mustard seed

i'm supposed to be doing homework, but i have no motivation. or had no motivation, until, in my procrastinating, i stumbled across Bill Watterson's Kenyon College commencement speech , which i think is really good. there are some things that life, work, and play have in common, and if we can find those things and do them, we've found a good path. (Dorothy Sayers touches on this - actually, Dorothy Sayers annihilates this subject - in her essay "Why Work?" which you should hunt down and read as well). David Foster Wallace also gave a commencement speech at Kenyon in 2005, you can find it online or, if you want to spend money, they turned it into a cute little book with goldfish on it (which of course catches my attention). if you read this blog and you don't go take a few minutes to read both of those as a result, you're missing out. this is sort of a threat, sort of a guilt trip, and sort of hoping you will read and enjoy both :) if you don't read th...

i haven't written anything about David Foster Wallace or Roberto Bolano in a while (also: i haven't read anything by either of them in a while) (both of these things may be explained by the fact that i have been reading and writing about too many other things) (ironically/thankfully this post is happening because of one of those other things i read about and am now writing about), but both of their lives/deaths/writing still wiggle around in me (since having devoted time to each of their respective "epics," i suppose you might call them based on sheer length, regardless of lack of tragic hero in the vein of Odysseus etc). what i have been reading is a lot of commentary by poets/artists/writers about their crafts (courtesy my Vision, Voice and Practice interdisciplinary class), and that has been beyond enriching. all i really mean to say is that i ran into this Flannery O'Connor quote (while reading her passage "The Church and the Fiction Writer") that al...

the reason that i don't capitalize a lot of my letters in informal writing is: a) not because i'm a little grammar rebel b) not because i'm lazy c) not because i'm incompetent (okay you have to laugh with me for a second, at first i spelled incompetent wrong, i went back and corrected it, but still felt like i should tell you, because the irony's killing me, and simultaneously giving me an identity crisis - am i incomptenetnt?) d) not because i don't know but actually e) because i am only like five feet talk and i have a great respect for the little guys (i.e. hamsters, corgis, baby frogs, etc). don't get me wrong, there's a place for elephants and giraffes and stuff (and by this metaphor i mean CAPITAL LETTERS) but it's not in my informal writing. hopefully one day an employer reads my resume and they see "melissa gutierrez" instead of "Melissa Gutierrez" they will think, "oh, she must be on the cute and short side l...

this is a spur-of-the-moment-rant (as Chris Munekawa would say, a "brain dump"). it's the sort of thing that makes me wish that everyone in the world read my blog so that they would know what i think about this. and honestly, it's not so much that i want them to know what i think, but also that i want them to change how they live because of what i think. and this is exactly the problem i want to rant about. i just spent time, too much time, browsing online/print journals and publications, looking at all the voices and all the writings and all the arts and all the media and all the PR and all the marketing that goes into these things. and it's a little conflicting because on one hand, these are the sort of people i can relate to one hundred percent (100%). i am the "inwardly-passionate-writer-type"; i can't help but browse, in addition to the publication part of these groups, their job listings because i dream of being part of one of them one day. it...

my lovely roommate and i were discussing the act of academic paper-writing, particularly as relating to our specific circumstances (unpaid undergrads, typical stressful mid-semester research papers). there is always a sense of triumph, we agreed, with finishing a paper, though we wonder to what greater end writing a paper is if no one besides our professors read our thoughts and ideas. i decided, like i have done once before, to post papers as blog posts - since blog posts are, essentially, papers for not-a-class . WHY I THINK THIS IS IMPORTANT: we need to be in dialogue, consistently and holistically, about the things that are shaping us. if it's even the least bit cool that you can read on someone's twitter the sort of burrito they ate for lunch that is affecting their intestinal system, it's even cooler that you can read on someone's blog what sort of learning they're doing that is affecting their entire worldview . i hope this comes across not as me saying ...

one of my favorite passages in the new testament (i know, i know, i run the risk of saying that about everything i pull from the new testament. hopefully that says something about the new testament and not about me. ideally it says something about the new testament and about me): Luke 12:33-34 "Sell your possessions and give to those in need. This will store up treasure for you in heaven! And the purses of heaven never get old or develop holes. Your treasure will be safe; no thief can steal it and no moth can destroy it. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be ." now, as much as i love these verses, i also love my nifty daily Bible (thanks, Becky Tirabassi). i will complain that it is difficult to transport (i won't take this bugger around with me to read it in between classes or anything, because it's like, five times the size of my itty-bitty ESV i am partial to), but that might actually be to it's benefit, because i have to be de...

i've been trying to write a post on Roberto Bolano's novel 2666 for the last like... two hours. i simply do not know which angle to take. and then i don't think i could take just one angle. it would be irreverent to the masterpiece to neglect the entirety of it's meaning. there are an overwhelming amount of things to say about it and because of it. and then there's the question: if something like that speaks for itself, why even say anything about it? i couldn't recommend 2666 to everyone, but i wish that i could. it is very dark, it's pages are slammed full of the worst occurrences and images but also the most beautiful of writings. the most profound of situations - between writer and writing, between writer and living, between writer and dying, between writer and reader, between writing and reading, between reader and reading, between reader and writing, between writing and world, between writer and world, between reader and world, between fact and ficti...

... how much goes on in my brain. i start writing in my notebook, about this verse i encountered in Job (hold on a second, i'll come back to that), and then my hand started cramping up, and i thought about how out of shape i am and how i really need to be working out and then how i really need just to write about how i'm feeling about working out / being part of the soccer team and all that, and then i am thinking still how it would be easier to type this, but still of how much i love the idea of written writing (hah. is there any other? yes... but i'm so subjectively partial to my chicken scratch), and then i think about what David and i were talking about last night (well a million things, but in specific to this discussion how it feels really good to be understood, and how it takes that long in a conversation / relationship to be understood about one specific thing about yourself or the other person's self, even if it's something you know about yourself, your rel...