Category Archives: bookish

Mar19

An open letter to Sherman Alexie

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An open letter to Sherman Alexie

Just read a line in a Sherman Alexie story about standing in line at Bartell’s and suddenly I’m so homesick I’m not sure I can live through the heartbreak of it. In my head I ask Sherman Alexie if he imagines how many of his throw away lines profoundly affect people?  I think of every word I’ve put out there, every bit of fiction I’ve written, and no one has ever come back to me with the important words, with the phrases that I labored over, they only come to tell me about the how they were moved by my fast lines, the ones that drop out, that I don’t consider at all before I put them to paper.

Perhaps the lines I don’t labor over mean the most, come more truly from me?  Perhaps there is no meaning in any of it and will just keeping spilling out words, looking for the turn of phrase that will free my soul and find it someday.  Perhaps Sherman Alexie labored over that line and still will never know will never know how his two sentences made me break my own heart.  I could write him a letter and tell him, but I would labor too hard over the words, I would lose the importance of sharing what he gave me.  I have always been writing this letter to him in my head, through out the years, every time I read his stories and poems.  A letter that never makes it to paper, to computer screen, never achieves more than some small form of therapy for me.

I am talking to Sherman in my head (can I call you, Sherman, I feel we are close enough now) about my homesickness, about how I cannot ever really understand where he is from and he cannot understand how I am from where he is now.  I tell him it is a continuum that no one but me can see, a story that can’t quite be told, but is important all the same.  And the The Butchies pop up on shuffle on the old mp3 player and I start to cry because this is more homesickness than a soul can bear.  But this makes me get up and start to cook dinner: fettuccine alfredo with smoked salmon (real, PNW smoked salmon), peas and caramelized onions.  Because I am homesick and if I lived close enough that I could call my mom and ask if I could come over she would walk to me to a restaurant near her house (one Sherman Alexie has surely been too) and I would order some variation of this dish because you don’t really find it anywhere else in the world, not the way we make it in Seattle.

And while I am chopping onions the mp3 player turns again and gives me Kevin Gordon singing Watching the Sun Go Down, and I remember how I stopped at 6:42 am, on my way to work, to photograph the sunrise over an electrical power station, and got distracted by some horses too.  I think of how the redbuds are surely more beautiful this year than they have ever been before, blooming riotously, everywhere, making the edges of every roadway glow purple.  I think of how  the heat in Tennessee makes me feel warm all the way through to my bones, like I’ve never been warm before.

So I tell Sherman that he is lucky indeed, to be able wait in line at Bartell’s, but he has to go through cold rain to get there and I am saved by the sun  and the green in spring and the sounds, all the sounds, here in the dirty South.  Perhaps I am homesick for a place that no longer exists.  A place I visited, moved through in childhood, that is just a fairytale now, I can not go back.  My adult self does not have the magic to cross back over the boundaries of the places I’ve been before, I can only go to new places or create them myself. And I’m still crying when I sit down to eat my dinner, but not because I miss anything.  I am so lucky to have been so many places, both real and imagined. Lucky to be me and to be still so full of emotions good and bad (love) about all of those places I have been and the people in them.  Even the rude lady in the Bartell’s line that you have to tell to fuck all the way off.  So thanks, Sherman, for reminding of my home, the past one, the new one, the one that is always me and goes everywhere inside my heart.  I’m certain that you never knew that namedropping Bartell’s in a story would make some girl in Tennessee break out the fancy smoked salmon from way back home and cook herself a good dinner on a night when she would otherwise have been too tired, too worn down by work, to do more than make a quesadilla.  Thanks for dinner, Sherman, I really feel like we are close now.

 

(Pictures taken early this morning in Tennessee, when I stopped, before I even had coffee, to remember that there is beauty in the world.  Even when you feel like you break to pieces because of the stress that swirls around you and puts the anxiety inside you, there is still the color purple and leaves that were not that green yesterday and sunrises.  The redbuds really are spectacular this year.)

Mar15

In which I tell you that Kalends are surely more dangerous than Ides

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In which I tell you that Kalends are surely more dangerous than Ides

The Ides of March

The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, which is said to have been devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. Whether it was Romulus or not, the inventor of this calendar had a penchant for complexity. The Roman calendar organized its months around three days, each of which served as a reference point for counting the other days:

Kalends (1st day of the month)
Nones (the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th in the other months)
Ides (the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th in the other months)
The remaining, unnamed days of the month were identified by counting backwards from the Kalends, Nones, or the Ides. For example, March 3 would be Five Nones—5 days before the Nones (the Roman method of counting days was inclusive; in other words, the Nones would be counted as one of the 5 days).

Used in the first Roman calendar as well as in the Julian calendar (established by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.E.) the confusing system of Kalends, Nones, and Ides continued to be used to varying degrees throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.

So, the Ides of March is just one of a dozen Ides that occur every month of the year. Kalends, the word from which calendar is derived, is another exotic-sounding term with a mundane meaning. Kalendrium means account book in Latin: Kalend, the first of the month, was in Roman times as it is now, the date on which bills are due.

