Risks may include pregnancy and death.

I saw the most horrific birth control ad on TV this morning for Mirena, an IUD (Intrauterine device) form of birth control by Bayer. Having decided in sex ed. that instering a tiny, plastic anchor into my uterus would not be my choice of preggo-prevention, I've always had the willies at the thought of an IUD floating around in no-man's land.

Halfway through the commercial, the announcer warns that Mirena can "come out" or slip through the uteran wall and cause "other problems". She then rattles off dangerous side effects like infertility caused by IUD misbehavior. See the commercial here, on their website. No thanks, friends. I like my uterus and its life-giving properties.

Although all birth control comes with side effects, this ad persuades me to stay far, far away from IUDs of any kind. Thanks for the affirmation, Mirena. You've scared my pants off, and I'm on the pill so I'm all set.

To Be Born With It

I will not deny my recent and unexpected blog hiatus (no offense, bloggy dear). Not only have I been busier than usual—with love and family and dirty dishes and thoughts—but the outside has a sudden, new appeal that grows more glorious, yet sneaky, every year. I’m distracted by the cherry blossoms outside the apartment, the purple sky at dusk, and the thin clouds moving over skyscrapers while having lunch in Bryant Park. And, oh yes, the benevolent Treats Truck on Fifth Ave.

These are not good excuses, I’m well aware. But it’s my blog, so I make the rules. A vacation was necessary, and may be again.

I mentioned in an earlier post about the biography I’ve been reading and have become completely engrossed in—Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch. For those interested, this is the fully-loaded guide to everything and ANYTHING you may want to know about the 20th-century southern fiction writer. Gooch covers it all: her sheltered childhood under the regime of her overbearing mother, Regina (also my mother’s name), her struggles with her voice in writing at Georgia College and State University, her steadfast commitment to Catholicism, which lasted her whole life, and the slow and devastating destruction of her young body by a mysterious disease—lupus. His detail is meticulous, and sometimes frustrating, but completely necessary to understanding the making of the writer and the woman simultaneously. You are literally watching the rise and fall of a precious being who leaves a few jewels of literature—and then ceases to create. Having died so young with such a limited amount of work, her writing is that much more potent and important to the realm of American literature.

I’m getting ahead of myself (plus a little misty, dammit). To be honest, I (haha) am actually not done with the book. I’m a little more than halfway through, and kind of hoping it will last forever. But as Flannery has taught us, this is never the case.

I’m currently working through what you could call the Golden Age of her career: it’s 1955 and she’s published her novel, Wise Blood (1952), settling into her disease and its crippling effects, and creating some of the most important short fiction of our time. Her southern-based stories of human connection (“A Good Man Is Hard To Find”), isolation, deceit (“Good Country People”), race (“The Artificial Nigger”) and violence (“Greenleaf”) are electrifying. She’s publishing in literary magazines and enduring the lashings of narrow-minded book reviewers that refer to her work as “un-ladylike” and “intense, erratic, and strange”. You could also say they just weren’t ready for it.

The most important discovery I found, while reading Flannery’s life, is her organic ability to put words on paper and tell a story. With such calm and decisiveness, she had decided to be a writer, and she wrote, and became an author, and then a literary figure. Before now, I’ve always been a firm believer in turmoil as the fruit of good writing (or art for that matter). I started my college career reading the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva and believing in her message: only pain and destruction breed creation (she had it a lot tougher than Flannery, living through the Bolshevik revolution and whatnot). Long before the onset of her disease, Flannery was writing the grotesque, because she was born with it.

When I was a senior in high-school I once wrote a short story for my English class that my teacher read aloud to the other classes (not mine). It was about a teenage girl anticipating the results of a pregnancy test. She cried, punched herself in the stomach, and mused about breaking the news to her mother. She regretted ever letting her boyfriend put his un-condomed penis in her. She estimated the costs for an abortion based on locker room hearsay. The story ends without revealing the results (if I remember correctly, if so, nice ending!). That was the last time I felt right about my writing. I needed that experience to write that story (though I don’t know how I would find a copy of it now). And although I wish no real turmoil upon myself, if it will get me to write something that good again, bring it on.

Goo: dairy-free yogurt

In an effort to cut back on my dairy (I suspect it gives me migraines), I've been poking around those faux-yogurts no one pays any mind to at the Stop & Shop. I'm pretty sure I've tried soy ice cream once, and spat it out, so I don't think soy-yogurt even deserves a chance. I noticed that So Delicious makes a yogurt from cultured coconut milk, and coughed up the $2 for a mere 8 ounces of pure mystery.

