restingmotion

Spark Joy

The symphony season began last weekend in Knoxville, and as usual, I attended the Friday performance.  It was a wonderful performance, a wonderful evening, and I returned home bursting with happiness, happily jotting down a few notes and impressions of the concert, full of good intentions.  It always takes me a while to translate my swirling emotions and thoughts following a concert into cogent words, and I have learned to accept this about myself, that I would not be suited to writing reviews on a deadline, just as my hands and mind refuse to become a fast knitter.  Although I desire to make things and write, barring dire necessity, production itself is never the goal.  It is sufficient to get wherever I am going in whatever pace is needed.

 

Alas, this week I took longer than anticipated.  I was under the weather Saturday and again early in the week.  Tikka was under the weather as well, and worry never aids in the flow of words.  But we are both on the mend and this year I am determined to not let the concerts slip into the ether before I put down words, if only to assist my own memory.  

 

It was a busy weekend in Knoxville, and I got to the concert hall early.  Since this was the opening concert there was a champagne toast, and I enjoyed sipping champagne and spending time chatting with friends, getting to my seat before the short opening work, Starburst by young American composer Jonathan Leshnoff.  It felt to me like the composer, and the orchestra as well, had captured that energy, that sense of bursting forth, and turned it into a beautiful, swirling performance. The music began with a great rhythmic energy that built to a single chord that held, then slowly faded away as instruments dropped off, folding into the perfect calm of a clarinet cadenza.  The music built back up to a beautifully bouncing balance of rhythm and melody in the second half.  I felt it was a happy piece, although admittedly these are but fleeting impressions, and I really need more exposure to the piece to build any kind of appreciation or understanding.

 

The Leshnoff was followed by what was for me the big draw of he evening, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, played by pianist Joyce Yang.    Of course, I tend to think that the piece itself is a work of pure emotional genius, and I was not disappointed in the performance.  Yang was fabulous, and the conversation between soloist and orchestra seemed perfectly harmonious, drawing this listener in from the opening bars of the solo piano, to the way the music swells into a powerful storm, balanced and interspersed with moments of calm.   There is so much happening in that first movement, different themes running around each other, sometimes bumping together but never crashing.  This is part of the genius of the piece to me, the way Rachmaninoff brings all these disparate elements into a common mesh, and the orchestra pulled this off beautifully.  I could not help but ebb and rage, swept away with the music.

 

And that was only the first movement.  The second movement is of course the movement we all know, and from the heights of the first movement I plunged into the second.  It was the culmination of an emotionally difficult day, following a funeral for a friend's mother, seeing that same friend, drawn and worn, stretched thin; my concern for the family.  I too was drawn and frayed and the emotion of the second movement burrowed deeply, eliciting tears.  Of course that movement is filled with a sense of loss and longing.  By the end I felt drained and spent, but of course you are not left there dangling,  This is part of the genius of Rachmaninoff: following the cacophony of the first movement, through the emotional depths of the second movement,  everything is pulled together in the finale. Through longing, comes  peace, hope, thundering power and the majesty of something I can only liken to faith.  It ended up being a perfect piece of music for me to be lost in on that particular day, probably on any day.

 

But this was only the first half of the concert.  Through the intermission the beautiful cry of the oboe in the Rachmaninoff echoed in my thoughts, and of course it would soon be followed even more thrillingly in the second half of the concert, in the Brahms Symphony #1, with a shimmeringly beautiful oboe solo, and stunning solos on horns and violin, and its own unique way of combining disparate themes and ideas into a harmonious and satisfying whole.  It was, I think, a happy pairing, the Rachmaninoff and the Brahms, both works brilliant in their respective ways.

