restingmotion

I Have No Idea

What do you do when you have fallen out of a habit that you once found useful, calming even, but which now seems like a distant memory.  Is it better to "let sleeping dogs lie", or is there some semblance of yearning still hovering in the inner recesses of the soul.  Is this a true yearning, or simply a reminiscence, a remembrance of things past, nostalgia rather than growth.

 

I don't have the answer to any of these questions.  2022 has not been my best blogging year, but it has not been a year in which blogging was absent from my mind.  Rather it has been more of a time of reacquaintance with so many things -- chores, passions, energy, loss, newfound treasures.  I suppose this is a long drawn-out way of saying some kind of reset has been required.  

 

The month of May in particular has felt very much like a slow process of reconnection.  There has been plenty to do, including things I used to write about:  books and music in particular, but random navel grazing as well.  These are all things about which I have spent time thinking even if not writing, thinking and wondering. There is a part of me that wants to return to the blogger I once was, before I knew anything about blogging, before anyone read my blog, when I just wrote whatever I felt like writing for the joy of it.   A time when most of my friends thought the idea of blogging was suspect, and then, since they didn't know or care that I was blogging, I felt no sense of obligation to be anyone other than myself. Is there a way to recreate that bloggerly moment?  Blogging is, in many ways, an anachronism.  At least the kind of blogging I yearn for, not the commercialized, stylized, marketing-world blogging of today.  But then, perhaps I too am an anachronism.

 

I am older now, and I am far less inclined to feel any sense of obligation to being anything anyone outside of myself expects me to be.  But a yearning for the past isn't necessary a path forward, even as I think there are things to learn from that yearning.  Our dreams, our thoughts, our emotions -- not just these but also our indulgences -- the things we read, the things we listen to, even the things we watch -- all of these are our instruction manuals, if we are paying attention at least, our guides through the complex process of constant change that is life.  I do believe we are attracted to and find the things that relate to some essential aspect of our inner selves, but whether we move forward or continue to look backward is up to us. Holding on to the past, to false stability, isn't growth 

In early May I adopted a dog.  Her name is Garbo and is is mostly standard poodle with a tiny sprinkling of golden retriever fairy dust. She is sweet, elegant, silly, and a great companion.  She greets me all wiggles and squeaks when I come home, and she runs around improvising a small symphony in squeaky toys to show her gladness at my return.  She is also a calm and patient studio assistant. 

 

Garbo has also gotten me out of the house for two walks most days, a long walk in the morning, and a shorter walk most evenings, although there are some evenings when I am out at other events and our late walk becomes very short indeed. My goal is to gradually increase my walks to be 3 to 5 miles per day, not all in one walk, but divided between two, or even three walks, although three may not happen often in the midst of summer heat and humidity.  At the moment we are up to three miles per day.  In terms of energy, and cardiovascularly I am ready for an increase, but last week I had a bit of ankle tendinitis, and this week my left knee is bothering me, so best not to push.  The knee is probably due to differences in gait caused by back pain last week, and that aforementioned ankle, and I do not think it will be a long-term setback.   

 

I have also been catching up on the piles of stuff, and the many tasks and routines upon which I fell behind following chemotherapy, radiation, and then struggles with atrial flutter and two additional procedures.    I am still working through cycles of physical therapy for damage to my right shoulder and chest musculature. It has taken me some time to get fully settled back into these routines:  walking, stretching and exercises, housework, cooking and all the activities of maintaining a comfortable and valuable life, including reading, knitting, needlework and yes, sewing.  The goal has been in terms of reestablishing habits.  The writing habit has not yet been the priority, but the air seems to be signaling that said change may be in the works.  The trick for me is, always, to maintain structure and habits, when my natures is now, and always has been, to throw myself entirely into the activity of the moment and allow all other things to fall away.   This was not manageable when I was 20, but at that time I could convince myself I had time.  Now I realize more fully how interrelated everything is, how fleeting the passage of time,  and my increasing inability to bounce back from abandoned structures.

 

I can accept that I have not, prior to this moment, had time to write.  Do I now?  Once again I have no idea. 

 

I don't want to return in any haphazard, piecemeal fashion.  I want my writing, like my daily walks with Garbo, to become a fixture in my life, something that is a necessary part of existence whatever other temptations may arise to lure me away.  I want my writing, like my walks, like cooking, like playing with fiber, to be something that is a necessary part of who I am, and therefore not subject to whim.  I must walk, even when I don't feel like it.  Garbo and I both need the walks, and the need to walk Garbo is enough to pull me out of my own periodic funks and reluctances.  But rebuilding habits is a struggle.  Is blogging the same?   I suspect it is.

 

I suppose then, I am writing a long, navel-grazing statement of intent.  I intend to blog.  I intend to maintain the three separate blogs, as they play different roles in my mental and writing life.   Does that mean that occasionally one or the other will be neglected?  Probably yes.  Just as in life.  There was the week I cooked a great deal, trying new recipes from a new cookbook.  All other activities fell back.  This past week I have spent more time sewing, and my knitting has fallen by the wayside.  I have knitted most days, but there are days when that knitting may consist of a single row, a tiny blip.  The habit has not been lost, but my focus has been more about priorities than product.  

Am I ready to add something new into the mix?  HaveI  a reached a state where the habits that I have formed are well enough established, like these flowers in the garden, that they will continue to blossom?  Am I ready to fill in the empty spaces? It seems the only consistent thread in this post is that I have no idea of what the thread is, or where the answers may lie hidden.  Here I am.    Life is often easier than I expect it to be, and at the same time it is harder than I want it to be.  But isn't that the basic conundrum of human existence?

The May Garden in Detail

I've had several blog posts rooting around somewhere in the back of my brain, but they haven't yet coalesced into anything coherent so I have nothing to fall back on but another garden post, heavy on photos and light on words.  Hopefully that, the energy deficit, is turning around following a flutter ablation last Friday, but, let's not count our chickens and all that stuff.

The garden, despite the empty spaces, has been a gift. The Siberian iris, Caesar's Brother, is finally coming into its own.  This is its third summer.  Last year I had blossoms but they were small and spindly.  This year the combination of the iris and the geraniums is everything I hoped it would be.

One of the irises, in detail.

The peonies have started blooming.  This was the first to open.

