Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

We watched this movie last weekend with my BIL on our annual “let’s do something for our birthdays” night. This year, I cooked dinner, knowing single guys usually appreciate home-cooked meals, while Steve and Mike went to pick out a movie and ice cream for dessert. We won’t talk about how long that took them. Suffice to say the sauce on the chicken marsala had pretty much cooked away but they had some story about the checkout line at the grocery store to explain away the delay. Given that delay, we might not have started this movie had we known it was almost three hours long.

In the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt plays a man who, as a result of some strange disorder, was born an old man, and regresses to youth as his life goes on. His story is encased in flashback, as his lover, now a dying woman, recounts their story to her daughter through the help of her journal. For me, the story was a cross between time travel, and, in an odd way, Forrest Gump. I generally love time travel stories. I hated Forrest Gump. My feelings about BB lie somewhere in the middle. The story kept my attention well enough. From his crippled, constrained beginnings, his life takes him around the world and finally back home to the girl he always loved. However, that’s all it was for me – a story. I felt like I was on the outside, looking in on two people’s lives. Nothing in the story invited me in to their lives; nothing in their story touched anything in mine. I guess I prefer movies with movement – where something happens in a character’s life to change them internally in some way. Benjamin Button’s changes were curiously limited to the physical realm.

It’s was an interesting concept though, the idea of growing younger. For all we value youthfulness, the bottom line is, going backwards just wouldn’t work. I would not be quick to trade the bit of wisdom and experience I’ve accumulated over the past four decades in favor of smoother skin and youthful energy. (Plus I’m sure there’s probably an energy drink for that!) Growing up and the whole maturity process are hard enough but to be un-maturing while everyone else is going in the opposite direction would just be weird. Sharing the journey with others, no matter what their life stage, is one of the joys of life. It would be hard to truly share that journey if the stages of our lives were moving towards opposite extremes.

This was indeed a curious movie! Don’t tell my husband, because I don’t have a desire to watch it again, but I actually thought Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood) was a much better movie!

Really, Molly!

So I’m scampering through A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, by Molly Wizenberg, and enjoying it immensely! I’ll definitely be purchasing this book – it’s one of those must haves. She just gets it when it comes to food. It’s not about the glamour or the gourmet. It’s about the memories you make along the way. I don’t think it’s something you can exactly orchestrate but at some point you just realize your life is ensconced in all these wonderfully pungent moments and you start snatching them out of the air, left and right, and stuffing them anywhere you can – recipe boxes, slips of paper, blogs or even a book!

Tonight I’m trying out a recipe I found on Molly’s blog, Orangette.  I had to laugh twice though as I read through the instructions (in the intro to her book, she recommends always reading her recipes through first – and I’ve been doing just that – quite unlike me!) At one point she says to sift the dry ingredients together. And I just heard myself saying, “Really, Molly!” In spite of proudly displaying my gram’s old sifter in my kitchen, I have never used it to mix ingredients together. (I did use it once, trying to make vanilla sugar, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post!)

And then further down, she instructs me to incorporate the oatmeal and chocolate chips with a wooden spoon. And once again, I heard myself say, “Really, Molly!” Does she know how weak my wrists are? I know that chocolate chips should not be beaten in except by hand but oatmeal! Just couldn’t do it.

So be honest now – are there any baking or cooking rules you habitually and deliberately break? Has it ever backfired on you? I’d love to hear your confessions. I always say to myself – the cookies don’t know!

(A sad aside: I just noticed that she’s been blogging just a month less than me, since July 2004 to be exact. And she’s written a book and opened a restaurant! Sigh)

Fall Hodgepodge

In an effort to keep the old blog rolling along, not to mention keep my blogging/writing skills honed, I offer you just a bit of this and that:

