Showing posts with label writing group. Show all posts

my life in books

(About 80% of this post was composed a couple of years ago. It was nearly finished then, but I tried to wrap up the unfinished section so I could post it along with the rest of my backlogged drafts!)

(edit: I wanted to add/note—I have mixed feelings nowadays about Dr. Seuss but I wrote this post before I learned about Theodor Geisel's racist political cartoons, which now make me a wary once-reader of the beloved childhood author. Anyway, that's a discussion for another day, but might I recommend you check out The Conscious Kid? They're one of my favorite Instagram accounts and they are fantastic. This is ancillary to this post, but Dr. Seuss was a part of my childhood and is now a controversial figure I am reckoning with, so anyway, carry on!)

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This post is my latest contribution to the Girls Gone Oscar Wilde writing club, in response to the prompt: "What books have changed your life?" I was having a hard time narrowing it down, but I realized why narrow it down?
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Over the course of twenty-seven years, many books have changed my life. I grew up on Dr. Seuss and Madeline, Beatrix Potter and Shel Silverstein. As a child I delighted in our quirky copy of a Beatrix Potter anthology—my parents had bought it at a fraction of the list price because the inner folios had been attached to the cover upside-down—you had to remember to flip the book over and upside-down in order to start from the front which was located at the back. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and We're Going on a Bear Hunt (my dad would do all the voices) were bedtime staples. My parents would take us to the local library and we would come home with a canvas bag full of books (or read-along books on cassette, in their worn plastic carrying bags—remember those?). Family photo albums include not a few photos of my younger sister in her crib, buried by the books I removed from the bookshelf and piled on her.

In first grade, I checked out Nate the Great mysteries and Amelia Bedelia books from the school library. In second grade, I remember the day I was allowed to cross to the other hemisphere of the school library in the basement of my elementary school—the far wall contained row after row of Nancy Drew books, which I devoured. I read Hardy Boys books on occasion and my mom told me how she had always read those growing up, having borrowed many a volume from her older brothers. My mom would volunteer at the Scholastic book fair at school and our family's tattered copy of Ella Enchanted bears the book fair date from 1997 stamped inside the front cover—this was our family's introduction to Gail Carson Levine, who quickly became a favorite author.

In third grade, I won a spelling contest in my class and got to select a prize from our teacher—my options were a Baby-Sitter's Club necklace or a Mad Libs book. As a BSC devotee who had never even heard of Mad Libs, the choice was obvious—I opted for the Baby-Sitter's Club necklace. The rest of my classmates were horrified, though the boy who came in second place was pretty happy about my choice. I took a baby-sitting first aid class through a local chapter of the Red Cross and in middle school, began my long-time summer and weekend job of baby-sitting for neighbors' families. My interest in baby-sitting really began as an extension of my childhood reading and the scenarios I read about in the Baby-Sitter's Club books by Ann Martin. I even had a rule which I established after a BSC book dealt with a similar plotline—I never permitted the kids I was watching to play hide-and-go-seek. We played many other games, but that particular one was off-limits with no adults around, in case of an emergency.

Early on in elementary school I became fascinated with our digital encyclopedia—GME95 (for "Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia 1995"). After school I would get onto our home computer, pop in the CD-ROM and print off articles from the encyclopedia about whatever happened to be my current obsession (Amelia Earhart, the Titanic, the Romanovs, elephants, etc.). I'd tote these around in a two-pocket folder for safe-keeping and easy reference. At school, I'd use the bound volumes of the encyclopedia in the library, and I loved flipping through these to look at the illustrations accompanying each entry. I also developed a taste for reading children's almanacs and had several beloved volumes (one with an aqua cover and thick creamy white pages, the other with a fluorescent orange cover and the cheap paper of mass-market paperbacks). My love of mysteries continued, fueled by Encyclopedia Brown books, which my dad had also read as a kid.

For my eighth birthday, I received a copy of three of E.B. White's children's classics—The Trumpet of the Swan, Charlotte's Web, and Stuart Little. My favorite was The Trumpet of the Swan and my mom loves to tell a story about how I corrected my second-grade teacher during class when she incorrectly referred to a baby swan as a 'gosling'—I had learned from my reading that they are called cygnets (the French word for swan is cygne).

