Tag: Laura F

  • R is for… Romantic Comedies!

    Contributed by Laura F.

    Who doesn’t love a good romantic comedy?  Nobody with whom I would care to associate, certainly.  :>).  Hating good romantic comedies, from my perspective, would be like hating kittens or boy bands: the sign of a tragically soured outlook on life.

    Of course, the key word is “good.”  Any team of idiots with multi-million dollar funding by a major studio can toss a film together, call it a romantic comedy, and unleash it on an unsuspecting public.  I have learned from bitter experience that although so-called romantic comedies abound, very few of them are either romantic or comic.

    The reason for this sorry state of things, I believe, is the current terror of being connected with anything that anyone anywhere might label “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l,” a word so feared and despised nowadays that I feel compelled to spell it rather than say it out loud.  Unfortunately, separating romantic love (supposedly the basis of romantic comedies) from anything that might strike anyone as “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l” puts filmmakers in a bit of a quandary.  We all know that the couple who are destined to be together have to wait until the end of the film to actually get together.  If they were joined at the hip from the beginning, where would be the suspense?

    With typical Hollywood genius, filmmakers are prone to solve this problem by having the destined couple HATE each other right up until that kiss (or equivalent) at the end.  Do you think I exaggerate?  I invite you to consider Ticket to Paradise, a movie I forced my poor family to watch last Christmas.  It had George Clooney!  It had Julia Roberts!  They played a divorced couple who unite in order to prevent what they believe will be a disastrous marriage for their daughter.  All this and the background of a tropical – well, paradise!  What could go wrong?

    What could, and did, go wrong is that the script was far too convincing in showing the Clooney and Roberts characters as genuinely estranged from each other, genuinely angry at, and contemptuous of, each other.  Their sniping and sarcasm and quarrels were truly nasty.  Sorry, Hollywood, after witnessing scene after scene of two people who show every sign of deeply disliking each other, even the most rosily optimistic audience member will not believe in the completely last-minute freeze frame that is supposed to signal their reconciliation.

    So much for the romance.  So, also, for the comedy.  Again, accept my apologies, Hollywood, but the current popularity of so-called “insult comedy” does not mean that every insult is automatically comic, let alone clever, let alone witty.  It is possible for a put-down to be funny, but it is a huge mistake to assume that every put-down is funny just because it is a put-down.

    Does this mean that the art of the romantic comedy is completely dead?  No.  One charming example of the genre is Love Hard, a film whose title comes from the fact that the heroine’s favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard while the hero’s favorite Christmas movie is Love, Actually.  I won’t pretend that the film is perfect; its plot relies heavily on the heroine’s obtuseness in pursuing an outdoorsy hunk instead of recognizing what the audience sees instantly: that she and the bespectacled hero are made for each other.  If you watch this movie (and I hope you will), you will roll your eyes over her slowness.  The point remains, however, that the two of them are made for each other; their respect and affection for each other shine through their every scene together.  As a result, when the two finally come together, I felt like cheering.

    Romantic?  Comic?  Yes, Love Hard proves a film can be both those things.  So, Hollywood, can we have more true romantic comedies, please?

  • L Is For… Leaving Things Out

    Contributed by Laura F.

    We live in an age notable for many things, and one of those things must surely be our shared obsession with “de-cluttering,” “minimalism,” “voluntary simplicity,” whatever other name you choose to give it.  The interiors held up for our admiration are those that have been stripped down to essentials: bare, airy, uncluttered.  If “decluttering” is the activity urged upon us as virtually a moral obligation, then “uncluttered” is perhaps the ultimate word of praise.

    I have certainly done my share of decluttering, some of which I heartily regret, but I have never achieved an uncluttered look in my living space, and I have no desire to try.  You see, there is a counter-balance to the gospel that an uncluttered, almost naked space leads to a healthy mind and a pure spirit.  The counter-balance is advice that I have found to be true: it is easier to pursue activities if your living space is set up to make those activities easy to jump into.  Some zealots go so far as to advocate packing your gym bag the night before or even sleeping in your gym clothes (!!!!) so that in the morning you will jump out of bed, grab your bag (or not, if you’re already dressed for the gym) and be on your way to a vigorous workout.

    Please do not imagine that the “you” in the preceding sentence is being used as an all-inclusive pronoun.  I have never even owned a gym bag and the thought of sleeping in gym clothes sounds as bizarre to me as the thought of showering in gym clothes.  That would save time, too, wouldn’t it?  But would it really be a good idea?

