The Second Ever Lobster Contest! 555

We decided it was time for another contest! Here's how this one works:


1. Leave us a comment somewhere on the blog. It could be on this post or any other post. 
2. The person who writes the 555th comment on our blog wins! (Of course, you don't know what we're on right now. It could be 500 or 554 or 10. Feel free to comment on multiple posts.)
3. Zoe will send you A Bug's Life on DVD because bugs have antennae just like lobsters. (Okay, maybe it's just because Zoe happens to have an extra copy. I know - we really go all out with these prizes. You're welcome.)

If you'd like to be lazy and just comment on this post, we'd love to know answers to one of the following questions:
1. What would you like to see us write about?
2. What's something pleasant that's happened in your life recently?
3. Do you enjoy three point lists as much as me?

Good luck, Lobsters!

Movie Review Monday #42: Tree of Life

I was not in a mood for this type of film when I sat down to watch it. And mood certainly matters. I can imagine that by watching the trailer, many people would guess they'll never be in the mood. You might also suppose that it would be the type of film to put you to sleep, and to be totally honest, it did that to me. Even still, after I went back to watch the piece I'd slept through, I have come away feeling like this is one of the most profound pieces of art I've experienced in ages, and I am going to try to convince you here to get in the mood and give it a shot, in case all the awards and acclaim it has received haven't already done that for you.


I was nervous even from the outset that I would drift off. It begins with lots of quiet imagery, not much action or dialogue. Manny made reference to its similarity to 2001: A Space Odyssey (as did Roger Ebert apparently, so good call, Manny!). I slept through all but about 90 seconds of that one, so I had no idea what he was talking about. But I did not drift off right away, because the images were so striking. Instead, I was reminded of Koyaanisqatsi, which is a film (trilogy) that uses nothing but imagery and sound to explore questions about the meaning of life.

I felt like you could take a still capture of every single image being shown and fill an entire art museum and have a phenomenal photographic exhibit. The light, the composition, the color, the content. It was actually overwhelming to behold so much beauty in so many forms in such a short period of time. There's a somewhat similar sequence at the end, and that's where the three weeks on 4-6 hours of sleep per night did me in. But I went back after a good night's rest and caught up on that portion and just cried through the whole twelve minutes over how excruciatingly beautiful and emotional it was, so I blame the sleep deprivation, not the film.





Not only was the visual artistry stunning, but somehow, the film managed to capture air. There is something singular about how the air feels on a sunny day in Texas (most of it is set in Waco), and through this two dimensional art form, I felt it. Perhaps that is something to be said for the excellence of the sound? However they did it, they managed to engage more senses, and therefore more attention and engagement from me than a film should be able to.

So it was stunning, yes. But unlike Koyaanisqatsi, there is a clear story at the heart of it. Director, Terrence Malik manages to drill down into the particulars of human experience with unprecedented sharpness in order to tap into universal themes and ideas about the meaning of life. There is an intimacy in the way he captures the story of a young boy who grows into a man that conveys great substance about this boy's context, relationships, inner thoughts, personal struggles, and sense of identity. The fact that it primarily revolved around a young boy growing up and doing as boys do in Texas, perhaps just shortly before my own father was doing the exact same things, evoked a very personal connection for me, as I never tire of hearing stories of my father's boyhood shenanigans. And from what I can learn about Malik's own story, there are some clearly autobiographical elements reflected here, with growing up in Texas, losing a brother, immersing himself in his career as a young man, etc. But from what I read online, it was less my Texas roots, or even the truth of his own experience, and more the manner of the directing that enables the audience to experience this personal investment, because plenty of others have felt the same thing without such auto-biographical connections.

The film opens with a verse from Job:

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand." 

-Job 38:4

And after a sequence of images of the formations of the earth, and the formations of the life of a boy, a voice over goes on to talk about "the way of nature" vs. "the way of grace." The effect was to convince me afresh and anew of my own smallness in the grand enormity of the universe. But even though you begin with a sense of inconsequence in your self and your own sufferings, the personal engagement you form with the characters helps you understand that even though we are relatively small, we are still imbued with great significance. Hopefully the end result is grateful humility. 

