Project 52: forty-six and forty-seven (plus bonus!)

The top picture (#46 of my Project 52) is an accurate representation of how my little brother sees life.* The middle picture (#47) is an accurate representation of my life currently, and for the next couple of weeks. And the bottom picture (a bonus!) is an accurate representation of the small furred thing that has been distracting the lot of us since she joined our family on Saturday. Her name is Taxi, she is eight weeks old, and she has single-handedly turned this household of frankly-we're-ambivalent-about-cats-people into -- simply -- cat people.

*When I saw that little scene on my parents' hall table, I cracked up. The soldier is so hardcore there with his military stance and his khaki. Pooh, on the other hand, is thinking, "If I just stand here smiling, this is all going to be just fine."

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Conversations:

Andrea -- that comment sounded very Seussian! I'm impressed.

Lauren -- Maybe the blonde hair zigzags generations? You're the zag, and Mum and Abby are the zigs :D.

Domesticwarriorgoddess -- I think grace is a battle for all of us. It's a gift, and it's a struggle. For what it's worth, however, I think you are an excellent embodiment of charis.
Sarah -- yes, His grace is sufficient. Always good to be reminded of that. xx

Staish -- you are a beloved "anyway" in my world. Love you. PS. I love your "epitaph" question. That one'll take some serious mulling.

Elizabeth Simard -- You are precious. I almost sobbed writing it so we're even.

Project 52: forty-four and forty-five

Two of my most favourite people in the world --
my Mum and my wee youngest niece, both blue-eyed blondies.

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A postcript: I've kind of dropped into unintentional hibernation as the end-of-semester tidal wave approaches (not just end-of-semester, but end of degree (yay!)). I had optimistic visions of myself sprinting gleefully to the finish line*, but 2012 has been a crazy whirlwind** (in the best possible way), and it feels more like I'm limping to the end instead. Regardless, it's been a good journey***, and I'm both sad and happy to see it concluded. Roll on postgrad studies (please, Jesus?)!

Anyway, just letting you know I might be a bit more absent than usual over the next few weeks. Also, thank you for your continued excellence in being the best real life and bloggy friends a girl could ask for. The last few weeks have been sprinkled with lovely acts of grace from people who probably don't realise just how giving they are. Getting a beautiful handwritten letter in the mail from someone across-the-sea (when I have been an incredibly poor correspondent) is just one example of grace upon grace. This, like other grace-gifts, points me back to the bigger picture of amazing grace. 

And so I've been thinking a bit about how grace, even the grace of a friend's unexpected letter, takes the bad news about me -- my inadequacies, my failings, my lack of -- and replaces it with another's good. Grace says, 'Whatever your failing may be, it doesn't matter anymore. I will give regardless.' Grace is the anyway, and that's a very beautiful thing.

So thanks, friends known and friends unknown, for your graces in my life, graces made evident through your reading, your comments, your shared creativity, your time, your words, and your warmth. You are a pretty fantastic bunch.

* the metaphor suddenly switched from the ocean to a marathon. Because that makes sense.

** and now we're couching it in terms of the weather.

*** and now it's a trip?

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Conversations:

Thank you, brilliant friends, for your excellent questions for my About page. Can't wait to dive in! You're all so cool and creative. xx

Andrea -- you're welcome. NOW POST AGAIN ALREADY.

Abbie -- I'm loving that the 'girls' are all blogging, too. I keep dreaming of a family blog project, but so far no brilliant ideas :).

Caitlin -- books are just a necessary part of growing up, hey? xx

Katie -- your "when" rather than "if" in your published author question brightened me considerably :D.

Carla and Alastair -- we practically are related, aren't we? I mean, it feels like we are! Ooh, that would be so fun to write your "about" page! I'll email you about it after a few weeks, when school is done. Warning: it may turn out rather silly indeed.

livingintheshadowlands -- you're precious. Thank you.

harriet coombe -- I miss you, too! I was just reminiscing about your wedding, the other day. So beautiful...

Lauren -- haha!! Andrew Peterson's mum and dad, I guess :D PS. No, that effect was done with an app. Totally cheated.

HCH -- I love that you could relate to this.

Sarah -- rather like you girls -- a family of blogging ladies! By the way, I've really enjoyed keeping up with you girls (at least in my own meagre way) online.