    No, let’s put all thoughts of gym firmly to one side and leave them there.  I’m thinking instead of such things as what I witnessed last Christmas, when my mother agreed to let my older sister spread out her jigsaw puzzle on our “fancy” table, one we only pull out to its full extent at major holidays.  We had our ordinary meals in the kitchen, as usual, but the “fancy” table stayed out in all its glory after Christmas dinner was over so that my sister could keep working on the puzzle.  It took weeks for her to complete the fiendishly difficult puzzle, but she finally triumphed over its challenges.  Imagine what a frustrating experience it would have been if she had had to put the puzzle away at the end of each visit and re-assemble it the next time she came over!

    Jigsaw puzzles, of course, are an extreme example, but almost any activity benefits from being literally easy to “pick up.”  Does any reader actually put a book neatly back in the bookcase after each reading session?  Who among us does not prefer to have a book handy on the bedside table or by the side of our chair?  After we’ve read the book entirely through, then it can go back in the bookcase.

    One of the greatest of sewing luxuries is the ability to leave a sewing project out on a table.  As for those people who actually have to put not only their fabric pieces but even their sewing machine away after each use, I salute their dedication but I suspect that less dedicated people would gradually sew less and less.

    I myself am a tremendous devotee of coloring books and it is a true pleasure to be able to leave a coloring book open, with a tempting array of coloring agents (pens, paints, etc.) by its side.  For me, coloring is a great way to relax.  Sometimes all I need is to color for ten minutes, or even for five, and that is enough to soothe whatever little upset ruffled my spirits.  If I had to take out my coloring book and colors each time before carefully putting them away again, my opportunities for quick “peace breaks” would be much more limited.

    In short, although plenty of people will tell you that a completely uncluttered space is crucial to mental health, I’d like to propose that sometimes leaving things out has valuable mental health benefits of its own.

     

  • A Is For… Again!

    Contributed by Laura F.

    When I was in school (long ago now), a classmate claimed that anyone who went a full year without having sex automatically became a born-again virgin.  I won’t comment on the validity (or invalidity) of this claim, but I want to connect it to something I heard from another classmate in another context.  She remarked that one of her professors had told her that he envied students who still had the experience of reading Anna Karenina for the first time ahead of them.  Of course, it would be possible to substitute any book for Anna Karenina.  There are videos on Youtube by booktubers who lament that they have forever lost the ability to read – oh, the Harry Potter series, to give one example – for the first time.  How did they lose this ability?  By reading the series, of course.  The first time, it appears, is always the best time.

    But is it true that we each get only one first time?  Recently I’ve re-read a few books and I was astounded by what a “first time” experience each of these re-readings was.  No, I don’t mean that my increased maturity, greater experience, and expanded consciousness :>) led me to new and brilliant insights into what I was reading.  I wish!

    I understand that there are people who proclaim that enduring a painful breakup/becoming a parent/undergoing a serious illness/[insert important life experience of your choice here] has given them an entirely new perspective on their favorite books.  That is NOT what I am describing.

    What I mean, somewhat embarrassingly, is that the books I was re-reading seemed entirely new to me because I didn’t remember a dang thing about them.  Oh, PRIOR to picking them up again, I would have said that I remembered them.  I could have named the major characters and identified significant aspects of their personalities. I had a pretty solid grasp of the plot, or at least I thought I did.  I had vivid recollections of one or two particular incidents.  I wasn’t expecting any surprises.

    But it turned out that on a sentence-by-sentence, page-by-page, scene-by-scene, chapter-by-chapter basis, I had one surprise after another.   Eventually, the surprises ceased to surprise me because I no longer had any expectation of recognizing anything I read.

    Now, admittedly, these were all books I had read years ago.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have expected them to seem familiar upon re-reading.  Nonetheless, despite being in what a lot of people apparently consider the fortunate position of being able to read the same book “for the first time” twice, I’m not sure that I consider it quite so fortunate.  After all, what does it mean to tell people I’ve read a certain book if I have so little memory of it?  What does it mean to tell MYSELF that I’ve read that book?

    I wonder now whether I should turn to another “A” word”: annotation.  I’ve never been one of those people who mark up their books with all kinds of underlining, highlighting, and marginal notes.  I’m used to reading books that I’ve taken out of the library and libraries prefer that patrons return books in the same condition they found them.  But I do own some books, including quite a few that I’ve never read.  If I annotated those books as I read them, would I have only one “first time” experience with them?  Would I retain more memory of the books once those books have returned to the shelf?

    Despite what booktubers might wish for, despite what that professor envied his students for, I think I’d rather be an experienced reader instead of a perpetually first-time reader.  Maybe it’s time to make highlighters and other annotation tools my new best friends.

