Look! Dare I say I might actually complete a post on a Friday?
This post will be but a simple thing, and probably a bit fragmented, but the “five things Friday” format seems to be a good starting place, as I pull myself back into regular postings, balancing of the simple and the day to day with the wider ruminations of my meandering mind. Perhaps acceptance is also key: acceptance that I am one of those people who are restless of mind; one of those people who always dreams of doing more; one of those people who is never bored. I live in a world define by the concept of a week. Even though the pacing of my own time is somewhat more fluid, I still begin each week filled with grand plans of everything that will be done by weeks’ end, and, somehow, I still fall short of my own goals.
So, where are we this week?
Poinsettias: I attended a workshop/demonstration at Stanley’s Greenhouse, focused on holiday arrangements. The event was inspiring and although I have never considered arrangements to be one of my gifts, I found myself excited by possibilities. I was also inspired by the variety of Poinsettieas that were filling the greenhouse, especially the variegated variety shown above. Apparently I have given poinsettieas short shrift, a situation that may need to change. But first, Thanksgiving travel, and the opening of the Christmas boxes, newly out of storage.
Pickled Ginger: I opened the first of three pint-sized jars of pickled ginger I put up in October. Oh my! It is good. It is the best pickled ginger I have ever tasted. Not jut something pretty and a bit sharp/sweet on the plate. This ginger is something I want to use in its own right. I got a little overwhelmed the week I put this up, and it is not particularly evenly sliced, not as decorative as it perhaps could have been, but the flavor is superb. I added it to an impromptu stir-fry of chicken and bell peppers, and it elevated the dish to something special. Now, despite the fact that I initially worried that I would never use three pints of pickled ginger, I am worried that I will run out before I can make more.
A Book: Recently it seems that my reading is somewhat circular meaning that as I read each new book I find myself circling back to books I have read before, mostly recent reads, but often books deeply filed away in the interstices of my reading memory. And so it was this week, when I was reading a new book by my friend Rob Gieselmann, Irony and Jesus, that I encountered this statement:
How many times have I sunk in water because I could see surf and gale only, having lost sight of the other side.
And, a few lines later, “go to the other side”. Such a simple thing and often also such a difficult task. In this instance these words also provided a spark of insight, a coalescence of sorts, about how to write about Deborah Levy’s new novel The Man Who Saw Everything, a book I finished reading last week. In this novel Saul Adler is attempting to cross Abbey Road. It sounds like such a simple and inconsequential thing, and in one sense it is, but as the novel progresses we learn that nothing in this short novel is what it seems. Truly. Nothing. What seems inconsequential proves full of weight, and what should be full of weight almost vanishes in the ether.
I am in one sense torn here. I believe The Man Who Saw Everything to be an incredibly beautiful and powerful novel, one that I find both essential and impossible. It is a novel I recognize that many people will not be able to stand. Truly the story itself is simple, straightforward and a bit boring. But the novel is not about the story. And I cannot tell you what the novel is about without disrupting, even perhaps aborting your experience of the novel. It is, actually a novel whose meaning and interpretation is multi-layered, and that in and of itself is a marvelous feat of writing and design. At the moment I see a novel about fragmentation, about who we are, how we become the people we become, but also about chance, distraction, care and carelessness, and about the possibility and impossibility of memory. Our memories shape who we are, but who we are today also shapes our memory.
Another Book: And this of course sent me back to another book, a book I read in September (I still haven’t caught up with September books). This book is also about memory, or, more exactly, Shafak uses memory as a vehicle to tell the story of a life: the life of a woman, the life of a town, a country, a culture. This is a poetic novel, a turbulent novel, a novel that could seem overwhelmingly bleak except that it is not. It is a novel filled with beauty and hope. Shafak’s poetic way of setting a scene, of describing a place, made this reader feel palpably present. Beautiful, powerful, touching, absurd. It is a novel about Turkey. It is a novel about women. In fact it is a novel about all of humanity, its joys and its tragedy, captured, if only for a moment.
A Sock: After a brief interlude where I worked on other projects, I have returned to sock knitting. Necessity called. I do need another pair of socks, and although it would be easy enough to buy such a thing, I prefer the ones that are knit by hand, simultaneously luxurious and practical. I turned the heel on the second sock last night, perhaps staying up a little later than I should to be sure if was finished. It is now smooth sailing to the end. Hopefully it will be finished this busy weekend, but then of late it seems all weekends are busy. Hopefully it will be finished and blocking before I embark on Thanksgiving travel, ready and waiting for me upon my return.
