restingmotion

“the hurried I go the behinder I get” or more books.....

I am in the midst of rereading Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds. Which I read when it was first released in paperback.  I figured it would be a good travel book, good for tired lonely nights, or airplanes and airports, and because it is the alternate novel selection for a group. In fact, I was not, at first, certain I wanted to reread the novel remembering nothing more than it was a saga of forbidden love, even though I remembered loving it at the time.  I quickly realized that memory was playing tricks however, that my memories, and my doubts were based more on the mini-series based on the book than on the book itself, and I am finding it a very satisfactory read, a book I am not only happy to be reading again, but which I feel sustains the differences in perception I as reader bring to the novel after a 40 year absence, because there is more to this book than the story of Meggie and Ralph.  In fact although they are the axle around which this story revolves, they become almost the least interesting characters in this drama of family, environment, love, and fate. In am thinking that hidden in this story is a rather complex meditation on the choices we as humans make and the consequences of said choices, both for ourselves and those around us.

 

I am reminded that the last time I took to the air, last November, I read Stephen King’s new novel Dr. Sleep, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. Dr. Sleep is a sequel to The Shining, which I read long long ago, and although this book picks up some years after the events of the first novel, and carries through on certain themes, it is very much its own book, its own story.  King is a master of a genre that actually has a long history in American Literature, and I would not give him short-shrift.  The story is very well told, but although The Shining is a great, terrifying, introspective horror, this novel is something else altogether.  I do not think it is any less for that.  We all evolve after all, even Danny, the little boy from The Shining.  One of the things I enjoyed about this book is that Danny does evolve, he chooses to confront his demons, although the path that gets him to that choosing is not necessarily of his own making or his own desire.  So it is for all of us. Although Danny seems to come very close to being sucked down by his past and never pulling out of his own internal morass, he manages to become something more than his hurts and terrors, more than his inner fears might allow.  And this is the thing about King;  yes, he writes horror stories, but it would be a mistake to dismiss him as merely a writer of genre fiction.  He writes psychological novels about the stranger that lives deep inside all of us, taking us on romps through the human psyche, guided romps where we know we may be frightened but where we also know we will come out relatively unscathed. There is always something more going on, more than just the terror; although just as in life, one may choose to see  or not to see. 

 

Which reminds me that I am still behind as concerns reporting about my reading list, so let’s take another stab at rounding out November.  

 

Dr. Sleep was not the only deeply psychological novel I read that month. I also reread A Christmas Carol, and there are many similarities between the two and their authors.  A Christmas Carol was dashed off because Dickens needed money to pay his bills, and i don’t think Dickens, in his day, was considered any more literary than King is today.  He was a writer of mostly serialized popular fiction, and in many ways he was a cultural icon of his time, much as King is today.  In fact, that he is still so esteemed may have been considered by some to be surprising.  And yet A Christmas Carol is a deeply philosophical and psychological story, and this does not even include all the Christmas trappings.  It is a story of redemption, of gaining wisdom, of what we currently popularly think of as the journey of the second half of life.  And the very contradictions of it, that it was written to make money, yet it sharply criticizes the life spent in pursuit of avarice, the combined darkness and the glowingly define Christmas sparkle, make it into something both simple (Christmas yes!) and complex.  In fact, Christmas, as we think of it today, owes more to Charles Dickens than to any religious sentiment, and I think my youthful self sometimes read the story with visions of movies and musical interpretations dancing in my my head.  Or do I experience Scrooge’s journey more poignantly today because I have made my own track through the forest?

 

And then there was the Dutch House. The house is as much a character in this family drama as the members of the family themselves. Two children are booted from their family home after their father’s death by a stepmother who is more interested in the house than in human relationships, and the house takes on an outsize role in their yearnings for the happy family they lost. Except that it was never happy, and the house, and what it symbolizes for the various members of the family proves to be a great foundation for this exploration of family dynamics.