 

I came late to an appreciation of Brahms, and I continue to grow in that regard.  I heard a lot of Brahms growing up, along with Beethoven and Bach.  Yes, my dad was a "three Bs" listener, but it was Beethoven that I most absorbed as a child, and Brahms with which I struggled the most.  That could have simply been youth, but I think it was also the emphasis I absorbed, and which I think was played up in my father's recordings, that Brahms was the "new" Beethoven, the successor to Beethoven, and I am happy that orchestras and musicians have gotten away from that narrow view, if it was ever a trend.  I don't know if that was a widely held view or just something I picked up, partially informed, from my small pool of understanding.  I don't really see Brahms that way today.  Of course there are moments that sound a little like Beethoven in some of the music, even in the first symphony, but in music, as in life, the past is inescapable, part and parcel of who we are.  We can become a slave to it or move forward.  Brahms moved forward. 

 

Certainly the opening movement of Brahm's Symphony No, 1 feels like it owes little to Beethoven except, perhaps, in its use of texture rather than a consistent melody.  I have to thank Aram Demirjian for reminding me of that as I was struggling with how to link my chicken scratches about the performance.   I think of Beethoven as liking clearly defined themes, linked together in discrete packages, but that is not what you find in the first movement of Brahm's First.   To this listener the Brahms opened with a polyphony of overlapping themes and ideas, a rich and complex counterpoint that felt far more closely related to Bach, and perhaps older forms as well, than anything that I associate with Beethoven.  From the opening lines the rising notes of the violins and cellos form a contrast with the descending notes of the violas and clarinets -- joy contrasted with lament.  It is almost exactly this contrast and overlapping of themes, melding into a harmonious whole, not particularly melodic but very moving and both intellectually and emotionally rich that brings the symphony into satisfying territory.  Again, this movement seems to stand more on the shoulders of Bach than Beethoven, but truly it is neither.  Brahms is reimagining the symphony: it is as if he is trying to merge the tight multi-dimensional complexity of a small scale work like a fugue with the grandeur and enveloping scale of an orchestral work. As the first movement continues to unfold the contrasting rising and falling lines seem to do battle, thrillingly but also harmoniously, locked together arm in arm, a yin and yang, although Brahms would not have known those terms.

 

Of course that high-wire balancing act cannot continue, and the first movement folds into the gentle lyricism of the second, a soothing place created by the music, like being caressed by silk, which slips into the allegretto e grazioso.  Here we have a gentle dance, a melody on a gentle breeze, a symphony that has begun in a worldly cacophony of voices and then turned inward, self-soothing, seeking quiet joys.

 

And then, out of the calm, all hell breaks loose.  That is really the only way I can describe the shock of the opening notes of the final movement. We have been lulled into near complacency and are jolted rudely awake.  Eventually a sense of clarity begins to open, a spark of light, signaled by a resplendent horn call in C major.  The big dramatic melody follows, the part people compare to Beethoven, a look to the past, but also surging into a new future, signaled once again by the horn call, harmonized by a bit of dissonance but breaking through into meltingly beautiful music.  It is a symphony that feels somehow public and private, individual and universal, a multidimensional road map.  To where?  I leave that up to you.

 

 

 

 

 

Entwined

The other day I went to the Ivan Racheff Gardens, a delightful oasis next to the Gerdau Knoxville Steel Mill, formerly Knoxville Iron Works.  This lovely garden is near where I used to live but I did not even know it existed.  Racheff created three acres of gardens from what was once an unsightly slag heap and it was a lovely and peaceful spot to wander with friends, a pocket of calm beauty in the midst of industry and highway construction.  I shall return.

It is this tree with its mammoth wisteria that has lodged itself firmly in my memory however.  I should have had a friend pose next to the tree for scale.  It is the stuff of childhood dreams and imagination.  I can imagine the wonder of it, the games I would play, the magical realms.  And yet, as an adult it is something we could easily walk by.

 

Wisterias are strong, heavy vines.  They can pull down a structure, can pull down a weak or damaged tree, and yet this tree looks very healthy.  This tree and this vine seem to be cooperating, supporting each other, working together in relationship and there is magic in this as well, perhaps even a bit of heaven.  For each, wisteria and tree (and no I do know know what kind of tree) are entirely themselves, each living out their essential tree-ness or wisteria-ness, and yet, they must live together.  They must simultaneously yield to the other and fortify themselves in order to assist in upholding the other.  Through this process they remain fully themselves and yet also something else, uniting in relationship.