My childhood memories are strewn with other bookish moments—a summer highlight was spending several weeks with our cousins' house in Long Island. We would ride bikes to the library (I was always jealous of my cousins' neat blue laminated library cards; our public library used only a computer system so I was not an official card-carrying member of a public library until college) and check out armfuls of American Girl books. Back at home, we'd hole up in the crawl-space-turned-private-reading-lounge on beanbag chairs with our library haul and all the latest installments of the Dear America books, picked up from the local Costco where my uncle worked and kept an eagle-eye on the new releases for his daughters (and by extension, us). Summer sleepovers revolved around Harry Potter midnight releases and my mom would read the first chapters aloud in the car on the way home. My sister Emily and I would sit in tandem on the sofa, one of us having had a jump start on reading, sharing one copy of the Harry Potter book between us and craning our necks to read the intervening pages standing straight up in the middle between our halves of the book.

Too quickly this becomes a laundry list of favorites—Chris Van Allsburg, A Wrinkle in Time, The Chronicles of Narnia, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Anne of Green Gables, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Holes, Louis Sachar's Wayside School books, Margaret Peterson Haddix, and on and on.

In middle school, my friend Brianna tried to get me to read Pride & Prejudice, her favorite book—I didn't end up reading it until high school, but it quickly became a favorite. I still kick myself that it took me so long to read Jane Austen, but perhaps the timing was just right for me (and I've still had plenty of time to enjoy and revel in Austen's humor and brilliance).

In the early advent of Amazon.com (back in its book-selling heyday), my mom tracked down a used copy of The Silver Tree (a book I'd gotten from the school library and immediately loved—it was a mystery also involving time travel and family history?!) and connected with a seller who happened to be a former school librarian. My mom told her that this was a reader-induced purchase, which delighted the woman on the other end. My sisters still make fun of this random choice of a favorite book in middle school, but I stand by it. I found the story so inventive and the characters so relatable, I couldn't help but love it. I also remember my mom taking me to a plethora of used bookshops in Vineland to try and track down weathered paperbacks to round out the Anne of Green Gables series. These days, whenever I'm browsing the aisles of the local DI, I always smile to see a copy of one of L.M. Montgomery's many volumes for sale.

Even in high school, books were a defining feature of my life. Practically no one in my small south Jersey community had ever heard of Mormons outside of the brief sentence on the trek west in our U.S. History textbooks. That all changed when Stephenie Meyer and Twilight came onto the scene—it's when reading became accessible—cool, even—to many of my peers and my sisters and I enjoyed a degree of notoriety as the resident Mormons in town and Twilight-early adopters. Even though the Twilight phase was regrettable (how much do you think my signed copy will go for on eBay? It's gathering dust somewhere on a bookshelf at my parents' house but I'm sure it's in pristine condition), Stephenie Meyer nevertheless instilled in us teens an appreciation for the classics with all her allusions to Wuthering Heights and Shakespeare, among other things. Arguably one of the best things about books and reading them is talking about them afterwards with your friends, teachers, family members. Twilight arguably gave us a lot of fodder for semi-literary conversation in high school English class before the bell rang and we got back to business (probably something along the lines of Julius Caeser or another ~actual classic).

Then there are the many books that are fixed in my mind as constant fixtures on my parents' shelves: Le petit prince, The Diary of Anne Frank, Tales from a Small Blue Island (a book of folktales from the Hawaiian islands, collected and illustrated by the daughter of a family friend my grandmother knew from her Honolulu Symphony days), The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and so many others.

The summer preceding my freshman year of high school, I selected John Steinbeck (and his two assigned works—Cannery Row and The Grapes of Wrath) for my future English teacher's summer reading assignment. My family had planned a week-long trip to California, starting in the southern end of the state and driving up highway 1 along the coast all the way to San Francisco. While growing up in Orange County, my mom accompanied her dad on frequent business trips up the coast to Monterey. My mom had always wanted to show us the environs that held so many memories from her youth, which was a primary motivation for the structure and format of the trip. With a scheduled stop in Monterey, we also worked in a visit to Cannery Row, which became my first official experience of what Anne Fadiman calls "You-Are-There Reading." Putting the book in my hands in the context of a real place and the kinds of people who lived there was unforgettable (and "You-Are-There Reading" is still one of my favorite components of travel).

 So many books carry with them associations with friends or family members who first introduced to me, recommended, or simply love a particular book. Literary experiences are, for me, visceral experiences, and it is difficult to explain fully how my experience of a book is enhanced by those other associations and connections. Even my favorite movie is about books (You've Got Mail, duh).