Nov3

Where do you get off?

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Where do you get off?

This is a writing exercise that I enjoyed reading here and I guess came from here.  I’ve been trying to poke my inner writing bear with a stick and it seems to want to remain in hibernation, so I’m looking for a bigger stick.

Where I Am From

I am from cherry blossoms and eternal hope for spring that always comes in its own time.

I am from riot grrrls and evergreen trees as big as you’ll ever see.

I am from fuck your fashion flannel shirt, this is to keep me warm.

I am from Protestant work ethic and self medication.

I am from science fiction and comic books aren’t for girls and screw your preconceptions.

I am from latch key kids and riding your bike miles with no adults around, tree forts and rope swings and how did we live to adulthood?

I am from Buddhism and Astrology, Catholicism and Lutheranism, the Golden Rule and actions speak louder than words.

I am from the train platform, the bus station, the airport, the gas station, the spot where we set out for our next great adventure.

I am from there is a template for this writing exercise and I couldn’t be bothered to read all of it let alone follow it.

I am from the land of high mountains and grey skies, damp chill and long, long summer days, winters where the green never dies.

I am from strawberries my grandfather picked with me after growing them in the soil he tended so well my whole life.

I am from men who build things, fix things and fight for what they believe in.

I am from women stronger and smarter than you, powerfully hard role models to live up to.

I am from places where I only sleep well if I can hear the traffic or the trains.

I am from revolutions, protests and riots, candlelight vigils and memorial marches, hands across America.

I am from an era where being different was king and still I was never the right kind of different.

I am from the edge where punk rock meets pop music and folk music shakes hands with soul.

I am from reading banned books and buying music for minors.

I am from putting aside my loneliness and pain to take time to listen to yours.

I am from white hat hackers and I’ll give you my money but you can keep your DRM.

I am from you can’t have sex on a stack of ereaders but I carry mine with me anyhow.

I am from sisters, both born and made.

I am from snickerdoodles, fattigman and lefse, mashed potatoes better than you’ve ever eaten and hamburgers that might break your teeth.

I am from the Monastery, the Underground, the Off Ramp and the Crocodile.

I am from if I could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, in all of history, I pick my mom and my sisters.

I am from music that transports you, transforms you and stays with you forever, even when its meaning changes for you.

I am from broken hearts and dashed dreams and princes who never showed up to rescue me.  Where I am from girls don’t need rescuing anyway, besides you’d just do it wrong.

I am from an artist and a scientist, a carpenter and a cook.

I am from long childhood summer afternoons spent in the dark stock room of a shoe store imagining owning Nikes with every stripe color possible.

I am from if you build it they will come and when they don’t show up just keep building anyway.

I am from the more cousins you have, the more joy you have.

I am from stitching my own clothes for the satisfaction of it and to honor my grandmother every time I lay hand to cloth.

I am from writing poetry you’ll never see, scratching out thousands of words you may never read and never stopping because if I don’t pull this all out of my head it will make me (more) crazy.

I am from promising more than I can ever produce and trying to please you no matter what.

I am from far away, a place I can never show you, a place that no longer exists anywhere but inside me.  My own homeland is lost to me and I never glimpsed the farther away homeland of my ancestors.

Aug17

Book, book, book, movie!

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Book, book, book, movie!

I have been fortunate enough to have time to read actual books lately.  Granted this has interfered with time I might have to sew or socialize, but I think it’s definitely been time well spent.  In the last, oh, month or so I’ve read all of the Southern Vampire Mysteries.  I won’t review them for you, as I assume you’ll either read them or you won’t (or you already have) and you’ll judge me or you won’t for having very much enjoyed them.  It’s possible that having Alexander Skarsgård in my head as Eric Northman went a long way towards my enjoyment of them, but perhaps not.  Perhaps they are just good, light summer reading.  Now that I’ve finished them, I might go back and read Book 4 again.  Or maybe I’ll start watching True Blood season 4 (don’t spoil me I haven’t seen any yet) and then read Book 4 again.  Book 4 is my favorite.

gratuitous ASkars. I can't help myself.

After all the vampires I read Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things, only to discover, about 80 pages in, that I’d read it before.  SIGH. Yes, I don’t know if that’s commentary on where my head is right now, where it was when I first read this collection, or if says something about the quality of the stories.  The stories, I felt, were uneven, as is so often the case with short story collections.  Some were excellent, others I flipped through reading only every fourth word or so.  I’m never sure with Gaiman, he’s written some things I love and some I clearly forget.  He’s an author I try to not engage with, that is to say that my enjoyment of his writing is equal to how much I am able to entirely ignore him as a media figure or a person of any consequence.

I’ve spent the last 6-ish days pushing through Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear.