     

  • W Is For… Walking

    Contributed by Laura F.

    “W” is for “walking but it is also for “writing” and in this, my final post in the A-Z Blog challenge, I want to pass along and recommend the best piece of writing advice that I have ever received, which is to use walking (or any other physical activity, no matter how slight) as a stimulus for writing.

    Based on publication records, there appear to be some fortunate individuals in this world who never experience even the briefest difficulty in getting words on the page (or on the computer screen).  I’ve read Stephen King’s On Writing and in that book he claims that he gladly – GLADLY!! – writes every single day of every year.  Oh, yes, once or twice he told pesky interviewers that he didn’t write on his birthday or on Christmas day but that was only because they refused to believe him when he told them the truth.  The truth is that he is eager to sit down and write every day and he DOES sit down and write every day, including his birthday, including Christmas Day.  He writes EVERY day.  Every.  Single.  Day.  He writes every day without any inner forces holding him back, whispering in his ear that he’s too tired, too distracted, that dishes need washing and the dog needs a walk and he’d better finish reading that library book today because it’s due tomorrow.

    I can only say, “Mr. King, I salute you. This consistency is part of what makes you Stephen King while I . . . . am not.”

    Of course, I don’t want to be Stephen King.  The very word “horror” fills me with, well, horror.  I’ve never read anything of King’s aside from On Writing, and I don’t intend to read anything else of his.

    However, I often wish I could be as effortlessly diligent about my own writing as he is about his.  No matter how satisfied I am with my plot, no matter how much I love my characters, no matter how much I’m delighted that I have written once I’ve done it, starting is almost always hard for me.  Sometimes it’s so hard that an entire day goes by without my advancing in my latest project.  Or two days.  Or a three.  Or a week.  Or . . . . .  I don’t want to admit publicly how long I can go without writing.

    Yet, even when I find the writing process most difficult, walking stirs my creative juices.  Often I have walked out whatever inhibition kept me from my writing desk.  Once I walked, I wrote.  The equation has often been as simple as that.

    Of course, many, many writers have recommended walking as a spur to creativity.  Julia Cameron, the creator of the Artist’s Way, devoted an book to the subject.  Yet Cameron insists upon the need to walk outdoors, and I regard that insistence as a serious mistake.  For those who love the outdoors and for whom it is possible to walk outdoors, Godspeed!  For me, indoor walking is best, preferably with some of my favorite music further lifting my spirits and stimulating my imagination.  I live in a climate where it is almost always too cold or too hot to walk outdoors, even if one is an ardent fan of nature, which I am NOT.  What suits me is walking in my apartment, in shopping malls, even in the stacks of a university library.  Walking is the magic, not walking outside.

    At times when physical limitations have made it impossible to walk, then less taxing physical activities have helped me get back to writing.  Any movement, even simply the hand movements of craftwork, have often inspired and motivated me to return to my current manuscript.

    Whether my feet move or my hands move, I almost always end a movement session with fresh enthusiasm for my writing.  Perhaps you have had similar experiences.  Perhaps you can share other suggestions for those of us who, unlike Stephen King, do not find it easy to write every day.

  • N Is For… Needle and Thread!

    Contributed by Laura F.

    My first blog post for this challenge advocated inefficiency as a way of incorporating more exercise into one’s day.  My second post advocates a different kind of “inefficiency,” but this time applied to needle arts.

    Sewing has been a passion of mine for decades.  Decades of experience, however, do not mean that I am the kind of skilled seamstress who constructs three piece skirt suits with two dozen different darts artfully shaping the jacket and a corresponding number of darts, pleats, and tucks transforming the skirt into something simultaneously tightly tailored and figure-flattering (not always a combination that go together).

    No, my sewing specialty has always been the type of pattern labeled as “Super-Easy,” “For Beginners,” “Quick and Easy,” “Learn to Sew,” and so forth.  After all, why spend hour after hour after hour on one garment when there was an entire world of potential garments just waiting for my itchy fingers to seize the fabric and plunge right in?  Yes, I spent a lot on fabric, but hey! I spent so little on ready-to-wear clothes!  Besides, I only bought fabric on sale.  I wasn’t completely emptying my bank account and I was having a lot of fun.  Why not continue this same way forever?

    Two words: fast fashion.  Like many people who do a lot of sewing, I felt smugly (some might say “insufferably”) virtuous about the fact that I didn’t buy the output of exploited workers in polluting factories run by what were surely evil people.