I've dozens of other books to add to this list in the intervening years since those high school anecdotes. My favorites nowadays present a different type of heroine—self-assured, often constrained by social moorings, but nevertheless determined, strong-willed, witty, and full of heart. As I face the denizens of young adulthood, I find myself joining ranks with the likes of Lucy Honeychurch, Elizabeth Bennet, the Dashwood sisters, Bathsheba Everdene, and Dorothea Brooke—and learning from their mistakes alongside my own.

I still frequent the library. I have my library card number memorized, in fact—the better to put books on hold before I forget. Stacks of books line the perimeter of my room and my shelves are brimming over. When I travel, I love to explore bookstores and my bookshelf is dotted with souvenir purchases and local bookshop bookmarks: Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, MI; Joe Fox Bookshop, a delightful find in Philadelphia, PA; The Strand, a classic in New York, NY; Shakespeare & Company of Paris, France; Powell's City of Books in Portland, OR; and of course, Pioneer Book in Provo.

In one of my favorite books, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman shares an essay titled "My Ancestral Castles." In it, she recounts the books that filled her childhood home and formed the basis upon which the foundation of her literary life took form. I love that notion—the fortress that is a literary life which has been built, book by book.

Chefchaouen


I owe Liesl, one of my writing club pals, several posts in our writing group as I've been MIA since January. I am still working on those (I promise!), but my writing muscles feel a little tight so I'm warming up with some backlogged blogposts.

Being that I am prone to glossing over things (aren't we all?), I wanted to write a longer piece about some of our time in Morocco. Chefchaouen was one of my favorite places to visit, but like any trip, not without its share of excitement and the unexpected.
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Chefchaouen (pronunciation)—the name alone is magical, even though I still think I'm spelling it wrong. The whole city is painted varying shades of brilliant blue and we quickly decided it was the most photogenic town in all of Morocco—it was first painted blue in the 1930s by Jewish refugees; the color stuck and now is its most iconic feature.

I was surprised how much I was reminded of Siena and Provo—Chefchaouen is situated in the mountains, and the mountains looked identical to the Wasatch range in little P-town (you will see a photo reference farther down in this post). With its mountainous setting, the town itself has many inclines and stairs throughout; Siena likewise is a very hilly city with few cars driving in the historic center, and shares some architectural elements/features (friends familiar with Siena will probably note the resemblance I see in the photo above, aided by terra cotta roof tiles and some exposed brickwork peeking from behind the blue). 

These elements of familiarity, plus the small-town feel and fewer tourists made Chefchaouen an obvious favorite, despite my getting horrible food poisoning and some unexpected difficulties in getting there.

After a full day in Tangier, we got on our bus to Chefchaouen only to learn that the bus would not be going there, since in the driver's view there were not enough passengers going there to necessitate a stop. Cue my argument in heated elementary French with the driver for over 15 minutes—we paid for bus tickets to Chefchaouen, so they had to take us there! Plus, it was late at night and we couldn't make alternate arrangements. Thankfully a woman boarding the bus lived there and was trying to get home, so the missed stop would affect her, too. She didn't speak French, but spoke a little English so we talked with her, and she talked with the bus driver in their native Arabic and convinced him of the necessity of taking her home, and us to Chefchaouen, with our previously purchased tickets. (Quelle nightmare.)

We arrived in Chefchaouen and got off the bus with our luggage. The bus station was closed, and we then better understood some (but not all) of the drivers reluctance/refusal to stop there; he let us off on the curb just outside the station and we watched the bus drive away as we stood in the dark, deserted street. The Moroccan woman from the bus stood nearby; she was in her early 30s, wearing a hijab with her street clothes, and talking on the phone to her friend. Being that the bus station was closed, there were no cabs anywhere. Behind us were some darkened frames of buildings in various stages of construction, fenced off from the street, and we could hear a lone rooster crow every couple of minutes. All of us were seized by the same panic of what do we do?

Again, our Moroccan friend (I wish that I knew her name!) proved a lifesaver, when she asked if we knew how to get to our hostel. Clearly we did not, despite having looked up directions in advance—directions are little help when you have no way to orient yourselves in the new surroundings. She explained that her cabbie friend was coming to pick her up; even though it was after hours, she could ask him to give us a lift as well. Her friend arrived a few minutes later, just as we were starting to shiver in the cold night air, and we hit another snag—in the cab were two friends. They didn't realize that besides their friend were the three of us, plus our luggage.

These kind souls took pity on us and we all squeezed in as best we could—the woman from the bus sitting in her friend's lap in the front passenger seat, and the three of us with suitcases beneath our feet wedged neatly in back—did I mention Moroccan cabs are tiny?