Apparently Malik is a very private person, so I have no idea what his personal creed of belief might be (though there are some hints he may be Episcopalian?). Many seem to claim that the film is crafted the way it is so that whoever I am and whatever I believe, I can project my own meaning into it. Perhaps. Or perhaps he has crafted his art in such a way that he has successfully tapped into a truth that we can not actually grasp in our limited minds and therefore limited human language. So it is a limitation of our own minds rather than a wideness in possible truths that he is battling with through his artistic choices. The answer to that may be a philosophical one, independent of how Malik himself feels about the answer. But aside from his intention one way or another, I have been studying some questions around the meaning of life, resurrection, and the book of Revelation (the last chapter of which speaks multiple times of the "Tree of Life"), and I found this film to express some of the lessons I've been learning (especially from N.T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope). I do not want to say too much about what I think the film is communicating through each detail, except to say that the film certainly seems to wrestle humbly with themes of grief, identity, sin, grace, reconciliation, and redemption. I'll leave it to you to watch it for yourself to see how all of that plays out. Of course, that is speaking to those who have not seen it. If you have seen it, I would be ever so interested to hear your thoughts!

Sabbath Sunday

Today:
Church
Lunch
Looked at wedding pictures with sister
Naaaaaaaaap!!!
Dinner
Compose lengthy email to Zoe about the wonders of having an iPad

P.S. Zoe informed me that Sofia learned to say gnome today. I think we can all agree that this is a huge triumph for the Reyes family. Congrats!

Flashback! The eleventh.

10/26/04

zoe.  honestly.  come on.  my imagination is starting to fill in the blanks and

i´m coming up with my own story about your engagement.  ;)

i love you!

emily

10/26/04

Oook - so my mom thinks we need to go photoshoot the whole path of the evening and put it into an illustrated version of the story.  But i guess i can give you the simple version first.

So . . . Around wed. manny announced "we're going to dinner Friday night, just so you know" - he never does this at all, never plans ahead, that's way too anal for his style.  So i already get incredibly excited!  And he isn't terribly set on not telling me where, but we debate back and forth about whether I want to know.  Eventually, i just start guessing instead.  Then i admitted that i was afraid to guess one certain place cause i kinda really wanted to go there and i was afraid to find out that wasn't it.  So - he started guessing what that was.  SO fun - we kept guessing like every restaurant in town and never hit the same one, so basically, i knew i was going where i wanted to go - which was Primo, a tiny hole in the wall, completely cramped little italian restaurant that we saw in the first few months of our dating then went for our anniversary and then second valentine's day.  This means, it really really is a special evening, so i'm a wreck of anxiety and excitement.  But i'd already gotten my hopes up that all the signs pointed to last Saturday night being the night and i was sorely disappointed and wound up fighting with manny all night instead.  Argh. So - i wasn't betting my life on it or anything, sometimes the boy just surprises me with being sweet.  But in anticipation and hoping for the best, i was a whirlwind as soon as i got home trying to beautify myself as much as possible - i wore his favorite shirt and a new skirt and his fav. Hairstyle and even put on make up - wo! :)  and he came to pick me up, he told me i needed walking shoes, so i had to run upstairs to grab them.  As i did, i heard tiffany [who was downstairs greeting manny] gasp.  Then when i came down, she took pictures of us before we went out - kinda like your parents on prom night - definitely fishy - definitely a good sign  in my opinion.  Also - kinda awkward!  Anyway, so we went, and as we were driving to dinner, the path he took was totally not towards primo - but turns out he was trying to throw me off by going round about, and we were in fact going to primo - points for manny! Perfect choice!  And dinner was SO much fun! We were just giddy and in love and having a great time together. We almost didn't get a table cause the place is so small and he didn't make reservations and apparently it's become more popular, but we barely did - the table that literally blocks the entrance - sort of awkward, but romantic in its own humble little way.  So dinner was great, happy food, happy us.  Once we finally decided it was time to give up our table for someone else, he suggested we go hang out at Borders. Now this really threw me off actually.  I thought maybe the walking shoes were for my non-high-heeled comfort for state steet.  We wandered around borders, judging books by their covers, literally, and having a great time exploring and romping around - yes, borders is our playground, we are totally nerds.  I think he must have by that point told me he loved me or that i was beautiful around 100 times - that could actually be a literal count - he was being so sweet [which isn't too different from normal, but still fun as always] and his eyes were just sparkling with excitement.  I was having a blast, but it was all so loose and unstructured or rushed or anything, so i thought -well, maybe there isn't a grand plan, and we'll just have to be having plain fun tonight vs. engagement fun. Oh well.  But after about an hour, i felt the fun start to wane - so i said i was done with borders.  He was like "oh, are you sure you're done with borders? You don't want to hang out any longer?" i was like "no, we're having so much fun, i want to leave before we even start to get bored with it" because i have actually fallen asleep in borders several times while he's been looking at math books! He asked if there was anything else i wanted to do for the night - i quite simply declined and so he said, "well, we can just go back to campus" so we did.  And he asked me to throw my walking shoes on so we could take one of our campus walks. Yay! So - we take our walk and we're still having a blast being goofy and talking and being crazy about each other, but he keeps interrupting me to say like, "remember when we tried to come sit in the hammock but someone was sitting there so we had to go read on the bench" and stuff like that all over the campus, then he took me down to the track where he asked me to be his girlfriend [because we used to go sit down by the track and talk when we were first getting to know each other] and we stood and held each other and he told me how much he loved me and how much he's loved the past year and 8 months we've had together, and how he always wants to be the one to love and take care of me, etc. and then he looks into my eyes and says, "Zoe Stewart, will you be my princess?" and i said "yes!" and he said "Zoe Stewart, will you be my queen?" and i said "yes!" and then he knelt down on one knee and grabbed both of my hands and said "zoe stewart, will you be my wife?" and opened the little jewelry box with the ring in it. And i just kissed him, and said "yes, a thousand times yes" and kissed him and he said "but you haven't even looked at the ring!" lol - and i said "silly, i don't need to see the ring, YES!"  and then he slid it on my finger and we just hugged and smiled and i think i probably said yes alot more times.  And the moon was so bright that there were hardly any shadows anywhere, and you could see the stars so beautifully - it was perfect.  And then we came back to his cottage.  We walked in and Nate and Aaron were like, "so are you guys going to go on a walk?" and i was all, "it's ok guys, we already went, we're engaged!" and they gave us a huge hug and i had some kind of ear ache and nate squished my ear and it killed, but it was a sweet group hug anyway.  Then we called our parents and you and then i crashed on his couch with him watching the end of Kate and Leopold.  And then he drove me home and i went straight to bed without even telling my roommates. I came home pretty early too - and i looked really beat - so tiffany thought it had gone bad - oops.  But it was wonderful. And nearly just as wonderful is getting to tell people now and everyone giving us hugs and being so excited -  a woman at work brought me flowers today! How sweet is that!??!?!?!?  I like being engaged!! :)  so that's the story and i'm sticking to it!  I hope this satisfies your curiosity.  And now its time to leave work - we have a double date with one of manny's professors - how great is that?!?!?! I'm so stoked! His wife is making us spaghetti with meat balls and we're just gonna watch a movie.  Yay!  Also - this afternoon was so great, we addressed christmas party invitations for the Gaedes [1600 invites! To address in 2 afternoons] and we drank apple cider, ate yummy snacks and listened to christmas music while it rained outside.  Lovely.  My hand aches like a mother, but i feel really relaxed otherwise!