Bloss -- you write the best blog comments. And of course I'll use your questions; they were awesome! Ugh, like you, I couldn't believe that someone would respond so negatively to the ad that Pete Peterson wrote. I'm discovering that some people really get joy out of raining on others' creative parades. It's such a shame! Love to you, lovely lady. xx

It's a million little things:

Given that I post nothing for thirteen days and then emerge with thoughts that only I am likely to relate to, I feel I owe you more, oh excellent blog friends. So it is more that I bring you, a whole selection of more.

Point the first: my sister Andrea is now blogging! For me, this is on a level of delirium to which I might compare earth-shattering things of such calibre as, 1) "Oh, didn't I tell you? Harper Lee is coming to dinner tonight and she wants to talk to you about her secret second novel which no one thought she wrote but which she actually did and it's every bit as good as To Kill A Mockingbird"; 2) "News flash: Willy Wonka stepped out of storybooks and into the real world in order to create a Magnum icecream which not only is not disgustingly bad for you like the ones you know and love on only rare occasions, but is actually positively good for you and therefore you should consume one a week or possibly even one a day"; or 3) "Congratulations, Danielle, you have won a competition which you never even knew you entered and suddenly the entire contents of one Kikki-K store SHALL BE YOURS." So basically I'm excited that Andrea is blogging. Also, she somehow thinks of herself as not a writer but she's obviously delusional because even though she only has one post (and an About page) up so far, they're both excellent. And this completes the trifecta of immediate female family members blogging: my Mum, my middle sister Andrea, and my littlest sister, Lauren. Cool beans? Very.

Point the second: since my so-called not-a-writer-not-a-blogger sister who now is blogging (and thus writing) has an About page on her blog, I am overcome with the sudden need to create such a thing for myself. But is there anything more awkward than writing a blog introduction? Okay, yes, falling over while rollerskating and clutching the shirt-front of a teenage boy whom you don't know in order to save yourself from certain death is definitely more awkward than writing a blog introduction, but still. So I am trying to think of a less awkward but certainly still silly and yet hopefully slightly intelligent way to do said About page, and since I can't just outright copy my sister's format, I'm thinking of going for a Q&A style thing. The only catch -- I need some Q's before I can fill in some A's. So hit me with your best -- and even your most random -- questions for my About page, and I will attempt to use them to talk about myself in that mildly humorous yet endearingly self-deprecating voice which we all somehow want to emulate for our blogs. I should probably state that in a less tongue-in-cheek way: Ask me questions, please? I will love you forever and send you imaginary cupcakes.

After a break for April, I'm doing the photo-a-day project for May. I won't be posting my daily pictures here except for the occasional one, but you can see them at my tumblr under the hashtag #photoadaymay. I'm loving being back in the challenge of taking a picture in response to a word prompt every day. It's a great and yet manageable little creative project.

While we're talking blogs and photography challenges, I have to tell you that my lovely friend Abbie has just started blogging, too! Her pictures are serene and feminine -- actually, that's a perfect representation of Abbie -- and I love the URL she has chosen. Very appropriate!

Over at the Walker Books Walk-A-Book blog, there's an excellent article on why kids in the internet age still need to be exposed to good old-fashioned paper books. It's called iKids Need Books, Too.

Meanwhile Louise Cusack, a writing tutor and mentor I've been privileged to learn from, is exploring the world of publishing in a series of blog posts. Her recent post, Doing The Work, is an excellent, excellent reminder not to plan for harvest when we haven't even done the ploughing. Also, she references Ira Glass's brilliant creative advice which is always a winner.

And this post is a month old, but it's a discussion which will never go out of date. Pete Peterson discusses the value of creating habitually. It's a good read.

Sehnsucht:

It can come from anywhere -- out of the blue -- though I suspect it appears more when you're actively looking for it. Today, it was in the words of Annie Dillard, whose lovely sentences made my stomach muscles hurt from the not-breathing. Other times it will be something else -- a picture of one niece's impossibly-long eyelashes resting on the curve of her cheek, or the moment when my other niece buries her tiny round head right in the baby-sized hollow where my neck and shoulder meet. Or hearing a piece of music that takes an emotion I have felt, or that I have known others to have felt, and pulls a tune from that emotion, taking a shapeless cloud of feeling and forming it into a note-picture that is visible, recognisable. Or I will be sitting in the sun with people I love and for the merest instant I see my life from a distance. I see it for the story that it is, for the movie that I get to watch as I live it, and I realise how good things are even in the brief upsets, how golden the moments are between the challenges and the small heartbreaks.

