pumpkin spice latte

It’s silly how something so small can change everything.

Today, Starbucks brought back the pumpkin spice latte. I have to admit: I’m impressed with the marketing strategy of seasonal drinks. I’ve been missing it since, well, since it ended last year, around the time the Christmas eggnog latte started up. And ever since, I’ve been tasting it on my tongue: the sweetness like vanilla with a hint of pie and candy and Halloween. When it was in season, I drank it every day. It made ordering, which is usually such a chore, easy. Normally, ordering a Starbucks drink is a bold act of self-definition: Do I get grande? Tall? Vanilla? Mocha? Latte? Cappuccino? But the presence of pumpkin spice answers all my questions for me: grande soy no-whip pumpkin spice latte. No doubts. Nothing to wonder about.

It’s back, I think, too early. Pumpkin spice ought to come with the fall scents of falling leaves and cooling earth and the deep blue sky that only comes in autumn. It ought to be combined with woodsmoke and campfires and the bright cold whiteness of October evening stars. But the drink has come too early; it’s still August, and August in Georgia is full of heat and haze and cloudy afternoons. It has none of the crisp brightness of fall, and the pumpkins aren’t even planted yet.

But I don’t care, because the instant I tasted my pumpkin spice latte, it was all there: the brilliant fall colors, the crunch of leaves under my feet, the smell of the woods and the hint of winter’s bite in the air. The heat still hangs in the air outside, but the latte brought fall to my tongue in a single sip. I can hear the fire crackling and feel the leaves under my boots. It’s time for hiking in the mountains, for cuddling by the year’s first fire, for raking leaves just for the pleasure of jumping in them. I don’t care what the calendar says; fall is here. My latte makes it so.

heretics

Today I talked with a writer friend of mine who'd just read a bad review of one of his books. He gets those a lot, so he's mostly immune to them by now, but this one upset him particularly because of its implication that he was prejudiced. "It's all right if they criticize the book," he complained, "but do they really have to attack my character?" He added, only half joking, "I'd rather be called a heretic than prejudiced."

I've spent the rest of the day reflecting on that statement. True, heresy doesn't mean much these days. I've been thinking a lot lately about the numerous splits in the church throughout history, and if you can learn anything from them, you can certainly learn that there are very few opinions that haven't been considered heretical at some point in history. Maybe it is, in fact, a lighter thing to call someone a heretic than to accuse them of prejudice. Maybe heresy is only directed against ideas--which can handle it--while prejudice is directed against people, who are much more fragile. Maybe heresy has no meaning in a world where everyone disagrees anyway, and prejudice is a lot more powerful.

But if that's the case, then do ideas even matter any more? Shouldn't they matter? Isn't it ideas that give people their power? As the main character remarked in V for Vendetta, "Ideas are bulletproof." People are, indeed, much more fragile.

And lately I've become impatient with the irrepressible open-mindedness of our society. I find myself hungering for orthodoxy, for right thinking. Maybe it's just a childish desire to know, once and for all, the right answer--the answer to life, the universe, and everything, as Douglas Adams humorously describes it. Maybe it's foolish to think that we can know it, and tolerance is really the wiser course.

But then again, maybe we could know more than we think we can, if only we weren't so afraid of truth. Maybe it's fear that has shaped our new orthodoxy, and the hunger for certainty has become, in this day and age, the only remaining type of heresy.

doomsaying peak oil

The sky is falling!

People are finally starting to wonder what's really causing high gas prices, but now it's too late.

Then again, we might have a little time--a couple of years, maybe?--before the real crash.

My husband (then fiance) starting researching the problem of oil supply over a year ago. It didn't take him much time of looking at the numbers before he bought into the theory of peak oil--bought into it big-time. When he first started talking about it, sometime last year, I felt like the family of Noah must have: everyone started to give us odd looks and avoid us at dinner parties. Whenever the subject came up, everyone--even me, sometimes--would roll their eyes: "Here he goes again...!" It's obvious enough to be a truism to say that oil--being, after all, a fossil fuel--is a finite resource that will eventually peak and then begin to decline. It's not far out of probability to say that the peak might be soon. But to say that everything in our economy, in our way of life, depends upon oil? That our civilization as we know it stands on a brink and will soon fall apart? No wonder people were rolling their eyes.