Patchett, as usual brings a keen understanding of human complexity to the story. I particularly like that the story is told from the perspective of a boy, who becomes a man, who himself is neither particularly introspective or observant, which makes him a great foil for this deft exploration of interpersonal dynamics. I also like the way the story is written around the house, the way the house itself, although inanimate, stands in the midst of all of them, both through its presence and its absence, a symbol of yearning, loss, love, isolation. This is a novel about the way people make assumptions — about places, people, their lovers, family, coworkers — that are more about the self than about opening a relationship. Everyone in this story knows everyone else, but for the most part they go through life never seeing each other.

 

Interesting to me, is how all these stories relate, in one way or another, to the novel I am currently reading, and will finish today.  It is of course one of the grand themes of human existence, one deserving of much exploration and always benefitting from new insight and further explorations,

 

And that seems to get me about two-thirds through November, and I feel I am at a stopping point, which means alas there is more catching up to do, four more books from November, eight from December, and whatever is happening this month.  So be it.  Slowing down, no so much physically or mentally, although that does happen as we age, but more in terms of a reflective slowing seems to be one of the current themes of my life.  I do not at the moment feel the need to rush through things, to accumulate experiences as if I am crossing off items in a list.  Bear with me.

 

Musical Musings and Meanderings

There was a brief burst of spring-like warmth last week, followed by a return to more seasonal temperatures.  The sunshine-yellow of forsythia acts as a beacon of promise throughout my neighborhood, the bulbs are beginning to shoot skyward, and the hellebores are blooming.  I am not worried about them, they are all tough, and it is a joyous thing, always to see that little burst of spring promise, especially in my own garden which is remains filled more with hope and dreams rather than actual plants.

I have been suffering through a bit of rotator cuff tendinitis. This has limited my ability to do a surprising variety of things, not just take advantage of the warmth to dig in the garden, but also to type, write, and knit for more than very short stretches. I suppose I could have pushed through, but am rather hoping that enforced rest will result in healing and another kind of blossoming.  

 

During this period of forced repose, I attended my first symphony concert of the new year, following a week of excited anticipation.  My heightened expectations were at least partially fed by the experience of attending at least part of a rehearsal for the performance on Tuesday.  Friday night the music filled me with joy.  

 

The part of the rehearsal that I had attended was for the first half of the concert, the Mozart Piano concerto #23 played by the exciting new young pianist Aristo Sham.  During the rehearsal I had felt that Sham was almost ethereally calm, the music flowed with speed and grace, although I wasn’t yet sure what I thought.  Friday night, I was delighted.   Sham’s performance was fascinating, outwardly still and calm, and yet the music flowed with a kind of sunny light sparkle.  This was a young man’s mozart, filled with grace but also a kind of bubbling enthusiasm. Sham’s performance was quick and light, not at all ostentatious, skipping along like a conversation between vibrant young people who grew up together, almost instinctually anticipating each other’s moods and reactions.   Sham provided a new insight to a familiar piece, making me realize that my favorite performers of the Mozart concertos, although quite different from each other share a more mature reflective sense, and that perhaps, although I too am inclined to more mature reflection, I also need to hear the light brought by music from new perspectives.

 

The Mozart was followed by Mahler’s first symphony.  Although I adore Mozart, Mahler is particularly close to my heart and it was for the Mahler that my heart was yearning.   It was fabulously done, with a tightly focused point of view — necessary in such a sprawling, overwhelmingly human work. The soft opening was breathtaking, evolving slowly into the lush theme of the first movement.  The effervescence of the dance, the sadness of the slow movement, of familiarity tinged with despair and absurdity, and the thunderous ending.  From the audience as well, that thunderous ending.  

 

I have missed hearing Mahler in Knoxville.  I do not think a Mahler symphony has been performed here since I moved to this city, whereas I heard at least one every year in New York.  Judging from the excitement and applause surrounding me in the concert hall, i do not believe I am alone in wishing for more.  

 

Admittedly, I came home wired and electrified, wishing to discuss the performance and the depth of the music. instead, I opted to hear it again.  I watched the wonderful DVD of Claudio Abaddo leading the Lucerne Festival orchestra, (available on Amazon Prime Video) before collapsing into music filled dreams, comparing, contrasting, reveling.  This is not a bad thing.  Each performance brings its own particularly clarity of vision, its own point of view.  A good thing in humanity and music, reminding me at least of both the complexity and the commonality of human experience.  