LM Montgomery's Emily (of New Moon) talked of this thing she called The Flash. CS Lewis borrowed a word from the Germans, Sehnsucht. And I wonder if they were both speaking of the same experience. When I think of Emily's "flash", I think of how, occasionally, we have these brief moments when suddenly the ridiculous constraints of time and gravity and history open up for the merest slit and we get to see past it all into something beyond, something that -- even though it's unfamiliar -- we seem to recognise. And Sehnsucht, well it can be translated as a yearning or a craving, even an intense missing -- whether or not we know what it is that we miss. For me, it's a great and irreconcilable clash of satisfaction and longing. In one moment it heals and hurts. My heart is full, yet hungry.

In a way, it reminds me of inspiration. Inspiration is a gift and a beauty in and of itself, but it is not satisfied to simply be. It wants to move, and it will not be happy until it goes somewhere, until it works itself out in some kind of art. And when I say that Sehnsucht -- that longing for a far-off country we know but can't quite pinpoint -- is irreconcilable, I only mean that in the sense that we are hemmed in on all sides by finiteness. Once we're freed from those constraints, once we're out in the broad infinity, everything is turned loose to find its reconciliation. It will all make sense in the Someday. 

For now, though, we watch. And if we are startled by a thrilling and unexpected glimpse of what Annie Dillard calls 'the corner where eternity clips time', so much the better -- because then we remember. This life is not all there is. To steal the words of another: we were meant to live for so much more.

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Conversations:

Carla and Alastair -- YAY first and beloved commenter! I love you, and I love that you love me in spite of my overthinkyness. And no, while I might feel shy leading up to a visit if it's ages since I've seen you, I could never be shy with you in real life. You are almost family!

Meaghan -- random fact #14: I learnt any awesomeness from you.

Charis -- thank you for persisting with commenting even though the internet is convinced you are a cyborg. Please don't terminate me. Is it weird that I am sort of happy that there is another person out there like me whose special talent is nervousness? I feel your pain and yet I love that I've got a buddy in this odd affliction! Ooh, I love quippy and fast humour, too (THE WEST WING!) and I hate watching others' awkwardness in real life. I can only handle it if I know it's made up. 

Andrea -- you should know by now I like quirky, conventionally daggy things, right? :D

Sarah -- aw, it's tough when you have big assignments all due at once! I hope you come through it unscathed! And I still haven't posted your questions and my answers, but it's on my bloggy to-do list :)

livingintheshadowlands -- if Atticus Finch was a living, breathing, non-fictional man, I might even propose to him.

Laura Elizabeth -- YAY you actually get this! Somehow, talking about what you'll be given after a grandparent passes away seems so morbid and -- yes -- mercenary, but in actuality it turns out to be quite natural and even funny :D. PS. I loved seeing Avengers with you yesterday. It feels like ages ago already, though, because it's been a really busy 24 hours. Boo to time passing too fast!

Jess Axelby -- so if we ever get a little hangout together again, Office marathon y/y?

Elizabeth in Alaska -- thank you, dear friend! x

Twelve for '12:

The lovely Sarah tagged me to participate in a little meme. The rules ask for eleven random things about me, but it's 2012, so I went for twelve. There are also questions from Sarah for me to answer but I'll save them for next time as this post already has enough words in it. If you're reading this, you can consider yourself tagged. I'd love to read your list!

twelve random things about Danielle:
 
one My favourite number is four (I don't even know why) yet I'd rather have an odd number of something. I love symmetry but when it comes to decor or groupings of items, I value the odd and the mismatched over the balanced and even. That's probably why my house resembles the den of a mad professor. Like a magpie, I just surround myself with things that I think are shiny.

two Hamish and Andy's podcasts never fail to make me feel ridiculously happy.

three One of my innate default settings is to instinctively look for patterns in everything. I think this is partly being human (I read somewhere that because the brain can only hold on to a tiny percentage of the sensory information we process every day, the things that reappear or remind us of something similar are the ones we tend to notice -- like looking at a new Subaru and suddenly realising that everyone on the road seems to be driving a Subaru), and partly my tendency to just be a teeny bit obsessive.

four Slowly but surely, I'm turning into my Mum. My siblings and I used to laugh at her ability to connect with a story or characters immediately, with real emotion. One day -- this is no exaggeration -- she switched on the television in the very final minutes of a Little House on the Prairie episode. Pa and Albert were standing over a fresh grave. Pa put his arm on Albert's shoulder and said, "Let's go home, son," and Albert said, "Let's go home, Pa", and that was the end. Sure enough, instant tears from Mum. Anyway, the joke is on me because I'm now becoming that way myself. Never mind. If I have to be a clone of someone, at least it's an excellent person.