I picked raspberry - the least intimidating of the flavors (I never trust passionfruit anything). It was like eating pink gelatinous perfume. It seemed like something that would be nice if I put it in my hair or rubbed it on my hands, but as a food, I just didn't get it. It was sweet, oily, and contained 6 grams of fat (from the coconut, you see). So I give it a "bleh". I miss my FAGE.

Enough, Peeps!

I came upon (and almost fainted at the sight of) this interesting concoction on Serious Eats last week. This "Peepza" kind of makes my tummy ache just by looking at it. Then again, I abhor Peeps (I know, such sacrelig).

I guess you have to be a real Peeps freak to take a stab at it. I call it an assault on pizza.

This Easter: thoughts on my Catholicism

One of my co-workers this past week laughingly referred to me as a "Christer": a so-called churchgoer who makes biannual trips to Christmas and Easter services(actually, I do Christmas Eve - less kids). With the Easter season afoot, I routinely try to come to terms with my Catholicism. And I just don't feel like it. That could take forever.

There's no avoiding it: I'm just one of the many 20-somethings who've fallen into that slump of not practicing, not really adhering, but still believing and, thus, suffers from the occasional wave of guilt. And my current state of "belief" is just about as confusing and contradictory as growing up Catholic; nothing has changed there.

Technically, I'm a fullout baptized, communion-ized and confirmed Catholic, raised from the very beginning to take Jesus' blood and pray to the Virgin Mother. I got the double-whammy upbringing from both parents, and on top of that, my even more Catholic grandmothers (who still go to confession, to confess God-knows-what). I remember that everything needed to be perfect on my First Communion: my mother gave me her tiny, white pocketbook where I stored my Catechism book (perfect size for little hands) and my plastic rosary (also white). I was seven, skinny, and content to take Christ's body into my own. And He tasted like paper.

A couple of years later, my parents were divorced. I recall mother describing the annulment process as "too expensive, too complicated, and takes a long, long time". Yikes!

My mother taught Sunday School for several years, and we went to church throughout my early teens. At my Confirmation I wore a sexy dress, tight around my new-forming curves, when I was sweet 16. In High School, I made friends with the offbeat metal-heads and skateboarders, who were baffled at my strict adherence to Sunday mass and crucifixes, which decorated my room. My choir teacher, a loud, large, dogmatic traditionalist, never failed to lecture us on the "hard times" his Catholic schoolboy past, and encourage us to sing the Ave Maria with tears in our eyes.

Then came sex, birth control, and college in that respective order. At Sarah Lawrence, Catholicism was a direction of study, not a belief. It was okay to take religion courses, but it was NOT acceptable to think that stuff was actually real. At campus art shows, poetry readings, lectures, and even in class, the topic of Catholicism was slurred over as a silly childhood superstition. It was on par with political conservatism (probably rightly so).

I wasn't offended - I took it as a sign to move on. You have to remember, by that time I'd committed at least one carnal sin, and wasn't on the way to make an honest woman of myself. I took a course on Medieval Christianity and the cosmos (really) and wrote theses on heresey and inquisition. I took Latin and read the Aeneid. I took a Russian novel class and fell desperately in love with Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (Google it, then read it).

When I spent time in Italy and studied abroad in Florence, I experienced mega-basilica-overload. I saw enough statues, icons, and mosaics and triptychs of saints and angels to fill another Catholic girl's lifetime. Though they weren't just objects. Every piece filled my heart with fascination of their beauty, mystery, and pain. I felt a return, in some way, to my faith. I went to Assisi and saw Saint Francis' tomb (that's what they said it was!). I climbed the fucking cuppola on the tippy-top of Saint Peter's Basilica. I read Dante for the first time, chuckled at his Hell, and loved his version of what Heaven could be. It was a journey into the world that carried the origins of a beauitful Catholicism; wherever you turned there was a sign that this was the mother land of it all. Though, interestingly, the Italians I met couldn't really care less about being surrounded by chuches.

I know, this glimpse really doesn't say enough. But, like I said, coming to terms with my beliefs takes a while, and to be honest, might not ever completely happen. In the meantime, I'm going to keep living in delicious sin with my boyfriend, watch Pope Benedict on TV and shake my head, and spell God with a capital "G".