 

Truthfully, the music still runs through my head, and I want to keep listening.  Each of the 4 or 5 recordings i own of this work brings its own unique perspective and exploration, and right now my brain is too full to absorb even more voices;  at the moment I want to just savor the memory of this performance, so close to home, and also close to my heart.

But of course nothing remains pure in memory, new experiences barge in, altering our perspective, and other, seemingly unrelated memories also wend their way through the thoughts.  In my case this means that Mahler and Mozart are somehow picking their way through my thoughts joined by the musical musings of R. B. Morris, whose songs have also been in my mind and heart since hearing him perform the previous Friday. I somehow don’t think either one of them would mind; they were both, after fully aware of the musical idioms and traditions of their own times and cultures.  And although I found the Morris concert to exert slightly less of a lightening-rod like shock to the easily bored and distracted nature of my own peripatetic brain, the songs themselves are no less satisfying, filled with the kind of wisdom and poetry and intelligence that haunts the memory, much like their forebears.

 

 

 

 

 

Readings past...

The best intentions.....

 

I have read three books already in 2020 and yesterday I spent some time catching up with my reading notes.  I had been remiss concerning this task and I realized the omission felt significant.  So too the missing book posts, and although I have decided to forgo catch-up blogging in general, this remains the exception: the one case in which I cannot move forward without first looking backward.  The books I read always end up informing my thoughts, past reading informing future reading, the way our experiences, all our experiences, and all our acquaintances end up informing and shaping the people we are.   The books I read can become either acquaintances of friends, certainly the books I keep become friends, and I think sometimes we humans are simultaneously too narrow and too broad in the way we define friendship.  As to books, I am reminded this morning of this quote from William Churchill:

If you cannot read all your books at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them — peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are.  Let them be your friends;  let them at any rate be your acquaintances.

               William Manchester: The Last Lion: Visions of Glory. page 31.

I hear Churchill’s voice in the quote, a voice that is familiar to all of us with a penchant for history at least, and it was a sweet discovery earlier this week, as my own view toward books is quite similar.  I have begun the task of rereading the first two volumes of The Last Lion in the coming months, mostly as a refresher and prologue to the third volume, which I own but have not yet read.  

 

But today I must deal with housekeeping.  Beginning with November and working may way through to books read in December, I hope to finish up the 2019 reading list over the course of the next week or two.  Notes or thoughts arising from current reading may, or may not be interleaved, depending on the whims of the muse.

 

Books that were just ok to good.

I have long loved Lee Child’s Reacher series, and of course I read the newest installment, Blue Moon.  As usual, Child has an ability to capture, in spare but haunting words, the forgotten places, the places we don’t really think about, the places we ignore.  This quote, from the opening lines of Blue Moon sticks with me, for all of its simplicity, reminding me of a lifelong fascination with maps, and with dreamy wonderings and imaginings of life, not just in exotic locales, but the places we both see and do not see.

 

The city looked like a small map of America. It was just a tiny polite dot, near a red threadlike road that ran across an otherwise empty half inch of paper.  But up close and on the ground it had half a million people. It covered more than a hundred square miles. . .

 

Alas, that was the most memorable part of this book for me.  As usual the storytelling was excellent but the body count got to me and aspects of the story seemed weak, geared more to provoking thrills or outrage rather than a coherent story. Alas, my own outrage was aimed more at the author than the injustices portrayed. I will read the next one and see if this development is the exception or a trend.

 

Allison Pittman’s Loving Luther was an engaging, easy-going, and entertaining read that placed no demands upon the reader. Told from the perspective of Katharina von Bora, the first half of the book, which revolved around Katharina’s life in the convent before she met Luther, was more engaging than the second half, which seemed to be trying too hard to turn the story into a conventional romance.  Sometimes, light bits of fluff like this are just the thing, temporary amusements.

