November resolution number one: write more book reviews.

It is scandalous how many books I read and never say or write a word about. A good book demands praise. So. Starting today, I’m going to do a weekly mini-review post of all the books I am reading. Just jottings; postcards if you will, from my literary travels. Longer reviews of particularly superb books will occasionally follow. But this habit will give me the chance to regularly articulate a few of the delightful, but agitated bookish thoughts constantly in my head. Feel free to join in the literary agitation.

The Brontes: Charlotte Bronte and Her Family by Rebecca Fraser
All writers need a few literary idols.  I never thought Charlotte Bronte would be one of mine. I liked Jane Eyre when I read it back in high school, but it didn’t sweep me away. Charlotte herself is a different matter. The fierce, tiny woman who hailed unthinkable grief with stoic faith, who loved and dreamed with unmitigated passion- she rivets me. Loyal, sarcastic, shy, determined, an idealist whose world was the tiny box of a parsonage on the Yorkshire moors, Charlotte Bronte offers a life story that reads like a novel. Gwen loved this and passed it on a couple of years ago, and having finally gotten round to it, I feel the same sorriness in finishing it as I do on ending Victorian epics by the likes of George Eliot, or Charles Dickens.

To begin with, this is excellent history and biography. The ideas and events of Victorian England and the literary world that was so rich at that time are extensively explained, as are Charlotte’s convictions, decisions, and history. I feel educated. But Rebecca Fraser has also managed to make this biography read like a story. She allows the brisk, brilliant tang of Charlotte’s letters and journals to form the main narrative of the book. We hear directly from Charlotte of the foibles of lifestyle, thought, and faith that made her a genius of a woman and writer. From her beginning as one of six imaginative children, to her end as the lone survivor of her beloved siblings, Charlotte’s story is marked by loss and a wild sense of sorrow. But it is shot through with her stoic Christian faith, her fire-fierce love for her family, and the vivid imagination that made an inner world for her and her readers.  I loved Fraser’s voice as a biographer. She is winsome, breezy, and descriptive. She shows great restraint in conjecture about Charlotte’s life, never forcing a theory where there is room for disagreement. Modern biographies often read all kinds of unfounded motives into the actions of defenseless writers who aren’t around to explain themselves. Fraser doesn’t. If Charlotte said it, it’s true. Otherwise, she leaves the matter to mystery. She also offers sympathetic, but often amused commentary on Charlotte’s rather abrasive opinions, her martyrish dedication to “truth in her art,”and her few fierce loves.

I started this book expecting to be challenged as a writer. In the end, I was heartened simply as a human soul by this story of the woman who accidentally set Victorian society on its ear with her passion and insight into human nature. Charlotte showed me the power of inner worlds, how a vivid, soulful imagination can form a story that makes a world for the inhabitation of other minds. She showed me how passion and grief can be poured into powerful creation. She also proved that it is possible to keep a soul vividly, lovingly alive in the shadowiest of situations. If you are in the mood for a long (this is 500 pages!), writerly, introspective, but tangy book and rather soulish biography, this is it.

King of Shadows by Susan Cooper
I thought of my siblings the whole time I read this. Especially my brothers. When we were all young, we spent read-aloud afternoons together which were inevitably followed by a re-enactment of our story (when we were little) or a discussion of its philosophy (when we were old and sophisticated). Our little gang would have gotten great mileage out of this book. I picked this up at Goodwill, and was going to skim it one Saturday, never expecting to be intrigued. But the actor boy Nat, the shimmering world of the stage, and a time-traveling story of Shakespearean England had me glued to its pages within five minutes. Eleven-year-old Nat is the hero of this tale, an actor of a boy who loves his role of Puck in an itinerant troupe’s production of  A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Nat gets sick on the eve of a grand performance in London’s Globe Theater, he wakes to find himself transported back to the days of Shakespeare himself. His friendship with the Bard and the time he spends in the smelly, sweaty, rollicking world of sixteenth century London, help him to sort out the secret grief that lurks in his present. A celebration of the stage, a subtle exploration of how art and friendship help us to bear grief, while also being a sensitive tale of an orphaned boy, this story has a surprising poignancy. Cooper is a writer who weaves a scene so that you feel you are in it. I’d caution though, that this really isn’t a children’s book, however much it says it is. Nothing graphic, but the themes, and Nat’s secret sorrow, make this a more mature tale.