Here it is again, becoming a bit blowsy but more blossoms are opening all around it.  This time with the new bearded iris behind it.  I found this bulb in a discount basket somewhat late for planting irises las summer, and stuck the three bulbs in the ground.  Only one came up, not bad for $1 though.  This is its first season of bloom.

The little apricot ground cover roses are also starting to bloom.  They survived a year in their nursery pots; it didn't seem to dampen their enthusiasm, so I dutifully snapped pictures the first blossoms.

And the blackberry vines are slowly filling with blossoms and promises of fruit to come.

The shady azalea garden in the back is also coming into bloom.  The pink shrubs in the back were in full bloom about two weeks ago and are now fading. The white are in their glory now, and the pretty large pale pink blossoms only slightly behind (below).

The fringe tree is also filled with blossoms.  In fact everywhere I look something is blooming.  Oh, I know this exuberance will not last, but at the moment it is all glorious.

In Your Easter Bonnet

There has been some small progress on the garden front.  Very little of the effort was mine and yet I am as proud and happy as can be.  The garden is spruced up for spring at least as spruced as it is likely to get this spring.

I feel like the yard has donned its Easter dress.

Saturday morning I gathered up all the little plants that have been languishing in the shady corners, since the spring of 2021 when I had ordered several dozen small plants intending to make headway on the front gardens.  There were a few bigger plants as well.  Some of them had rooted through their pots into the soil and so a little bit of digging was involved.  My labor conisisted of uprooting them all and placing them wherever I had originally planned to plant them.  

A crew came and planted them Saturday afternoon.  Monday morning they came back and mulched. Above is a mix of old and new and yet undone.  Gardens are mostly like that.

The remnants of winter pansies and drift roses.

Some tiny green flecks of alchemilla mollis between the peonies and the grass (above right). Another peony, which had been sheltering behind the garage, in a shady but protected spot, was also transplanted, far right in front of the hydrangeas.  It has leafed out further than the ones I planted in this same bed last spring, where it is sunnier but more exposed.  Some of my neighbors' peonies have buds. I do not, yet.

This is the older bed, between my driveway and the neighbor on the East.  A few more nepeta plants were added.

I keep singing "Easter Parade" when I am in the yard.

There is still a lot to design and plant, and I have come to terms with the idea that I am not going to do it.  I am already working with a designer but it will likely be at least fall before further progress is made.  I don't intend to do much but clean out the overgrown vegetable garden in the back.  It is included in this photo because I have some perverse inclination to acknowledge and celebrate the failures and imperfections as well as the successes. 

I am all for celebrating beauty and joy.  But beauty and joy are not everything.  Life is tough. Things break. And yet we still bloom and grow.

That previous sentence sounds like some sappy theme from The Sound of Music, or a book blurb.  

There remain more empty spaces than plants, but I am ok with that.  I have already given myself permission not to fret, and not to plant this year.  In fact that is more like an order -- "do not plant".  Wait and see. Oh, I know there will be exceptions.  I will pick up something here or there and be unable to risk the possibility of putting it in the ground.

There is no rush and there is also no such thing as an instant garden.

Here and There; Everywhere and Nowhere; Does it Matter?

I was at Big Ears this past weekend.  I am home. Technically I suppose I was always home as Big Ears takes place in Knoxville.  And yet the festival offers an opportunity to check out of the routine of normal life and to step into something different, perhaps unknown, definitely unexpected.  I suppose that is one of the things I love about this experience.  I am not convinced that I am the best judge of what is new, or "avant-garde" or even good, but what I love about this festival is the opportunity to step through the looking glass in a way, to just go, to listen, perhaps to be surprised by joy, to let your world be filled with something perhaps unexpected.

 

Anyway, I wasn't really planning on writing about Big Ears in this post. I may do so in some future post.  I am still processing everything in my head and heart.  I've written about my experiences at Big Ears following every festival, and it seems to almost foreign to admit that I may or may not do so.  And yet, look at my record this year. There has been much I intended to say that I have not.  Despite that, I find myself oddly content.

 

Life is not about the writing, after all.  To make one's mark, to write, to post to social media, the attempt to claim one's presence and worth -- this is all too human, this striving.  But life is lived with or without public acknowledgement.  One has walked x number of miles whether or not one has worn a smart watch and recorded the same.  This year, despite multiple, broadly expansive to-do lists, I have mostly not done, and have been content, happy even.  I can say that honestly even though in some ways it has not been the best year, certainly not the year I was hoping for.  

 

But happiness, and whether or not life is good, actually has nothing to do with the things that happen all around one.  It is an internal thing, perhaps a state of acceptance.  Many good things have come this year.  There has been time with family and friends, although perhaps not as much time with family as I might have hoped.  I have traveled, and read, and played with textiles.  I have been lost in thought slowly drinking a cup of coffee or tea.  Mostly I have been in the moment, even when those moments were in the hospital because my heart went back into flutter, and the one thing I did not want -- more time in hospitals -- came to pass despite my protestations.  I am ok now.  I remain content even though I have been trying for a week to open my new bottle of eye drops and failing with every attempt.  I am happy even though I am behind on more things than I can count.  I am happy and healthy, at least in so far as any almost-64-year-old can claim to be. I can choose to be happy, to celebrate the good that has come, or I can hold onto bitterness over that which has not come.  I think I choose the former. 

 

I may yet write about music and the discoveries of Big Ears.  I may yet write about that trip to the literary festival back in January.  I may not.  I may do less, but I hope to enjoy it more: to savor a properly made coffee Americano: to exist in the moment of idle chatter with a friend;  to spend hours ripping and re-knitting without regret or recrimination, to stay up in the wee hours listening to music, or reading a bodice-ripper.  I know I will write, here even.  I have not given up on seeing myself as a person who maintains this blog, I merely accept that the path is full of curves and I do not yet know, or even need to know, the destination.

 

At the moment all I have are questions and vague thoughts.  I am not certain that anything about our sense of timelines and obligation has much to do with the ebb and flow of life, but that it is rather something we impose on ourselves and each other.  I wonder if a good life is not so much about what one has accomplished but rather about those fleeting moments of just being present. I wonder if perhaps I like music more than I like people.  Music never breaks one's heart.  Only people do that.  Music never disappoints; mostly our disappointments are caused by our own self-imposed expectations.  And yet a life lived without the risk of a broken heart is a life not lived at all.  And how can there be music, or art, or even joy and love without pain and heartbreak? What makes a good life is not all the things that have been made and done, it is in the breaking and rejoining, in the birth and death and yes, rebirth.