 

Likewise, Stephen King’s Elevation.  I picked this up in an airport bookstall while I was waiting for a short, one-hour flight.  It was the perfect entertainment at the end of a long day, and perfect for the duration of the flight.  It is very well written, which is not at all surprising, and sweet; a different perspective from the kind of dark psychological exploration that we tend to expect from King. This novella is a rather pointed look at the kinds of issues that fill contemporary newscasts, but it is also a story of letting go of the things that weigh one down. In fact this dichotomy encapsulates its power. Although I have been accused too often of being cynical, I perhaps am also too easily satisfied by simple hopeful things. In retrospect the memory of this book has grown on me, and although I think the book may be dismissed as simple pandering to cultural unrest, or even blind hopefulness, it is actually a bit more than that.  It has snuck up on me perhaps.

 

Last, in today’s discussion, but far from least, Marty Makary’s book, The Price We Pay, is about how the commodification of medicine has broken the health care system.  It is a good book that I think more people should read.  

 

Makary starts with stories, stories that are at times shocking, and then moves from there to the data behind those stories.  This is where the strength of this book lies, in the naming and the call to action.  Makary admits that he has been, through much of his career, ignorant of these very forces, forces that have created an unwinable game, despite the fact that he works from deep within the system.  And yet it is this very fact, the fact that he is in the middle of the system, that has allowed him to reveal some of the inner workings, inner workings that appall him as much as they will outrage the reader.

 

The book is well-written and clear, and Makary takes the time not merely to expose the problems but to honor agents of change.   Makary’s suggestions for fixing the problem are not enough, in and of themselves, but i agree with him that the first step toward healing is in the naming.

 

 

And it feels as if I have written more than enough for one post, even though I have discussed merely a third of the twelve books I read in November.  This project may take more than a week, but I will get through it.  Until next time....

 

 

 

 

What I Did Over My Christmas Vacation

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  And it felt wonderful.

 

That statement is, in fact, a bit of an exaggeration. I spent whole days knitting, well maybe 6 or 8 hours of a day. I think that counts.  I reported that I had finished a sock, the second one of a pair.  I have worn them frequently since.  But I also spent a lot of time knitting my cozy, oversized, pink cardigan, a cardigan I dearly hope to finish and wear before the relatively short Knoxville winter comes to an end.  Of course it may also work as a spring sweater as cool evenings and mornings often extend well into the Knoxville spring. Whether late frosts are actually a part of spring or an extension of winter seems to be semantically contentious here, although I do not think that the seasons are determined by temperature alone. 

 

But I digress.  As you can see, I was doing something. I finished the back and one front of this long sweater.  The other front, the sleeves, assembly, and a knitted-on cowl remain.  But this is where the something/nothing debate becomes important. I live in a culture where we admire people who do handwork, admire craft, music, art, but which also thinks of this activity as outside of the “normal” or “productive” part of life and culture. Increasingly think the opposite is true.  It is the making and the makers that are truly living and the rest of the world that is spinning its wheels on a little hamster-wheel of our own creation.  But this is not supposed to be a philosophical post.

What I really did not do was keep up with email, facebook, instagram, or social media in most forms.  I could go whole days without connecting to the inter webs and it felt good.  I saw people individually and socially, but otherwise I explored skills, skills that need significant amount of sharpening before I can achieve that happy place where idea and muscle memory join forces, where the idea is the spark, and one’s collection of tools (skills), as well as one’s ability to get out of one’s own way, can allow art to occur.  I think this tool-building stage of life will take some time.

I did try my hand at some sewing, with mixed results. I made a pair of black silk evening pants which are quite wearable but which do not really live up to my former standards.  There is a good bit of “happy hands at home” imperfection to the finished product.  

 

I could have started with something easier and more practical.  But I have never been one to take the measured, practical path. I had despaired of the fact that all my clothes were casual.  I desperately wanted something dressy, hence the idea of evening pants; but it was a project was both perfect and foolhardy.  Sewing silk, and silk chiffon is tricky under the best of circumstances, and I was starting with two deficits in that I neither had a well-fitting pant pattern or much in terms of recent sewing practice.  Still, I managed to make the pants and the construction is decent, if not couture quality.  I simply served the edges and did not bother making french seams.  The problem came with the tiny hems.  In fact I initially hoped to wear these pants to a Christmas party, but did not because I couldn’t manage the hems.  My plan, and a perfectly logical one at that, was to put the pants aside until after the holiday, when I would make the narrow hems by hand.  I am much more confident of my hand-sewing at the moment than my machine sewing.  But the many edges to be turned under meant that I had several days of hemming ahead of me, so no party pants for the party season.