The cab climbed up the hill on the outskirts of town, and we passed more darkened buildings and homes. As we drew in closer to the city center, the road got narrower and the architectural details grew older and more worn. The driver turned a tight corner and drove further uphill, pulling into a bend at the end of the street where a large gateway led into the maze-like medina of the city—every Moroccan city has a medina: a winding network of alleyways and streets, twisting and turning and utterly bewildering to any Westerner. 

Some men stood to the side near another doorway and the driver got out to talk with them. We had told them the name of our hostel, Riad Baraka, but none of them was familiar with its location, and addresses are less than helpful when navigating the medina. A couple of minutes later he came back to the car with one of the men, who knew the location of the hostel. We exchanged glances in the backseat; none of us were comfortable following a stranger to our hostel, but the chain of connections in this case (our bus friend's friend's friend) made the situation a little more palatable, besides which there were three of us (safety in numbers and some such).

We got out and situated our luggage for carrying it another distance. Mind you, by this point, we were all bone tired—we'd driven from Provo to Las Vegas, slept for a few hours on a friend's sofa, flown from Las Vegas to New York to Madrid to Marrakesh, spent a day traipsing around Marrakesh with our luggage, taken an overnight train to Tangier and slept somewhat, all day explored the coastal sites and the city of Tangier, and most recently made it successfully through the ordeal of our bus ride—it had been days since we'd had a truly restful night of sleep.

We followed our guide silently through the large gateway and around what seemed like endless bends and turns. There were no streetlights, but the moonlight reflected from the blue-painted ground and walls. A few minutes later, we reached the door of the hostel and buzzed the doorbell. We rifled through our pockets and wallets for spare dirhams to thank and tip our benevolent guide, and gratefully stumbled through the now-unlatched door.

We checked in, the lobby area still and quiet, and in our darkened room, the other tenants were already sleeping—just like the rest of the city. We quickly changed out of our traveling clothes and climbed into our beds, grateful that we'd gotten there despite all the hiccups in our well-laid plans.

In the morning, all was forgiven—we were immediately taken with Chefchaouen's charm. The shops sprawled on every corner with traditional wares (and workshops in the back with shuttling looms or hammering at metal or tiles) and the lively banter of bartering carried on the air to us as we walked past open doorways. The blue buildings and doors and other details never ceased to amaze, and tiny doorways would open onto beautiful courtyards and hidden gardens. We explored the town for a few days and the many mishaps of our incoming travel faded into the background, adding hidden layers to the memories of our time in Chefchaouen and Morocco.

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And, being the most photogenic town in Morocco, photos of course. If I had one recommendation for friends going to Morocco, it would be to go to Chefchaouen. Not only is it beautiful, but if you plan to buy traditional Moroccan goods, it is a great place to do so, as it is much less crowded and you can meet the craftsmen and see them at work!


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P.S. Another fun fact about Chefchaouen which I learned during the research stages: it is a sister city of Issaquah, Washington, which is where Amy & Brian got married (and is Brian's hometown)!

