restingmotion

Transitional Spaces, Meandering Thoughts

I am sitting in my empty apartment writing this post.  Why?  Because it is hot out and I am not ready to go back outside.  Also because my computer is here since AT&T came today to set up my internet service.  Why am I writing my blog post from a mostly empty apartment?  Because fiber. 

 

The apartment is not completely empty.  The laundry room is partially organized, which is good because the washer and dryer at the house have been disconnected and prepared for storage.  I've brought over most of the pantry.  There is an aerobed, a table, a few pots, coffee. There is a bookcase in the alcove that will become my office, and two stacks of Elfa wide single runner drawers filled with yarn.  Those came because everything is sorted and labeled and cataloged and I didn't want the movers to mix things up.  The wide frame that they belong in is not here yet because it will not fit in my car.

 

I am tired, and hot, but I am not as stiff and sore as I was.  The Elfa drawers were the last big things I brought that had be be carried in front of the body, and lugging them up the stairs, even one at a time (light but still awkward) was still difficult.  The simple truth is that I can't carry stuff like that.  Everything else can be tossed in a sack or a duffel and carried over my shoulders or on my back.  It is still tough going up the stairs, but my back is no longer sore.   I huff and puff too much, and am reminded that I miss that earlier Mardel, the one who was a bit of a gym rat, who walked and bike and did furious workouts. That isn't exactly right.  I miss the feeling of being capable and strong, but I don't miss being that girl, that girl who worried about what other people thought, that girl who could never believe she was somehow good enough.  Now I want to be strong again just so I can do the things I want to do, and enjoy doing them.  Now I know I can be strong.  I can carry heavy packs up the stairs on my back, but probably couldn't carry a platter of drinks across the room.  Now I can accept that I can dig the hole, that I can be tough with a pickaxe, but I can't lift the shrub that needs to go in the hole.   I can dig the rocks, uproot them, but I can't carry them away.  And you know what, that is all fine with me.  None of us are really meant to be solitary, to be completely self-sufficient. I can do what I have to do, and if I had to move that rock I could figure out a way.  Solitary gets in the way of solidarity.  My skills complement other's skills.  Together we turn things around.

But back to the move: I am writing at this little table, the same table I spray painted over the July Fourth holiday.  It looks a little lonely in this very empty, very beige apartment, but stuff will arrive and we, the table and I, will settle in. This is not a table for big dinner parties.  I could have brought my dining table.  But then there would have been no room for chairs.  Maybe one chair, with its back to the living room, but what fun is that?  I can't imagine anything more depressing than a big dining table with only one chair, no with hope of sharing a lovingly made repast, no hope of convivial dinnertime conversation.  Better a smaller table with potential.  Although if four people ate here they would have to be four people who didn't mind getting entangled with others, knees touching, feet intertwined.  All kinds of potential for trouble.  All kind of potential for togetherness.

 

I'll probably just have people over for drinks and nibbles.  And it does strike me as one of those funny little jokes that life plays on us that, now, moving out of my house which is good for entertaining, I suddenly am ready to entertain again.  For six months I needed to pull inward and not be particularly social.  It had nothing to do with the house and everything to do with me, me and my own propensity to root around in the undergrowth, stirring up the leaf-mold and things that are best left undisturbed.  Oh wait.  I wasn't the one that stirred the pot.  But there is a lot of pot stirring going on the world right now, and a lot of turds are floating to the top.  People I once thought of as wise and kind let their reactionary edges show, and burrow deeper. I realize they are often only trying to shut out the unpleasantness, but in reality they just create more cesspools, uprooting even bigger turds.  Not everyone mind you, many of us are still kind.  But I fear the cesspools will grow deeper and more and more sinkholes will be revealed. I fear more of us will fall in.  All the more reason to gather together, to keep each other afloat. Hence parties.