five It's easy for me to be nervous -- about anything. I live fairly constantly in the nervous zone. Meeting someone new, heading alone into an unfamiliar environment, making an awkward phone call, approaching a stranger, talking to a technician, driving without having studied a map, submitting an assignment, crossing a pedestrian crossing when there's no other person in sight but there's a long line of cars (I FORGET HOW TO WALK). Unless you know me really really well, though, I think I could convince you of my (fake) confidence.

six I love my personal library, but it grows an awful lot and sometimes I have this fear that my books will rise up in the night and swallow me.

seven Years ago, my grandmother, whom we call Ma, started sticking bandaids underneath various of her treasured objects, bandaids with different family members' names on them. I suspect my sisters started it, because my grandmother has a few truly gorgeous porcelain dolls which we all kind of coveted when we were little. "Can I have that doll when you die?" was where it began -- I swear we were not morbid or mercenary little kids, honestly -- and soon my sisters had each claimed one of those dolls for their own. Being older, I was above all that stuff, and disdainfully refused to claim a post-death prize for my own. Until last Christmas, that is. We were sitting around the kitchen at my grandparents' place, and I was looking at all the old, familiar details. I noticed Ma and Pa's clock -- really noticed it -- and how it looked like a beautifully kitsch timepiece from a 1970s Swiss chalet. This was it -- this was the thing I wanted. So then and there, Ma pulled the clock off the wall, found a permanent marker, and in amongst her battery change record-keeping details (who knew?) inscribed this message: this clock belongs to Danielle on my demise. Shirl. x I love it. (You can see it here).

eight Among all the people I have met and been influenced by, there are still many I haven't met who played a huge role in shaping my worldview and growing my spiritual beliefs. If I made a list, I think either CS Lewis or Elisabeth Elliot would be fighting for top place.

nine Awkward, character-driven humour is my favourite kind. That's why I love shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation. Ridiculous as they are, there's that sense that there really are people like this, and this actually could happen -- and how much less painful it is to watch such experiences than it is to actually live them. In life, we require some passing of time before we can totally embrace the humour of our most awkward moments.

ten Lately I have been really, really missing my little New South Wales niece and nephews. I've never lived close to them, so obviously I'm used to the distance. Just sometimes it feels more.

eleven I believe Atticus Finch is probably the greatest fictional dad ever.

twelve Studying history could basically be a never-ending journey. There's always more to learn, and it's always possible to dig deeper. But if there's one great overarching sense that my limited study of history has given me, it's the idea that we're all so much more connected than I ever imagined. History is so broad and so vast, yet studying it all, seeing, for example, how things in ancient Rome are still finding repurcussions in our world today, makes me think how young we all are, and how much we all have in common. Solomon knew it all those years ago: there's nothing new under the sun.

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Conversations:

Laura Elizabeth -- yes! I saw the picture the other day and was like, "Aaaah why couldn't I eat it all? I want my leftovers!" PS. Thank you for hanging out. I love how much we have in common to chat and fangirl about.

thelittlebluefishy -- it was seriously good.

Lauren -- uh huh, they definitely were good. We'll have to go there for lunch sometime, hey?

Katie -- you're so right. Good friends and good food = happy days.

Mothercare -- I believe in your green thumb, even if you don't.

Andrea -- "its works!" You have a face! And a name!

Project 52: forty-three

Lunch date with my favourite Laura.

(Let's pretend I posted this at the start of the week, okay?)

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Conversations:

Amanda -- I find myself looking for that little "like" button everywhere these days! :)

Joy -- thank you so much for that beautiful comment! You're exactly right. Waiting, working, and worshipping is the way to find satisfaction in our calling.

Katie -- I love moments when the external world -- even the world of blogs -- collides with exctly what we've been thinking about internally. Cheers to you and your writing dream; may it be just as fulfilling now in the "during" process as it will be when it is realised in that concrete sense.

Sarah -- YES! In fact, your comment reminded me of the verse which says something along the lines of, 'do not despise the day of small beginnings...'

Rebecca -- thank you, my friend :).

Amanda (2) -- me, too. xx

Bethany -- "Dream big dreams but then hand them to God and tell Him it's His to do with as He likes." That is brilliant. Thank you for sharing it. xx

Jessica -- that's a really good point. Because dreams are often a process rather than a result, it can feel less fulfilling when we "get there" than it did while we were working towards it. A good reminder to (and permit a hackneyed cliche to work its way in here) enjoy the journey.