This is certainly one book split into two volumes and should be read as such.  This is in her Oxford Time-Travelling Historians universe, though reading the other books in that universe is not a prerequisite of reading this one.  Several reviews I read and a couple trusted reader friends suggested that B/AC would have benefited greatly by having an excellent editor and being a few hundred pages shorter.  Something I have said often about the last 3 Harry Potter books, about everything Diana Gabaldon has written since Outlander,  about Cronin’s hideous Passage, and many more.  And yes, I imagine that B/AC could have been more concise, more dense, more tightly crafted but for me Willis is one of the few authors I simply can’t get enough of.  Her worlds immerse me utterly, her language keeps me in instead of pushing me out of the story, letting me see only the story and not the writer and she clearly loves her characters so much that I can’t help but love them too.  I would gladly sit down right now with 1400 more pages of her characters.

I knew this would have a happy ending, I knew it would all work out, but it twists and turns enough that one can never guess quite how.  I found myself anxious to the point of wishing she would just get on with it already in a few scenes.  Mostly because some of the secondary characters were so beloved and seemed so likely to die that I just couldn’t stand it.

I know only the basic framework of history for WWII Britain. Still I have been to most all of the places in London that the action happens in, and I have been to museums and memorials all over Britain about the war and the Blitz specifically and I believe that engaged me all the more with this tale.  London is a character in the story being just as battered and ill-treated as her people were through out the war.  I felt many times like I was walking through the locations of the story and thought deeply about how it must have been to see the city both before and after the war.

Time travel is very tricky and I think Willis handles it well.  Generally making it simply a framework for an understandable historical bit of fiction.  This time though the time travelling paradox itself plays into the mystery of the plot to good effect.

I was feverish and sick and slept a lot this past weekend.  I dreamt long involved fever dreams of this book and the characters and myself in with them.  I have, in this way, completely internalized this story.  I feel exhausted and thoroughly satisfied having been through the ringer with this story.  It’s always hard to recommend things.  Do I want you to to read it because I liked it?  Yes.  Do I want you to read it because I think you’ll like it?  I don’t know.  If you liked her other books you’ll probably like this one, even if you think it is too long.  If you’re interested in WWII history from an every day standpoint of how citizens dealt with it, you’ll probably like it.  Amazon hopefully has enough of a preview up that you can decide if you want to read more or not.  If you decide not to read this you should read To Say Nothing of the Dog anyway.  Yes, you, all of you, everyone should read it.  Because I said so.

I also went and saw Captain America which I enjoyed very much.  It was a very, very different WWII than B/AC. I think they used a lot of the same location shots from Band of Brothers which really tickled me.  I’m totally digging the universe connections in the Marvel comic movies and all the cameos etc. It’s like each movie makes the previous ones even better. Thor and Iron Man are both somehow that much better for having seen Captain America.  I can’t wait for The Avengers!

(A note on formatting: I had been writing my posts so they were easily read when imported in to Facebook but the importing feature only works intermittently and really I’d prefer if you clicked out and read them here anyway, so I’m not formatting for FB anymore, if you don’t get pictures you’ll have to click out to the original post.  If FB can’t be bothered to make itself work right, I can’t be bothered to cater to it.)

May27

Some salty goodness and some bitter horror

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Some salty goodness and some bitter horror

There is not ever enough poetry in the world.  Here is some for your (hopefully) warm spring day:

BIRD

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.

- Pablo Neruda

♦♦♦

I have BIG plans for the 3-day weekend.  I don’t know what they are yet as the first thing on my to-do list for this evening is ‘make plans for the weekend,’ but I bet they will be great.  Hopefully they will involve home organizing/cleaning, sewing sewing sewing (embroidery included in this category), sleeping perhaps more than would seem normal for a human being, walking around in the out of doors (cicadas might limit this),  talking to my mom on the phone and generally relaxing and pretending the world doesn’t exist.  I will probably watch P.S. I Love You as an emotional outlet (and because it’s a good movie).  I will hopefully have plenty of time to read Deathless because so far I am enjoying it immensely (it’s like poetry in it’s own way).

What I will not be doing is work, returning your phone calls (unless you’re my mom or sister), or sewing anything that looks like this:

I did include a link in case you want to sew it.  But I will think less of you if you do.  I’m fascinated with it, like a horror movie you can’t look away from.

May10

Movies, books and needle books

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Movies, books and needle books

Was a slow, relaxing, mostly wasted weekend. Lots of reading, walking and a some chores, not much else.

I did go see Thor on Sunday with Talks to Owls.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  My only complaints were that his transformation was a little abrupt and barely shown and I think Alexander Skarsgård should have played Loki to up the eye candy and keep me even more amused. The actor playing Loki was too whiny and not nearly mischievous enough.  I feel that Skarsgård could have done a much better job at being trickstery.  Overall worth the price of admission though.  I forget how much I like going to the movies.  I wish the good theater by my house would reopen.  Stupid flood damage keeping me from movies for more than a year.

Hi Alex! Glad to have a thin excuse to post a picture of you!

I also read  the Hunger Games trilogy.  A fast but riveting read.  Highly recommended. Like I can’t stop thinking about it and harassing my friends to read it so they will talk to me about it.