 

But I digress. The official move is next week.  First stuff for storage.  Then stuff for the apartment.  There are a few more things I have to get taken care of this weekend, just to make life easier for myself next week, but hopefully also to make the transition a little less stressful for Moises and Tikka.   Tikka will go back and forth with me, but I've decided that it may be best for Moises if we move to the apartment tomorrow, camp out a bit before the rest of our stuff arrives.  He will be upset regardless. But I am hoping he will be a little less upset than he would be at the house, with people moving his stuff around.

 

And I am thrilled with my small accomplishments:

The little things include my coat and wine closet.  There are no closets on the main floor of my house, and no hook, or place to hang a coat either.  That will be remedied when I return, but for now I am thrilled to have a convenient place to store coats, and a convenient place to store wine.  I've also hung shower curtains, and I am thrilled to have a bathroom that actually has towel bars and a place for toilet paper.  The previous owners of my house seem to have removed all the toilet paper holders and towel bars when they vacated the premises.  Admittedly I could have replaced them.  But I didn't want to spend money on towel bars when I was going to be redoing the bathrooms within a year anyway.  Count me cheap, at least about some things. The truth is, I am tired of my efficient, but tiny little bathroom with no place to hang a towel.   Perhaps buying a towel bar would have been cheaper than removing a wall and redoing everything, but well, I probably would have done that anyway.  I'm still a Texan after all, "go big or go home" runs in my veins, but I'm not all about bigness or space, just getting it right.  I'm either all in, or I'm all out.  No halfsies here.

 

 

It begins:

Bookstool:

 

This little African stool was George's before I knew him.  I didn't think of stacking books on top of it, but it was a good idea. The content, and the location, have evolved.  Last summer and fall the stool was stacked with the nominees for the 2017 Booker Prize, and they were removed as they were read.  Paul Auster's 4321 is the only remaining book on the short list I have not gotten to, although there are actually three additional books from the 2017 longlist that I still haven't read, and still intend to read.  I hope to do better this year.

 

Currently the stack contains the Booker winners from the past 5 years, plus the aforementioned 4321. I have not read them all, although I hope to do so.  I also hope to read this year's longlist.  I accept that although I may well read all these books, I may not do so in a timely fashion. Still, it costs me no more to hope.

The 2018 longlist was announced yesterday.  The collage shown above was taken from The Telegraph, here.   Of these books, I have already read Warlight, and I have a copy of the Overstory on my stack, just waiting for a little post-move defragmentation and a hoped for increase in my ability to concentrate.  I've been of mixed minds about The Mars Room, but accept that I will indeed read it.  In fact there are a couple of novels I would probably never have chosen to read were they not on the list, and so I shall be thankful in advance for expanded horizons.  

 

But there are very few Booker-nominated books I have felt were a waste of time, and some have completely entranced or changed my way of thinking.  The Sellout was one of those books and, in fact, it was a difficult read.  Initially I was simply shocked and dismayed, but the novel won me over, and showed me a new way of looking at a culture, at people's hearts, and through the novel, at myself and my own assumptions.

 

But of course that is what fiction does.  it doesn't have to be literary fiction.  Three of my favorite books last year were on the short list for the Man Booker, and I probably would not have read two of them were it not for that list.  My other favorite books were by Louise Penny; I don't consider them inferior, just different.  In fact books chosen for the Booker Prize may not be better, just different.  There is room for all kinds of books in the world, just as there are all kinds of readers.  C.S. Lewis said something along the lines of: "there are no bad books, only poor readers", and I tend to think there is a lot of wisdom in that statement.  That line has been running around in my head a lot this year, as has Abraham Rothberg's statement that "fiction is a lie that tells the truth".  Lies are lies, except when they are not.  The truth is the truth, except when it is not.  I better not let my poor brain spin in circles.

 

Better, I think, to start looking for books.  Last year, most books on the list were not available at my local library.  I don't suppose this year will be much different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday Miscellany

I'm still here, not doing much, with barely anything to report.