 

And then, on December 30th my foolish little inner demon reared her head. I decided I could wear the pants to a New Year’s Even party.  There was not enough time for hand-hemming. so I just dove in, figuring that wearing something, and something I made, even if it was finished badly, was more appealing than not trying at all.  

I worked in a variation on the normal procedure, doing the hems first, and then the side seams on the open chiffon panels, reasoning that the hems, being near the floor, would be less visibly wonky to others than the side seams.  That worked.  My hems look like a first year home-ec student did the sewing, but the narrow hems at the sides of the chiffon panels looked good, and I was happy wearing the pants, feeling festive and swishy.  I paired the pants with a sweater I had finished a year ago, and not yet worn, knit in Artyarns Beaded Silk and Sequins and Merino Cloud. And yes, a bathroom selfie seems to be the best I can manage at the moment.

Also shown in this post are two photos of the bowl I made at the “pottery indulgence” workshop I attended, and wrote about, in November.  It too is a bit rustic and far from perfect.  In fact I think if I can learn to celebrate anything, I hope to celebrate the fruits of the process of making, imperfections and all.  But then, I have always felt it is our imperfections that make us human, and therefore lovable. 

 

 

Winter Solstice

December slips away, a time of busyness and reflection, of preparation, of waiting, of darkness and promise.  Despite the fact that East Tennessee autumns are not as appealing as Hudson Valley autumns were, this time of year remains my favorite season.  December, the culmination of that process of winding down, of preparing for darkness, for hibernation, for pulling inward to the center, is waning.  Advent as well, the Christian period of waiting, of preparation, reminding us of the necessity of dark passages in life, of the necessity of rest, necessary sustenance to fuel the light. The solstice occurs tonight. 

My new trees were planted Thursday.  Even though they currently just look like sticks in a bare landscape, they are filled with promise.

 

Winter begins.

 

I too have been slowing down.  It strikes me that I am increasingly out of sync with the cultural mania surrounding this season in particular.  It is not that I don’t love parties, baking cookies, wrapping gifts, time with friends — all of that is a joy but only in so far as it doesn’t get wrapped up in the tangled threads of obligation.

 

The first part of December was extraordinarily busy.  Intentionally then, I have left the end of the month fairly lightly scheduled.  Even so, I have been a flake, missed appointments, cancelled obligations that felt more burden than joy, taken long naps.  

 

But this too is part of this preparatory season.  Much of what is important to me had been laid aside.  This is my time of burrowing.

 

I cooked for the first time in weeks, making a Franco-Vietnamese beef stew from Andrea Nguyen, a dish that had once been a winter staple, but which I had temporarily forgotten about in all the hubbub over moving (again and again), construction, and settling.  A little baking may have also occurred.

I spent most of Tuesday knitting a sock, the second of a pair, the sock I had ripped out before Thanksgiving, but had not yet begun again.  Knitting from the top down, I got through the turn of the heel on Tuesday, perhaps staying up a tad past my preferred bedtime.  Wednesday offered less time for knitting, and a little less ability to focus due to lack of sleep, so I finished up the toe early Thursday morning before heading off to the gym.  Above is the completed pair, on the library carpet, just after closing the toe and before washing and blocking.  The lines of slight laddering, from the divisions of my four double-pointed needles, have settled into the fabric now, and are no longer visible.  I have tried other sock knitting techniques, magic loop, two circulars, even tiny little circulars, which I find difficult, but I keep returning to double points.

 

I wore the socks yesterday with ankle boots and rolled up jeans.  I loved the slightly longer length, loved wearing new socks, socks I made.  I believe these are my Christmas gift to myself.  Or perhaps the gift is actually just this act of settling, of letting myself delve into process and just do whatever it is I am inspired to do.

 

No promises here.  I shall write when the inspiration strikes.  In the meantime I hope the waning of the year offers time with family and friends, times of love and warmth, but also times of quiet contemplation and burrowing-in. Our inner selves are the soil that feeds our lives.  We need to give them time for nourishment.

 

Family Week

Spent a great Thanksgiving week in San Antonio.