It's always sunny

My memories of summer revolve around what everything revolves around: the sun.
There is something about the quality of the sunlight in the summer months—its long slants as it dips westernly, the way it sparkles in the morning full of promise of good days ahead.
Mine is a love-hate relationship with the sun. As a fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde, I burn like nobody’s business and have a family history of skin cancer to boot. But the sunshine is what makes summer...well, summer. It is especially poignant to consider it now, in the dead of winter, when the days are dreary and short, and the sun dips below the horizon before I’ve even had a chance to take a deep breath after the work day is through.
When I was in Morocco, we talked with some Canadian girls at one of our hostels, one of whom assured us that an excursion to the desert was not to be missed. She said they even saw the sun rise! She had never seen a sunrise before. What?! Was an opinion from someone who’s never seen the sun rise one to be trusted? Probably not.*
My earliest memories of summer shift between several locales from my childhood: Bethany Beach, Delaware;  upstate New York;  and Long Island.
East coasters that we were, we would head to our beachside mecca yearly with our family friends—their beach house in Bethany was a constant of my childhood summers. My sisters and I would walk up before dawn, slip out of our downstairs bunk beds, and head out to the cool sand to watch the sun rise, a pink orb floating up over the ocean. We’d get back in bed, then wake up at a more reasonable hour to frivol away our days in the water or sipping orangeade downtown. Days on the beach bring back the sunny associations of summer: slathering on sunscreen and slathering on more after we dried off from our swimming and crashing through the waves.
In Upstate New York, we’d hoe pumpkins in between adventures on my grandparents’ farm. It was always tricky knowing how to dress—the morning air was the slightest bit chilly, but as soon as the sun came up, you’d regret a choice of long sleeves. We’d hoe pumpkins from the dim early morn until mid-afternoon, the sun high above our heads. Squinting our eyes to spot the end of the row, the sun was relentless. We’d toss the bottle of sunscreen down the row for when we’d need it later, though with each application, we’d grow considerably grimier with another layer of dirt blent in. The rest of our daylight hours would be spent in the treehouse, clambering up the creek behind Ariel’s house, or picking wildflowers to make daisy chains. The sun always seemed like a friend in the afternoons, after it was no longer ticking away the slow hours until we’d be done hoeing.
On Long Island, our days and weeks were spent with cousins running out of doors, climbing trees, making trips to the library, the ice cream shop, the Red Deli—wherever our bikes or our feet or our wagon would take us. The sun, again, plays prominently on this summer stage. My worst sunburn in memory happened at 418 Smith Avenue. We swam in the pool for the entire day (possibly taking a couple of breaks to eat a popsicle or two). At my young age, I was in no place to be responsible for my own sunscreen application and didn’t think twice until we went inside that night. Already my backside was tender and red as a lobster. I spent the week sleeping on my stomach, aloe vera plastering my t-shirt painfully to my skin. Never again! And yet, every year, I usually end up with one bad sunburn before I sufficiently wisen up.
Away from the peer pressures and opinions of high school, I’ve come to embrace my ivory skin, donning a wide-brimmed sunhat at the pool and setting a timer to go off every two hours during my mountain hikes so goodness knows I won’t forget to reapply my SPF 50. And so my love-hate relationship with the sun has muted into one of mutual understanding; Vive l’été!


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*writer's note (these are the kinds of things we talk about in our writing club): I can't tell if this makes sense here; I was drawing a comparison of sorts between this girl who'd NEVER SEEN THE SUN RISE and my earliest memories of summer, watching sunrises on the beach. There's probably a better way to connect these ideas but it's late and I'm playing catch-up :)

Ode to Indoor Plumbing, Or A Foray into Poetry

Adrienne gave me a thick, cloth-bound journal for Christmas a year ago and I jot lots of things into it—phrases, descriptions, lists, poem fragments, essays I want to write: all things related to (my) writing.

Ever since she asked me if I was going to write any poetry and I said no, I decided I change my mind; I think it would be really great to write poetry, so sometimes I try… I wrote this in November and promptly forgot about it until coming across it again this week. This poem evokes some of Billy Collins’ style—classical and literary references plus a humorous element. Et voilà.
Ode to Indoor Plumbing
Perhaps
bathing really was as elegant
as the Impressionists
would have us believe.
Renoir, Cassatt,
    Degas.
They all depict the same easy grace.
But, oh! Just think
of all the boiling,
of water turned chill,
or frozen over before
the first morning fire was lit.
No, I’m perfectly content
with my modern
    showers,
magically heated
and pumped right to my salle de bain.

Strawberry Swing

My friend Jesslyn has a writing club, and we have in our brief time as friends discovered a common love of many things: Anne Shirley, Nora Ephron's oeuvre, writing, and great music, to name a few. These and many more shared interests have catapulted us quickly from the tier of friends/acquaintances to that of bosom friends. I'm also the new kid on the writing club block! I probably won't post all of my weekly writing here, but as deep in my archives there are some related posts to this one, I thought sharing an inaugural writing group post would be nice. The prompt is below, and my essay below that, if you'd like to read.
December 13: Think of a song that you would consider a lifelong favorite, even if your love for it now is attributed more to a strong sense of nostalgia than to your current musical tastes. Does hearing the song unexpectedly on the car radio or in a restaurant suddenly transport you to a different time or instantly change your mood? Write a personal essay about the memories you have associated with the song, and how the lyrics might have resonated with a certain significance in your past. How has your understanding and appreciation of the song evolved?
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My musical tastes are eclectic, as most people's are, wallpapered over with layers of time and changing tastes. Some music has become the soundtrack to certain eras and epochs of my life; listening to the cello will always make me nostalgic for my childhood, when my maternal grandparents lived with my family. My grandma was a professional cellist who played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Honolulu Symphony for many years, and my childhood memories echo with her evening practice. My mom recalls my grandma's chamber music groups meeting often in their living room; didn't everyone's mom play chamber music on weekday mornings?