 

It is not that I love music, or art, more than people.  I love.  We are a communal species. And yet that power of creation comes from the inward breath. The power of happiness exists only within us, it is not a gift that is given to us depending on circumstances, it is a gift we give the world despite circumstances. 

Settling In, Again.

This was not intentional, this precipitous dive off the blogging map.  It just happened.  One day I was filled with ideas and the next those ideas had taken a sharp left turn.  All good, in many ways.  What actually happened is that I needed to settle in.

 

It has been roughly two years since I moved back into this house and the construction was finished.  They were not, personally my favorite two years, but the house was done and I was safely ensconced.  The basic tools and artifacts of living were unpacked, but large parts of the studio remained boxed up and chaotic.  This year I have given myself permission to play, to discover, to experiment, and, if that is what I wish, to simply sit in a pile of fiber and dream.  There are no goals. There is but one rule: follow your heart. Do something, anything, without fear, without worry, without expectation.

Part of that process has involved a return to unpacking.  All the boxes of fabric have been unpacked, sorted, photographed, cataloged and put on the shelves.  I am now going through the same process with yarns and embroidery/needlework materials, although there is not quite as much a rush on that front. Even this one step has given me access, ideas, and the desire to hide out in my bright space and play.

 

At the same time I sent all the large rugs in the house out to be cleaned.  The house has been colder without the insulation value of the rugs, so I spent some time working on my alpaca blanket.  The visual change also prompted a reevaluation of furniture layouts and how I am using the house, so there has been some moving of furniture, both upstairs and down.  

The small side tables that were upstairs were not working next to the library sofa, so they got moved to the front hall, where I felt something more was needed.  I didn't know what until I happened to place those tables beside the front door.  The small bowl shown has moved, and I found two green glass vases which I can fill with flowers.  Now my entry is beginning to bring joy.

But you know how it is, move one thing, and then suddenly the entire room needs to be transformed.  After moving the tables, I decided that the armchair in the library needed to be swapped with the reclining chair that had been in the master bedroom, where it was neglected.  It works much better in the library, and gives the room a more modern vibe.  There are no plans to get a side table for that spot at the moment, other than the little bubu 1er stool that is currently there.  I have ordered a reading lamp, but it is backordered for a couple of months.

Going with the modern vibe, the two glass Eileen Gray side tables, which were not working in their previous locations, were moved up to the library to flank the sofa.  Then the lights, which were the first lamps I ever purchased, shortly after I moved in with George, about forty years ago now, did not work with the new tables.  Well, technically they didn't work before the tables were swapped either.    So. I bought new lamps that had better-directed task lighting if I wish to read or knit.   Above you see both lamps, the new and the old.

I really like this new arrangement.  The lights and the tables disappear somewhat against the wall of books, yet they are both attractive and functional.  I almost want to have people over for drinks in the library. Except that is not why it was rearranged.  A home is about what works for the life of the people who live there, not about what it says to others.  For me, a certain amount of visual harmony is paramount.  It must work but it must also bring me aesthetic pleasure.  Now I have a library/office/television room that does all that.  It will bring even more joy when the rug returns and my ankles aren't always cold.

 

 

Vacation

 

At times, over the past 23 months it seems that all I wanted was to get away, to go someplace, any place.  Why was it then, when a long-scheduled vacation finally loomed, I had decidedly mixed feelings?

Anyway, I went.  I had a great time.  It was not always smooth, but then, what in life is?  I admit that as much of my trepidation about traveling, about traveling alone, was that in the past, the world of 24 months ago, I was finding that I did not really relish solo travel all that much.  But perhaps I just needed to slough something off, something that I might not have sloughed off otherwise.  Perhaps I needed to realize that I am only as alone as I chose to be, and that solo travel does not imply loneliness.

I can admit that my initial reaction to Key West was mixed.  I arrived near dusk.  I ventured out to the seaport and along Duval Street and I was struggling with crowds and noise.  This was in sharp opposition to my reaction to airports and travel itself.  Why was it that Duval Street made me pull inward, whereas I can drift through a crowded airport as if in a bubble?

 

Something I noticed before, before I stopped traveling, is that I find the travel itself quite calming.   I am perhaps neurotically organized.  I am always packed and ready at least a day before.  I can feel at loose ends waiting.  But at the same time this helps with my feelings of calmness.  I've been stranded in airports due to cancelled planes and I tend to be calm and bemused.  There is something about going to an airport, about planning travel, that allows me to just let go of the idea that I have any say in controlling events in the world,  that allows me to make myself into an island of calm.  Home may be my kingdom, and I want control.  In the world, it is easier to slough all that off.  This seems like phenomenal growth.  Would that I could maintain it in my daily life.

When I arrive however, that bubble seems to burst; perhaps it is just the yearning that takes over, the idea of vacation, the idea of escape, of adventure, of fulfillment.  That first evening in an unfamiliar place, I was nervous in crowds but also nervous on a street that felt too quiet in contrast.  Of course this stems from years of training, compounded by now years of isolation and this crazy- making hyperbolic world we live in, a world that sometimes seems determined to feed on fear, on making us fear one another.  That first night on Duval Street was like the meeting of two opposing seas, leaving me in emotional turmoil.  I had left the safety of home, but hadn't yet found my vacation self.  I felt like Dorothy landing in Oz.  I think there is always that moment of transition, a moment when pent up expectation spills over; how we experience it may vary, but it too is part of the beauty of vacation.

I found a happy corner to settle down in.  I had soup, and shrimp, and a vantage point for people watching.  That airport calm descended once again.  I walked back to my hotel in the cooler night air.  I wasn't yet sure what I thought of this place; at first it seemed too casual, too loud, too "tourista".  But that was mostly me,  my own unsettledness. It takes me a little while to shift gears sometimes, even shifting into gears that have been getting more frequent use as I grow older.

The second morning I found a great breakfast and coffee spot, a place I stopped most mornings.  I wandered around old town.  I admired the neighborhoods, the bars, the stores, the music, the artists.  I loved the fact that chickens, and especially roosters, wandered around everywhere.  This seemed a metaphor for something, perhaps just the idea of not rushing.  I watched a gecko while I drank a cup of strong Cuban coffee. I hadn't put words to that something at that point; I am not sure I have yet.  But I too began to unwind, to enjoy this place, the ambiance, the casual vibe.  I began to let go of my own expectations.