And I didn’t touch any of sewing projects I have around the house in various states of doneness, but I did make a little felt book for my embroidery needles out of some scrap denim and silk I had lying around.  I’m pretty pleased with it. And Talks to Owls just got me these owl scissors  so I’m be all ready to get embroidering!

Apr27

In which I read, so you don’t have too.

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In which I read, so you don’t have too.

I feel like in any given week I vacillate between trying to finish all the half-watched series in my Netflix queue and to finish all the books, well, just all the books.  This week it’s books.  I spent all of Sunday finishing Justin Cronin’s The Passage.  Multiple fails on my part here.  I didn’t (as is my tendency) research the book at all.  So it’s probably safe to say that if I’d known it was the first in a trilogy and I ‘d known it was 800 pages long going in (it’s always hard to tell on a Kindle which is something they really should fix) I might have felt differently about the book.  But honestly it would have benefited from an editor able to make it 200 pages shorter.  But it wasn’t just my not knowing.  The author failed as well, I think.  The first 250 or so pages were amazing, excellent, well written and engaging.  And then I spent the rest of the book waiting for it to get good again.  Not only did it not get good again, it didn’t end (the trilogy thing).  Incredibly frustrating.  And I was perhaps so disappointed in the decline of the story as it went along that I doubt I’ll bother with the next 800 page bit he puts out, trilogy or no, I just don’t care enough now to even find out what happens.  Cronin’s writing is engaging enough that you keep turning pages, assuming the good part is just around the corner, but it never was.  And the characters in the second part of the book are flat and flaccid, not vibrant like those in the beginning.   For some satisfaction after I finished reading, I went and read a bunch of Amazon reviews and many folks felt the same way I did: starts strong, winds away into nothing.  And I kept pushing through in hopes of it improving, of some of the new characters turning out to be likable, but alas.  Fortunately I think I needed a restful day and now I’m done so I won’t waste any more days on that book and  can start a new one from the dozens in the ‘waiting to be read’ pile.  Or I guess that should read waiting to be read “pile,” since it’s all on my Kindle and not actually in a pile like we used to keep books in the olden days.

Yesterday I had a 45 minute wait in the doctor’s office I spent much of it with my eyes closed trying to remember the best parts of The Passage all that came to me was fleeting images of Colorado autumn, or what the walk to the Zoo in Memphis is like, or glasses of tea on hot summer, water beading on the sides.  So I’ll grant Mr. Cronin that he does an excellent job places descriptions and has a way with words, but now, a few days later, none of the characters have stuck with me at all.

After reading up on The Passage I fell down the Amazon rabbit hole and started reading customer reviews of the book I intend to read next.  Which is either brilliant and amazing, or dumb, confusing and derivative. So now do I want to read it so I can feel superior to the people who didn’t get that it was brilliant, or will I read it and wonder why I wasted my time? And this, my friends, is why I always go into book blind, or with a few words of rec from friend and not much more.

—

Because I’ve been sewing so many utilitarian, solid colored skirts I haven’t been posting pictures.  I mean you saw the one, right? The other look the same but better.  Basic staples.  I don’t need to show you pictures, in the same way I don’t give you the recipe when I make mashed potatoes.  Still I am doing stuff so here’s a quick shot of what’s currently half done on the sewing table:

Only the bodice is actually done, the ‘skirt’ here is just folded fabric.  It will be a kimono sleeve, empire waist summer dress when it’s done.  But look how pretty, the fabric!!  Wheee!

Apr20

Things and books and other things

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Things and books and other things

I’m in the market for a used dresser or side board or cabinet of sorts to replace the cheap, small emergency shelves set up in my sewing nook.  I’m simply hoping to stumble across the right thing in a thrift store or whatever and paint it (or I figured I’d be happy with something like this).  However I stumbled across this re-do the other day and now suddenly I need something I can refinish with a squid.  Like I will waste away, pining for a squid dresser if I don’t get one.

click for pictures from the books locations, in case you werent already wishing you were in Provence right now

I just finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s Ysabel.  The Lions of al-Rassan is one of my favorite books and I really enjoyed The Last Light of the Sun.  If I find I like an author I generally seek out more of their books, but I rarely read anything about those books or the author.  I’ve been burned too many times by finding out the creator is a jerk and I find it’s easier to just read a story in the void and only bring to it my current preconceptions of the world and not any negativity about the author or to be pre-influenced by reviews I’ve read.  So based on my two previous reads it seemed safe to assume that Kay wrote character stories in fictionalized versions of historical events (al-Rassan is essentially El Cid and Moorish Spain and Sun is Alfred the Great defeating the Vikings). Which he does write, right? He just also writes other things, apparently.

Ysabel reads like a YA urban fantasy, you know the ones where you’re just a teenager in the city and suddenly you get caught up in the drama of the fairy world? (See Charles de Lint‘s Newford saga stories or Holly Black‘s Modern Faerie tales.) Kay’s story relied more on the strange possibility of magic and history colliding and less actual fairy tales and the setting, Provence, was as much of a character as person in the book.  It was enjoyable and neatly written, it made me dream and think and still left something lacking.  I just didn’t engage enough with any of the characters.  I was compelled to keep reading by the mystery and strange magic and French Celtic history.  And while the main characters were likeable enough, they were real enough, still they just didn’t make me care enough.  I’d recommend this, but save it for the airplane or the beach.

