Welcome to Bellatext, where words behave beautifully and language reigns supreme. Feel free to look around. Make yourself at home. If you are interested in having me review an existing document, proposal, presentation, website, and so forth, or if you would like me to create something new, please contact me at sheryl@bellatext.com.
I both love and loathe Facebook. I am relatively new to the whole Facebook experience, but in less than a year’s time, I have created my page, added pictures and flair and collected friends from both far and near. I love finding out what is happening with my friends (and those people I assume I know but still am not exactly sure), even if it’s something mundane and not entirely scandalous. I get giddy when I open Facebook and see the column of faces who need to share a tidbit or two. I scroll through my list and find out within moments that Jeff has his new Indy video up, my friend Lori is now feeling better, Laurie’s triplets are almost a year old and my friend Suzanne’s puppy ate a sock. I love the amalgam of faces and voices on my page. I love realizing that my past and my present have fused in such a way that within 10 minutes I can touch the worlds of my best friend from third grade, the women’s pastor at my church, and a present colleague, all without throwing an elaborate and awkward party.
Navigating through that introductory Facebook page reminds me a bit of how I felt walking along the streets of Manhattan. I remember seeing hundreds of people walking, talking, working, arguing, smiling, each with his or her own different ideas, sensibilities and dialects. I felt small and big at the same time — an insignificant soul but also one infused with this incredible global energy. I was part of everyone else’s reality that day just as they were a part of mine. Facebook does that. Facebook brings us together, making the world seem smaller and more intimate even while you are reaching lives in every part of the globe. (Hello, friend Anne in Rome.)
What I don’t like about Facebook and similar social networking sites is that they have reinforced a culture of communication where authors must pare down their thoughts so much that the reader gets only a snippet of the whole argument or just a glimpse of truth. I am worried that this ADD-sound-byte-too-busy-to-read-newspapers trend will be detrimental to a society where thinking is a privilege and an inalienable right. We are allowed to think in our country and think deeply on all subjects, both sublime and perverse. Then, we are allowed to publish material that not only highlights our arguments but also unearths and explores new lines of thinking, all without fear of government persecution. What are we going to do if our society ceases to think deeply because we only need to provide the thesis statement? Where will our deep thinkers go if their audience is fed up with books and essays that are longer than a paragraph? How can we accept something as truth if it does not have strong, well-derived, written evidence to back it up? What if the rest of the story is on page A-9? I feel like La Malinche is on the rise.
I acknowledge that Facebook is not the proper place for lengthy dissertations. I also acknowledge that you do have an inbox on your page where friends can ask for the whole of your argument or find out the crazier details of your family vacation. What plagues me is that as a culture we are starting to be satisfied with the one-liners and the limits on what we can and should publish or read. We look forward to reading Ashton Kutcher’s latest musing or to making inane comments on Youtube videos. The quality of the response is left to be desired as well as the quantity of deep thought (or proper grammar) put into the retort. Hell, even customer reviews got a leg up recently as a viable mode of expression with regard to the three wolves t-shirt. Is that because we’re exploring new genres and creative outlets or because the average review is only a sentence or two long?
As a general rule, Facebook sets us up with only a sentence prompt to describe how we are doing. For example, “Sheryl is . . . .” It used to be that you only had the “to be” verb “is” at your disposal, and with it you had to create a sentence describing your reality at that moment. For instance: “Sheryl is lamenting a lack of verbs on Facebook.” Thankfully, Facebook now allows you access to all the verbs in the English language so that you can create more elaborate sentences, such as ”Sheryl truly understands that with a greater number of verbs comes a greater possibility for rubbish.” We do have greater options for our Facebook writing now, but we still are limited by space and by the generally accepted Facebook protocol. And when you limit writing, you limit others’ understanding of our words.
In my case, I have had two instances where my postings have led to misunderstandings. In an effort to be funny (humor is subjective; I get that, and self-deprecation sometimes needs a visual component), I have inadvertently caused people to jump to my defense so that I would feel better about myself. I knew that my attempts to be succinct left out a very important part of the story in two of my postings: 1) I do not believe I am obese, and 2) I did give the cheese lady a dirty look. In the interest of brevity, I chose to leave out these facts so that the humor could come through, and I assumed that the readers would get my intention. That’s not what happened. My readers did not search for subtext; they looked at what I had written and responded.
I was touched by everyone’s concern and their need to defend my honor against the mean cheese lady, but what troubled me was this nagging idea that we (myself included) tend to focus on what we read in those snazzy little taglines and forget the bigger picture. We need to remember that truth is found in the whole. That behind every little piece of writing is a larger idea to explore. We cannot scrunch our thoughts into single sentences when what’s needed are huge ideas that can change the world. Facebook is great. Facebook is wonderful. Now that we’re connected, let’s use our new verbs and create a greater world.