Sacred Legacy by Myrna Grant
Steph had this waiting on my pillow when I visited in October. I’ve read a chapter a day as a storyish way to begin devotions. I am heartily pleased. My first observation is very insightful, of course: it’s not treacly. I get rankled by the plethora of spiritual books for women that lack verve, strength, challenge. Not this. The first chapter is on Perpetua, a young and beautiful Roman martyr who was so enthralled by the joy of Christ, she walked to her death singing hymns, barely aware of the arena where she met a wild animal. Try that for a devotional spark with your morning tea.

This is a collection of writings excerpted from the works of nine, ancient Christian women. Remarkable  anyway for being writers in times when few women were educated at all, each woman was also exceptional in her love of God. Each chapter is prefaced by a personable introduction and short history/biography by the compiler, Myrna Grant. Grant herself is an engaging writer, using stories from her own life and travels as an intro to her easy-to-read histories of the ancient church and her bios of the featured women. These are followed by excerpts from the works of the women themselves. So far in my reading, I’ve met Perpetua, Dhuoda, a worried medieval mother writing instructions about faith to her son, and Hildegard, an opinionated, brilliant, and passionate nun. Each story, each rousing bit of ancient writing, has an energy that spurs me. I am better readied to think, to pray, but mostly to love after encountering the vivacious faith of these women. They have lots of verve. I want to too.

And now. On my currently reading, or soon to be begged, borrowed, bought, or stolen list:

1. Brendan by Frederick Buechner
2. The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Our Pain by Scott Cairns
3. Lilith by George MacDonald
4. The Importance of Being Foolish by Brennan Manning
5. Standing by Words by Wendell Berry. I am going to finally finish this.
6. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
7. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton

I was driving down the highway very early (too early)  the other day. Snow like sugar on the streets, steam rising from the slip of tires, the sky a pale, unbearable blue. Fingers stiff with cold, eyes dim with sleep and irritation, I tapped the radio on to classical. A piano and violin duet came on, notes blue as twilight, quick as running water. I was leaning forward, into the music. The melody was like the aching run to a hilltop, a breathless climb, and then, joy to the far horizon. It ended. I unslumped in my seat. My eyes widened. I was suddenly aware of that particular moment, the melody invading it, the pearled gleam of snow that lightened it. I looked out my window. Beauty tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to face it, and found God saying good morning.

Ever present, His presence takes me unawares.

I often clutch at beauty, and in it, God’s companionship. I scratch at it with my fingernails because I feel it to be spontaneous, and somehow, fickle. God seems at times like a whimsical friend. Beauty is sudden and unscheduled.  A passage of story stabs my heart awake (as R.L. Stevenson would say), music calls my name, some glimpse of nature engulfs my eyes in joy, and I feel alive. Those glimpses convince me that God is really with me. Then, abruptly, they’re gone. Hurry and need and work shove joy out of my life. I grasp at it, but only manage to catch the ache of its leaving. I mourn. Some part of me even feels abandoned. Gradually, I forget the whole thing. I wake up to the weary hours of another daily sort of day, and forget to even want God’s beauty, or his company.

So he taps me on the shoulder. A glint of light off snow, a strain of unexpected music. Up comes my head, as if I had seen a beloved face in a strange city. It’s like thinking someone has abandoned you, when suddenly, you see them across a crowd, waving delightedly, running to greet you. In my car, I looked up and found God running toward me. The song and snow were his call across the crowd. He comes whispering, then dancing in front of me, glinting in and out of my sight, calling my name in laughter and song. His beauty never abandons me, it just keeps waking me up to love him again. And if, at times, it seems fleeting, it’s not from his being fickle, but from my being frail. My own forgetfulness, my rush, my  persistent dimness of soul are what make him seem absent. The miracle is that he never leaves me there. Tap. A violin duet. Tap. A crimson sunrise. Tap. Fresh bread. Tap. I look up.

What do you know. He’s still there.

We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must act the play out. We must live misfortune down!

-Betsey Trotwood in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

Maggie Smith (who plays Betsey T.) says this with such dauntless sparkle in the movie version I saw a bit of yesterday, I couldn’t keep the line to myself.