 

We humans tend to not think about other living creatures in terms of relationship, or even in terms of "selves".  We like to think we are unique, but we also struggle with our sense of uniqueness.  A tree can be a tree, a fox a fox, yet we rarely allow ourself such simplicity of truth.  We build complex societies,  structures that shape the way we see our essential selves, then,  in our fight against our own self-imposed structures, we search for our "true" voice, and seek to stake out our individuality.  We lean away but we do not lean in.

 

Every year we watch the cycle of the seasons, the cycle of life.  We see birth and death.  We see growth, and strength, weakness and damage.  We also see care, blossom, and beauty.  You cannot have strength without fragility, life without death.  We try to convince ourselves that we can overcome nature, overcome our own essential beings.  But to soar, we need to lean together, strengthen ourselves with, not against, allow ourselves to risk failure, for only then can we also find true support.  Our strength is relationship, for we cannot live alone, but relationship only thrives in shared vulnerability, and yet fear of vulnerability is our downfall, our weakness.  

 

And so it seems it is our weakness that makes us strong.  Only by leaning in, in opening ourselves to vulnerability, can we can find strength.  Only then can we find true support. Only then can our blossoms fill the high heavens.

 

 

 

 

 

Knitting Reboot

I am knitting again, knitting regularly and consistently.  Sitting and knitting, usually while I am watching TV, is incredibly calming and settling, but it is also energizing and exciting simply because  the process of knitting, although actually slow, rhythmic, and almost meditative, also allows time for my brain to wander, depending on what I am knitting of course, not in a frenetic way, but in a smooth, swirling way, an underlying babble, like the purling of a small stream.

I have resumed the process of unpacking the sewing room, and my small cutting table has been cleared.  It is in use today for blocking a sweater, the pieces of which are shown above.  

 

I am somewhat appalled that it took me 8 months to finish this sweater, it is not difficult, but I will also admit that I ripped the first piece three times before I completely wrapped my head around the bias short rows and the technique.  With time I also realized that my knitting space at the house was inadequate.  I was not knitting, not due to lack of desire, but due to frustration and discomfort. I can't say it was an oversight, but it was definitely a miscalculation.

 

The previous owners of my house had the TV downstairs in the living room, which is not what I wanted.  I had planned, all along, to turn the two smaller bedrooms upstairs into a library/television room but I wasn't ready to begin the remodel when I moved in May of 2017.  I needed to live in the space, get a feel for it before making any final decisions.  I have no regrets about the delay itself.  Admittedly, I also questioned whether or not I wanted another large tv, if my viewing warranted it. I hadn't really been knitting much in the old house either, and television watching had become of something of a soporific, a tool for numbing an agitated mind. I moved in with only a small TV, placed in a corner of my office with a single reclining chair.

 

It actually took me most of that first year to realize that I had in fact made a mistake to admit to myself that I missed my large TV. In order to see on the small TV I actually had to watch it, and pay attention, I couldn't knit simultaneously.  The corner absorbed sound, the small screen absorbed detail.  I could either look at the tv or my knitting but could not really do both.  I also, eventually realized, that the chair was a terrible knitting chair, that attempting to knit induced a crick in my neck. I wanted to knit; I dreaded knitting.  The situation was untenable.  

 

When I moved to the apartment I went ahead and bought the new large tv.  I have a comfortable sofa to sit on, with a table nearby where I can put a pattern if I need it, good light.  All of this is planned for the new library/tv room/office as well.  And I love knitting again.

 

I purchased enough yarn to make a triangular shawl to match the sweater, and I am working on that now.  The sweater, shown above, will be dry enough by this afternoon to begin seaming.  Once the red sweater is off the board I can block the scarf I shared with you last week.  Blocking will meld the stitches together and make it look "finished".  Then I have a hamper full of projects that have been abandoned in various stages of partial completion.  I look forward to occasional spelunking forays into that hamper, to finding and reclaiming relics of knitting past.  Starting to knit again has simply been the first step, and it will not be the only fiberly pursuit, just the opening thread.

 

 

Five, mostly revolving around a recurring theme.