But now, people aren't just listening; they're calling him to ask him for answers. As we've been fed little tastes of what it really is like to run short on gas supplies, even temporarily, people are starting to worry. They're starting to be afraid. I've been watching with a surreal amazement as my husband's predictions have come true, one after another falling like dominoes into place. It's not pleasant to be a doomsayer, but I must admit: it is pleasant to be proven right, even when you'd really rather have been wrong.

Most of all, though, it's pleasant to have an answer. And while we still don't have that, at least we have thought about possible solutions. I don't want to be remembered, as we generally remember Noah, as having been part of the judgment (although I'm sure Noah didn't think of himself that way); I want to be part of the solution. And when the time comes that solutions are desperately wanting, perhaps our role as doomsaying prophets will pay off. If nothing else, there is one certain benefit of speaking up now: we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that we told you so.

february showers

I've been to more bridal shower than I can count. I went to a women's college: I have a lot of girlfriends. But this weekend was different. This weekend, for the first time, I was the bride.

It was strange going to a shower empty-handed; I kept thinking that I was forgetting something--where was my present; shouldn't I bring a present? Then I remembered, again, that I didn't need one: the presents were for me. For some reason, the shower made it real to me--this is it, this is real, I'm really getting married.

The idea of a wedding seems stranger to me than the idea of marriage. Marriage--how different will it really be? There's sex, of course. But mostly, I think, it will just be living: deciding what to eat for dinner, sharing the bathroom, coaxing him out of bad moods and persuading him to put his dishes away. The only different part will be sharing the bathroom.

But weddings--that's something else entirely. Weddings are something that happens to my friends, not to me. Weddings are when I buy an ugly pink dress that I'll never wear again and walk down the aisle with a stranger who happens to be friends with my friend's fiance. Weddings are when I serve the bride, doing everything I can to make her day special, placing myself at her beck and call to pick up flowers or fetch water or instruct the groomsmen on their negligence of duty. Weddings are a time to meet the strangers who are my friend's family, to wear an outfit that I didn't choose but that I spent a lot of money for, and to enjoy myself thoroughly despite it all. Weddings are for someone else.

But this wedding--this one wedding--will be for me. Now all my friends are giving me gifts, telling me I'm beautiful, offering to help with everything from dresses to flowers to food warmers. I'm hesitant to accept their help, puzzled by their delight in serving, even though I remember how it feels to be a friend of the bride. I remember how much fun it is to gaze in delight and wonder at your friend who has transformed before your eyes. She has changed from the ordinary girl you've always known into someone glamorous and mysterious, someone glowing in white, fragrant as flowers, her eyes bright and shining with anticipation and mystery and love. And even if you're jealous of her good fortune, even if you're bitter in the feeling that nothing so romantic will ever happen to you, you can't help but get caught up in her joy. She is in love, and she is perfect, and for one day, the world revolves around her.

But me? I am so plain, so earthy, so utterly suffused with the ordinary. Did I look like that to them, yeterday as I opened presents? Did I glow when his name was mentioned? Did the magic of love touch me, too, changing me without my noticing?

Marriage is about two people. But weddings are about everyone. Yesterday, I caught a glimpse of how the love of two people draws the love of all their friends around them, showering toward them like fireworks in reverse, all the brightness that was scattered across the sky drawing together toward a single point. And I am so grateful for my friends, those bright lights that have lit the path of my life through many years, and I hope that the magic that has touched me will spread to them, too, like mist on the mountains in the morning, and reveal all of them, as they are, beautiful.

friends

The hardest thing about moving is leaving all your friends. After nearly ten years in Virginia, I had garnered together a long list of cell phone numbers. Some of them were people I rarely, if ever called; some were people I called every day; some I called only occasionally, when all my regulars were unavailable. But all of them were people who at some point had liked me enough to trust me with their cell phone number, and that says something. On days when you feel like you have no friends, that says a lot.