It’s almost here. I just had to tell you. It’s like my baby. Three more weeks and I’ll have it in my hands. I am speechless with thanks.

I have to admit, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I sat down to write this. The urge to spontaneously jot down book lists for people has been with me since my teens; I’m that nose-in-a-book sort of girl. The original idea was a very intuitive one: “oh, I think I’ll write a book with all the lists of my favorites, and tell everyone why reading is the most delightful activity in the world.”

Well, it is. But now I have documented it, dated it, footnoted it, researched it, and laboriously listed out why. The sheer amount of details required to document each book mentioned is mind boggling! But it is done and the work and journey of the writing has been an education that has shoved me even farther down the literary road in my life. This is one of the things I want to give my life to. I want the whole world to love books. I want every child to be formed by stories. I want every person I can get my hands on to have their soul enlivened by the sorts of books that will help them to live an epic. I even want to give speeches about this, which, since I generally avoid speaking as if it were chickenpox, will tell you just how passionate this subject gets me.

So there you have it. If you live in the Colorado area, there are going to be several release parties/literary celebrations/Christmas book reading sorts of soirees in late November, early December. I’ll post dates soon. Have a beautiful day you all.

Oh, and while you’re at it… READ!

Update: I’m so bad at remembering details. Here’s the stuff I forgot that I really should have added. The publisher is Apologia Press. You can order the book at Apologia.com. (As soon as I have a specific link to my book, I’ll post it here.)

Nobby apple cake.

Robbie Burns. I’m trying to read one full entry in my Norton Anthology every day. The man is funny.

Tea. Catching up with the British average of 6 cups a day. I’m a Yorkshire Gold girl.

Hickory, Dickory, Dock. I love Monseiur Poirot. He’s sort of a family tradition.

Three foot drifts. Those are fun to shovel.

What are your snow day delights?

There is a peculiar light to Monday mornings. Uneasy, it always feels to me, as if hurry thrummed in the very color of the day. But this past Monday, I ignored it. Rush was mobbing my conscience, but I gated it out because I was reading a book I truly could not put down. It was noon before I finished, and by that time all my bustle had been scattered by the slow, sweet rise of joy that ached in my story. I don’t think I’ve ever been so immediately affected by a book as I was by Wendell Berry’s short novel, Remembering.

I have taken Wendell Berry for my mentor. His books challenge me, especially his fiction, because they make me face what is real, hungry, and true in my own heart. This is not escapist literature- there is no whisking away involved in reading Hannah Coulter, or A Place on Earth. You don’t put down his novels like you do some modern books and wish your life weren’t so mundane. In Berry’s characters, you meet yourself. The loves, the quiet losses, the unspoken griefs, the desires for transcendence and hope that plague every one of us humans every day, get articulated in the thoughts and lives of his characters. Because of this, Mr. Berry also manages to put his finger on the pulse of what we have lost in modern culture. He writes about the loss of community, the breakup of families, the deadening ways of consumerism, the way wonder is poisoned by a materialistic view of life, and he does it with quiet, logical eloquence, demanding us to value the old ways again. He speaks what we all feel, but have no idea how to say.

I must admit though, that I have often wanted to write him a letter of protest. How, I would say, do you return to community if you never had one? I yearn for history, for a people that knows me. But how do you learn rootedness without roots? Berry himself grew up in Kentucky, the son of farmers. He left to study, and could have stayed away forever, breaking the “membership” (one of his terms) of the life to which he was born. He came back. He re-entered the fellowship of place and family that were his history and gift. Lucky him. What if you don’t have that to come back to? Could he possibly understand the sense of displacement felt by so many in my generation? I at least have the priceless grounding of a strong, loving family. But I’ve moved at least 15 times in my 25 years. I yearn to be settled, and ultimately, known. Can a nomad soul like mine and others ever find community? There is no “place on earth” waiting, hoping for our return.

That’s why I loved Remembering.