The view of clouds coming out of my apartment Thursday evening on the way to a party.

A second trip to see Candide.  I was very tired the first time I went and although I thought, and still think, the production was fabulous, I appreciated the second act more the second time around.  The first time it just confounded me, but as I said I was tired.  The first act remains my favorite, probably because it is closest to the actual work.  The second half cherry-picks episodes and tells a completely different story than the last two-thirds of the book and although I appreciate the musical as entertainment, I think temperamentally, I much prefer Candide as Voltaire wrote it. I continue to be a person who does not want to be spoon-fed easy answers, even as entertainment.  I also confirmed that I still don't love the score.  I appreciate it more having seen the production, but it is not something I would sit and listen to.  Again, this is me, and I am aware that my opinions are in opposition to the mainstream. I have no regrets, and am happy that I made the effort to see the production again because I was able to relax and let go of my annoyance with the score and enjoy the performance itself.  This second viewing allowed me to concentrate more fully on the musicians themselves, the acting, the timing, the sets, all the things that made the performance magical.

New floor tiles for the front hall.  

 

I went to a fund raiser for Ijams nature center last weekend.  The event is usually outdoors on the lawn but due to the threat of rain it was held in a series of connected tents, which proved wise.  I thought that the darkness in the tent and the lighting around the symphony was beautiful, as was the performance.  I've been to many symphonic performances in tents and the sound is often awful.  This was not.  When I could hear, the sound carried quite clearly.  Notice the word "when".  I could not hear the music initially, and in fact the orchestra was well into the first piece before I could tell they were playing. It rapidly became clear however that the issue was not the fault of the organizers, but with the audience itself.  Very few people in the second tent stopped talking throughout the first portion of the program, which focused on the classical repertoire:  Rossini, Beethoven, Haydn, and Copeland.  However, the instant that RB Morris began to sing all sound stopped.  You could have heard a pin drop.  Morris was excellent, and the sound of the orchestra in the final third of the concert, revolving mostly around popular show tunes, was beautifully done.  Yes, I sat peacefully and calmly through the overture to Candide.  Would that my fellow attendees had had the courtesy to do so during the initial portion of the program.

When I came home from my second performance of Candide, I picked up my (new) copy of the novel.  My older copy fell apart earlier this month.  I still have it in French as well, but my ability to read French has atrophied over the decades.  Enraptured, I stayed up far too late reading. The excesses of Candide are indeed ludicrous, but there is humanity in the story, and a wisdom about human nature, suffering,  and what is important in life that I felt was more of a gloss in the play.  

 

And now I must go tend to my own garden.

 

 

 

Who Am I? A beginning...

Who Am I?

 

It seems like such an easy question doesn't it?  A question to which we should have an easy answer.  Sometimes, it is true these answers come easily, but at other times not so much.  I do think that most of us recognize that we each play many complex roles:  "I am a woman"...."I am a mother"..."I am a father"...."I am a lawyer".... "I am a teacher".  Most of us would not define ourselves exclusively by any one of the roles we play, and hopefully, abstractly at least, we recognize that this is the case for others as well.  But we don't always live out that understanding of others, that they too live complex lives, and that their own identities, just like our own, are shaped by many roles.  

 

Sometimes it seems we don't even truly understand it ourselves, the question lurking behind questions such as "who am I".  We tend to define ourselves by roles, by identities imposed on us, identities that are defined by a fixed set of parameters, identities that are more what than who.  The statement "I am a mother" is a statement of identity defined by a role, and yes motherhood shapes our identity but motherhood alone is not identity, not self.  Every mother is also a complete person apart from motherhood; a person who would be equally complete, different perhaps, but complete, whether or not she was a mother.  

 

There is a danger in identifying ourselves exclusively by our roles -- by the roles we choose for ourselves as well as the roles that society chooses for us. "I am a lawyer" implies that one went to law school, but that also one works as a lawyer.  We assume that people who say "I am a writer" work at writing and earn some kind of monetary recompense for their writing, ie. they are published.  Sometimes writers are compelled to write, but their work is not recognized or appreciated in their lifetimes.  No one today would question that Emily Dickinson was a writer, a poet, but only a dozen of her poems were published in her lifetime, and they were severely edited, often to the point of being rewritten, before they were deemed fit for publication.  The term "writer" can be used as a "what" a definition of a person's place in the world, but also a "who" a statement about something that is essential to the nature of a particular person.