 

The impetus for the trip was my aunt’s 89th birthday and it was a lovely celebration indeed.

But I also had time to walk along San Antonio’s River Walk and spend time with both of my brothers and their families.  

 

I was back in Knoxville on Sunday; the first Sunday of the month is Altar Guild Sunday, at least for my team.  It was the first Sunday of advent, the anniversary of my uncle’s death, and the kirkin’ o’ the tartans.  Somehow I think Uncle Ted would have loved that. I sponsored the advent greenery, and although I played no role in the selection, I think it was perfect.

It amazes me sometimes how things sometimes all fall into place in unexpected, and unexpectedly perfect, ways.

Another Catch Up Post

Still working on the backlog, reading wise, with the hopes of finishing up the September inventory here.   My reading was rather random, with no apparent themes, so I think a simple list will get the job done.

I started the month with Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians and read the entire series of three books over the course of the month, mostly while riding an exercise bike at the gym.  The series was perfect bicycle reading, and a perfect escape.  I thought the first novel was good but I struggled with the second, China Rich Girlfriend.  The book felt rushed to me and the story was not as strong.  I was also annoyed by the tendency to footnote everything, as if the book was trying too hard, taking itself too seriously.  The asides (still annoying) continued in the third volume, Rich People Problems, but I felt the story line was the strongest of the three, and the book was therefore much more enjoyable.

Other Books:

10 Minutes, 38 Seconds In This Strange World. Elif Shafak.  I wrote about this pretty fabulous novel in my post last Friday.  

 

Why Dad’s Leave: Insights and Resources for When Partners Become Parents.  Meryn G. Calendar.  This seemed to make sense and had some thought-provoking ideas but I found it very repetitive and at times circular. It might or might not be useful to people in the field, and I don’t have the expertise to judge.  Although I don’t mind having read it, much of it seemed like common sense, or like it should be common sense, but perhaps is not.  Or I am completely out of my depth.

 

Gypsy and Other Poems.  James Baldwin.  Powerful.  Beautiful. Haunting.

 

Tributary: Poems. Cid Corman.  I’ve had this book a long time and I reread it as I was organizing the library shelves.  When I first bought the book I loved the poems but knew nothing about Beauford Delaney.  Now I live in Knoxville, Delaney’s hometown, and I was struck by the photos of Delaney’s paintings in the front of the book.  Even in my youth I thought the poems themselves captured something essential about art. I still think this, and perhaps find the poems even more expressive of the artistic moment than my younger self knew.

 

A Better Man.  Louise Penny.  Sigh.  I shut the door and plowed through this, forcing myself to pause only for necessities.  Call me a fan.

 

Ordinary Light. Tracy K. Smith.  Smith’s memoir of her childhood describes what is essentially a perfectly normal life. That is its strength, and the source of its beauty.  One of Smith’s talents is in capturing the ordinariness of experience and sussing out the light within, showing that it is the very ordinary itself that is truly extraordinary.  

 

Bottle of Lies. Katherine Eban. An expose of the dark underbelly of the global generic pharmaceuticals industry, as well as a good story of the politics, compromises, and cognitive dissonance that is necessary to run the current US system.  I found it upsetting.  Haven’t yet researched sources. Also mentioned previously, but not in detail.

 

 

Weekend Update: Socks, Playing with Clay, Music

I ripped the sock back on Saturday, ripped it back to about an inch and a half from the ribbing at the top.  I knew I had dropped a stitch, and was holding it with a marker.  But at some point after the heel I discovered that I had dropped another stitch on the foot, and a I tinked back I also discovered that there were other errors.  I am not a perfectionist.  One error I can live with, but this was too many.  

 

The sock is not done.  But I will be much happier with it, having accepted my mistakes and started over.

Saturday night I went to a “Pottery Indulgence” party/workshop at Arrowmont School of Craft in nearby Gatlinburg.  I had never made anything out of clay before, I was a bit nervous, and my bowl is a bit rough, but I had a lot of fun.