    However, even in my smug cocoon, I gradually became aware that many people who sewed were getting concerned that home sewing could itself be part of “fast fashion.” What about the factories that pumped out fabric instead of ready-to-wear clothes?  What about the way textile workers were treated?  What about the environmental harm done by textile manufacturing?

    Need I add that the kind of dirt-cheap fabric I had been in the habit of buying was the fabric equivalent of the worst excesses of fast fashion?

    I didn’t want to give up sewing and I haven’t.  But I have made certain changes, some in where I find my fabric and some in how I sew that fabric once I have it.

    Thrift store sheets are now the fabric with which I sew most often.  So much fabric!  Oodles of fabric!  Not only that, but the main concern most people have about thrift stores is that so few thrift store items actually get sold.  This might make donating to thrift stores problematic, but it doesn’t mean there are any problems buying from thrift stores.

    Once I have this virtually guilt-free fabric, what comes next?  Not necessarily a trip to the sewing machine.  With the super-simple patterns I use, a project sewn on a sewing machine can be finished in a few hours and then.

    But what about needle and thread?  What about hand-sewing?  Like all my other good sewing ideas, I did not originate this thought.  I first came across it in an article by a woman who advocated hand-sewing as a way to make sewing a more portable hobby.  I can attest that sewing without a machine DOES make sewing more portable and also – this is the big benefit that I have gained – much, much slower.

    I’ve always found sewing supremely relaxing; hand-sewing adds another layer of relaxation because removing the whirring noise of the machine enables me to listen to music, to engage in conversation, or to watch a movie while I sew.  There is a meditative quality to hand-sewing that soothes the spirit.

    Are the resulting items as sturdy as machine-stitched ones would be?  Absolutely not.  That’s why I reserve hand-sewing for items that I will not be putting to seam-busting, hem-ripping tests.  A delicate scarf, a loose bathrobe: these are the types of sewing projects where hand-sewing shines.

    I expect a sewing machine to be a part of my household right up until the time when I depart for that sewing studio in the sky.  However, making hand-sewing an integral part of my sewing experiences enables me to keep enjoying one of my favorite hobbies in a more sustainable way.  Perhaps hand-sewing could do the same for you.

     

     

  • E Is For… Exercise!

    Contributed by Laura F.

    “E” is for exercise but “E” could also be for enjoyment.  After all, one of the oldest (and truest) pieces of advice about exercise is to always pick an activity you enjoy.  The biggest problem with exercise, according to those who study such things, is that people rarely stick with an exercise regime.  For every dedicated runner who fits in ten miles a day so as always to be “marathon-ready,” for every gym rat who wears out the seat of their favorite stationary bike, there are a hundred (or more) people who start a workout program only to abandon the program within weeks or even days.  If only these people did something they ENJOYED, the theory is, they would find it easy and satisfying to keep regular exercise a part of their lives.

    I don’t disagree with any of that.  Even the most time-crunched among us usually find or make time for what we truly crave.  Time management experts will sometimes claim that through truly efficient use of our time, we can always accommodate the activities that matter most to us.  Well, “efficiency” is another “E” word, but I am NOT writing a blog post about “E is for Efficiency.”  Instead, I’m going to advocate for deliberate inefficiency, all in the service of incorporating more exercise into my own life and into the life of anyone who wants to try this approach.

    After all, exercise-efficiency experts argue that by being ultra-efficient in all areas of our lives, we can always include exercise in our schedules.  But extremes meet (hey, “extremes”!  another “e” word!) and by being inefficient, one can be surprisingly active.

    Let me give an example.  In my old apartment building, I had to walk up and down three flights of stairs to get to the laundry room.  The more often I walked up and down, the more exercise I got.  So why not take the laundry down in batches?  Why make one trip up and down the stairs when two trips would provide a better workout?  Why make only two trips when three trips would make me feel like a super-athlete?  And as for making FOUR trips up and down stairs – well, after four trips, I feel ready for a gold medal from the Olympic Committee.

    Think I’m kidding?  I’m not.

    I enjoy feeling like a super-athlete; in fact, I enjoy that feeling immensely, although no one who observes my daily routine would see anything even remotely athletic about it.  So, by building inefficiency into my daily routine, I get to ENJOY the self-image I create by climbing stairs more often than I need to, walking more steps than I need to, and generally putting more effort into routine household chores than any efficiency expert would recommend.

    An additional benefit to this workout regime is that it motivates me to actually do some housework, at least at those times when I want to polish my Olympic gold medalist self-image.

    Could this approach of cultivated inefficiency work for you, also?  Or are you someone who takes the opposite approach of being so efficient that you have time in your day specifically set aside for a straightforward workout?  Either approach could work since, as noted above, extremes meet.