 

And so it seems that often what I think I know about myself is really about a role I have chosen to identify with.  Although said role does indeed add shape and definition to who I am, it is also a mask, a mask that hides and shelters the person within.  Roles are the what of our identity, but not necessarily the who; they do not define who we are on an essential level.    

 

We are not born a blank slate.  We are shaped by the families we are born into, our culture, our experiences, but there is always a self, a self learning to live and function in the world.  Much of our lives is spent learning to shape our outward selves to what we perceive as needed to survive in the world.  A large part of growing up concerns learning to take on the mantles of various roles in society, defining ourselves by external structures.  But our self, that true self we were born with and which we may or may not have honored and expressed, remains.  To be an adult, to thrive, to perhaps raise a family, requires building and maintaining a structure of societally sanctioned roles.  And yet, later in life, if we are seeking wisdom, we may find we need to dig deeper.  We may find we need to become archeologists of our own selves, our own souls.  We may find ourselves once again asking "Who am I?"  We may find ourselves searching for the inner resources, reasonings, and talents that underpin our roles in life.  

 

It seems lately that I have been compelled, sometimes dragged kicking and screaming, to let go, to stop defining myself by the things I do. I have become compelled to question who I am more deeply, to seek out the reasons, needs, questions, yearnings, that have lead to making the choices I have made.  Looking for that inner self is, in many ways, a frightening task.  I don't always know who I will find when I strip away the layers, and I fear losing the security of my safely defined roles.  This is hard work, and I am by nature, a person who seeks to go deeper, who is interested in the questions of who we are, and why the do the things we do.   Choosing to dive into the depths does not make the experience any less frightening, nor any less rewarding.

 

 

Who am I?  Today I am a person who is ready to start dismantling those definitions external to myself, a person ready to stop defining myself by "what" and start discovering "who".  Welcome to my journey.

Saturday Morning

The view out my window promises a beautiful Saturday morning.  I however have a sinus headache, and have already been out twice with Tikka and know the humidity is higher than I would prefer.  That doesn't make it a less beautiful day; it simply means I need to modify my expectations.    

 

Moises is settling back in after my return from Texas, settling back into the apartment as well, as I don't think he was fully acclimated before I left.  Hence the sinus headache.  M is very clingy right now, and consistently tried to crawl up under my chin during the night whereas I usually manage to keep him on the lower half of the bed.  I know he needs comfort, but I have learned that I am allergic to cats, only mildly so, as I can have him in the house as long as I vacuum and don't let him cuddle up under my chin, but allergic nonetheless,  Cat-in-the-face was neither good for my ability to breathe or for my sinuses, but we will both recover.   

 

I am planning on a slow day, a day for puttering.  Next week is busy, so a personal day is a necessity.  Even so I may or may not keep up, just as I did not keep up with the blog this week past, and I am beginning to accept that a production schedule doesn't really work because I am not really interested in production, in producing a particular thing.  This is something that has shaped my creative life all along, even with sewing and knitting.  I am interested in making, but with writing, like in knitting or sewing, the end result is a happy bonus that comes out of the process.  I am not interested in the making in order to produce, I am interested in the process itself, and the results are simply a little something extra.

That said, I did actually finish something last week.  I knit a small scarf.  I had a skein of gray Ritratto mohair by Filatura di Crossa, and a few little bits and bobs, yarn samples from a mailing or two, so I knit a narrow scarf,  I'm not sure I ever thought I would want a narrow scarf, but I love this one and look forward to the day when the weather will cool enough that I will wear it.  I suspect that is a few months away.  I've almost finished another sweater, at least the knitting part, but I don't yet have a place to block anything, including the above scarf. I may get that much of my craft room cleared away this weekend, but considering my pounding head, and a general sense of laziness, I make no promises.