That did not come as easily as it sounds writing the words.  It is so easy to write, "I let go". But nothing is really that simple, is it?  I found my joys and my disappointments came in waves, but overall the good quickly outnumbered the bad, and mostly came when least expected, lost in a moment, often of mundanity.

I retreated during the heat of the day to my shady porch, or perhaps to the big window with the easy chair and my knitting.  I am still not a creature of the hotter climes.  I love the angled sunshine of winter light.  I burn in the hotter sun, get sun poisoning and headaches, but that doesn't mean I don't love the easy going flow of tropical and sub-tropical climes.  And yet here I was, happy and content, enjoying shade and warm breezes, the languor of the siesta.

I was went to Key West for an event, a literary festival, but I will write about that in another post.  I attended.  I missed some things.  I walked a lot, more than I had in a long time, since before my cancer treatment, only 3 to 5 miles a day, but it was a start.  I hope to keep walking now that I am home in cooler weather.  I needed the boost, the interruption to my state of inertia.

What I found, and what I often forget, is that for me the best part of vacation is not seeing the sights, or doing the things that everyone tells me I must do, but in the wandering around, in talking to people.  In just sitting back and being in a place.   I went to the Hemingway museum.  I did not go on the water.   Yes I want to see and do but I also just want to unwind and be myself.  What is surprising, although it should not be, is that being myself in a foreign environment is subtly different than being myself at home, and that, in and of itself is quite revealing. What is always surprising is that the highlights aren't the museum, or the adventure, but the little moments one was not expecting.  The chance encounters, the birds at your feet, the crow of a rooster.

Vacation, all I ever wanted....

 

Well who knew?  Sometimes we go place for the wrong reasons.  Sometimes we go for the right reasons but with the wrong expectations.  Sometimes it all falls in place.  Sometimes it doesn't.  But if we are lucky something we needed is revealed. 

 

Key West.  I will be back.  And this from a woman who usually avoids vacations to hot places.  

 

And So The 2021 Reading List Closes

One year of reading ends and another begins.  I am not going to list all the books I read in 2021 here, but I will include links to the previous monthly installments at the end of this post for those who just can't get enough.  This is the first year in many that I actually posted a reading list every month.  In fact, there may have been months when I believe that is all I posted.

 

I read more books in 2021 than I did in 2020, and in both years I read far more than my yearly average over previous years.  I hadn't really thought about this very much until I sat on the fringes of a conversation regarding reading, where the others involved noted that they had in fact read less than usual since the Covid-19 pandemic began.  I noted, to myself, that I had read substantially more, but didn't jump in because the conversation was actually far more interesting without my input, which would have served no purpose other than bragging rights.  

 

As for my own increased reading there were several factors involved.  To begin with, I had decided to read more in 2020, even before the pandemic shut-down began, and then, like many others, I went through a period of ennui where I was unable to read.  I overcame that however.  To some degree I simply. read more because I went out less; there were fewer social obligations to distract me.  I also have to admit that health issues may have contributed; it would be naive to deny this.  My television viewing also increased exponentially, and that I do blame on health struggles and lack of energy.  My heaviest television use occurred at those times of greatest listlessness.  

 

I also cut back on social media in many ways.  One would think that in a time of greater social isolation, greater social media would enhance one's sense of connectivity.  But that was not what I found.  Yes, zoom was a godsend and I have friends I zoom with, and friends I talk with regularly.  But otherwise it seemed to me that I found social media sites polarizing.  Pandemic shut-downs were hard enough for everyone, but there were times that I felt that the combination of the news and social media, especially combined with a lack of one-on-one human interaction, were more isolating, and made conversations and interactions, if anything, more high-strung and volatile, as if none of us could completely get out of our heads.  Books helped me with this.

 

At any rate, I have been happy to be a reader, and I still wish to see myself as a reader.  I have no regrets over any book I have read, no matter if it was difficult or mindlessly simple, no matter if I found myself agreeing with the author, or disagreeing vehemently.  Each and every book showed me some perspective on the world outside of my own, and often I was most surprised by the books I least expected to be surprised by. 

 

Still my plan is to read less in 2022.  My goal is 60 books, and I would be very happy if that is all I read.  I will also be happy if I read more, or even less.  I have other things I want to do with my time, and although those things do involve social engagement, I also find I have no desire to be out in the world as much as I was prior to 2020.  In short it is all an adjustment.  Who knows where it will all lead.

 

Note that already my reading was tapering off in December:  6 books, 5 of them fiction.  The one non-fiction book, Avrum Bluming's Estrogen Matters, was a reread.  I had read it the first time in April, so technically, although there are 140 books listed, that one was listed twice, for a total of 139 books.

 

135. Edwige Danticat: Claire of the Sea Light.

136. Alice Hoffman: The Marriage of Opposites.

137. Joy Jordan-Lake:  Under a Gilded Moon.

138. Avrum  Bluming: Estrogen Matters.

139. Louise Penny: Still Life.

140. Jean Stafford: Boston Adventure.

 

Edwige Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light takes place in Haiti in the seaside village of Ville Rose.  The center of the novel is the occasion of Claire Limye Lanme's 7th birthday and in many ways the action of the book weaves its way around this center, much like a circular maze, using Claire's story to tell the story of the village, its history, its residents, as well as the story of Claire herself.  In the first part of the book we get a fairly straight-forward explication of Claire's story up until the time of this birthday, and Claire closes out the novel, making a decision about her own place in this intricately woven web.  In between these two points, the story moves forward, backward, and often sideways, showing us the interconnected lives that make up this place, and which make up the underlying foundation on which Claire's life is built.  It is a fascinating, and often poetically told story.  Despite the name of the novel, Claire is not the main character, she is simply a point of light around which all these other stories come into focus and are told.  It is a beautiful and compelling novel, although the story line is often convoluted and will frustrate the less than focused reader.    It is as much the story of a place as of a person, and in fact the story of each person is as much the story of the place and the people that shaped them.  Claire initially seems as much an idea, a creature of mist and yearning as she seems a child, just because of the way the story focuses around her but not on her.   As the stories weave together, the reader also begins to see how Claire will, herself, become interwoven into the story of this place, and this place will be interwoven into her own story.

