The thing about a crossing

I have been on an unofficial blog hiatus-ish in July. I didn't mean to be, but the fact that I had more days with visitors this month than days without kind of just made it happen on its own. (And was totally worth it, BTW.)

I will return in full-swing in August, but for today, let me leave you with an excerpt from Donald Miller's new book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years," which comes out in September. The full chapter is available here, and I really hope you will read it.

To entice you, a sneak peak...

"The Thing About a Crossing"

Robert McKee put down his coffee cup and leaned onto the podium. He put his hand on his forehead and wiped back his gray hair. He said, “You have to go there. You have to take your character to the place where he just can’t take it anymore.” He looked at us with a tenderness we hadn’t seen in him before. “You’ve been there, haven’t you? You’ve been out on the ledge...the dream is over now; nothing good can come from this.”

He got louder. “Writing a story isn’t about making your peaceful fantasies come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn’t think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it’s conflict that changes a person.”

His voice was like thunder now. “You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That’s the only way we change.”

(Thanks to Rachel for the Tweet tip!)

Look up

Since moving last June, I've taken the same commute route every day. I ride the 2/3 train downtown to Times Square, then transfer to the 7 train to Grand Central. When I exit the train station on 42nd St, I'm in the midst of one of Manhattan's most crowded morning streets. The view looks something like this:




Busy New York street, commuters, cabs, a Citi Bank, a shoe store. An all-around bustling, gray city view...just your run of the mill midtown scene.

But one day, I happened to look up.

And I saw this:

The Chrysler Building. One of the tallest buildings in the city. Arguably the finest, most beautiful piece of New York City architecture in existence, and certainly my favorite building dotting the Manhattan skyline.

From the ground, it looks mundane. Boring. Unexciting. Gray. So much so that I, even knowing exactly where the Chrysler Building is in the city, did not put two and two together that it was the building I passed every single morning for a year.

That is, until I looked up.

Horizontally, it appeared to be nothing worth noticing. In fact, I frequently complain about my commute and the crowds and the people that surround me. I am one of many cattle herding through the subway system and along the sidewalk. There are no trees to be seen at any point in my morning trek. It's long and tiring. It has never seemed to be noteworthy in any way, shape or form.

But once I shifted my view vertically, I saw that I was beholding a masterpiece. I saw that things were not as they originally seemed. I saw that the drab, unimpressive ground-level exterior was the base for the majestic, glittering structure that makes my heart sing.

I needed to be reminded to look up. I needed something to help me remember that, in life, things are not always as they seem. That the very thing I'm complaining about today could turn into something beautiful tomorrow. That, in the midst of the mundane, something new is just waiting to be seen. That the view from down here and the view from up there are never the same.

But we have to look up.

"Then the word of the Lord came to him: 'This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.' He took him outside and said,

Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.

Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness."
Genesis 15:4-6

Happy Friday

Print courtesy of MadeByGirl

Awkward Turtle

So I have a problem: I have no regard for the personal space of others. And I'm awkward about it. Particularly on the subway. And even more particularly as it relates to reading their reading materials.

People read other people's reading materials on the subway all the time (I think). It is common practice to sneak a glance at what's happening with Iran or Bloomberg or Miley off of your neighbor's New York Times, Metro or US Weekly. Sometimes, you get lucky and they have it opened as a spread instead of folded... they're practically begging you to read what's spilled into your hula hoop space. Or, if they're holding their paper up and you're sitting across from them, you can read the B Side with ease.

Or at least that's what normal people do.

I, on the other hand, have a problem - the aforementioned issue of disregarding the personal space of others and being awkward about it. See, when I'm reading someone else's paper or magazine (or, I won't lie, book, iPhone, Kindle, Blackberry, t-shirt, or whatever else they may have in their posession that I can get my eyes on), THE WHOLE TRAIN KNOWS IT. I gawk. I lean over. I squint. I nod. I laugh. All of which are totally inappropriate and kind of freaky. And make me a total awkward turtle.

Then, taking it to a whole new level, I will comment. Not to myself, and not (usually) to the reader in question, but to whomever I may be traveling with. Enter second problem: I talk really loudly. Really, awkwardly loudly. I don't mean to, but I just do. So imagine how the scene goes: A friend and I are riding the downtown 1 train, I awkwardly read over someone's shoulder to find out that Kevin Jonas got engaged, an article that the person holding the newspaper is inevitably reading at the exact same time. Then I look to my friend and loudly say, "Did you know Kevin Jonas got engaged?," at which point the person whose personal space I have invaded looks up and realizes that we both read the same thing at the same time, but I am not holding any type of newspaper whatsoever, and they realize that I actually just read it off their page and commented about it. And then they think to themselves, "That girl has no regard for my personal space. And is kind of an awkward turtle."


p.s. Don't even get me started on the other awkward ways I disregard people's personal space, including but not limited to: asking to try on strangers' engagement rings, eating off anyone and everyone's plate if I want to try their food, freely petting someone's purse if I'm curious of the texture, etc, etc etc...

p.p.s. I can't help it, it's just the way I am. :)