After reading I tried to sleep, somewhat unsuccessfully, because of a string of late, late night thunderstorms that seemed so threatening that I got up from my bed under the windows and went and curled up on the couch (not under windows and further from big, bad thunder).  But as I drove in to work this morning, the storms had left behind a jumbled mess of crazy clouds rushing out and everything is so very, vibrantly, overwhelmingly green, especially against the grey sky.  And I remember, as I do every year, that I (and surely everyone else) continues to live in Tennessee because spring is so sensational.  It’s really astounding how the trees fill in and the colors.  It’s like God is talking directly to you, just for a little bit, daring you notice every leaf and every change and be grateful for it.  And it will be hot soon enough, spring so fleeting like the first flush of being in love and overwhelmed by it, but it comes back every year.  It’s worth the storms and the heat waves and the grim winter.  The Steve Earle line, “Tennessee is green in spring” is like the understatement of the century but at the same time anyone who lives here understands the depth and meaning of that little statement.

Apr1

April is surely not the cruelest month, everyone knows that’s February

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April is surely not the cruelest month, everyone knows that’s February

April begins BIRTHDAY MONTH.  I would love to say it’s all a celebration of me, from beginning to end, but indeed many of my most loved friends share this month for their own celebrations.  I’d say a good dozen or so of you are already, or gearing up to celebrate your own births.  Let’s all do it together!  HOORAY!

The April birthstone is diamond and the flower is Sweet Pea. Which seem some how at odds with each other.  Like at what point is someone going to be like, ‘say, baby, I got you some diamonds and this Sweet Pea bouquet’? It seems simultaneously weird and actually just like something I’d want, so maybe it does make sense for April after all.  Though I prefer amethysts to diamonds, partly over the whole blood diamond and hideous over hype of them and mostly because everyone knows anything purple is superior to anything else!

March has wound down being grim and grey, despite some thrilling spring sun there in the middle and I have high hopes for April. A little more sun and fewer days I have to put on gloves in the morning to keep my hands from stiffening up on the drive to work.

April also brings an awesome surprise visit from my cousins at the beginning, a long anticipated visited from good friends at the middle and my birthday at the end, so I surely couldn’t ask for more goodness from this month!  It should be calm, wonderful, joyous friends and family love all the way through!  Everyone should have a month like this occasionally.

April is also National Poetry Month for which I shall share some of the poems I carry around in my handbag at all times:

Three Crepuscular Poems
Federico García Lorca

[1]
The evening is
penitent,
still dreaming about
noon.
(Red trees & clouds
over the hills.)
The evening, loosening green
lyric hair,
is gently trembling
… vexed
to be the evening having once been
noon.

[2]
Now the evening starts!
Why? Why?
… just now
I watched the day droop down
just like a morning flower.
A day lily
bending its stems
… just now …
the roots of evening
rising through the gloom.

[3]
Adiós, sun!

I know for sure that you’re the moon,
but I
won’t tell nobody,
sun.

You sneak
behind the curtain
& cover your face
with rice powder.

By day, the farmhand’s
guitar,
by night, Pierrot’s
mandolin.

I should care!

Your illusion,
sun, is to make
the garden
turn Technicolor.

Adiós, sun!

And don’t you forget who loves you:
the snail,
the little old lady
on her balcony,
& me …
spinning my heart like a …
top.

Mar10

the absence of desire is the end of suffering

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the absence of desire is the end of suffering
(You may as well just this skip this incredibly whiny, self-involved venting about furniture shopping.  It even bores me.)

Okay, I’m nearly done being a drama queen about moving and furniture.  Seriously I’ve felt like the swoony scarf lady in the Gorey Mystery! intro or something for the last week.  Oh, whoa is me, couch shopping!  So terrible!  Pity and lament for me.  On the one hand, wah wah wah, my sad first world problems: I can’t find a thing to spend money on.  But on the other, I really do just want a nice, comfortable house and it shouldn’t be that hard.  After much personal torture in furniture stores looking for a couch I gave up all of my criteria except for ‘not ugly’ and ‘comfortable’ which led me back to the very first store and perhaps the second couch I sat on.   Bonus: it was also the least expensive of everything I looked at.  It is now neatly settled in the middle of my living room, just waiting for me to have time to enjoy it.  YAY COUCH!

However, progress isn’t really being made.  I also ordered some other furniture for the bedroom and the office area.  Which is now either dreadfully back ordered or discontinued, leaving me with my possessions still in boxes and a sense of displacement.