And how are you chica??  How did that test go?  Any traveling adventures this weekend? 

Love you!

Zoe faith

1:10:100

Living in a college town has some really great advantages, including free talks by neat people. I recently got to see the guys from eepy bird, of "coke and mentos" fame, give a talk. One of them was the son of two mathematics professors, so it was kind of like getting a glimpse into Sofia's potential future, or half of it anyways, since she only has one math-professor-parent. It was timely because I have been struggling with a desire to nourish creativity lately, but not feeling like I have all the tools or environment to do so. While the presentation didn't answer my questions from my recent blog post on the topic, it was still really encouraging. Also, considering Emily's recent realization that her dream is to do something creative, I thought at least my Lobster might enjoy some process encouragement, so I have to share. 

You can essentially see the exact talk I saw in this 7 minute "1-10-100" youtube video. This is their explanation of the creative process that they believe anyone can execute. As I discussed in a recent post, creativity [and this process they discuss here] is something that can be applied in so many different contexts - be it math, writing, juggling, or coke explosions. I'll just splice in some of my own thoughts and a few examples they shared that aren't included in the video. 

"1-10-100"
Experiment one: Just start with something that piques your interest. For these guys it was putting mentos into a bottle of coke. As they went through their talk, I found it helpful to consider a couple possibilities for what my experiment 1 might be, so that I could apply their advice as I considered where it could go. I have a few seeds of potential writing ideas in the back of my mind. I've wanted to write for ages but have just never known about what. It seems like there have been so many good books already produced, it's hard to think what more there is for me to contribute. But there are tons of things that pique my curiosity, so I started to think about two of those as they went through the rest of the presentation.

I'll pause for a minute while you come up with a potential experiment one for yourself.

...

Ok . . . Once you have an experiment one, you just test it out. Drop that mentos in the bottle, draft up a little 500 word essay, start to jot down a proof, run some numbers, put together a spreadsheet or a sketch. To get from experiment one to experiment ten, just apply variation. Play. See what all you can do with your experiment one - come at it from different angles, get wacky, get bold, explore. Explore alot.

