Kentucky Blue Grass & the G-force

My two most embarrassing moments:

1. The first summer I spent in Rexburg began with the hunt. The hunt for employment= story of my life. It is the story of all our lives! I had a handful of applications in & an interview lined up. Lindsey was looking for a job as well. Lindsey got a list from the Employment Office in Rexburg. Of course all of it was hard labor jobs. Lindsey had a job in mind, but didn't want to go alone. The job description involved the ability to lift 50 lbs. multiple times a day. I paused there & wondered why Lindsey wanted this job. The job was at a SOD FARM!! I tried so hard to talk her out of it but somehow I ended up in the car driving in the middle of nowhere down a dirt rode surrounded by mud & sod. In the car I see a trailer and a mobile home. When we pull up to the said equipment I see two men dressed in coveralls & irregation boots doing something farmish with a knife. They are looking at us, wondering if we are lost. I look down. I have on dress pants & a nice shirt. I am wearing black dress shoes. My hair is curled. Lindsey is dressed the same way. I look at her and say in frantic voice as my face reddens, "Turn the car around. What are we doing here? I am not getting out of the car." After a few moments of repeating, "what are we doing, what are we doing, what are we doing" with my hands covering my crimson face I felt sick. Sitting in the car while a couple of sod farmers were considering how to tell us that they didn't want any girl scout cookies was not the most embarrassing part of this whole episode. We actually had to get out of the car. Lindsey said something about how we came all this way and she told her mom she would turn in an application. I felt blind, deaf, and dumb. I could hear Lindsey ask for Mike. In my slightly heeled black shoes I stepped into the mud and walked past the dumbfounded farmers into the mobile home to talk to Mike about a job. The five minutes spent felt like hours. I kept glancing at the car wishing I was in it and hidden from sight. I don't know how all of those guys kept a straight face. I could see the laughter in their eyes. They were dying to talk about it. Finally we made it back in the car & I sank to the floor. I was frustrated and amazed at my own audacity, or rather Lindsey's because if it were up to me we would have turned around. I think she was interested in the 9$/hour. The irony to this story is that we ended up working that summer installing sprinkler systems. One day we even installed sod.
2. Elder meets G-Force
This was probably back when I was just a DD-force. I was at the farewell dinner for my friend. We had gotten to know each other a little bit over the summer. He was better friends with Lindsey & Ariel. I was wearing a shirt that I had so cleverly crafted. I loved this shirt. I loved it so much that I continued to wear it even after the buttons stopped buttoning over the G's (or DD's). I wore it even after the shoulders were so tight I could not raise my arms above my head. I buttoned it the middle button & wore a tank top underneath. When it was time to say goodbye I hugged him over the shoulders. 1st mistake. With my shirt so tight I couldn't really lift my shoulders all the way. Lifting my arms in combination with double the D's put double the strain on the one button holding me together. Then my friend squeezed me and all potential energy was released. He was shot in the stomach with a button & everyone surrounding us heard it. My shirt was all the way open & I actually think I re-buttoned it in the middle of the circle as everyone laughed. This missionary-to-be and lover of Star Wars for the first time in his life finally felt the Force.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Reading the international bestseller by Muriel Barbery was like eating my first French pastry. The pain au raisin was new to my tongue. It was like a simple greeting from a stranger. The taste changed from novelty to delight as the two of us got more acquainted. When it was gone, I wondered how I ever lacked appreciation for what I had held in my hands.

I read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" at first in pursuit of the novelty it brought to my reading list. The majority of the book is focused on the silent intelligence of the two main characters. Although there are pages of interactions with other characters, I never felt like I met another character. I was constantly locked in the corner of Paloma or Renee's mind. It was almost as if I were in a dark room peeking through the cracks to get a glimpse of the world outside, able to hear but unable to see. I am sure this was the intent of the author because, as confining as it was, it felt like the right place to be. I was meant to trust every perception of these two women, even when they seemed unjust and merciless.

What is most intriguing to me about this book is the seemingly vast lack of plot. There were moments when I thought, "Will anything ever happen in this book?" I am not the type to put down a book once I have started and I didn't really consider it as an option with this book. But, there was a split-second that I was jealous that others had that ability. It was the next second, however, that made me pity those others. Like the pastry, I began to wonder why I didn't appreciate all along the gap between novelty and delight.

You know that moment in a book where you read a line and you think, "That is why this person became an author." There are things people want to say. They don't even have to be profound. In fact, it might be very ordinary. It might be something they have learned while fighting for closure on any given event. It might be an lesson learned about a household chore. I think that author's risk years of education, drafts, rewrites, the full spectrum of emotion, the callouses of editing, and their entire life to create the conditions necessary to say even one thing that they truly believe in. Those moments are invaluable. I felt that Muriel Barbery was able to say it in this book. I don't know which line or profound thought was the pearl of her collection. As the reader I chose the one that meant the most to me.

If you want to heal
Heal others
And smile or weep
At this happy reversal of fate

For the millions of insights that this brings to me I thank Ms. Barbery. I thank her for centering her life to make the conditions right to share four little lines that will enhance mine. This is why I read.

Catharsis

One day, while FB chatting with Nicki, I was browsing the NY Times (something I never do). I stumbled onto this article by a Samuel Pisar, a man who survived Auschwitz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/opinion/29pisar.html?scp=1&sq=pisar&st=cse

I am always brought to an acute awakening when I read first-hand accounts of WWII concentration camp survivors. As most people, I am enthralled by the survival of such a person let alone the achievement of living beyond that horror. In the article, Mr. Pisar spoke of the great need for survivors to tell their story. For a split second he showed us a vision of what accounts of WWII would be like as told by historians.
He said, "Today, the last living survivors of the Holocaust are disappearing one by one. Soon, history will speak about Auschwitz with the impersonal voice of researchers and novelists at best, and at worst in the malevolent register of revisionists and falsifiers who call the Nazi Final Solution a myth. This process has already begun.
And it is why those of us who survived have a duty to transmit to humankind the memory of what we endured in body and soul, to tell our children that the fanaticism and violence that nearly destroyed our universe have the power to enflame theirs, too."

Wow. Is this charge limited to those who live through events that horrify and entrance people throughout the century? The more I thought about this quote, the more I thought about my journal. I thought about the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I thought about the Ensign. I thought about my children and my friend's children. Is it only the Holocaust that falsifiers try to prove is a myth? I was once told that history is only what is written down. From the time of Adam, events of the day were written down, which many people consider to be a myth. What can these records teach us?

"The fury of the Haitian earthquake, which has taken more than 200,000 lives, teaches us how cruel nature can be to man. The Holocaust, which destroyed a people, teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason."

To tell of what one endures when the world loses its moral compass and reason, or when nature unleashes its fury, is catharsis of the soul. There is so much pain in the thought of exploring the depths of iniquity done in such a time. The Holocaust was an experience of life. As is the earthquake in Haiti, or the economic crisis, or the death of our loved ones. It was not something that all had to witness, but of those who did we wait- for all to tell their story.