 I remember learning once that the cello, piano, and French horn are some of the most pleasing instruments to listen to because they share the same range as the human voice. It's no wonder that as humans we are musical beings speaking in sing-song tones; our hearts beat within us like metronomes, ticking out lines of biological music that crescendo and decrescendo with our comings and goings.

Many of my favorite songs remind me of specific places and people, much like scents that carry strong associations and emotional connotations. Certain songs evoke summers in high school having adventures with my sisters, and other songs whisk me back to waiting on Italian train platforms. Others yet call to mind the low lighting of a house concert with friends, and heart-to-hearts late into the night. Imbued with meaning, these songs are woven seamlessly into my experience.

 When I was about twelve years old, my cousin Jessica came to live with my family for a time. Despite our age difference of six years and standard geographical separation of 2,746 miles, Jessica and I have always had a close connection, sending letters in the mail and going on nature walks and adventures when we were together during family visits. When she lived with us, she had Coldplay's album "A Rush of Blood to the Head" on frequent rotation. Jessica occupied the same bedroom that had been my grandparents'; her music carried into my life with the same muffled tones that our grandmother's nightly cello practice had. Pre-Shazam, I never knew what this album was—months after Jessica had moved back home to California, I finally pieced things together and tracked down my own copy of the Coldplay CD at the store. Since then, Coldplay has been something else we have shared.

 Now, reader, you ask for a song—my favorite song. All this has been the thread connected to the favorite.

 I have for a long time considered my favorite song to be "Strawberry Swing" by Coldplay. This surprises most people—it even surprised one of my closest friends and long-standing roommates, Adrienne, when she learned this, as I don't listen to it every day or even very frequently at all, as one might assume with favorite things.

 I spent Thanksgiving break of my freshman year at BYU in southern California—with Jessica, and my aunt and uncle. The oldest of my siblings, I was in Provo alone and found life in the dorms to be less than the stars-and-butterflies experience one expects of freshman year. Years later, I only faintly remember those twinges of hurt; a handful of my now dearest friends are girls who I met at age 18 in the dorms, so the painful parts of freshman year have been replaced by dearer memories and people. But predominantly, I had a difficult time finding my place among many girls who were not as accepting and friendly as I'd expected to find in a like-minded community. For these reasons, Thanksgiving in California was like a refuge for my soul—Jessica and I went to the beach, to the library, to get Balboa bars, on walks through her neighborhood. And we went and bought the Prospekt's March EP on release day. We listened to it in the car on the way home, and most of the rest of the time I was there, up until Jessica drove me to the airport.

 I don't remember discovering Strawberry Swing until about a year after this, though I would surely have heard it when listening to the Viva la Vida album. But one day my perception of the song changed, like a slight adjustment made by the optometrist on the phoropter which makes your vision that had been growing less fuzzy by degrees suddenly and immediately crystal clear. And it has been my favorite song since that moment.

 Some of the lyrics of Strawberry Swing are repeated in the songs on the Prospekt's March EP; these lines evoked memories of my restorative time in California—"cold, cold water/bring me round/now my feet won't touch the ground"—of Thanksgiving Day spent at the beach with Jessica and the chilly Pacific waves lapping at our feet.

 "I remember/we were walking up to strawberry swing./I can't wait until the morning/wouldn't want to change a thing." A nostalgist to a fault, I picture in my mind my own well-trodden paths to special places in my life: all over my grandparents' farm, walks around the block on my childhood street, nightly passeggiate the summer I lived in Italy, and walking through my own intimate Provo neighborhood on summer evenings, to admire Christmas lights, and on early morning runs. As much as I will always love to travel, there is something unspeakably perfect about having a sense of home and of belonging wherever you live.

 "People moving all the time/inside a perfectly straight line/don't you want to curve away./And it's such a perfect day/it's such a perfect day." The bridge and the resolution are my favorite parts of this song—these words and the melodies that accompany them express to me the impermanence and imperfection of life, but their beauty despite all this.

 "Now the sky could be blue/I don't mind/without you it's a waste of time./Could be blue/could be grey/without you I'm just miles away." This song has elements of African tribal music as an undertone throughout—Chris Martin attributed this to his mum's upbringing in Zimbabwe. I love the familial connection that exists within this song, a tie that can't be broken by distance or time or by the color of the sky; happiness is generated within us rather than found in our external circumstances.

 The lyrics and music of Strawberry Swing are simple, beautiful, and resonate deeply with the ways that I experience life, and on grey days, the ways that I always hope to choose to experience it.
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