For the first time, I knew that Berry had felt my own sense of being lost in a huge grey world where nothing is personal, and no one will hold you. Remembering is a journey in and through the thoughts of middle-aged farmer Andy Catlett. I knew Andy from previous books as every story Mr. Berry writes is set in the fictional town of Port William. Andy had been a boy when I knew him in Hannah Coulter, but now he was a man who had made the hard decision to return to the farming and family he had left when he was young. The story opens in a dark San Francisco hotel room, where Andy is questioning not only his decision, but everything he loves. Injured, alienated from his wife, far from home, rejected by his peers, feeling that he is a relic from an old time never to be reclaimed, he walks out into the pre-dawn of the San Francisco streets.

The first chapters were surreal; as a reader I felt disoriented. Only at the end of the book did I realize that I was meant not just to read, but experience, the terror of being unmoored from the people who love you and the place that knows you. Everything becomes strange. Andy wanders the streets, wondering if he can return to the life he thought he had chosen in Kentucky. Homeless men and suspicious woman grip his eyes; he sees the river-like flow of nameless faces stream through the city, and wonders how anyone can ever be known, get home again. The worst comes gradually to him. He has failed. Does he even want to be found? But then, there is this moment, as dawn creeps up the edge of the ocean. He sits on a bench, just watching. And he begins to…remember. Snippet from tales told in his childhood about the courtship of his great grandparents, or the first farm of his father. The stories of the lives of the men and women whose choices, loves, had made possible the shape of his life. They rise up around him and:

He is held, though he does not hold. He is caught up again in the old pattern of entrances: of minds into minds, minds into place, places into minds. The pattern limits and complicates him, singling him out in his own flesh. Out of the multitude of possible lives that have surrounded and beckoned to him like a crowd around a star, he returns now to himself… He has met again his one life and one death, and he takes them back. It is as though, leaving, he has met himself already returning…meeting…a few dead and living whose love has claimed him forever. He will be partial and he will die; he will live out the truth of that. Though he does not hold, he is held. He is grieving, and he is full of joy. (Chapter 3)

I won’t tell you anymore, but for me, every word from there out was the slow swell of a music only to be known in loving, and choosing to love again in the face of loss and grief. It is a music half broken, but singing itself whole. In hearing it, I knew that Mr. Berry had known the ache of being lost. I knew he had fought, as I am fighting, to believe that constancy in friendship and fidelity in love is possible. I knew he had heard, as I have, the derision of a fast-paced, impersonal world, and still chose to believe that the sort of life that grows up slow and rich from the ground of faith, hope, and love, was so precious it could demand the whole of his life. I even think he’s wondered if he had it in him to stay that course.

When I got up from my chair on that Monday, I felt held. Mr. Berry, I realized, is generous with his history, offering his own memories to cradle the hopes of nomads like me. He affirmed that my hope for a place on earth is already creating one. It is a struggle and a journey, but my very desire to love creates the possibility of community. Mr. Berry and Andy Catlett were blessed to have places to come back to, but someone had to begin it. In my case, I’m the beginner. My actions of hope as I search for my place are creating the memories that will one day hold my children. I will find my place on earth. But the story I am making in the process will be part of the “remembering” that grips those coming after me. This journey is a fight, but every step of it is also an act of creation.

With Andy, I was suddenly full of joy.

Three grey day hours of delay in the Nashville airport, two caffeine-grabbing stops at Starbucks, and one restive ramble through terminals C and B had me in a serious state of mental exasperation last week. Three glorious hours of quiet, albeit unexpected, had been dropped in my introverted lap and I couldn’t do a thing with them. My brain was jammed with mental white noise, every channel of thought scrambled by the dash through early morning traffic, the monkey dance required to make it through airport security, and then, this sudden space of free time. I had tried my old steady; reading. Too fidgety. Same with writing. I tried to be quiet, to draw inward to those silent spaces at my core. No luck. I tried to pray. Even worse. Time sat in front of me with a grey, blank face.

So I draped myself in a sharp-boned chair under one of those wall size airport windows and watched the planes glide in and out like silent white giants. My eyes were red with lack of sleep, my brain was buzzing with it.  I was too exhaustedly restless to think up anything to do but watch the TV blaring another cycle of “breaking” news over my head. I looked around; everyone near me had a cell phone or iPod in their ears. They stared ahead, unseeing. I glanced down. There sat my plucky black Macbook. I stuck my book and journal back in my bag, pulled out my headphones. The impulse to flip my Mac open, find an online show or lose myself in cyberspace, was an itch in my fingers. I reached for it. Anything to distract me from feeling distracted.