 

This last week also ended up busy.  Monday was intentionally quiet:  knitting, practicing embroidery stitches, sketching a few design ideas.  But I knew the week would be filled with meetings and events, and that quiet time was needed for balance, as I suppose it is, again, today.

The house is also progressing nicely.  The walls have been opened up.  The two small bedrooms that will be the new library are now one space, and I can get a wonderful sense of the space and the light.  This photo was pretty early in the morning, an hour and a half or so
after sunrise, but still lovely.

And framing is going in, so I can begin to imagine the new layout, walk through and feel the flow.  That translation from space on paper to something three-dimensional, a reimagined space, is wonderful, and I exciting.  I fell it is going to be as wonderful as I imagined it would be.

Foundations will be going in soon.  There are still meetings and decisions to be made both large and small.  I love the process, but even though I am not doing the work, it is exhausting, and I am a bit behind.  

 

It is also September, and the fall season has started up.  There are plays, concerts, exhibits, events -- my ability to step back and not overload my social calendar has always been somewhat weak.  I have learned to better balance quiet time, creative time, with going out time, experience and fellowship time, but I don't quite know how the demands of the remodel will play into that.  I suspect that once I get through this first couple of weeks, my input into the job will quiet down and things will be easier.

 

In the meantime.  I'm still plowing through ideas.  I did take the time out last week to go to the production of Candide at the Clarence Brown Theater, which was utterly fabulous, one of the best things I have been to in a long long time.  I knew Bernstein's score but had not seen the musical production. I have read the original play, in both French and English, but had not read the libretto.   I love the way everything comes together here, the sharp wit, bitterness and hopefulness, the cynicism and satire in the world view.  That is in fact, something that I think Voltaire does well, that combination of cynicism, with hopefulness.  Of course Bernstein's music plays up the hopefulness.  But I saw the same thing in Grass as well, in The Tin Drum.  Can one be both cynical and naive?  I think that is the essence of human greatness, that we need both.  And that is also, of course, why we need art.

 

Truthfully, I had not been a big fan of Bernstein's score, although it is quite possible that this was due to my own lack of imagination.  I had heard it in concert on more than one occasion, and, lushly beautiful as it is, I felt disappointed.  But I also tend to feel that music meant to accompany something else, as a libretto perhaps, is not complete without the words and even then, perhaps not without the visual component. One needs all the pieces to come together.  Do people who love show music love the music itself, regardless of seeing the show, or do they love the music because it also triggers for them memories of the show?  I've never asked.  And again, this may again be a crisis of my own lack of imagination.  I don't think I will ever be able to listen to Bernstein's score again without reliving bits of this production however, and I think that is a good thing, just as I can't listen to West Side Story without seeing West Side Story in my head.  But then, I love operas I've never seen live, or do I?  Or do I imagine the opera in my head while I listen, and do I listen only to the operas I can imagine, whether or not I've heard them performed? Context, it seems, is always important.

 

The production is over the top and highly entertaining, and I love having the symphony present, on the stage, as part of the performance. Candide himself is wonderful.  Everyone is wonderful.  Really, I wish I had bought tickets for more than one performance.  It would be a joy to see again and again. Who knows, perhaps I will.

Sweet. Bitter. Sad.

When life is busy, tiring, frustrating, hectic, or just too much, I turn to fiction.  August was like that.  August was fiction month.

With the exception of one volume of short stories, I read novels in August.  The stories were by Caitlin Macy, whose novel, Mrs. I read in July.  Macy is an astute observer of a certain subset of the culture, of the striving, competitive, intellectual aspirational class, at least in its east-coast variation.  She captures the striving, the uncertainty, that combination of need, drive, and guilt, the petty jealousy of it as well.  Some of the stories resonated deeply with me, others not so much, but I could see how they lead to the novel, a novel which in a way was a series of linked short stories.