 

Alice Hoffman's The Marriage of Opposites also takes place in the Caribbean but it is an entirely different kind of novel, much more in the vein of classic historical fiction.  It is the story of Rachel Pomie Petit Pizarro, the mother of the painter Camille Pissarro, beginning with her childhood in the prosperous Jewish community in Saint Thomas and ending in France.  Hoffman paints a fascinating and occasionally maddening portrait of Rachel and through this rather good historical novel she also allows the reader to explore the precarious situation of women in early 19th century colonial life.  Rachel's stories, and her descriptions of Saint Thomas seem to flow from some of Pissarro's work.  I am certain this is intentional as Hoffman tries to weave together the little we know of Pissarro's family with what we do know of his work as an artist.  I found the story also fascinating because it explores the Jewish culture of St. Thomas, where there had been a strong sephardic Jewish community since 1700. Hoffman's description of the synagogue itself is particularly beautiful, blending a bit of magic with historical reality in the understanding and eyes of a child, the young Rachel. The telling drove me back down memory lane, allowing me to relive my own experience of visiting the synagogue of Congregation Beracha Veshalom Vegmiluth Hasadim in St Thomas, which is one of the oldest standing synagogue I have personally been to.  This one is the second oldest building built as a synagogue in the Untied states, having been built in 1832, and it is still in use. 

 

From there, and continuing in the historical fiction vein, I read Joy Jordan Lake's Under a Gilded Moon, which concerns the Vanderbilts and the building of  the Biltmore Estate in nearby Asheville, North Carolina.  This was a book club choice, I believe partially chosen because it is about local, or at least regional history.  The novel shows the sharp dichotomy between the Vanderbilts, including their friends and kin, and their attitudes toward the poorer residents of the region. I felt it was particularly good at describing the beauty of the scenery. It suffered from attempting to add in too many "real people" and "real places", as if somehow it had to be a survey of all that was once here, at the expense of the story line.  It was clear a great deal of research went into the novel but the detail overwhelmed the story, resulting in inconsistently tenuous connections and gaps in the plot.  Still the novel did open a discussion into the roots of the divisions and attitudes, between rich and poor, attitudes that we still struggle with to this day.

 

For my other book group, i reread Still Life, the first of Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache novels.  I enjoyed reading it the second time as much as I had the first, which makes me think I will enjoy it again and again, and it was good, from this perspective to see how many of the characters who might take center stage in later novels are introduced here.  

 

Lastly I read Jean Stafford's early novel Boston Adventure, which proved to be a difficult choice.  The novel itself was good although at times tedious.  It is a carefully painted and studied portrait of Boston Society in the mid 20th century told from the perspective of an outsider, a poor girl, who is brought into the circle but who is never really a part of it.  In many ways it is a fascinating study of social isolation, perhaps not the best thing to read when our entire culture has been experimenting with a different vein of social isolation.  It is also a fascinating study of the cruelty that is often contained in social "kindnesses", in the way that persons of one class or milieu often, in the name of "helping", create effective prisons without explicitly meaning to do so. It was a worthwhile novel, but not perhaps the best airplane reading, where I would have done better with one (or four) short frivolous novels.

 

Previous months:
January, February, March, April, May, June, July1 and July2, August, September, October, November.

 

 

 

Joy. A Reflection.

A few weeks ago, attending a small birthday celebration among friends, the birthday girl asked the members of the party to reflect on the year that was coming to a close.  When it was my turn to speak, another friend interrupted and deflected the conversation into another topic.  I was a little put off, and a few minutes later was talking to a third friend, telling her what a positive experience the past year had been, when she asked that I wait and share my comments with the group.  And yet, when the topic came up again, I was once again interrupted, and the birthday girl was distracted with another unrelated conversation. I never did get a chance to speak.

 

In some ways this conversation, with all its attendant frustrations, is a mirror for my year, and, in fact, much of what I was hoping to say that evening.   I can state upfront that at that moment I felt unheard, and uncared-for, as if my year and my thoughts were somehow less valid than anyone else's.  But that was also a fleeting feeling, and like so many disappointments in life, one can either hang onto a momentary flash of negative emotion, letting it shape and color your being, or one can simply release it into the air and let it go.  I chose the latter, just as I chose, despite a year that many would consider challenging, to see it as a good year, chose to count my blessings rather than my losses.  

 

In fact, what I was going to say that evening was not about cancer or struggle or how hard the year had been; everyone in that room knew what I had been through, knew my struggles and that was not the time to reiterate them.  What I had actually been about to say was that through my experience I had been offered an opportunity, and in a way a blessing,  because I was forced out of the comfort zone of habit.  Habits are not always to our benefit. It was only through the process of falling apart that I was able to realize the possibility of rebuilding, of rebirth if you will.   I am in fact happier today than I was at this time last year; I am happier today than I was two years ago.  That does not mean the road was easy; in fact it was damn difficult at times.  But no one ever promised any of us an easy road, and the more mature I become the more I see that ease and comfort often hamper growth and creativity.  I would not wish cancer on anyone.  But at the same time, increasingly, neither would I wish anyone bland comfort and ease.  There is something in our essence as Homo Sapiens that needs to be challenged, that needs to create, and the process of creation is a process born of destruction.  We cannot live up to our full potential without constantly dislodging ourselves from the dead-ends life has imposed on us, no, that we have imposed upon ourselves.

 

In retrospect I saw that my friend, fearing I my comments would be something of a "downer" was deflecting, as she had been reared to do, steering the conversation away from unpleasantness and toward idle chatter.  Of course this did mean that my thoughts went unheard; it also meant that on some level she expected something less of me than I was going to offer.  But it also presented an opportunity for forgiveness.  I realized that my thoughts were no less valid for not being heard. Yes, we all want to feel heard, and that is an important part of feeling loved. The crime was not really against me, but against herself and the others.  In choosing to deflect, she was choosing not to engage on a personal level, to live on a surface level, which is both her choice, and her loss. Yes, she was protecting herself from despair, but she was also closing herself off from the possibility of joy.  The simple truth is that all of our words deserve to be heard. And by shutting down each others words we close ourselves off to the possibility of connection, and ultimately to joy and through joy, hope.