GIADA AND JADE
I keep thinking about Giada. I mean, really who doesn’t? Could that woman be any more beautiful or talented? I’d kill to look that good chopping tomatoes. But, in this case, I was thinking specifically about Giada and her almost-one-year-old daughter, Jade Marie. A friend of mine told me that Jade in Italian is Giada. “Hey, Giada named her little girl after herself. That’s so cool,” I thought to myself. And then I paused. I found that I was struck by her action, and I began to wonder why I felt I had to delve into her motivations when I found out.
When looking at mainstream American culture, you won’t find a lot of instances where the woman names her daughter after herself, even if the name is in another language. The mother’s name is often given as a middle name, but rarely as a first name. Or in the case of one of my favorite television shows, Gilmore Girls, the mother (Lorelai) names her daughter after herself but gives her a nickname (Rory) to minimize confusion. Lorelai’s motivations for naming her daughter after herself seem to stem from her experience with teenage pregnancy and the solitude she felt in her situation. The name made sense to her when she was giving birth alone without her parents or friends or the baby’s father nearby. I think the character was interested in a shared, communal experience that only a mother and daughter could appreciate in the years to come. Their link was their name — a shared identity. (I did find that Lorelai’s middle name is Victoria while her daughter’s is Lee). Giada has other reasons for her name choice, mainly that she wanted her daughter’s name to have international sensibilities and link her soundly to her Italian heritage.
I know that in some cultures, the woman’s surname is added to the child’s name be it boy or girl, and in most cultures, there is a tradition of naming children after certain or specific relatives. However, why did I find it strange that a woman named her little girl after herself? Why did I pause and wonder at her motivations instead of embracing her desire to honor her line, her heritage, her identity? Why did I suspect hubris instead of benevolence? After all, Giada will be imparting all her wisdom to her daughter and will help her little girl grow to be a woman in today’s society. It stands to reason that the daughter could benefit from having a link to her mother’s own true heart. The irony is that in our society we understand implicitly when a family names their son after the father and perhaps his father before him. It is a continuation of tradition, an honor that can be passed down through the generations — a geneology to trace and hold dear.
In all honesty, why wouldn’t a woman want that continuity? Women’s names are changed and their identities transformed throughout their lives. They are part of one family and then they get transferred to part of another when they marry. While women are individuals, they have no claim to an independent name. They can take their husband’s name upon marriage, keep their maiden names (their father’s name) or hyphenate (big hassle when signing loan documents) between the two family names, but their names are still a by-product of two families within a patriarchal system. They can never just make up their own name unless the courts are involved. Why should I pause when a woman gives her daughter the start of a new tradition?
I’m fascinated by this idea of name vs. identity, and I need to think more deeply on this subject and the gender implications it raises. In the meantime, I am happy that Jade will grow up with part of her mother’s identity securely fastened to her own. May she wear her name proudly and explore all the meanings it holds for her.
The Trouble with Nouns
I stood in line today at one of our favorite restaurants. My family hadn’t joined me yet, and I was waiting for a table. I had just come from a meeting and was mulling over a comment I had made. I was trying to figure out if I had been offensive, but then I surmised that any comment that includes the words worthless and/or parasite tends to be taken the wrong way. I was actually happy for the quiet moments, but these were interrupted by a child in a stroller behind me.
The little girl could not have been more than 14 months old. She was tucked into her stroller, looking very serious. Her blond hair was in one of those topknot hairdos, and she had really big brown eyes. She was wearing a dark blue sundress and leather walking moccasins. She had no doll or book or blanket with her, but her right hand was wrapped in a death grip around an orange and yellow sippy cup that was bigger than her whole head. I said hello and smiled at this cute little girl, and she looked up at me, babbling intently and pointing to the window of the restaurant. I looked at what had captured her attention and saw the shiny red bicycle that was on display.
Apparently, at the end of the month, the restaurant manager was going to draw a name out of a hat and someone would be the proud owner of this fancy bicycle. It was quite stylish: white wall tires, shiny red paint, extra wide handlebars – the works. I imagined myself winning the bike and then was struck by the horror of that thought. While winning the bike would be nice, you can never just win something. There has to be a catch. In this case, the restaurant manager would likely have a camera and there would be some sort of small ceremony at which I most certainly would have to get on the bike and ride it around to show how happy I was to receive it. More than likely I would either fall off the bike or feel so dumb having to mount the thing in the first place that I would anger the manager who really just wanted to do something nice for the community and doesn’t a bicycle like this seem a rather generous gift, and so forth. Not to mention – how does one get the bicycle home anyway? The restaurant is on the second floor – does one ride it down the stairs? Does one lift it onto one’s shoulders and carry it? After a few minutes, I decided against filling out the form figuring it was probably the best solution for everyone involved.