 

Today it is two weeks before the official construction start date.  Next week is moving week, and for now I am still just kind of hanging out between phases of my life, still sorting out what goes where, still packing some things before the movers come, still changing plans, almost daily it seems.  I am moving some small things, there are always things that it seems to make sense to move myself, that I don't want to pay someone else to pack, although at the moment I can't say that I honestly don't think it would be easier just to pay someone.  I live in and use all three floors of my house, and think nothing of running up and down stairs all day long.  But I had forgotten how exhausting it is to carry stuff, 25 to 40 pound loads of stuff, up and down stairs out to my car, up stairs to my apartment, in the heat.   No wonder I have little to say.

 

But here are a few things that have entranced me lately.

 

1.  My small wine rack.

I put this together this morning after hauling the coats, some wine, and a few other kitchen supplies over from the house.  It was actually rather gratifying to sit on the cool floor in the empty apartment and bang things together. And I am thrilled to have a coat closet since there has been no place to hang a coat or jacket in this house since I moved in.  I still won't have a coat closet when I move back, but I will have a rear entry and space for a coat rack.  I jettisoned the coat closet with the extended addition, but that is ok.  I am thrilled with what is ahead.

 

2. Coreopsis.

I picked up the yellow li'l bang coreopsis as a kind of next-best choice.  I really wanted a different color, but didn't find it.  Now I am happy.  I love the way the cheerful yellow flowers play so nicely with the little lime hydrangeas.  The south side of the front yard is doing really well considering I just planted it all this year, and we have had some extended dry spells.  I've decided I will need a lot more coreopsis next spring.

 

3. Crape Myrtle.

The crape myrtle on the cool, shady side of the front yard is also doing much better this year after I hacked back a bunch of other trees and shrubs that I really didn't want.  I remember talking to my neighbor and he didn't even believe there was a crape myrtle in that thicket. No doubting its presence this year, as the blossoms are quiet evident, although I will have a good bit of weeding out to do again next spring.

 

4.  New Perfume

 

I treated myself to a decant set of natural perfumes that Duchesse, of the blog passage des perles had recommended and I fell promptly in love with one perfume, Arbolé Arbolé by Hiram Greene. I have been wearing it every day and it just makes me feel grounded and happy.   It is sweet without being sugary, at least on me, with hints of patchouli, cedar, and sandalwood, therefore making it somewhat woody and grassy but without the harsh edge of some woodsy fragrances. It also feels a bit spicy, with a little touch of the oriental, but I don't really know if that is an intended part of the perfume, or how I feel wearing it. It reminds me of walking outside at dawn on a summer morning right after a nighttime rainstorm, when one smells the wet, but one also smells the earth, the wood, the perfume of flowers hanging in the air.  It is a scent both soft and warm, bruised and also full of hope.  I think that is how I feel when I wear Arbolé Arbolé.  I feel like I am in a bubble of hopeful equanimity, as if no matter how harsh the storms, how ugly the world, there is still hope that nature and right will win out. For me, for this summer at least, it is the perfect perfume, filled with hope and laughter, calm, and a touch of flirtatiousness, where upsets are melded into new growth, a reminder that as long as there is still beauty and life, there is also still hope. 

 

 

Bookish Meanderings

 

When you attempt a memoir, I am told, you need to be in an orphan state.  So what is missing in you, and the things you have grown cautious and hesitant about, will come almost casually toward you.  "A memoir is the last inheritance" you realize, so that during this time you must learn how and where to look.  In the resulting self-portrait everything will rhyme, because everything has been reflected.  If a gesture was flung away in the past, you now see it in the possession of another. So I believe something in my mother must rhyme in me.  She in her small hall of mirrors and I in mine.

                                                            Michael Ondaatje, Warlight,  page 135.

 

It is rather odd to be writing a post about a book I read over a month ago, books actually, as more than one book is haunting my memory cache.  But there are advantages to distance as well, one being the inability to provide a proper review of the book, as my memory is just not up to the task.  Instead what you will get is a mishmash of remembered ideas and themes, almost like fragments of conversations that have haunted my thoughts.