 

When I was at my mom's I read the first three volumes of the Leafy Hollow Mysteries by Rickie Blair.  One of my tasks was to connect mom's nook to her new wireless network so she could read again, and the first novel in the series, From Garden to Grave, was the first book she downloaded.  As she read and laughed she mentioned that I should read it, and so I did.  It was a free offering on my kindle as well, and there was something nice about reading together.  But I read much faster, and although the novel was well enough written, it was not deep or difficult, and the characters are a bit simple and over the top.  I read the first two novels that afternoon, and enjoyed them, the way one enjoys a piece of cake, as a lovely wonderful, too sweet, but still enjoyable treat.  The next afternoon we were in the emergency room, and after I browsed through my stack of shelter magazines I downloaded the third volume, A Branch Too Far. It was interesting, light, silly and entertaining, just what I needed to rest my nerves and wandering thoughts.

 

I had another book with me that afternoon in the ER, but didn't feel able to settle into it.  I might have wished I had Andrew Sean Greer's Less, which was a light, charming book, sweet and humorous but packing a fair amount of wisdom in its soft and gentle exploration of the mishaps in the adventures of one Arthur Less.  It is the kind of book I could read again when I needed a bit of cheering. I could read it again because I am simply the kind of reader who picks up books again and again, but also because it is the kind of book I love, a meandering exploration of character.  Obviously not for those who are looking for a fast-paced, plot driven novel.

 

Instead I had Phil Rickman's second novel in the Merrily Watkins series with me.  I had read the first one, The Wine of Angels, early in the month and loved it.  This is not high fiction, and a fair portion of the characters and settings are not deeply explored, but I loved the self-doubting main character, Merrily Watkins, a fairly newly minted Episcopal priest, posted as the new vicar in a small town in Herefordshire, in the west of England, and soon to become a deliverance minister (not yet, not in the first book).  It is an interesting mix of things, a gentle study of the currents and whims of Episcopalians and the church, about the way we struggle with the pressures of modernity and tradition on many levels, and in many ways,  and a murder mystery with a hint of the occult, but mostly here it is an exploration of intuition and the unexplained, those borderlands between what we can touch and what we don't understand, and the ways we try to explain them. I like the way the book explores the thin spaces of spirituality, as well as Merrily's struggle with these places and her own intuition, the battle between intellect and spirituality, between science, superstition, and faith. I think the series looks promising; I'd like to grow with these characters, but again, this is not a novel for those who want action,  or those who want their answers served in black and white.

 

Which leaves me with the two "big" novels.  I'll start with The Tin Drum, which I had never read, but which I had also assumed I would read since childhood.  My father had a copy and he encouraged me to read it more than once.  Having read it now, I think I am happy that I didn't read it in my teens as there is so much I would not have understood.  I am not convinced that I understand it now, but it is not a difficult novel to read. It is often laugh-out loud funny, but it is also deeply sarcastic and often very uncomfortable.  I completely believe that it might be considered one of the great novels of the 20th century, in any language, and I am glad to have finally read it.  I have a harder time telling you what I think about it because nothing I can say captures the complexity and power of the book and its wonderfully allegorical story.  What does keep popping into my mind, and I admit that this comparison may be a bit on the shallow side, is a line from Caitlin Macy's Mrs.:

The truth was, people didn't want to go back in time to stop Hitler, they wanted to scoop up Manhattan real estate on the crazy cheap, see Dylan in a café, maybe.

 But Macy writes a much softer version, more attuned to our naive America sensibilities, where we don't really want to believe that humans are basically crass self-interested beings, or at least we want to pretend like we don't believe that.  The truth is that most people, most of us, are more concerned with our own immediate needs and wants than the grand issues of the world; most of us in crisis think only of what we need to protect for ourselves.  We grow outraged from the safety of our own security, we will fight if the fight doesn't inconvenience us, or endanger us too much.  The truth is that at some level we all want to be Oskar Matzerath, eternally 3 years old, eternally getting what we want and making the world pay for not giving it to us.  But eventually we learn that 3 year-olds are not taken seriously and we adapt, eventually we are forced to grow up, as Oskar decides to grow up, even though it almost kills him.  The process of growing up does that, it destroys some part of our essential self, and we too have humps, scars, burdens, deep buried secrets that deform us.  If we survive we might also find art, find beauty, but no matter what course we take, the blind cook, death, awaits us all.  This is a powerful, even beautiful novel, it is also simultaneously a fun and a brutal read.  I will read it again.