 

For that, it seems is one of the things I have learned this year, perhaps one of the many things I have known in my head for a long time, but which I have not always practiced in my heart, is that life is short, that I am very lucky, and that it behooves us all to treasure and hold onto joy.    Joy has nothing to do with the trials of life; and although it often does us good to rail against pain and affliction, holding onto our grief, our anger and our sadness does us no good.  When we cannot manage hope, we can still find joy.  Through joy we can often find happiness and love. Holding onto joy teaches us that there are things we can let slip away, that forgiveness is not difficult once we let go of pain. Taking even hesitant steps toward joy starts us on a path that can lead us to finding  hope in a world that occasionally seems devoid of just that.

 

In the past two years the median life expectancy in the US has dropped by 1.5 years. Regardless of the numbers, no single one of us is guaranteed anything, to live to the median, or beyond it.  And yet this reminds me of something.  The median life expectancy of an American is roughly slightly over 4100 weeks, perhaps less by these new calculations.  I have already lived over 3200 of those weeks.  No matter how I look at it, I am on the downward slope.  It is easy when we are young to think we always have time, but it is not true.  Most of my time is already in the past.  When we look at years it all seems so far away; when I look at weeks, it all seems so short.  I want my weeks to be about joy, whatever joy I am finding in the moment of that particular week.  Last week it may have been about family. This week joy revolves around friends and fabric and creative endeavors.  If I am lucky I have 900 more weeks, perhaps more, perhaps less.  But the luck isn't in the number of weeks; it is in how I chose to live those weeks. The gift is that I can chose who I want to be.  I can chose joy.  It is not about what happens, or even time itself, but what I chose to make of my time in my life.

 

I choose joy.

Wallowing....or November Reading

Sometimes life just gets the better of us, despite all of our good intentions, despite all our efforts to bear up and soldier on, and sometimes there is no recourse, or perhaps no healthy recourse, other than to allow oneself to be caught in the tide, washing up wherever one will.

 

November was, in many ways, a difficult month.  During that last 10 days or so of radiation therapy I was just done, mentally exhausted perhaps more even than physically exhausted.   Although I had allowed myself to be sick, allowed myself to stay in bed as needed, allowed myself to shirk responsibility, I hadn't really allowed myself the option of wallowing, of hosting my own private pity party, of tossing myself headlong into escapism and grief.  And then November hit.

 

As you may recall, I ended October with a novel in Fern Michaels' Sisterhood series.  I went on to open November with a binge-read, finishing the first nine novels in the series over the course of twelve or so days. When I wasn't reading I wasn't doing much else either, other than flouncing about or hiding in bed.  I have no real regrets about that; I needed to allow ennui full access, allowing it to simply run its course and die from exhaustion.

 

In fact, were I not so generally listless and in need of escape, I might not have enjoyed these books as much as I did.  Michaels is a story-teller, not a writer, and the novels very much follow a simple formula.  This is the crime; this is the punishment; how does one then make the story work.  As I mentioned before, this is pure simple escapist and revenge fantasy and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  They read like a literary equivalent of a Lifetime movie.  I would want to say Hallmark, but they get perhaps a little too gritty on the revenge side for that, at least in some of the volumes.  There is no nuance, no sophistication, no real character development, and yet they were exactly the escapist distraction I needed.

119. Fern Michaels: Weekend Warriors

120. Fern Michaels:  Payback.

121. Fern Michaels:  Vendetta

122.  Fern Michaels:  The Jury.

124. Fern Michaels: Sweet Revenge

125.  Fern Michaels:  Lethal Justice

126. Fern Michaels:  Free Fall.

127. Fern Michaels: Hide and Seek.

128. Fern Michaels:  Hokus Pokus.

 

If you were observant, you may have noticed a gap.  

 

Somewhere in the middle of that list, about the time of my last treatment, of ringing the bell, of celebrating the joy of finally being done, I threw myself into a literary novel, and a very good one at that.  It didn't hold, that focus, and I was back to fantasy fiction before I knew it, but enough of that.

 

123. Richard Powers:  Bewilderment.  I found this slim novel entrancing, moving, powerful, provocative, and bewildering.  I intend all of that in the very best way, but it also may have been slightly more than I was ready to deal with at the time.   It is the story of Thomas, an astrobiologist, who is raising his nine-year old son, Robin, following the death of his wife some years previously; but the novel is both more and less than one particular story line.  Thomas is thinly drawn, often rather one-dimensional, and also far too clueless, even for a trope. Sometimes too much weight is placed on Robin, not that children can't be wise beyond their years, or fragile in ways that we, as adults have long forgotten.  But the story is deeply affecting and even the sometime glib characterizations play an important role in this.  It is the story of a family struggling; it is a story of a struggling earth and the damage mankind is inflicting on it; it is a story of scientific ethics; it is an overtly political novel; it is an overtly humanistic novel.  In short it is a short novel that can be read on many levels in many ways, and that will both entrance some, myself included, and annoy others.   

 

I found  the tile of Bewilderment entirely apt.  Mostly it is exactly that, the story of our own bewilderment.  Thomas is a bewildered single father, struggling to deal with the needs of his son in the face of the expectations of society, neither of which he fully grasps; he is a man most comfortable with his science. Robin is a child probably somewhere on the spectrum, but his father wishes to avoid labels and drugs. Robin is preternaturally bright, a trait inherited from both of his parents, and emotionally unstable.  He is bewildered by humanity, by the learned behavior humanity embraces, especially as this behavior appears contradictory to the natural world Robin so keenly observes. Bewilderment is also portrayed in the glimpses we are given of the life of the mother, Alyssa, (A - Lyssa, or not-fractious) who fights against the destruction of the natural world and yet struggles to contain her own emotions and anger at said destruction.  Robin is very much the blossoming of the union of Thomas and Alyssa, neither of whom fit into the world completely, into something new -- a new beginning, which alas does not survive the bewilderment of the world into which it is born.  I do believe there is a lesson in this, as well as the most telling lesson in this book, which is not the bewilderment of the primary characters, or the bewilderment of the natural world, which is ongoing, but the bewilderment of humanity at its own destructive tendencies.  In this novel the complacency, ignorance, and willful blindness are their own kind of bewilderment, a bewilderment of unseen consequences.  What choice does one make when the alternatives are bewilderment or retreat into a comforting complacency? Do we chose bewilderment? Or would we rather be comfortably numb? Can we learn? Or is it already too late?  Will we change, or will we retreat into our own solace, our own grief, our own bubbles?  There are no real answers here, but despite all the big questions, there is quite a bit of humanity.