 

It should not surprise you that I loved Warlight.  I love Ondaatje's poetic prose, and the way his books always seem somewhat shrouded and circular, revealing themselves slowly, as though through a mist or a fog.  In that sense this novel is typical:  the prose is lyrical, the characterizations complex, but like the plot, everything is non-linear and somewhat difficult to suss out.  Nothing is easily revealed.  But then nothing is easily revealed in life either.  We make snap judgements, seek easy answers, but they often lead us down false paths.  So too Ondaatje's characters.  

 

Actually Warlight, the title itself, is a foreshadowing and a metaphor for much of what is explored in the novel itself.  The term of course refers to the dimmed light from World War II, but it also refers to memory and the way we are shaped by our experiences, but not just our experiences alone, but by the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences.  "What I am now was formed by whatever happened to me then, not by what I have achieved, but by how I got here."  (p. 274). Nathanial has defined himself as an abandoned child.  That it happens to be true, or at least technically partially true, is not the point; the point is how the experience shapes his life, how what he choses to remember, and what he choses to forget, shape the person he becomes.

 

Warlight is a fascinating novel, and I'm sure I've missed the gist of most of it here, but my in my thoughts certain themes swirl together with other themes and other books.  Perhaps these thoughts are complicated because I interrupted Warlight in the middle to read another book, a book that happened to land in my pile from the library at precisely that moment.  The second book was The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin.  And here I am, writing about two books that are nothing alike in the same paragraph.

 

Or are they really all that different after all?  Certainly The Immortalists is not as poetic as Warlight.  But The Immortalists may appeal to those who want a little more story, a little more action, a little less navel grazing.  And yet the stories are related.  Both begin in the childhood of their protagonists; in both, a childhood incident becomes a focal point in defining the person each will become.  Nathaniel is a man afraid of making connections. In The Immortalists, the bored quest of a summer afternoon seemingly alters the course of lifetimes. Or does it?  That is one of the questions asked by this fascinating novel.  Four children visit a fortune teller; four children are told the day of their death. Three of them die on their assigned date.  But was the date a chain or a key? The children are shaped by their family, by their culture, by so many things, and the fortune-teller is just the pivot point.  

 

Benjamin uses the story as a starting point in an exploration of time, place, culture, families and relationships.  And it is a tale simultaneously evocative, endearing, maddening.  We move from The Lower East Side of New York in the 70's to San Francisco in the 1980s, to the Hudson Valley and back to California.   The youngest, Simon, is the first to die. But was the proffered date a gift or a curse? Even at a tender age he feels different from his family, a child torn between self and environment.  Did the fortune-teller see the future, or is she simply intuitive, seeing something of the essential nature of each child and offering them a tool?  There are no easy answers here, and the children, as well as their mother, eventually must question their own motives, their strengths and failings, as well as the burdens of love, hope, guilt.  Ondaatje and Benjamin are examining similar questions in very different ways, with different, and yet related, revelations to be mined.

 

All this brings me to yet another novel,  Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere.  Ng's novel is the easiest read of the novels discussed here, but it is not necessarily lightweight and I think there are depths under its glassy surface.  I think it perfectly captured its milieu and its intention.  I would even say that the broad characterizations, stereotypes almost, actually served the point rather well here. Ng is weighing the promise of success, the promise of the "ideal" life, of the bubble we have created around aspirational class American life, and finding it somewhat wanting.  It is a life of surfaces.  This novel is more direct in placing blame, in revealing flaws in the surface.  

 

One of the deepest fault lines in Little Fires Everywhere revolved around Mrs, Richardson (Elena) and her youngest daughter, Izzy.  I found the portrayal of this relationship both shocking and also sensitive precisely because of its obliqueness.   And it is this relationship exactly that ties this novel to the other two in this post.  Nathanial has self-identified as abandoned.  The children in the Immortalist both absorb and strike out against the expectations of their parents, parents who are trying to rise above their own stations in the world, with sometimes tragic results.  All three novels present the needs of children at odds with their parent's own needs and expectations. And Izzy? Poor Izzy.  I felt sorry for Izzy from the very beginning.  She is the identified patient of the story, and we initially meet her in absentia, through the eyes of her family and her assigned role in that family. But then, as the novel progresses we see glimpses of the true Izzy, and Ng is clever here, slowly revealing that the stereotypical "bad child" is rarely what she is made out to be.  Izzy is the child that never fit her mother's mold, and whom the mother has singled out from the beginning; confrontation becomes her only option.  