 

It strikes me that the books I will save and read again can be either light and silly, or profound and enlightening, difficult even.  I make no apologies for that, we are each of us a complex blending of the self we were born to be and the experiences and cultures that have shaped us.   Perhaps that is why people's collections can be so interesting, but often it is the why that makes them interesting more than the what.

 

One book I will not read again is The Water Cure.  I emoted about it extensively here.  It is beautifully written, and as a first novel, it is absolutely stunning.  I will look for Sophie Mackintosh's next novel.  But as powerful as the novel was, I felt let down by it in the end.  I felt deceived and used, subjected to a promise, an emotional wrenching even, without closure, or any further understanding or empathetic growth.  I went in to it expecting to love it and instead the novel left me with overwhelming sadness and no recompense.

 

This was not because the book was sad, or even that there were no happy answers.   I have just finished reading Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room, which I got from the local library.  I expected to dislike this book.  I had not intended to read it until it appeared on the Booker list.  And yet, although it is unquestioningly bleak, I did not find it depressing. I loved it.  I loved the voices of the characters, I don't particularly want to meet them, become besties, but Kushner's writing was successful in building empathy, in bringing outrage and understanding and some insight into lives that are totally different from the lives of most of the readers of this book, different from the lives most of us can even imagine.  I was touched, outraged, sad.  Yes probably manipulated as well, but mostly I felt like I was beginning to see something differently than I had been able to see it before.  Yes Romy Hall's life is bleak.  The terrible truth was that it was always bleak, the lives of most of the characters in this novel were bleak and imprisoned before they even committed a crime, and this is what I think Kushner portrays so successfully.   But I would also be naive to think that some of my perceptions of this book were not partially shaped by my having just finished reading both Mackintosh and Grass,  

 

What I don't understand, and perhaps there is no need, is why some books make me feel inspired, touched, enlightened even, while those same books might bore a friend to tears, or make another feel manipulated, as I felt manipulated by The Water Cure.  There are books among my all-time favorites that are abhorred by friends, and vice-versa.   I am intrigued by this, by the complex multi-faceted ways we experience and are shaped by the world, and by the ways the world speaks to us.  Increasingly it is the discussions about the ways things affect us, or do not, that I find interesting.  I am reminded that CS Lewis said something along the lines of "there are no good or bad books, only good and bad readers".  I don't have the book with me in the apartment, so I am not certain of the quote, but I generally agree, at least to a point.  I admire anyone who can write a book and get it published.    I'm not even sure I see being a bad reader as a particular criticism.  We are all bad readers at times.  We all bring biases and expectations into everything we do.  Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we may not be the right reader for a book, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who love that book, whose lives are changed.  Reading is a relationship.  Writing, be it a letter, a blog, or a book, is also about relationship.  Would that we could all learn to share our opinions, explore our differences, and find even new respect in the world.  Books can help us open doors.  Let's keep them open.

Update

Work picked up steam on the house this past week.  The deck was removed, and excavation was completed.

By Thursday there was a hole in my backyard.

Friday morning they were pouring concrete.  I haven't been out to see it yet, but will take a look later today.  

 

In the meantime I went to Texas to visit my mom.  We had a mostly good time. We chatted, ran errands, did little things around the house, the things one does.  It was lovely.  Often that is all that is wanted, companionship.  Someone who will laugh with you over a silly book. Someone who will sit and let you blather about this or that.  Someone who will not tell you what to do.

 

We went to the ER one afternoon.  I worried.  I know mom worried too, but she went home and we were both grateful.  I niggled where I shouldn't have niggled, as one does.  Sussing out changing mother-daughter  dynamics can be a challenge at times. It is hard, this adult child of an aging parent thing.  It is hard separating Margaret the person, from Margaret, my mom.  They may not always be compatible.  But as an adult daughter I need to respect Margaret more than I need to hold onto "Mom".  That is the hard thing it seems, hard from both sides of the fence.