–I actually started writing this post a day or so ago, saved it to work on later and then had an exchange in email about furniture shopping with Talks to Owls, which I will just paste here as it sums up how I feel today:

I’m living out of boxes, I’m uncomfortable, I haven’t been in a place I feel comfortable in a long time, shopping makes me feel overwhelmed and like crying and something I HAVE to do instead of calmly regrouping at home and enjoying my life, which I can’t do because I’m living out of boxes. It’s circular and miserable. I just want the stuff to appear there. I don’t even give a s*** where it comes from or if it falls apart in a year and has to be replaced.

Plus the shelves have to be exact dimensions to fit into the spaces I have, so even if I spend hours roaming antique stores and thrifting and what ever, the chances that I’ll stumble on something that will be the thing that will fit seems unlikely.

So no, it isn’t fun, it isn’t a quest, and it isn’t leisurely.

That said, here’s the basic list of pieces I need to be able to unbox, if you stumble across something in your thrifting and antiquing you think would fill one of these gaps, feel free to point me to it: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/CY3P41H7D6MX/

(In TTO’s defense, he didn’t deserve this email bitchfest, since all he’d done was comment on finding a better chair than the one on my Amazon list, however the chair is just a small piece of my problem, obviously.)

And of course since I’ve sat down and looked back at the list of things I still need to find, I feel overwhelmed again by the scope and cost of the whole thing. And then I’m additionally upset because it feels like the whole world is in turmoil.  North Africa is blowing up and I want to cry for the normal people caught in Libya’s civil war. Our own country seems to have declared war against the average working man and is tricking its citizens into punishing themselves by giving up all their power.  There is so much poverty and suffering in our own borders and so much hate and misdirected anger that it’s painful to turn on the news.  And here I am wound up and miserable because I can’t find easily and affordably find the furniture I want in the country that provides us the most options in shopping ever seen in history?

Aug24

Ain’t nothin’ gonna to break my stride

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Ain’t nothin’ gonna to break my stride

"Raven and the First Men" by Bill Reid at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, BC.

I think the less said about moving the better?  I will say that no matter how long you have to complete it (3 weeks or 3 days) it still sucks just as much. Also rumors of my impending move to the West Coast have been greatly exaggerated.  Sorry.  All I can say about that is that in this economy good jobs are better than freedom to move around.  And in any economy it’s nice to keep a good boyfriend close as well.

Of course since I haven’t been thinking about anything but moving, I don’t have anything else to talk about.  I read this old post from Bruce Sterling.  There’s a lot of irrelevant info in there so let me quote the important parts:

What is “sustainability?” Sustainable practices navigate successfully through time and space, while others crack up and vanish. So basically, the sustainable is about time – time and space. You need to re-think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time. The things that are physically closest to you. Time and space.

In earlier, less technically advanced eras, this approach would have been far-fetched. Material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship. They were rare and precious. They were closely associated with social prestige. Without important material signifiers such as wedding china, family silver, portraits, a coach-house, a trousseau and so forth, you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors. If you failed to surround yourself with a thick material barrier, you were inviting social abuse and possible police suspicion. So it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms, renew all major purchases promptly, and visibly keep up with the Joneses.

That era is dying. It’s not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous. These objects can no longer protect you from want, from humiliation – in fact they are causes of humiliation, as anyone with a McMansion crammed with Chinese-made goods and an unsellable SUV has now learned at great cost.

Furthermore, many of these objects can damage you personally. The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking, washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.

It’s not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

Do not “economize.” Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It’s melting the North Pole. So “economization” is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.

The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don’t seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It’s in your time most, it’s in your space most. It is “where it is at,” and it is “what is going on.”

It takes a while to get this through your head, because it’s the opposite of the legendary of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed – (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You’re spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.

Sell – even give away– anything you never use. Fancy ball gowns, tuxedos, beautiful shoes wrapped in bubblepak that you never wear, useless Christmas gifts from well-meaning relatives, junk that you inherited. Sell that stuff. Take the money, get a real bed. Get radically improved everyday things.

Sterling says some other great stuff, but the main thrust here is rethinking your (my) relationship with stuff.  Obviously we all do this every time we move.  That’s the easy part: you look at something and think, “Do I like this enough to pack it, carry it twice, unpack it and put it away?” But I feel like I haven’t been saying “No,” in answer to that enough.  So I’ve been thinking much harder about what value objects have to me.  Are they sentimentally meaningful? Like old pictures of my grandparents? If yes, I’m making them active by doing things like framing those pictures and putting them up in my office where I see them everyday instead of just storing them away.

I think some of it is a factor of age as well.  I can look at knickknacks and trinkets now and think, “Am I using this as a way to express or define myself?”  If the answer is yes, then out it goes.  I guess maybe I know myself better now?  The same is true with books.  Do I have this book so people will see it and think that I am the kind of person who has this book? Yes? Away with you!  Of course, I also have a Kindle now, which has greatly changed my relationship with books.  I still love books.  I still want them.  But now I look at them and keep only the ones that are rare, special, or with strong visual impact. Shelves of paperback novels I might read again someday? Gone!  If it can be acquired from the library or for the Kindle it doesn’t need to take up space.