 

I have known mothers like Elena Robinson.  I know their children.  I think Ng successfully tried to portray something that is more common than we would like to believe in a sympathetic way.  She did not make Izzy the evil child.  She did not even make Elena the evil mom, although it is evident that most of Elena's identity as the warm, loving, caring, generous mom is mostly about her perception of her role than it is about any actual benefit to her children.  We see Izzy gaining confidence.  We see Elena unraveling.  Izzy may have been the match that lit the fires, but the fires were built by Elena.  The match did not strike itself. For one brief moment,  Mia, the creative mom, and the dangerous interloper, incites the other children to work with Izzy, to act with her rather than against her.  We can only hope it is enough.  Ng gives subtle hints of the future, but no easy answers here.  

 

Do these books all run together in my mind because they were read in close proximity to each other?  Or do they feed some natural bent in my own imagination?  It is probably a combination of both, proximity and my own interpretations of experience. But words, like children in a small way, take on lives of their own, form their own relationships with readers. I am interested in how reading changes us, whether or not it affects our own understandings and relationships.

 

Have you read any of these novels?  If so, what thoughts have stuck with you?  They do not need to mirror mine.  They should not mirror mine.  I see only what is reflected in my own mirror, but without other angles, other views from other mirrors, there is no insight, no enlightenment, no growth.

The Common Blue-Banded Booby

I believe this was the first time in many years that I did not post on Independence Day. I spent much of the day outside. It was a privilege and a joy, even though I did not spend my time at any Independence Day celebrations.  This has not always been the case.  In the past few years I have gone to cookouts,  spent the day boating with friends,  watched the Farragut Independence Day parade, gone downtown for the festivities there, watched fireworks, heard the symphony. 

 

This year I celebrated my independence of choice.  I celebrated the privilege to work, to work at projects of my choosing.  In fact, the idea of privilege itself was a constant in my thoughts, and will perhaps be overused in this post. I thought about those who came to this country, many fleeing oppression of many kinds, seeking the freedom to choose their own lives, their own paths, their own work, their own religion.  This is actually what our Declaration of Independence celebrates, the legacy of choice, the legacy of hard-working souls who insisted on their right to choose their own path.

Actually I wasn't doing anything so lofty.  I worked in the yard, despite the fact that it was obnoxiously hot.  I did some gardening early, mostly weeding, and then moved on to other projects.  Yesterday felt like the first day of summer to me, although it wasn't really, but it felt like a day set aside, a day with no obligations, no interruptions, a day to do as I pleased.  And I was pleased to wash and paint outdoor furniture.

 

This was not the first time I painted the Panton chairs.  I refreshed the yellow chairs a few years ago. Apparently the colored chairs wee not meant to hold up outside, although they held up beautifully for years in Hyde Park.  In Knoxville, after one year, they were pale faded versions of themselves.  I don't know if it is the stronger sun, the longer humid season with its greater mold-producing tendencies, the pollen, or what.  I spray painted them my second summer in Knoxville, and kept them in a protected spot afterward.  But they went back outside here, at the new house, and were worse for it. They are not good outdoor chairs for Knoxville, and will not remain outdoors for any length of time in the future. But first they needed refurbishing.

 

I chose a color called lagoon.  Four chairs were painted.  There are no flat surfaces on a Panton chair, which means that it takes multiple steps to paint them, and it took much of the day, although there were periods of painting, and periods of waiting.  I had lofty ambitions of cleaning the garage during the waiting periods, but it soon grew too steamy.  I needed to run a couple of errands, and while I was out I decided to paint a table as well, a fairly modern black steel table that was looking worse for wear and was destined for the donation pile. I spent the remainder of the day washing and painting outdoor furniture, working in the garden and garage, and coming inside to work when I would get overheated, which was frequently during the middle of the afternoon.  