Now I've moved, and my cell phone number collection has suddenly decreased in value. All of the numbers are long-distance now. Not that matters with a cell phone, of course, but it matters very much on a Friday night when you're trying to find someone to go see a movie with you.

A few weeks ago, I had nearly despaired of ever finding friends here. It's true that there aren't a lot of people in my age range. But, as is so often the case, despair was only the last step before breakthrough. In the past few weeks, I have finally started to make friends. I've started to meet people in different circles--which is important, because I like to be able to spend time with different types of people. I've started to meet people in different stages of life--which is important too, because I'm still in a stage where I feel very uncertain of exactly what life stage I'm actually in. I've even met a few people who like to watch 24, which I think is probably essential for my social health and happiness. But most important of all, I've met people--even absolute strangers--who, by the end of our conversation, have trusted me with their cell phone number. Not only that, but they told me to call.

Just the other day I met a girl in the teahouse. I'm starting to love the teahouse: it seems like every time I go there, I make a friend. After a long conversation about life, politics, economics, and neuroscience, we exchanged phone numbers. "Call me," she said. "Really: I mean it. I would really like to hang out with you."

For someone as gregarious as me, a statement like that is the most beautiful thing I could possibly hear.

cultural revolution

Some people talk about "culture" like it's a cuss word: it's the stench of pollution that we avoid as much as possible. But that avoidance itself is part of culture. You can't escape it; everything you do is shaped by your culture. Even your thoughts are shaped by language, and no Orwellian badspeak is necessary. There are thousands of ideas that cannot be conceived in our language, and we don't even know how limited our thoughts are, because we can't even imagine the things we can't say.

Culture is too pervasive for us to ever escape it: it's like our skin, like the air itself. We are surrounded by something we cannot see or feel, and yet it is the power that shapes all we do and all we are. We are controlled by something that is greater than us and yet created by us. It's foolish to think we can separate ourselves from it.

And the church: they say it shouldn't be changed by culture, but how could it not be? I do believe that the church is, at least in one sense, free of it, in the mystical and spiritual realm. But what good does that do? We live in the earthly realm, in the world of sweat and dirt and stones, and here, the church is just as trapped as anyone else. We are chained by our consumerism, enslaved to our image, caught in our greed. Most of the time, we don't even want to be free.

But there are a few points we take a stand on. We fight and split over issues that we're certain are clear, cultural trends that we see as intrusive, invasive, subversive. But there are so many other things that we accept without question, without even fighting for truth. We let our culture brainwash us when it's comfortable; it's only when it's uncomfortable, when it involves the acceptance of someone unlike us, that we rebel.

But Christ commanded far more than acceptance: he required love and sacrifice not just for those who are unlike us, but for those who hate us, those whom we hate. He tells us to love, not just sinners, but our enemies. He did more than welcome sinners to His house: He solicited invitations to theirs. So why are we so quick to draw lines in the name of holiness?

I doubt there's an easy answer. But surely, somewhere, there is an answer. If nothing else, we have to believe that, because that hope can give us the courage to press through our differences, to press through our fear, and maybe find something on the other side: if not light, then at least a little less darkness.

ants in harmony

Today I declared war on the ants.

They started scouting out my apartment a few days ago. I have to admire their efficiency; only a few days ago they were just an itinerant worker here and there, wandering around my honey jar or my sugar bowl. I killed all the ones I saw, crushing them with a paper towel without remorse or sympathy for their fate. When my conscience rebelled, I told myself firmly that killing worker ants is not murder; they are extensions of the queen, without individual lives or genes, and killing them is little different from trimming one’s fingernails. I had Orson Scott Card to back me up. And if I still felt a qualm of conscience, I repressed it firmly, determined to maintain the cleanliness of my house. I had a guest coming this weekend, and I didn’t want her to think that my house was an unclean and messy home for ants and cockroaches, even if that was the truth.

