End of Month Roundup

Ways into beauty, art, & play

Children Playing on the Beach, Mary Cassatt, 1884

At the end of last month I wrote about how I want to play more. Now, at the end of this month, I’ve been taking assessment. And thinking about how I can hold myself accountable moving forward.

Hence the new End of Month Roundup.

I will confess upfront: I love ‘roundup’ style newsletters. But I never thought I could pull one off (to be clear, I’m still not sure I can). I’ve always assumed I don’t have that many interesting things to share, especially if sharing up-and-coming anything; I’m just not cool enough to know what is up-and-coming.

But I can share the highlights of my month in the way of play. And if I don’t have that much to share, well, then that will be embarrassing, and I’ll have to do better next month.

So, without wasting any more time with explanations, here’s a few ways in August that I’ve played:

1. Last weekend I taught a journaling class to a group of women from my church. There were about 12 women present. A perfect number. How is this “playing” you ask? The prep and planning ended up being so much fun. I haven’t taught a class like that for some time. Thinking about different ways to journal, oragnizing materials, practicing what I’m going to teach… discovering these layers to the art of journaling helped me see new avenues into this practice I’ve had for most my life.

Also, we played with stickers. And that’s just fun.

2. Two movies I watched this month that I keep thinking about (As you see from their the release dates, my point about not being up on the up-and-coming, is proven) :

   The Holdovers (2023 - R): This movie took a couple turns I wasn’t expecting. I love it when that happens. It also features a cast of unlikely (and some unlikeable) characters thrown together under depressing circumstances, and still a beautiful thing plays out.

   Peanut Butter Falcon (2019 - PG-13): I’m not going to say one word about this movie. I had no idea what to expect when we started watching it. I think this made the entire experience all the more wonderful. I laughed a lot. I cried some. That’s a great movie.

3. My unusual Audible listen while I run:

   Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard. If you think this is some kind of spiritualist book about forest worship, you’d be wrong. Suzanne Simard is a forest ecologist who helped pioneer research that has led to new understandings about the connectedness of trees and their connectedness to other living things in the forest. I sometimes get lost in the science, but Suzanne (who narrates her book) has written an incredibly accessible account of her research and discoveries, along with her own life story woven through. I love the intertwining of the two: her story, and her telling the story of the trees.

4. Putting fresh flowers from my garden in my office.

5. Reading this post on poetry from the Substack, The Beauty of Things

6. Writing what Anthony Doerr calls “love letters to the world” in my journal. Which is another way of saying I played around with describing several different places around my house, inside and out, using my five senses.

7. Reading and discussing Everything Sad is Untrue has felt a lot like playing. Daniel Nayeri’s voice is both playful (as it should be, his narrator is his twelve-year-old self) and profound, shockingly innocent and bracingly honest all at the same time. This YA novel has brought me closer to the earnest truth about love than any book I’ve read in quite some time.

8. Reading Yasmine Seale’s translation of The Arabian Nights has also felt a lot like play. It is this hulking coffee-table like book, full of illustrations and annotations, feeding both my love of art and color, and my natural inclination to want to know more. I’m excited for Rhea and I to talk about in on the R&W podcast.

9. Last weekend, I went to my local wine shop for my usual stock-up. There was a wine tasting. I never have time (or take time) for the wine tastings. But, last Saturday, I took the time and had a wonderful experience. I learned about Italian wines, a new grape varietal I’d never heard of—Malvasia, WWII history, the Naples sea port, winemakers outside of Rome, small Italian winemaking culture, and…. Best of all, I found my football wine for the season. Yes. I drink wine at our tailgate (I have a son who plays college football).

I would love to manufacture one more way I played to make it a solid ten, but no cheating. There’s always next month.

I will finish my first (and every) monthly roundup with a few of my favorite quotes from books I’ve been reading:

“Consider, instead, perhaps the most pleasurable sensation a reader can encounter—that feeling of being nestled in the lap of a story, fully removed from the surrounding world and concerned only with a need to know what happens next. One might study syntax and structure and use of language and all manner of literary devices, but this one thing, this magnetic thing, when it happens is a distillation of all that is joyful about storytelling.”  - Omar El Akkad, from the Forward to The Annotated Arabian Nights

“Does writing poetry make you brave? It’s a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do.”  - Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue

“Can God create a law so big that He himself has to obey it? Is there an idea so big that God doesn’t remember anything before it? The answer is love. Love is the object of unusal size.” – Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone. And remember, keep your eyes open! For Christ plays in ten thousand places.