During my reverie about the bicycle and honking off the restaurant manager, I could hear the mother of the little girl behind me. She kept talking to her child in that soothing but authoritative mom voice: “That’s right, honey. Baseball. BASEBALL. B-A-S-E-B-A-L-L.” I could not figure out what she was talking about. I snuck a look back and downward and caught the little girl pointing at the window. “Bbbbbbb” she said, which to me didn’t clarify her point, but the mother chimed right in again. “That’s right! Baseball!” I was starting to wonder about my eyesight and my sanity when I noticed a tiny Los Angeles Angels pennant in the corner of the window. Was this mother serious?
On an elevated turntable in the window of this restaurant was a giant ass red bicycle, gleaming and shining in the sun. From the way she was positioned in the stroller, the little girl could have thought the bicycle was the sun. However, the mother was convinced that her child was ecstatic about a twelve-inch white pennant in the lower left-hand corner of the window with the letter “A” on it, which, in my mind doesn’t signify baseball as much as it signifies the letter “A” or the word flag, but that’s beside the point. At each little “bbbbb” from the little girl, the mother would gasp delightedly and say, “That’s right, honey! Baseball!”
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself at this point. I felt so bad for the little girl, who I knew at any moment was going to stand up in her stroller and yell, “For God’s sake, woman, it’s a freakin’ bicycle!” She looked so frustrated, or maybe it was me.
I began to worry about this little girl. I thought about her in preschool and wondered whether the other kids would make fun of her because she kept calling a bicycle a baseball. I worried that her mom was mixing up other things and that she would never know her real name or that the dog was not really an ice cream cone. I thought about her trying to explain to a store security guard that she couldn’t find her mom because she was supposed to meet her at the fountain, which she mistakenly knows as a fire truck. There were endless possibilities for this little girl to go through life utterly confused by nouns. I realized I was sweating.
Mercifully the woman’s cell phone rang and as she began a conversation, I looked down at the little girl and said, “You are right, you know. It’s a bicycle. I see it too. It’s pretty, huh?” I felt better, so I proceeded to talk about the bicycle’s color and the fancy handlebars. The child slumped back in her stroller, either grateful that someone had acknowledged her desperate attempt to communicate or completely irritated with the adult world for being so stupid. How could her mother not see what was directly in front of her? How could she not see what her daughter saw but instead focus on some inane, nondescript thing in the periphery?
As I moved into first position in line and then over to my empty table, I thought about those questions. As parents, we often assume we know what our children are talking about. We often assume that they are pointing at what we see. We forget to look at things as our children see them. We look at things with a practical eye or try to get a lesson into the situation. We might be able to teach them about rain but we might miss how lovely the water drops look against the window. We might focus on their exhibiting good manners and miss how nervous they are about meeting new people. I think we just need to pay special attention to what our kids are saying and pointing at, even if we think they’re saying and pointing at something else.
I watched for my family through the restaurant’s window, and from my vantage point I saw the woman move to the front of the line. I saw her pick up her little girl out of the stroller and point to the pennant. I was encouraged at that. The mother might have missed the bicycle but at least the little girl would know what her mother was talking about. It made me feel better that the child was perhaps learning a new word and that her trouble with nouns would be short-lived or at least confined to a few choice words.
I love Bubble Breaker
I have been playing a lot of Bubble Breaker lately. I blame the economy, my husband and my serious lack of willpower to do chores. My husband introduced this little gem to me about a month ago. I have since surpassed him in number of games played, and he’s had his phone since Christmas. It’s now March.
Bubble Breaker, in case you don’t know, is a video game where you try and link together as many colored bubbles as you can before popping them. They are arranged in a huge grid, and you try to pop some and manipulate others so that the most bubbles of the same color are lined up. This is much trickier than it sounds because the second you pop two or three or more, the ones you thought would wind up together are a bit off, causing you to lose points rather than gain them. It is terribly addicting, and I have never been happier than I am now when I have to wait in the school pick-up line for my kids. Everyone walking by believes I am cool and texting my posse, but really I’m playing Bubble Breaker.
This handy, frustrating and otherwise fantastic game is on my cell phone, and I play it any chance I can get. There is something very soothing about ignoring my own day-to-day responsibilities for the chance to string together meaningless colored balls and get points for my skill. It is immediate gratification, and it takes two minutes. The problem is that because each game is only minutes long, you wind up saying to yourself, “Ah, just another,” or in my anal-retentive, slightly OCD case, “I’ll go until I reach a multiple of five or ten.” Working with these parameters, I can easily blow through 20 minutes.
Since I am supposed to be writing instead of playing games, I decided to multi-task today and do both. I was astounded at what I came up with regarding my newfound obsession. Since subject matters are scarce this week, here is my essay about life lessons I gleaned from playing Bubble Breaker.