But my efforts were in vain, and the ants arrived in force on the same day that my guest did. Ginna came on Friday night, and on Saturday morning when I woke up, the ants were marching in organized columns of war, like soldiers in the early days of the American Revolution, before guerrilla warfare took hold. They had laid out a path from the corner of the kitchen above my fridge, where there seemed to be a crack in the sealing, all around the edge of the cabinets—they neatly avoided the dishes, which gesture I appreciated, even in an enemy—over the top of the door to the laundry room and to the food cabinet, where they had deftly discovered the unsealed bag of potato chips I had carelessly left there. I had already put the honey pot and the sugar bowl inside my fridge as a preventative measure, but apparently ants like protein and fat as well as sugar, and the potato chips, if not their first choice, were still sufficient attraction.

I was horrified. It’s bad enough to find an individual ant wandering on your counter, but this—this was something else entirely. They had declared war on my kitchen, without even attempting negotiation. There was no precedent for such a move. And they had arrived on the same day as my guest, right when I was weakest, almost as if they knew.

It was clear that there could be no mercy in a situation like this. I pulled out all my guns and faced them down.

Or rather, I called my fiancé over, pointed out to him the terrible line of doom, that thin reddish line that moved creepily and inexorably around the edges of my kitchen, and begged him to do something—anything. He assured me that he would, and I got out of the house, unable to bear the sight of hideous crawling things wandering at will through my kitchen.

Three hours later, I came home to find the line of warfare undisturbed and Matt standing complacently on a chair, carefully studying the enemy. I realize that study can be a tactic of war, but if that was his intention, it didn’t look like he was making very good use of it.

“Look at this,” he said, without turning, when I entered. “They greet each other. Every time two of them meet when they’re going the opposite direction, they stop and greet each other before they move on.”

I couldn’t see how this was going to help me get them out of my kitchen and away from my food and my dishes, but I was feeling better after a break away from the battle scene, so I humored him. I joined him on the chair and studied the creatures marching in full view across my cabinets, only inches away from my cereal boxes.

It took me a minute to see what he meant. But it was true. Two ants, coming from opposite directions, pause when they come face to face. They wave their antennae at each other, politely, like guests at a party shaking hands before they continue on their respective walks around the room.

But this party was at my expense. I was not to be drawn in. They’re only workers, not queens, I reminded myself, thinking of Ender’s Game. I drew a breath. “That’s very nice, dear,” I agreed. “But how are we going to get rid of them?”

He glanced at me with something like pride and turned to point out what he seemed to view as his successful efforts. “I’ve been researching ants online,” he began, by way of explanation. Online research is Matt’s cure for everything. “First I tried soap,” he continued, pointing out the container of hand soap that was now sitting on top of the refrigerator. “But that didn’t seem to work so well.” He rotated to face the other wall, the one by the laundry room, where an uninterrupted line of ants continued to march undisturbed toward my food cabinets. “Then I tried lemon juice, because it said they don’t like that, but that didn’t work too well either, although you can see that their line is a little messed up—they don’t like to cross it.” I couldn’t really see what he meant, but I believed him. But I was also starting to doubt the effectiveness of his war methods. He concluded with some pride: “But you see, they really don’t like cinnamon. See where I sprinkled cinnamon above the door? They won’t walk there now at all.”

It was true. The marching line of my little enemies had originally been laid precisely above the door frame. He had sprinkled cinnamon along the top of the frame, like a row of trenches, and the enemy had retreated. Their line now marched about two inches above the frame, directly on the wall.

But I didn’t see what good gaining ground would do, when the ants still had a clear and uninterrupted supply line all the way to my potato chips. Although he had also sprinkled cinnamon in the cabinets, which seemed to be deterring them from the food. But it evidently hadn’t taken them long to find a secondary pathway along the wall, and I wasn’t about to bet on the cabinets.

I gritted my teeth, thanked my fiancé for his help, and called my apartment manager.

Of course, the office was closed, so I left a desperate message (“My apartment is being overrun by ants! I can’t use my kitchen! Help!”) and went to bed, trying to ignore the creepy feeling that ants were crawling all over my body, even after my shower.

My apartment manager called me at ten o’clock on Monday morning. “The exterminator usually comes on Friday,” she said cheerily, “so we’ll be sure he comes to visit your apartment as well.”

I groaned. “No,” I protested. “You don’t understand. I can’t use my kitchen. There are ants everywhere. They’re all over everything. I can’t wait until Friday. You’ve got to help me.”

