

My friend Jamie was going to get her Christmas tree several days ago, but another friend pointed out that she probably couldn’t carry it up three very steep flights of stairs by herself. So while we were at (yet another) Christmas party yesterday, Jamie asked if I would help her. Being the loyal, kind-hearted, good person I am, I said yes.
 
(She also agreed to buy me coffee in exchange for my services.)
 
So we run back to her apartment and she gives me a coat to wear over my outfit, because I was dressed up. I also borrowed a pair of flops because I was wearing four inch heels, which are not good for carrying trees up stairs. At this point I look like a hobo. And we’re off to buy a tree!
 
At some point in this process, I realize that we are buying a tree and transporting it in a convertible. Awesome.
 
We went to Lowe’s and quickly began lifting trees and evaluating their attributes. An employee said, “You know I can pick those up for you,” apparently amused by the site of two very enthusiastic, tiny women lifting six to seven foot trees. (They’re not heavy!) So he picked up trees and tried not to roll his eyes at our proclamations. “He’s so cute!” “Oh, he’s so short and fat!” “Look at him! He’s so tall and thin and elegant!”
 
(“Is this how you pick out men?” the guy asked us.)
 
After settling on a tree, Jamie convinced the guy to go ahead and put the tree on a stand for her, so she wouldn’t have to struggle with it when she returned home. This took probably another 20 minutes, and while we waited we continued a commentary on every other tree that was walked past us. (“Oh, he’s cute too! But yours is so much cuter.”) (The latter was, of course, uttered in a hushed voice so as not to upset the other tree’s purchaser.)
 
At last, we pay and are told to bring the car around so they can load the tree for us. We plotted taking back roads back to her house–we certainly weren’t going to drive on I-65 with a tree in the back seat! Surprisingly, the Lowe’s employees were undaunted when we pulled up in a convertible. “We loaded a red one earlier!”
 
So they pulled out a sheet of plastic, laid it in the backseat, and then gently (lovingly) eased the tree in. (We did not buckle it up.) They then tied the plastic around it so that her car wouldn’t be covered with pine needles and so the plastic wouldn’t flap in the wind too much as we drove back to the Southside.
 
Do you know how hard it is to check blind spots with a tree in your back seat?
 
We stopped at my coffee shop to pick up my reward coffee and ran into a friend of Jamie’s from undergrad. (I knew we would see someone we knew with my get-up being what it was.) Hooray! We told him what we were up to, and bingo! We have man-help to escort the tree up the stairs. 
 
He effortlessly carried the tree, all by himself, up to Jamie’s attic-level apartment. And our adventure was a success.
 
Plus, I got coffee.

A time to laugh, a time to weep

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I joke about my various maladies all the time–and I’m even a hypochondriac about being a hypochondriac–so don’t take me too seriously when I claim to be a little bit OCD. But I am, and that rears itself in my obsessive list-making habits. I’ve got lists of everything–grocery lists, lists of guys I’ve dated this year, lists of things I need to save money for, lists of every article we’ve published in the last year.

But this is my favorite list: books I’ve read this year. (My mom gave me a book journal as a stocking stuffer, and I have already loved putting it to use.) Of course, every list has its rules. (OCD) Books that I’ve read multiple times in a year count each time. Books that I haven’t finished (even if I’ve come dangerously close, even if it’s more of a gift book than a book really meant for reading cover to cover) don’t count at all.

In rough chronological order, and copying my friend Kari’s style, these are the books I read and often loved in 2007.

January
In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner (f)
If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name: News From a Small Town by Heather Lende (nf)
Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office by Jen Lancaster (nf)
The Lucky Shopping Manual by Andrea Linnet (nf)
The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket (f)

February
Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman by Alice Steinbach (nf, book club)
Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield (nf)
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (f, book club)

March
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (f, reread)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (nf, book club)
Because She Can by Bridie Clark (f)
Here’s to Hindsight: Letters to My Former Self by Tara Leigh Cobble (nf, reread)

April
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling (f)
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey (poetry, summer reading)
William Christenberry’s Black Belt by William Christenberry (art, summer reading)
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (f, summer reading)
The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond (f, summer reading)
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician by Daniel Wallace (f, summer reading)
Blood and Circumstance by Frank Turner Hollon (f, summer reading)
Alabama Moon by Watt Key (f, summer reading)
Red Clay Suite by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (poetry, summer reading)
How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (f, reread)

May
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (f)
Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult (f, reread)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (f)

June
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling (f)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (f)
When Harry Met Sally by Nora Ephron (f)
Big Fish by Daniel Wallace (f)
See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America by Logan Ward (nf)