 

129. Heather Busch's  Why Cats Paint. This slim art book proved to be a humorous romp.  Yes, it is a book for cat lovers.  Yes it is about cats making messes with paint, as well as making messes with other things.  It is a brilliant satire of both the culture of cat lovers and the elitism of the art wold. A good reminder not to take oneself too seriously.

 

Having gotten all that out of my system, my reading settled down. Here is the remainder of the list.

 

130. Booker T. Washington: Up from Slavery.

131.  Maggie O'Farrell:  Hamnet.

132. Hillary Rodham Clinton: State of Terror.

133. Tommy Orange:  There, There

134.  W.E.B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk.

 

Although they are not sequential on the list, I am going to discuss Up From Slavery and The Souls of Black Folk together primarily because they have formed their own conversation in my thoughts.  I had heard of both authors of course but do not believe I had read either.  They should both be part of some essential syllabus that is required reading for what it means to be educated in America, along with the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.  In fact, I wish I had read them as a teenager, when I was reading both of the latter.  But I also realize that both men, Washington, and DuBois, write in ways that are not really accessible to teenagers today, and that we do not really teach historical context, historicity, or train young people in how ideas change and evolve, and how our own thoughts are changed by shifting tides of ideas and events that often really have little to do with the original context facing the writer of the words themselves.  I suppose I continue to hold onto the hope that such a world is possible. 

 

I found both books fascinating and equally valid but quite different.  DuBois does not agree with Washington's stance.  I am not certain Washington would have agreed with DuBois, but that is not the point.  I am also not convinced that Washington was an "Uncle Tom" and although I know what the term means, I also struggle with the idea that the Uncle Tom most of us know is the one portrayed in movies and on television, and that Uncle Tom is but a shadow of the original Uncle Tom as he was written.  Dismissing Washington as an Uncle Tom, the idea of the Uncle Tom itself, is a fiction, a trope for a two dimensional world that refuses to acknowledge nuance, or reality.  It is simpler, but not true.

 

But I have wandered into the weeds.  Both works are shocking at times; both are moving, often most moving when talking, almost off-handedly, of deeply personal things.  Both writers are most revealing when they are also the most oblique, when they hint at the vastness of things not said.  DuBois' essays are meticulously argued, but it is the poetry of the personal stories that resonate.  One cannot understand where we were without reading both, just as you cannot understand where we are now without also reading MLK and Malcolm X.  

 

And then back to fiction, my comfort zone.

 

Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet has resided on my shelves since its initial publication and I am only now getting to it.   Once I started I wondered why I had put it off so long.  This is fine historical fiction.  Set in Stratford in the late 16th Century it is the story of the young William Shakespeare, although he is actually never named here, his wife, Anne Hathaway, and the loss of their son, Hamnet.    Hamnet was apparently another spelling of the name Hamlet, which I knew; my early English literature training coming to the fore here.  In so many ways our obsession with proper spelling of names is such a modern thing.   O'Farrell imagines Hathaway as a strong, resourceful, fierce and creative young woman, the kind of young woman to which an observant and poetic young man might be drawn.  The setting is convincing, the story as well, and the author ties in the few known facts about Shakespeare's personal life into the story in convincing, if not always historically accurate,  ways.   Anne and Will never really overcome the rift created between them over Hamnet's death, although the drift was already present.  It was always evident that young Will's imaginings that he would take his wife to London were at odds with everything we were shown about her character; as well as many of the realities of life in 16th century England.  This did not surprise me, knowing that it was not unusual for families to stay behind, and I was grateful that O'Farrell did not fall into the modern assumption that Hathaway was a shrew simply because she stayed in Stratford.  But more than just a beautiful and heart-warming story, Hamnet is also an exploration of loss and the transformative origins and consolations of art. 

 

Next I read the new Louise Penny/Hillary Clinton political thriller, State of Terror, and I actually enjoyed it more than I anticipated.   It is a well-crafted political thriller and it read like a good mix of the two authors voices.  I am not certain I am happy about some of the connections made with Penny's Three Pines characters, I suppose these had to be added in to satisfy Penny's fans.  There is also a lot of sarcasm and political pay-back, which I did expect, and although some of it bordered on off-putting, generally the story got moving quickly enough that one just let it slip.  It always seems to me that a fair amount of suspension of disbelief is required in these novels anyway.  It was a gripping read that I didn't really want to put down. Although I suspect that the political machinations and insights are not as off-base as my heart would prefer, I did find it lacking in the empathetic insights of Penny's Three Pines voice.  This was no cozy mystery.   The ending left open the possibility of another novel, but I am not certain I would follow through, even if the authors do.

 

Lastly, I read There, There by Tommy Orange.  This was a novel that completely surprised me.  I don't remember why I put it on my library hold list, a recommendation from a friend probably, but I absolutely loved it.   The opening chapter is explosively passionate and I was completely captured by the voice, by the changing voices, by the palpable anger and confusion and even poetry of emotion and loss. This novel is told from the point of view of several characters, telling stories that initially seem disconnected but eventually come together to form a complexly woven whole.  Sometimes the transition between the stories seemed choppy; sometimes the stories seemed incomplete, and I cannot say it was the easiest read,  but I gradually came to recognize that this was intentional, a part of the story itself.  There is some confusion around the timeline just as there is confusion in the characters understanding of themselves, their place in society, and their own history -- the very state of existence known as Native American.  

 

The title of the novel is taken from a famous quote by Gertrude Stein, about Oakland, where the novel mostly takes place, when she stated that there was no "there, there" meaning the Oakland of her childhood was no longer evident in the 'there' of contemporary Oakland.  Of course this is always the case for all of us, but in this novel that meaning is even more profound as the characters are trying to reconcile the "there" of their modern lives in Oakland with an almost mythological "there" of their heritage, something to which many of the characters have no knowledge or palpable connection, other than the fact that they are judged for being Native American and they yearn for some defining story to make sense of their lives.  This is an incredibly powerful novel, filled with raw emotion.  Orange captures the feelings of these characters so that something of each of them and their struggles sneak under the skin of the reader.  Never have I read anything so powerfully soul-wrenching about the experience of alcoholism, or being a child born with fetal alcohol syndrome.  Never have I felt such raw yearning.  I can't say it was a favorite book because it was too shocking to be so classified; but I will certainly look for future work from this author, and my view of the world will never be the same. 