My manager was sympathetic but unoptimistic. “We’ll call the exterminators and see if they can come earlier,” she said. “In the meantime, don’t use any chemicals, because they might interact with the chemicals the exterminator uses.” Great—just what I needed. No reinforcements for a week, and I was forbidden to use any significant weapons. My house was under invasion, and no one was going to help. And I had more guests coming on Friday.

“Oh,” she added, “but you might try Windex. I’ve heard that works pretty well.”

I hung up the phone, rolled up my sleeves, and decided to try everything. I would pull out any weapon I was licensed to use. I sprinkled cinnamon everywhere; I spread lemon juice on the walls, and I sprayed Windex on everything that moved. To my surprise, the Windex was pretty effective. All the ants that came under direct fire stopped moving immediately. A few of them, after a few minutes, began to crawl again half-heartedly, like dying soldiers struggling to drag themselves off the battle lines. But I was merciless. I crushed them with paper towels and threw them in the trash can, and then I sprayed the walls again with Windex in the hopes that it would prevent any further invasions.

My fiancé was slightly disappointed, I think, by my aggressive guerrilla tactics, as well as by my compromising methods of using chemical weapons rather than organic ones. He cited my dislike of living in harmony with nature, and my war against my six-legged brothers, as evidence of my American consumerism and proof that I would never be able to live in true poverty. But I stuck to my guns. There are certain circumstances under which one is happy to live in harmony with nature, such as when one is living as a missionary in a South American jungle, or when one is camping, or living in self-chosen poverty in a cabin with a dirt floor in the mountains of West Virginia. There are other circumstances under which nature—particularly in the form of six-legged brothers—would do well to keep her distance, such as when one is living in an creaky apartment for which one pays a rent of $680 dollars a month. Particularly if the cost of an exterminator is included in the cost of that rent. Even the most tree-hugging fiancé surely can’t blame me for my determination to get my money’s worth.

Actually, the truth is that I’ve always like ants. As a kid, I used to love watching educational television about any kind of bugs, but particularly bees and ants. Their widespread efficiency and community harmony has always amazed me. Now that I realize the absolute inexistence of the individual that is the key to their perfect unity, I find them less fascinating. It was T.H. White’s treatment of them in The Once and Future King, when the young King Arthur experiences an afternoon as an ant worker, that first made me doubt my youthful admiration of their camaraderie and loyalty, and Orson Scott Card finished off the job with Ender’s Game and his description of workers as mere fingernail clippings, expendable pieces of a body connected by communication rather than physical unity. Still, it fascinates me how they communicate, how they exist as a single being spread out in all directions from its heart and mind and yet somehow still one entity. Real ants, of course, do not communicate so instantaneously as the buggers of science fiction, but they do communicate. And the individual is utterly, even joyfully, effaced in the life of the whole, the life of the colony, the life of the queen.

It’s hard to imagine a life between the two extremes: a life in which both the individual and the community is truly, deeply valued. I’m not sure it has ever existed. Humans have tried both extremes; communism, for instance, was an experiment in the value of the state over the individual; capitalism is an experiment in the value of the individual over all. One has failed; the other is failing. Community is the life that values both, and cares for both, but it is a balancing act as delicate and difficult as a trapeze artist, as endangered as the ants in my kitchen once I declared my war against them.

For there are a thousand guerrilla enemies that go to war with any attempt at community, and they attack with fair and unfair weapons on both sides, on the side of the individual and the side of the state. Selfishness, anger, desires weigh in on the side of the individual, and we draw our guns for number one, determined to keep our rights at any cost. Then fear, outsiders, politics draw their guns on the side of the state, and we eagerly give our rights away, never even bothering to ask what happened to them. And yet—. The Bible draws a picture of a world in which the lion lies down with the lamb, a world in which the good of the one and the good of the many could kiss each other, could live not just in coexistence but in harmony. And harmony is not the unity of one note; it is the beauty of two disparate notes that find enough in common to not only exist in the same space but to blend, to become something greater and more beautiful, together, than they ever could have been alone.