 

As the afternoon waned, and I was out until nearly 9 before everything was finished, I would listen to various bursts of fireworks around me.  I've not lived anywhere where so many fireworks went off, not at least in my adult life, although I remember going out to the lake or the countryside to set off fireworks with my parents when I was a child.  I don't recall setting off fireworks at home, but I don't know if fireworks were allowed in city limits or not.   In Hyde Park we could occasionally sit on our deck and watch the display from a nearby town, but often we went down to Poughkeepsie to see the fireworks display first-hand.  Although I love professional fireworks displays, I have no interest in setting them off myself.  In fact I love parades and fireworks, but somehow this year did not feel like going by myself, despite the fact that I knew I would see people I knew.  I always see people I know.  Not family however, I am the only one among my remaining local family who enjoy an occasional  pyrotechnic display. 

 

This year my intent had been to work and then go downtown, but I quickly realized that to leave would mean the work would be unfinished, and I chose to finish.  I was content with my choice,  reminded to once again to thank my own privilege, the privilege to choose to work, but also the privilege of keeping a cool house, the privilege to go inside whenever I felt overheated.  These are luxuries not to be taken lightly.  As I put the last piece of furniture in place, I saw the flash of some neighborhood fireworks through the trees, and I thought about what a happy fourth it had been.  But I also thought about fireworks and parades and barbecues, and the many ways we celebrate the fourth of July, and that the very ability to do these things is a privilege, a privilege earned for us by our forebears, who were all immigrants to this place.

I am happy with the results of my labors.  Two chairs remain outside, for now, but I will keep them here only a few days.  The chairs will move with me to my apartment during construction.  I'm not sure about the blue table yet.  It is an inexpensive thing, the finish is peeling and flaking off the bottom, but it can go in the garage during construction, delaying the decision until next spring.

The table turned out well and I am newly entranced.  It seems I am always drawn to color.    I still don't know where it will go once the new deck is finished, as I want a larger table, but I love this light green.  The pale blue chairs are not mine, we gave them to my step-daughter's family when we moved here, six years ago. It is hard to believe it has been so long. But they do look pretty with the table.

The other two Panton chairs are inside, in the morning room, with the twin to the now-green table.  I did not paint this one as it always has a cloth.  This table, and all four chairs will move to my apartment, as the dining space is not large enough for my dining table, even without the leaves. Looking at this photo, I see that the curtain needs to come down now, at least if I am going to leave the table in the corner, even temporarily.   The curtains will come down anyway as I will be moving in less than a month. 

 

But what about the "blue-banded booby"?  I am the booby.  Well, I actually believe we are all boobys at times, and in this instance I am not referring to the bird, but the other meaning of the word, although I am saying it with love and humor.  Actually bobby's were so named because the sailors who named thought they were stupid.  They weren't of course, perhaps unexperienced with humans, but they learned.  I think that is something to remember, that we often make judgements based on incomplete information, that one seems stupid in one context may, in fact, not be stupid at all in another, and that we all, at some point make mistakes.  Mistakes are actually what makes us human.  Mistakes are probably the secret of our success, and the source of our greatest discoveries.  We are all boobies and  we should not take ourselves too seriously.  It seems that much of the wisdom of age seems to revolve around holding things lightly, even mistakes.  

I am the blue-banded booby.  It was a very calm day, but at one point in the evening a breeze came up, and a few specks of dust got stuck in my wet paint.  I can live with that.  But I apparently did not realize that I was, at one point, downwind of the spray paint.  It was late; I was tired; mistakes happen.   Unfortunately, by the time I realized what had happened, the paint was sufficiently dry that it did not come off easily.  I shall consider it a badge of honor, honoring my humanity, and a birthday gift to myself, although only a temporary one.  Within a few days all remnants of blue shall be gone and only the memory will remain -- memory and perhaps a gentle smile.