Yikes. My idealistic self came spluttering to life. What was so wrong with me that suddenly, I couldn’t think of a thing to do but watch TV? Of all things in the world, mindless submersion in electronic entertainment is my pet peeve.  I have spent endless hours and a ridiculous number of journal pages in outrage at the amount of time my culture, and sometimes me, wastes on TV. We could be thinking, writing, cooking, carving, weaving, planting, loving, dancing… and here I was about to succumb to the temptation of the screen. What had brought me to such a state?

At that moment, I remembered Neil Postman’s arresting book, Technopoly. Bear with me. When I read it a few years back, the first thing that struck me was his explanation of the way that every new technology changes the shapes, needs, and spaces of our lives. Inevitably, an old way of existing is displaced by a new one. Fine and good, yes? Maybe not. The example that startled me into a keener understanding was his account of the written word as a new technology. As a lover of books who considers all things bookish to be old-fashioned and good, I was startled to read of how writing displaced the grand, oral tradition; the bardic art of poetic memory, of epics sung round firesides. To write something down is a wonderment, but it did replace an ancient way of remembering that was immediate, poetic, and highly communal.

The reason I remembered this in my airport reverie was that I had the abrupt realization that I was experiencing exactly what he was talking about. I watched, wide-eyed, as another line of toe-tapping travelers ducked into a tunnel to be whisked round the world, and I knew that my restless brain, my impulse to mindless entertainment, was a direct result of the processes of technology that Postman described.

Travel, as we moderns know it, is a technological innovation. What does it enable? Global movement. Business. Adventures. Connection with people halfway round the world. But what does it change? Our use and experience of time. Our connection to home and the rhythm of work, rest, play, and creation that we live within is disrupted and we are faced suddenly with what I’ll call vacant time. Normal life is suddenly suspended by the need to be in transit.  For me, this sort of time is on the rise, not only from airport jaunts, but also from the vast amount of time I find myself spending in the car, a habit shared by most people I know. We as a culture are living more and more in spaces of transition; hours that take us to and from our spaces of living, yet somehow don’t feel like real life themselves. Vacant time.

So what is the natural impulse when confronted with such emptiness? To get through it as quickly, and painlessly as possible. Boredom has never been something the human brain tolerates with equanimity. And if we don’t have recourse to the tools, stability, and quiet needed to accomplish our usual work, relating, or creating, what happens? We need to be entertained. We need some form of transportable distraction that will fill these empty hours, and allow us not to feel lost. Hello virtual reality. Hello TV and iPod, cell phones and endless sessions on the internet. Hello to me, perplexed in my metal airport chair, bewildered and bullied by the forces of technological change.

I know you’re probably wondering why this seems so vastly important to me. It’s just a few airport hours, after all. But hours add up to days, and days to years, and years to lifetimes. Time is God’s gift to me, and the way I use it is my answer back to him. In the airport, I forgot this. I was tired, distracted, and unaware of what had made me so.  Life happened to me that day, instead of me happening to life. That makes me a little afraid, and then, indignant. I don’t want to spend my life, even bits of it, with a soul disconnected from the people around me, the earth under my feet, the moment by moment possibility of doing something creative or good. My ideals mean nothing if I give up the fight to fill my hours with meaning. I don’t want forces outside my self to determine how I use the drip by drop flow of my precious, numbered minutes on this earth.

Epiphanies happen in strange places. I decided that day that I want to become accountable for the empty spaces of time which modernity hands me. My travel schedule won’t change, in fact I love it. Good grief, I’m the girl who named her car Gypsy because that’s what I wanted to be. But none of us gets any practice hours here on earth. To let time come to us, and then depart in vacancy is a waste, a sort of death. I want to require the same level of creativity, love, and wonder of myself in travel that I do when I am at home. I’m just beginning to figure out how. All I know is that nothing, not even airports and freeways and hectic hours should be able to shove goodness out of any given minute in my life.

What do you think?

Don’t tell me about science, Frost said. I’m something of a scientist myself. Bet you didn’t know that. Botany. You boys know what tropism is – its what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light… We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can’t – what was your word? dim? – science can’t dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so the true light can get us home.