First we played with texture on a sample slab, then we applied the texture and cut out our bowl shape, refining the edges, smoothing and beveling, and finally folding it up and forming it into a bowl.  I had a little trouble with the seams, but I got them together.  My thumb, index and middle fingers are the ones most plagued by arthritis, but I managed.    Somehow, while I was trying to form my bowl without simultaneously deform it, I was reminded of childhood, of making mud pies with my friend Ginny, and the perfect little turkeys she would mold from the mud.  

Perhaps I am not a natural at clay.  But I would like to play some more. The “handles” on my bowl were a last-minute whim.  I had planned to leave the top plain, but then started drawing free-form leaf shapes in my practice clay.  They may be the best thing I did.  They may prove to be a disaster.  As you can tell, it was time to walk away.

 

Friday night was symphony night, and I took the family.  Grandson O is very interested in percussion, and one of the works on the program was a fabulous percussion concerto, Spices, Perfumes, Toxins! by Avner Dorman.  The percussionists were two members of Nief Norf, a contemporary music group based in Knoxville (which I adore), Andrew Bliss and Mike Truesdell.   The performance was energetic and dynamic, a conversation really between these fabulous musicians and the orchestra itself, almost a marathon given the huge number of percussion instruments the two men played, including marimbas, vibraphones, tom-toms, bells, bongos, drum sets and things I can’t identify.  They brought both power and subtlety to the performance: from the complex tapestry of sounds that was the first movement (spices), through the often delicate lyricism of the middle section and into the dynamic combativeness and melding together of the closing, feeling very redolent of the complexities of modern life.  I was awed, amazed and enlightened.

 

The concert ended with Beethoven’s 7th symphony, a piece that revolves more around rhythmic passages than around complex melodies, and it was heavenly, perhaps the finest Beethoven I have heard this orchestra perform.  It seems that I am becoming boringly repetitive in that I keep saying that the orchestra has never sounded better, and they haven’t.  It is true.  The performance was held lightly, buoyant even, the orchestra seeming to achieve a kind of relational nuance that I tend to associate with fine chamber groups, even if on a larger scale.  The music was crisp, conversational, happy even, as tensions that arose and resolved, like an evening spent with the best of friends.  As I sat listening, my fingers and toes dancing to the music, O’s head resting on my shoulder, I could think of few things more magical.

A Friday Five

Look!  Dare I say I might actually complete a post on a Friday? 

 

This post will be but a simple thing, and probably a bit fragmented, but the “five things Friday” format seems to be a good starting place, as I pull myself back into regular postings, balancing of the simple and the day to day with the wider ruminations of my meandering mind.  Perhaps acceptance is also key: acceptance that I am one of those people who are restless of mind; one of those people who always dreams of doing more; one of those people who is never bored.  I live in a world define by the concept of a week. Even though the pacing of my own time is somewhat more fluid, I still begin each week filled with grand plans of everything that will be done by weeks’ end, and, somehow, I still fall short of my own goals.   

 

So, where are we this week?

 

 

Poinsettias:  I attended a workshop/demonstration at Stanley’s Greenhouse, focused on holiday arrangements.  The event was inspiring and although I have never considered arrangements to be one of my gifts, I found myself excited by possibilities.  I was also inspired by the variety of Poinsettieas that were filling the greenhouse, especially the variegated variety shown above.  Apparently I have given poinsettieas short shrift, a situation that may need to change.  But first, Thanksgiving travel, and the opening of the Christmas boxes, newly out of storage.

 

 

Pickled Ginger:  I opened the first of three pint-sized jars of pickled ginger I put up in October.  Oh my!  It is good.  It is the best pickled ginger I have ever tasted.  Not jut something pretty and a bit sharp/sweet on the plate.  This ginger is something I want to use in its own right.  I got a little overwhelmed the week I put this up, and it is not particularly evenly sliced, not as decorative as it perhaps could have been, but the flavor is superb.  I added it to an impromptu stir-fry of chicken and bell peppers, and it elevated the dish to something special.  Now, despite the fact that I initially worried that I would never use three pints of pickled ginger, I am worried that I will run out before I can make more.

 

 

A Book:  Recently it seems that my reading is somewhat circular meaning that as I read each new book I find myself circling back to books I have read before, mostly recent reads, but often books deeply filed away in the interstices of my reading memory.  And so it was this week, when I was reading a new book by my friend Rob Gieselmann, Irony and Jesus,  that I encountered this statement:

How many times have I sunk in water because I could see surf and gale only, having lost sight of the other side.