And it isn’t happening this week, moving or not, but I would like to move toward simply owning less stuff.  Or more stuff, as long as it’s genuinely meaningful or useful.  I have been thinking about this for a long time and I am glad to have a chance to begin to seriously act on this change.

If you’ve read this far and you’re still wondering how the picture on this post relates, it doesn’t really, but it does.  I just really love that sculpture and I found a postcard picture of it while I was packing and discarding unnecessary objects, so I thought I’d share the picture with you, rather than hoard away the post card.

Feb10

Bookish 2010 (possibly 1 in a series)

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Bookish 2010 (possibly 1 in a series)

Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland

I’ve been thinking about tracking every book I read this year in this space.  I haven’t actually decided to commit to that yet, but in the spirit of thinking about it, here’s thoughts on the books I’ve read so far this year.

Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby Technically this was the last book I read in 2009, but I’m including it because I liked it so much.  Hornby is generally enjoyable, if fluffy and forgettable.  I read this book straight through in about 5 hours while traveling and thought about it for days.  It’s about finding your way out of relationships you shouldn’t have been in and about music and fans.  It avoids the usual conceit of romantic comedy and I guess being about music, fans and relationships is pertinent to my interests.  Recommended highly.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson I just really didn’t like this book at all.  I wanted too.  The female character is an excellent creation.  She draws you in and you want to keep reading about her as she is strangely enigmatic, somewhat off-putting and yet incredibly likable and endearing (one assumes she’s mildly autistic or at least saddled with Asperger syndrome based on her actions).  I have considered reading his next book, just because I like her.  But over all the mystery here was convoluted and not well written.  The book itself relies on shocking the reader with grossly, overly described horrors of human nature.  The characters can’t redeem the story (and in this case even the setting is a character and again well done). I think a good writer can write about the disgusting, horrifying underbelly of human nature and titillate, shock and inform the reader without resorting to graphic descriptions.  Hmmm, it’s like the difference between a good suspense movie and slasher horror flick.  In the end, even with the amazing setting and lovely characters, this wasn’t much more than a slasher horror flick.  Bleh.  I know many people liked this book, but many people like bad slasher horror films too.  I wouldn’t recommend it and would probably dissuade friends from reading it.

Babylonne – Catherine Jinks I did make it all the way through this.  Sort of.  The author entirely loses focus in the second half and I skipped about 4 of every 5 pages through the end in an attempt to find the story again. I wondered after reading it if it was supposed to be juvenile fiction and perhaps it was.  It just isn’t good. The story is told in first person and the narrator is unreliable (I’m not sure even intentionally so) and comes across as being about 9 years old and insanely naive (although she is supposed to be 16, an age would make her an adult in the time period the book is set).  If you are curious about Cathars or the Albigensian Crusades there’s dozens of better books to choose from, both fiction and non-fiction.

Veil of Lies  – Jeri Westerson This book wasn’t particularly well written, nor (I suspect) especially historically accurate, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.  Sort of a private investigator noir but medieval.  The main character was flawed but dashing.  I’d recommend for light reading, say at the beach or on a long trip.

Wayfarer This is a collection of translated short fiction written by Korean women.  Insanely, unbelievably depressing.  Interesting, with lots of bits about family members lost to other side of the “wall” or to prison when communism split the country.  Some interesting insight into  another culture.  And yet, mostly just sad in a long suffering, empty void of despair kind of way.  Worth reading, but only if you have something cheerful to pick up after.

The Fools’ Guild Series – Alan Gordon  I’m not through this series yet, but here are the ones I’ve read (in the order I’ve read them):
The Lark’s Lament (#6)
The Moneylender of Toulouse (#7)
Thirteenth Night (#1)
Jester Leaps In (#2)
I love these!  Murder mysteries solved by fools in Medieval Europe, based, somewhat around Shakesperian stories.  Hooray!  The author’s ability to write mysteries dramatically improves in the later books, but the characters are so wonderful (as are the literary and historical in jokes) that it saves the earlier books.  I got #3 from the library today and am half tempted to blow off everything else this afternoon and just read it.  Love love love!

Aug9

too many things. and vampires.

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too many things. and vampires.

Untitled-1

Libelle is still out of town and I am being kind of lazy on this Sunday.  Ha!  Of course even if Libelle was here, chances are I’d still be sitting around in my pajamas.  But since she is out of town, I am waiting and waiting to watch the last two episodes of Being Human.  Even though I am dying to find out what happens.

Because I needed something to watch I am watching True Blood. I am only on episode 2 of season 1.  I have clearly not at all been paying attention to mainstream media since I had no idea that this was based on the Sookie Stackhouse books. I read the first three books when they came out and in general I like vampire things (which seem really, really popular lately, is that Twilight fall out or something else?) so it seems like someone would have told me I should be watching this show.