1. It is easier to work upwards than to work downwards.
This seems like a great place to start. In Bubble Breaker, I find that the easiest strategy for winning is to start with the bottom bubbles and work my way up. I can get a better sense of where the bubbles are going to fall when I work that way. Working upwards gives me a better sense of how to maneuver things around.
I embrace this theory in my life as well. I like to look upwards and be thankful for those blessings I can see. I thank God for my life, my children, my husband, my health and all our day-to-day blessings. It is easy to work upwards when you have a lot to be thankful for. You can appreciate your situation and see where things fit into your life. You can move things around and watch out for potential pitfalls.
However, when you try and work from the top down, things get much trickier. For some reason, when working from the top down on the grid, I cannot get a good sense of where the bubbles are going to fall, so I wind up making stupid decisions that ruin my chance of getting a good score. I get so frustrated when all the bubbles are in a solid-color row at the top, and then I break up that unity by moving the wrong set underneath.
Okay, that’s a pretty easy analogy. Sometimes, I get too focused on the downward nature of things. I get stuck in the terra firma and cannot look beyond today’s or tomorrow’s worries. I agonize about where things are going to fall and what piece I should move to find a solution. Instead of looking up, I negotiate further downwards, inevitably moving the wrong piece.
So what do you do? Sometimes we are stuck in the downward position with no real solution in sight. Especially in today’s rather bleak economy, it is easy to get frustrated at your current financial situation or those plans you need to put on hold until the timing is better. It might be time to shift perspective. Perhaps it’s time to leave the big scoring to another game and hit restart. Or, perhaps you can start working upwards again by focusing on another color. So you won’t get the big points with blue – try getting at least some points with red. Sometimes looking at things from another point of view can free your mind and bring the calm back to your life. We’re all suffering. Hit restart or chalk up that game to the oft-used phrase “learning experience” and move on.
2. If you only have two or three bubbles left at the end of the game, you get bonus points.
This is one of my favorite parts of the game, and it only happens once in a great while. It is very difficult to find matching pairs of colors (you can only pop in multiples of two) for every bubble on the grid, and doubly difficult to end the game with none left. I would say it is damn near impossible. However, I have come close. I have been left with only two or three bubbles, which means I got a special bonus amount. Yippee!
I liken this to my never-ending to-do list. Have you ever had a to-do list that you are loathe to begin because it will take all day? Or all week? The daunting to-do list is the bane of a mom’s existence, for sure, because it is never ever done. There is always something we could be doing and always a new item to add to the list. Well, what if you got a bonus each time you only had one or two items left? Instead of feeling defeated, you got extra points or chocolate or both!
As my wise friend Melissa says – instead of focusing on what you missed on your to-do list, think of all the things you accomplished during the day. Write them down and stare at them. You will be amazed at how many things you actually got done, including getting out of bed and taking the kids to school. Man, there are some days when that is a huge accomplishment in itself. For women, the “to-do list conundrum” is especially difficult as we believe we have to do it all in life and do it well. We have to raise the kids, keep the house, be a good wife, be a good friend, be an active member of church/community, and perhaps, if we’re lucky, have a job we love and care about. Holy crap. It’s amazing we can even see straight. If we are lucky enough to accomplish most of our chores, then we definitely need a bonus.
3. If you hit “undo,” you can erase the last move you made.
Let’s just cut straight to the analogy. How many times would you love to just “undo” a moment in your life? At least three times a day I realize I have said something that could have been worded differently (and I deal with words for a living) and that could have been taken the wrong way by the other party (which oftentimes is one of my children – Ouch). How lovely would it be to just hit “undo” and have that particularly irksome comment be erased?
Now, in the game, you can only go back one step and you cannot do it repeatedly. This makes sense in the game because the technology would have to be programmed to track every possible move. This would be terribly complicated because each move you make affects the position of all the other bubbles, and there are infinite moves. Such is the case with life. While it would be amazing to erase whole chapters in our lives because we did something stupid, way too many actions and reactions happened because of that one stupid move. We cannot control everything that happens because of what we do. We cannot control others’ responses to the things we do. We can only control and watch our own actions, reactions and choices. But, if by some miracle, we could erase just our one last move, our choices could change and others’ choices could change too and that’s a start.
Just so you know, I am nearing 2000 games on Bubble Breaker, and I am realizing that perhaps it’s time to employ the old adage of “everything in moderation.” I have been a bit obsessive in my playing, and it is now time to dial that back. I will still play, but I need to focus more on the balls up in the air in my own life rather than those on the screen. I need to look up and work upwards, do what I can to take back my last stupid move and, above all, give myself a little bonus when I get most of my work done. Ah, the lessons one can glean from the most unusual of activities: Bubble Breaker. Now, what can I learn from Lego Star Wars, The Complete Saga?