And, a few lines later, “go to the other side”.  Such a simple thing and often also such a difficult task.  In this instance these words also provided a spark of insight, a coalescence of sorts, about how to write about Deborah Levy’s new novel The Man Who Saw Everything, a book I finished reading last week.  In this novel Saul Adler is attempting to cross Abbey Road.  It sounds like such a simple and inconsequential thing, and in one sense it is, but as the novel progresses we learn that nothing in this short novel is what it seems. Truly. Nothing.  What seems inconsequential proves full of weight, and what should be full of weight almost vanishes in the ether.  

 

I am in one sense torn here.  I believe The Man Who Saw Everything to be an incredibly beautiful and powerful novel, one that I find both essential and impossible.  It is a novel I recognize that many people will not be able to stand.  Truly the story itself is simple, straightforward and a bit boring.  But the novel is not about the story.  And I cannot tell you what the novel is about without disrupting, even perhaps aborting your experience of the novel.  It is, actually a novel whose meaning and interpretation is multi-layered, and that in and of itself is a marvelous feat of writing and design.  At the moment I see a novel about fragmentation, about who we are, how we become the people we become, but also about chance, distraction, care and carelessness, and about the possibility and impossibility of memory.  Our memories shape who we are, but who we are today also shapes our memory.

 

 

Another Book:  And this of course sent me back to another book, a book I read in September (I still haven’t caught up with September books).  This book is also about memory, or, more exactly, Shafak uses memory as a vehicle to tell the story of a life:  the life of a woman, the life of a town, a country, a culture.  This is a poetic novel, a turbulent novel, a novel that could seem overwhelmingly bleak except that it is not. It is a novel filled with beauty and hope. Shafak’s poetic way of setting a scene, of describing a place, made this reader feel palpably present. Beautiful, powerful, touching, absurd.  It is a novel about Turkey.  It is a novel about women. In fact it is a novel about all of humanity, its joys and its tragedy, captured, if only for a moment.

 

 

A Sock:  After a brief interlude where I worked on other projects, I have returned to sock knitting.  Necessity called.  I do need another pair of socks, and although it would be easy enough to buy such a thing, I prefer the ones that are knit by hand, simultaneously luxurious and practical.  I turned the heel on the second sock last night, perhaps staying up a little later than I should to be sure if was finished.  It is now smooth sailing to the end.  Hopefully it will be finished this busy weekend, but then of late it seems all weekends are busy.  Hopefully it will be finished and blocking before I embark on Thanksgiving travel, ready and waiting for me upon my return.

Meandering and Twisting....Sometimes In Slow Circles

A meandering path:

I unearthed the leaf blower from the bowels of the basement last week.  Then I proceeded to blow all the leaves onto the flower beds, thinking the added organic matter and acidity would be useful in  the newly added heavy alkaline clay soil.  Shortly after I did that, a landscape crew came in and started to blow all the leaves off the beds and up to the street.  

 

Enter screaming banshee white woman yelling “No! No! Stop! Put them back!” Yes that was me.  I understand, intellectually anyway.  I had been a previous client.  Why not try to help and assume the client will be happy to return to the fold?  Ahh.  No.  Protect me from people trying to help.  Nothing is wrong with help.  But it needs to start from the same frame of reference.

 

The rest of the week may be a slow week.  I pulled my back doing something minor, and foolish, a lift and twist move — the kind of thing we all do without thinking but which we really aren’t supposed to do at all. I am having a bit of trouble moving around.  Or I move well, once I get started... until I don’t.  Short walks are called for, many short walks, which will hopefully lengthen over the next few days.  I don’t know if I can afford the slowness and yet at the same time I cannot afford to not take the time.  

 

And so it seems my walkway is not the only thing that meanders.  Life meanders as well, sometimes in convoluted twisty ways that we never anticipate.  But so many of the our goals and deadlines, the things we twist ourselves up over, aren’t really what we are supposed to be working toward at all.  The goal of life isn’t the next party, the promotion, the next job.  Sometimes we forget that we are really just trying to cross the street.