For the sake of this post, I'll tell you about one idea I have, which is writing about cooking. On one side of my family, I have one cousin who is a chef and owns/runs three restaurants. On the other side, I have a cousin who is an actual and very accomplished food writer. So there seems to be a familial value and theme coming at me from every angle. I've started to play around with that in my cooking with zoe series here on this blog. I've just been playing around with the idea in various ways. 

After you play around for a while, and you invest time into it, you can eventually formulate a sketch like a skit or an article or an outline that is quick and dirty, but is a rough picture of something really cool. This is Experiment Ten. They point out that most people stop here. With their experiment ten, people thought it was cool and told them to post on youtube. 

Emily tells me this cooking with zoe post was the best thing I'd ever written. Thanks, Pyg! I think it was probably my experiment ten. And while it was cool, here's the thing about making something great, don't stop at experiment ten, because you're not done until you have something "unforgettable."

They give 4 charges for getting from experiment ten to Experiment 100.
1) Be obsessive. Become the expert. Really put in the time and explore your object of curiosity more than anyone ever has before. Example: Theo Jensen: Animaris Rhinoceros. This guy got curious and became an expert on sculptures powered by the wind. Check out this crazy video of one of his pieces:

2) Be stubborn. If you have a gut intuition that you want to see something come to fruition, keep at it even when it doesn't seem to be working. Find creative ways to get around blockades. I felt like they discussed all kinds of neat and crazy possibilities they explored and had to let go of - so I think there must be an art to stubbornly pursuing something with neat potential, and knowing when something simply isn't working out and needs to be scrapped or edited out or let go of. This point probably troubled me because I really have trouble editing down, in case the length of my posts hadn't already made that painfully obvious to my regular readers!
 
3) Be extreme. Scale up. Quantity can change quality, break away from the pack and discover something new. They talked about how it was cool to see mentos dropped into 10 bottles of coke, but what about 100? I've thought about the trickiness of quantity before through this blog. And it counter-intuitive to me to admit that there is value in greater quantity, but I see what they mean about something great becoming something grand in this way. I think this is maybe just a trickier point for me to understand how to apply to my own creative project. Thoughts, Lobsters?

4) Limit yourself. This was my favorite point. I'm from Texas, Lobsters. You know, where everything is bigger? And yet these guys beautifully illustrated how powerful it is to limit yourself, to think inside the box. 

A trippy math fact I learned from my husband, did you know that some infinities are greater than others? I'll give you a minute to try to wrap your mind around that . . . tough,  I know, we'll just move on. So some infinities are greater, and in fact, the infinity of numbers between zero and one [1/2 or 0.5 being right in the middle of that list of numbers] is greater than the infinity from zero to infinity on the number line? I'm probably not stating that precisely, Manny will have to leave a comment with a more eloquent statement. But I've always found that truth to be so beautiful. It provides a metaphor for how there is greater depth in drilling down than in blowing up and out. And that's what they seem to be trying to get at here, that Creativity flourishes with rules. 

The examples they provided were so great:

a) This artist, Peter Callesen, explores creating sculptures with nothing but one sheet of A4 white paper. Here's just one sculpture, check out his website to see a whole series. Petercallesen.com.

 

Or in another medium, how about this guy Matt who traveled around the world and took video of himself doing one very simple and silly dance:

I cry every single time I watch that video. Every. Single. Time. 

This was so helpful because I realized if I limit myself to writing around cooking, I'll be forced to go deep into all that that means to me, and hit on some more beautiful stuff, which I think I began to do with my experiment 10, but I have a long way to go. 

One of the key points they make in the presentation is that they did not wake up one day and execute experiment 100 out of the blue. It was a diligent process from one to one hundred. They say, and I leave you with this charge: 

"Don't worry about genius, just get down to business."

What might your experiment one be? Have you ever gotten to an "experiment ten," or an "experiment one hundred"? How did you get there? Did these principles apply to your process? 

some things i've been thinking about lately...

Random musings...go!