• This is my favorite time of year. Although I feel the holiday months ahead shuffling their way to center stage, a splash of autumn color always settles me down, reminds me to breathe. I’m hoping to catch one last leaf-peeping this weekend if we can swing a long drive somewhere.
• I’m already immersed in my fall reading list. Time may get tight but there’s always room for a few pages of a good book. I’m well into The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith. Each chapter wraps up with a spiritual practice to consider, and the suggestion is so gentle I can hardly just move on to the next chapter without giving it a try.
• I’m keeping The Irrational Season at my bedside. That’s exactly where Madeleine L’Engle belongs, at the end of the day, to pause and consider the deeper things of life from her simple and practical perspective.
• But Molly Wizenberg’s A homemade life : stories and recipes from my kitchen table has been fast-tracked to the top of my list, due to the fact that I have it on a one-week library loan and I despise having overdue books. The fact that there were 12 holds on it inspired me to dive right in. Actually I’ll probably end up buying this book, for the recipes alone. Julie and Julia reminded me of my Gram’s determination to master some French cooking techniques. Kathleen Flinn’s The Sharper the Knife, the Less You’ll Cry inspired me to follow my own dreams. But Molly Wizenberg makes me want to get into the kitchen and cook. Period. Any book that starts off with a recipe for one’s father’s potato salad is sure to be a winner!
• I do have a life outside of books, believe it or not. And October is just a cool month to enjoy that life, as it’s full of family birthdays (nephew and brother-in-law), anniversaries (ours and my sister’s) and oh – my own birthday!
• I was rear-ended yesterday, to add a little excitement to the month. I’m sore but otherwise okay and I have to say the insurance process was relatively painless.
• We’ve been hearing critter racket around here lately. Honestly it was so loud the other morning, my dog was barking at who knows what. I was certain a racoon had set up home in our attic. Turns out birds are seeking shelter in our woodstove chimney. Can’t blame them – the gameroom is my favorite place to be too. Mike opened the stove tonight though and Mr. Sparrow Jr. flapped around the house for a while. He is lucky Mike is an animal-lover; when I got home all the windows upstairs were opened. We shooed him out from behind the desk and eventually he headed back outside where he belongs! Obviously we need our chimney checked!
• That’s it for the most part. Gotta run . . . I got something in the oven. It’s not food, it’s not a baby but it’s big and exciting and  . . . well, that’s all I can say for now.

The Look of Love

In our Bible study, we’ve been talking about how Jesus might have looked at others. In Mark 10, it says that Jesus looked at the rich young ruler and loved him. What might that have been like to have the eyes of Jesus look deep into your soul? And yet of course, he does. Lately I’ve just been spending some time in stillness, imagining the eyes of Jesus upon me. It melts me, it really does. I see all kinds of things there – from joy to tears. That look, as I experience it through Scripture and prayer, keeps drawing me back to a safe place where more and more, I want God to strip away all the pretense that stands between me and him.

While I believe that Jesus actually sees me, I also realize that many people have never experienced that loving gaze. They may be too caught up in just surviving from day to day to stop and consider how Jesus might love them. They may sit in church pews every Sunday and still not realize that Jesus cares for them personally. I think that’s part of what we offer others. When we take time to just look at others and see them for what they really are, when we can see past the junk, knowing that God looks past our junk, what a gift we can offer them.

And yet, I’ve been spending time each morning lately reading Psalm 131. I’m not sure if David was really certain that his heart was not proud nor his eyes haughty or if that was just a hopeful prayer. I know more often than I like to admit, my eyes are haughty. They’re engaged in presenting a front to others, one that protects the real me while projecting who I’d like to be. I don’t think Jesus can love others through those eyes. So that is my prayer of late: Change my view, O Lord. Eyes fixed wholly on you. Free and clear to see and reflect your love to others.

Later on in Psalm 131, David likens himself to a weaned child, contented. The eyes of a contented child are anything but haughty. I think how my eyes see others will change as my view of God continues to change, as my heart becomes more and more contented with him and him alone.

My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

But I have calmed myself and quieted my ambitions.
I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.

Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore. Psalm 131

Fall Reading Thing 2009

Once again, I’m joining Katrina in challenging myself with a fall reading list. I tend to read anything and everything, but often that ends up to be just bits and pieces of anything and everything – not good. Over the past few years, I’ve realized how much better I do with a list for starters. If you’ve never participated in this challenge, why don’t you hop over to Callapidder Days and join in the fun? There’s always lots of book reviews and fun giveaways going on, even if you don’t do the reading thing.

Here’s the list I’m planning to tackle this fall:

Standard non-fiction fare:
The Good and Beautiful God – James Bryan Smith
Days of Deepening Friendship – Vinita Hampton Wright
The Irrational Season – Madeleine L’Engle
A Two-Part Invention – Madeleine L’Engle
Scouting the Divine – Margaret Feinberg
Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis

My token fiction pick:
The Passion of Mary Margaret – Lisa Samson

Memoir: (I realized how much I love foodie reads so I’m planning to devour more of those, pardon the pun!)
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone - Jennifer Ferrari-Adler
A homemade life : stories and recipes from my kitchen table – Molly Wizenburg
Ghost Rider – Neil Peart (NOT a foodie read, but a story by the drummer for Rush piqued my curiousity)

I’m reading An Invitation to the Jesus Life by Jan Johnson, which I’m loving already. I’m sure I’ll pick up a few others along the way (and perhaps drop a few as well!) I hope to review quite a few of the books I read this time around but don’t hold your breath!

So what am I waiting for . . . it’s time to curl up with a book!