July
Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown: Notes from a Single Girl’s Closet by Adena Halpern (nf)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (f, book club)
Rereadings: Seventeen writers revisit books they love by Anne Fadiman (nf)
Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl’s Guide to Why it Often Sucks in the City, or Who are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? by Jen Lancaster (nf)
The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart (f)
Heart Full of Soul: An Inspirational Memoir About Finding Your Voice and Finding Your Way by Taylor Hicks (nf)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling (f)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling (f)
A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas (nf)
Leaving Birmingham: Notes of a Native Son by Paul Hemphill (nf)

August
Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover’s Courtship, with Recipes by Amanda Hesser (nf, reread)
Allure: Confessions of a Beauty Editor by Linda Wells (nf)
If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister’s Story of Love, Murder and Liberation by Janine Latus (nf)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (f)
Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein (nf)
Strange Skies by Matt Marinovich (f)
The Coma by Alex Garland (f)
Here is New York by EB White (nf)
Dixieland Delight: A Football Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference by Clay Travis (nf)
Five Men Who Broke My Heart by Susan Shapiro (nf, reread)

September
When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin (f)
Hurricane Season: A Coach, His Team and Their Triumph in the Time of Katrina by Neal Thompson (nf)
Calm My Anxious Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Contentment by Linda Dillow (nf, reread)
The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents and One Enduring Friendship by Sara James (nf)

October
Slam by Nick Hornby (f)
Life on the Refrigerator Door: Notes Between a Mother and a Daughter by Alice Kuipers (f)
Bar Code: Your Personal Pocket Decoder to the Modern Dating Scene by Stephanie Naman, et al (nf)
Songs Without Words by Ann Packer (f)
Here If You Need Me: A True Story by Kate Braestrup (nf)
The Little Black Book of Style by Nina Garcia (nf)
The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst (f)
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privelege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill (nf)
Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff (f)
Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type by Isabel Briggs Myers (nf)
Crowded Skies by Tara Leigh Cobble (nf)
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffengger (f)

November
The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta (f)
Cormac by Sonny Brewer (nf)
Love You, Mean It: A True Story of Love, Loss and Friendship by Patricia Carrington, et al (nf)
My City Was GOne: One American Town’s Toxic Secret, Its Angry Band of Locals and a $700 Million Day in Court by Dennis Love (nf)
The Year of Living Biblically: Oen Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by AJ Jacobs (nf)
ESPN Guide to Psychotic Fan Behavior edited by Warren St. John (nf)
Crowded Skies by Tara Leigh Cobble (nf, reread)
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffengger (f, reread)

December
Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford (nf)
The Agnostics by Wendy Rawlings (f)
Changes that Heal: How to Understand the Past to Ensure a Healthier Future by Henry Cloud (nf, reread)
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table by Ruth Reichl (nf, reread)

By my count, that’s 76 total books. I might go back later and count up how many were fiction and how many were non-fiction, and how many were rereads, but then you might really think I’m crazy.

2007 concerts

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley
  1. Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, January 2007
  2. Bela Fleck and Chick Corea, Alys Stephens Center, Birmingham, February 2007
  3. Stoll Vaughan, Jim James, Matthew Perryman Jones and Patty Griffin, Alabama Theatre, Birmingham, February 2007
  4. Scott Miller and Patty Griffin, Tabernacle, Atlanta, April 16, 2007
  5. Alli Rogers and Derek Webb, UCF House, Birmingham, April 29, 2007
  6. Alli Rogers, Andrew Osenga and Derek Webb, Zydeco, Birmingham, May 14, 2007
  7. Chris Thile and The How to Grow a Band (now the Punch Brothers), WorkPlay Theatre, Birmingham, May 26, 2007
  8. Damien Rice, Tabernacle, Atlanta, May 30, 2007
  9. Taylor Hicks and the Little Memphis Blues Orchestra, Alabama Adventure, Birmingham, June 1, 2007
  10. James Morrison, Ben Folds and John Mayer, Verizon Wireless Music Center, Birmingham, Aug. 4, 2007
  11. Maddy Wyatt, Pianos, NYC, Aug. 12, 2007
  12. Nickel Creek with Fiona Apple, Central Park, NYC, Aug. 14, 2007
  13. Josh Rouse, WorkPlay Theatre, Birmingham, Oct. 3, 2007
  14. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Alabama Theatre, Birmingham, Oct. 15, 2007
  15. Josh Ritter, WorkPlay Theatre, Birmingham, Oct. 31, 2007
  16. Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken, WorkPlay Theatre, Birmingham, Nov. 2, 2007
  17. The Bittersweets, Eddie’s Attic, Decatur, Ga., Nov. 10, 2007
  18. Tom Brosseau and Nickel Creek, Alabama Theatre, Birmingham, Nov. 11, 2007
  19. The Spots, Laser’s Edge, Birmingham, Dec. 11, 2007