Rebecca Simon -- exactly! So, so true. And doing what we're meant to do is about so much more than the finish line or a grand gesture, isn't it?

Hannah -- you're a sweetheart. Thank YOU for your encouragement.

Samantha R -- your comment reminded me of that old catchphrase: it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Works in life as well as in sports :).

The trouble with dreams:

As I near the end of my undergrad degree, I’m getting more questions about what I’m going to do ‘afterwards’. Aside from the basic and straightforward response – pursue an MA – it’s a hard question to answer because it suggests that it’s only now I’ve (almost) completed a degree that I’m actually able to pursue my goal of writing. Really, though, I’ve been working towards this in one way or another since I was seven years old.

But the degree adds a kind of subtle pressure. In a sense, it legitimises a long-held dream, but in another way, it reduces the dream to a mere to-do list. I suppose that’s the problem with dreams. They are intangible fantasies which only come true when they reach a tangible conclusion.

The way I’m using the word ‘dream’ and making it interchangeable with ‘fantasy’ probably sounds like I’m not a fan. Perish the thought! I’m a big fan of dreams. I think imagination is important. And I strongly suspect that many of our dreams are God-made ones, originating in the Creator’s heart and transplanted into our own.

But lately I’m realising that the tangible conclusions we dream about and work towards are always strictly measurable ones. We dream of adopting a child, or building a house, or being married, or rescuing women out of slavery, or painting a prize-winning portrait, or travelling in space, or writing a novel. We think that when we achieve those things, our dreams will have come true. We’ll be successful!

We don’t dream about the little things along that pathway, though. We never dream about filling out psychiatric evaluations, or taking an architecture class, or building ourselves into the sort of person who would make a good partner. We don’t dream of squirreling away a little bit of money here and there to send to a mercy mission, or cleaning our paintbrushes, or reading dense physics texts, or putting 500 words down on paper every day, good or bad. To us, those things aren’t success. They are the things we do while we’re waiting to be successful.

The other day, I had a nasty thought: if I die and I’ve never had a book published, will I count myself a failure? To give you an even greater insight into the lame depths of my own heart, my next thought was: will people think I’m a joke because I never achieved my dream?

Bleh. My, it’s great to be reminded how pathetically human I am. And I mean that sincerely. It was eye-opening to discover what a place of honour my self-made idea of success had been given in my heart. And not merely success for my own satisfaction – after all, small things make me pretty content. But there’s this idea that I need to be successful to prove I haven’t wasted my life, to ensure that I meet with others’ approval, and to be absolutely certain I don’t mess up what might be one of the main things I was meant to do with this four score years and ten (plus a few, I hope).

How backwards all of that is. How backwards my dreams can be! Wherever did we get the idea that One Great Dream defines who we are – defines our success?

God says that it’s the one who is faithful in little things who’ll be given opportunity to be faithful in big ones. When we pray over adoption websites, rescale blueprints, learn to cook healthy food, attend a seminar, make preliminary sketches, watch a documentary on space exploration, take a red pen to a first draft – then, we are living our dreams. The dream isn’t made real when we hold the baby in our arms, hammer the last nail, open the safe house, stand at the altar, accept the blue ribbon, get outside earth’s atmosphere for the first time, or finally see that paperback with your name on the spine. In fact, those things might never come to pass. But we can be parents, builders, advocates, faithful friends, artists, astronauts, or writers as we faithfully pursue the work that we care about, looking ahead to the final goal but never letting it be the one definition of who we are.

We can work at our dreams and work well – today. Being faithful in the little things is our worship and our success. Which, I guess, is actually the dream come true.

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Conversations:

Laura Elizabeth -- thank you for giving me permission to obtain a little teeny piglet. BRB, pig shopping!

Lauren -- What did Arnowld Schwarzenegger say? "Owl be back!" Yes, I did just make that joke up. How can you tell?

Un -- aw, your March thing fizzled out? Start again in May with me!

A Child of Promise -- aw, glad you like them! Haha, trust you to appreciate the "teef" -- and a good reading spot. We are literary-loving kindred spirits :).

Brenda Wilkerson -- isn't it just? I kind of wish it were possible for me to adopt a baby piglet immediately.

Sarah -- the relaxing spot is indeed a great place for studying! Do you have a favourite place to sit down with books and papers for some heavy duty reading?