 

Books I Read in October

'Tis the last day of November,

And what do I do?

I struggle to publish

A book list for you......

 

Bad attempts at poetry not withstanding, I will get my October reading out of the way, if only so that I can start on the November list, hopefully before my December gets out of hand.  

 

It may already be too late for that, of course.  November seems to be simultaneously a time when I have mustered energy and strength enough to begin putting the routines of daily life back to rights while at the same time, shoving my shoulders to the door and bracing my feet to keep it from bursting wide open with the calls and demands of worldly too muchness.

 

But.......Books

 

My October reading was, for the most part, light and inconsequential, not that there is anything to complain of in that.  I was in undergoing radiation therapy.  I had days of increasing strength and energy, and days where I would have happily stayed in bed.  I was frustrated that, although I was feeling increasingly better as chemo therapy drugs were dissipating from my systems and my body was beginning the long process of healing from the onslaught, neuropathy continued to be a problem.  I wanted it all to be done.  Very human that, as also is the impetus to escape into something silly and or distracting.

 

114. October started off with The Guest Book by Sarah Blake.  Oh my, was this a frustrating read!  In fact, had it not been for a book group, I would have abandoned this book fairly early on.  

 

Surprisingly, although I struggled through the five-hundred some-odd pages of dissatisfied whining by wooden characters in a novel with no core, no heart, nothing to grab onto, there were parts of this novel, certain themes, that persistently stayed glued in my thoughts. Yes, I thought. Yes, I wondered.  Yes, I wished that the author had been less scattered in her focus on big themes, and had more adept at tying them together in deeper development of at least one character.  There is a lot that could have been explored here:  A multi-generational family saga, an island in Maine, family secrets, so much to explore.  But it wasn't really explored, just listed, and almost analyzed through the overlapping stories of three generations of women, except that this interleaving of experiences never quite worked, and this reader never really connected with any of the three women.  

 

Blake was taking on big questions and alas, the questions overwhelmed the novel.  Rather than deft emotional exploration we were given minutia, pat answers and cliché. This book left me yearning for a different book; it could have been so much more relevant, revealing, even rewarding had there been less attention paid to throwing in circumstances and greater focus on the personal repercussions caused by the ripple of those circumstances. I found the novel to be less than satisfying, even if thought provoking.  No regrets however: it was worth reading the book if only for the group discussion, which was far more interesting than the novel itself.  In that sense, I would have to say it was a good book club novel; depending on the temperament of the club itself.

 

Book 115:  Charming Falls Apart by Angela Terry.  This sweet, charming, bit of fluff, chick lit at its best, just made me happy.  It didn't take long to read, and the story was predictable, but those were not problems here.  The story, about a young woman who loses her job and her fiancé on one fateful day, and has to find her way back from this upset of her "perfect" life, is just fun to read.  There is humor and growth, and yes a bit of sappiness as well, but it was the perfect book for me at the time.  The gentle exploration of vulnerability and self-mockery exploited by self-help books was particularly adept. Sometimes one needs something that just brightens the spirits, and does it with a light hand. 

 

116. I went into Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken with high hopes.  I was disappointed although it is not necessarily a bad book.  Perhaps it is just that the passage of time has not played well with Hawken's thesis.  It is actually a very good survey of millions of small NGOs from around the world, of the desire of people to effect change, and a cataloging of the, mostly local, desire of humans to change direction  and return to some kind of biological, environmental, and humane sanity.    But he is trying to define this movement as a coherent movement, despite its incoherence.  Hawken acknowledges the localness of the human condition, and even makes efforts to point out that the global human community and its impact does not depend on agreement on specifics, but acknowledgement of the common humanity that includes our differences.  He fails in that he focuses too greatly on labeling a movement, even as he acknowledges that a defining focus cannot exist.  I found the book naively optimistic.  

 

A quote from the introduction stuck with me though, and it defines much of the tenor of this book, and hits home with me in my own views of life:

 

If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data.  If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven't got a heart.   (4.1.4)

 

117. Next, I picked up James Baldwin's slim but profound volume, The Fire Next Time.. Baldwin's passionate voice, the intelligence of his observations and his prose are still highly relevant even over half a century after this book was written.  Baldwin writes about being black in America, about how black Americans see white Americans, and chillingly so, how whites do not see themselves.  It is a book that is easily read in one sitting, and yet I kept coming back to it over the course of several days.  Absorption took weeks. I saw Baldwin's insights in other books, other events in my life, changing my thoughts, still.  I think this is a book everyone should read, a book that I wish I had read when I was 15, when I was reading the writings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.  I didn't know about James Baldwin at that time. In my own, admittedly naive in some ways, worldview, this and quite a few primary sources would be taught and read by all teenagers when they study American History. But that would require a world that took a different view of itself.  Whereas the more pessimistic side of myself believes the only lesson history teaches us is that we don't learn the lessons of history.

 

I ended the month with more frivolity.  I talked to my mom on October 31, and she mentioned a book she had found in the library at her assisted living facility, Safe and Sound by Fern Michaels.  I was tired and overwhelmed, I needed an easy read, and I was able to download it from the local library system to my kindle right then and there.  So I read it.

 

118. This is volume 29 in Michaels' Sisterhood series, but I didn't know that when I picked it up.  It was still an entertaining read, quickly finished in just a couple of hours.  I will say up front that I do not like most of Michaels' romance novels, but I enjoyed this, and I went on to a bit of a mini-binge into the beginning of November.  The novel is meant to pull at the heart-strings:  a lonely, abused, child in trouble, women who want to protect him, and inflict punishment on those who cause this charming boy harm. The Sisterhood is a series about female vigilantes.  It is pure over-the-top female revenge fantasy where bright ambitious women take on the ills of the world.  No one is killed, but that does not mean that punishment and retribution are not occasionally quite violent.  Yes, I loved it.  I can say that even as the punishment in this particular case made me squirm, although I also understood it.  

 

We are complex  and inconsistent, we humans, aren't we?  No point in pretending otherwise.