-Tobias Wolfe in Old School (from a fictional speech given by the poet Robert Frost)

I should probably begin by stating that I did, finally, make it home. My driving angels got quite bruised when Gypsy slipped on the ice, nearly wedging me under a semi, and then spinning me out across the road so that I ended up facing oncoming traffic in the fast lane. Incredibly, I wasn’t hit or even scratched. God is very good to me.

In the white-knuckled minutes of that drive, I found myself repeating what I have heard many people call a “breath prayer.” Just the simple words Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. It’s an ancient prayer. I have always been intrigued by the simplicity of it. For word-drunk me, it could seem almost miserly. Too spare an address to God. And yet, Lord have mercy. Those three words manage to sum up my litany of usual requests. They encapsulate exactly what I desire in every area of my life. I found that they were just what I needed in my dire moment the other day.

I think there are times in life when fear becomes your breath, when need is an ache in your stomach, and suddenly, there are no extra words to be had for a prayer. Your whole body, the strain of mind, the ache of heart, becomes its own prayer. I had such a moment as my car spun out.  Sound ceased, thought froze. Yet through it came the whisper, Lord have mercy. When I could not form my own plea, the rhythm of that prayer in my heart spoke for me, fused its voice into the silence of my utmost need.

I think perhaps I would like to pray more like that at all times. Oh, I love and deeply value the freedom of speaking back and forth, easy with God. I love the dressed-up pageantry of good church liturgy. But there is a bare bones simplicity to that breath prayer that makes real to me the undisguised essence of my own need as I come, arms outstretched, to beg God’s abundance. I’d like to breathe that prayer throughout my day as a sort of grounding. Those words make a stark space inside of me where what is true is clear; my weakness, God’s strength.

One of my favorite passages in one of my favorite books (Scent of Water, by Elizabeth Goudge) is the exchange between an old man and a young woman on the verge of despair: There are three necessary prayers and they have three words each. They are these, ‘Lord, have mercy. Thee I adore. Into Thy hands.’ Not difficult to remember. If in times of distress you hold to these, you will do well.

I think he had a point.

I’m sure St. Brendan encountered a blizzard (well, the sea-faring equivalent) or two. It was swift, bright sailing until just after dark yesterday. I did manage to feel soaringly introspective most of the trip, helped by a mocha or two, and the friendly voices of Mat Kearney and Loreena McKennit. Kansas can be a stunning place in autumn. Just before dusk, there was a moment I wish I could have painted. I came out of a pocket of dark fog to have the skies suddenly widen. The rain storm I’d slogged through for hours gathered itself into a bright, navy line of cloud on the horizon while the sunlight fought as near to the earth as it could, turning the clouds into an opalescent canopy. The light got captured beneath it, thick, grey and gold, and it soaked into the harvested fields until they glowed up into rusty red, and this deep, wheaten yellow. I kept trying to snap pictures, but scared myself with my erratic driving and just watched instead.

But then, storms. When I had just passed the three hours from home mark, the pleasant rain patter changed abruptly into snow. Literally within ten minutes I was smack in a blizzard. Only one lane was open, I was slipping all over the place and there were four inches of snow. I will admit to being scared. Gypsy’s the pluckiest car alive, but snow is not her favorite terrain. Especially when those ridiculous semis whiz past her, shoving us off course and burying us in snow. Hundreds of miles of empty land, a wind screaming like a demon, and the snow piling up. A lot of praying got done in that half hour.

I was very thankful to make it to a motel (after finding the first one to have no vacancies). And I’m still thankful. Despite the fact that the highway is now thoroughly closed, and the electricity here dies every half hour or so. It’s amazing the sorts of panic-stricken thoughts you can think when you wake in the middle of the night to the pitch blackness of a power outage. It was about one am and people were out talking in the halls and I was very tempted to stick my head out and yell, “Ya’ll! Please. Some of us are trying to conquer our irrational panics about being stranded on the plains with no heat or light by sleeping through it all.” I didn’t though.

And now, here I am, writing to you. Strand me in snow more often and I’d probably get more blogging done. I plan to make the best of this. Read, think. Try to find some decent coffee. Maybe write for more than thirty snatched minutes. Oh, adventures. It’s like Bilbo said, you step out on the road, and you never know what’s going to happen. Good grief.