• Now that Eiley is mobile, I find myself saying be careful all the time. Tonight, I realized that saying be careful to anyone is almost always pointless. (For example, one Christmas I received an mp3 player in hard plastic packaging. I was using a knife to cut it open, and my mother said be careful, and I rather sarcastically said okaaaaay. I promptly cut my finger open with said knife. She tried to warn me, but it just didn't do any good. Please note that I found this hilarious.) Tonight, I also realized that saying be careful to a baby is completely pointless. I might as well be saying yaddablahmcgrawr. Even after I came to this realization, I said be careful no less than three more times. Oh well.
• I've tried to find the "like" button on several work emails this week. It would just be nice to be able to acknowledge that I've read things even when a response isn't necessary, you know?
• I love it when God reveals himself to me at unexpected times. This week, Eiley had just finished eating, and she gets this big, goofy grin on her face and stares at me, and BAM I felt pretty much bowled over with His love - amazed that He'd entrust me with that smile. Also, two nights ago, Jeff and I were watching Parenthood, and they start playing "It Is Well," and God and I had another moment. This time because it hadn't been feeling well with my soul, but listening to those lyrics made me pause and pray and I realized that all is well when I turn to Him. Yep, I got all that from an episode of a TV show.

Gah.

• I made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins this weekend. I went heavy on the chocolate chips. I don't want to brag, but I could have eaten all 16 of them.
• I've been watching a lot of TV lately because we just got hulu+, and it kind of makes me feel guilty. How much TV do you all watch? I always feel like I should be doing something else with my time.
• Big rigs without trailers make me sad. They're like giant heads wandering the freeways without bodies. I'm certain it humiliates them.

Pooooor big rig.

End of thoughts.

struggling to write

I'm married to a mathematician. I feel like that sounds as obscure as telling you I'm married to a philosopher, which is not so far off. People get all squirmy and uncomfortable when I tell them that. I start hearing confessions about how bad that individual was at calculus, how much they hated statistics, or how they just can't add. Or on the other hand, people tell me how much they loved math in school, the nice orderly security of having a definite answer amidst all the other ambiguity of life. Whatever the reaction, it's usually fairly strong, and followed by a quick change of subject. (Are you squirming right now just reading this?) 


I can only imagine what it is like to walk in Manny's shoes and have to experience that much more directly all the time. Anyways, if people don't change the subject so quickly, and they don't always, I love to talk about how amazingly creative the world of math is once you get past the basic requirements schools impose on you. I had no idea, even until years into Manny's Ph.D. program, just what it meant to be a mathematician, and to be honest, I'm probably fooling myself to believe that I get it even now. He humors me. 


What's beautiful about the fact that math is surprisingly imaginative is that it makes our unlikely pairing into a beautifully rooted connection in creativity. I was a philosophy and english major, he majored in physics and math. The only class we had together was ballroom/swing dance. But because there was this creative analysis at the root of what we each loved about our respective disciplines, even if we don't understand the details of what the other has to say, we get the core experience, and for us, that ends up being what truly matters.


The other week, we were able to resonate with each other when our hands were full with Sofia and he just wanted to sit down and concentrate on some research, and I just wanted to sit down and write, and when we were finally able to, we both felt so freed. When I told him how, on days that I don't get to write, it feels like there is a traffic jam of material in my head just blaring their horns, dying to break through, he got me. 


Maybe even if you don't write, or even if you're not a theoretical mathematician (because I know those make up a huge percentage of this blogs following, right?), but you have some form of creative expression, you get me too. Maybe you understand that once you start disciplining yourself to get into your craft, the art starts to flow much more easily and you find yourself refining your process and your results and growing in your abilities in little ways each time you get back to it. And that growth feels fantastic. And the traffic jam similarly grates at your brain and frustrates you. 


Sometimes life is crazy enough, I moved past the point of the traffic jam. The other day, I was so frazzled and sleep deprived I just could not get words out, I might have had a little baby-induced-aphasia. It was as if the road between my brain and my mouth (or fingers) simply crumbled apart. You know after you've been sitting in that traffic jam for long enough, as soon as you get a break through the cars (time to write) you let loose and drive like a maniac because you are making up for all that pent up energy and you drive your car up a median, or in my case write really weird blog posts that you have to come back to and edit furiously once you realize the mistake you've made. 


The worst stage is when I feel like I've been sitting in the traffic so long, I've just given up hope for any movement to pick up, and I've just reclined my seat and curled up behind the wheel to take a nap. On some days, by the time I get a chance to sit down, my brain is fried and it just takes so long to settle into a creatively productive space.


Anyone else connecting with me here? I'm grateful for this blog as it forces me to get some flow going, and I think that helps keep the creativity alive in dry spells. But since it seems like this struggle may transcend across talents. Maybe you identify and have some other tools for how we can navigate this traffic. How do you keep the creative juices flowing? How do you create space for your craft amidst the chaos of life? How do you satisfy those needs when your art can't find its outlet?