As with any adaption it has it’s problems.  And of course the original stories themselves require a lot of suspension of disbelief (and I don’t mean just believing in vampires, but more the weird secrecy about part of it and how the rest of the world would respond to the existence of vampires).  Still it is well enough made TV to be cracky cracktastic crack.  I just wish the guy who played Bill was hotter.  Alas, they don’t yet let me cast all the TV I watch to my own specifications.  I do actually really like Sam.  And Tara.  And oddly enough, Jason.  Sookie is the epitome of a Mary-Sue, which is oddly likeable in this instance.   But maybe the thing I like best about the show so far is the credits.  They are subtly creepy and promise great things for the show.  The images are disturbing but somehow home-like as well.

Huh.  That’s a lot of words about TV.

So as I watch I have been slowly and carefully continuing to strip down my possessions.  I’ve talked about this a little here before.  I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.  Some of it is a Zen thing, some of it is just feeling sort of burdened by everything I own.  It’s not like I need to pack up and go at any moment.  No, it’s more like a few years ago I started looking at some of my stuff and feeling like I didn’t know who it belonged too.  And then, it feels weird to say, but there is such thing as too many shoes and too much clothing.  And then there’s the stuff that’s just stuff.  I have spent a good part of my weekend sorting through the tons of stuff I have just in case I need it.  And you know, some of this stuff I have literally been packing up and moving around for YEARS and still haven’t ever used any of it.  And so it goes away.  Hopefully to someone who will use it.

Of course some of the things I have way too many of are because I can’t find the right one.  Hand bags for instance, I buy one that seems good, use it for a bit and then shelve it in favor of one that might be better.  I did once find the perfect bag, but alas, when I got mugged last year it was one of the things I lost and I have not been able to find another one like it.  When my sister was here about a month ago I saw this bag and swooned over it.  It perfectly fits all my criteria.  I didn’t buy it though.  And I’ve been kind of obsessing it over it ever since.  So I guess I’ll smartly save my pennies for a few weeks and buy it. In purple.  Which is less practical, I guess than brown or black, but more me, non?  And hopefully this one wil prove to be a great as the one that got away.  Otherwise I’ll have to keep acquiring handbags.

Heh, the fact that I am sitting around in my pajamas contemplating vampires and handbags is probably a sign that I need to get out more.  Maybe I’ll go make dinner.  And then watch some more vampires…

The picture on this post is a conversation between my mom and one of my cousins.  It just cracks me up so much I had to share it with everyone.

Jun28

seemingly unconnected

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seemingly unconnected

Hot.  Just roughly ten days of over 95°F and night time low temps of 79°F.  Daytime heat index has been over 100°F.  I’m not complaining exactly, especially since it’s spposed to break tonight.  At least for a few days.  I’m looking forward to that.  But it’s the kind fo heat that wears you down and I’ve already had so much going on, all the kind of stuff that wears your soul down and the heat just is making things worse, you know?

Also, PNW people, I know when I lived out west I said that poeple here didn’t understand that when it was hot in the PNW it was worse because weren’t used to it and no one had AC.  I take it back.  Sereiously.  It’s hotter here, even with AC, and harder to bear.  I am saying this, only because I am here.  If I was there and it was hot like this, I’d probably go back to my original opinion. :)   I reserve the right to change my mind as often as I like.

And, I’ve said before, the weather in this part of the country still baffles me.  I understand Seattle weather, how it lies between the mountains, how the clouds catch, why it rains, where the wind comes from, etc.  In Tennessee things just don’t happen in way that seems normal to me.  Cloud cover and night time don’t cool tempratures down.  The hottest part of the day is at the wrong time and somewhat variable.  Temps can drop, like they are right now, at 4 pm, on a clear and sunny day, for no reason other than a different weather system is coming in, unhindered by mountains and unchanged by oceans.  I mean, I guess I understand it, it just feels so alien to me.

—

“Nonsense.  Name a shrub after me.  Something prickly and hard to eradicate.”

*SIGH*  Oh Jack and Stephen, I love you so much.

So, uh, Im sitting here, reading some pretty hard science fiction and simultaneously watching Master and Commander.  And suddenly I’m wishing the future was even more now.  Where are my full text searchable databases of all the literature in the world?  I have an impulsive desire to go look a specific line in the third book of O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series (which is listed in some Amazon entries as “Aubrey/Maturin” HAHAHAHAHAHAHA) when I realize, oh, I don’t have any of those books here.  And it’s too late on Sunday afternoon for me to go to the library.  I suppose I could find an open Border’s books or something and look it up there, but that would mean putting on pants and brushing my hair.  Too much effort.  And in the other book I’m currently reading the tech allows almost anything to be searchable.  And so here I am wishing for full text searchable databases of all literature.

When I was in college people acted like librarians would soon be an extinct thing of the past.  Presumably because we’d all have these imaginary databases.  I said, no in my lifetime.  Tragically, it looks like I was right.  Come on, technology, catch up!!

—

Normalcy begins tomorrow.  I’ve been a wreck and I have no real desire to talk about why.  I’ve been wavering in pattern of taking a day to try and equalize and recover myself, starting to regroup the next day and then either I do something to fuck up or some outside force interfers and I stumble and try again to take a day to recover myself and the cycle begins again, lather, rinse, repeat.  Can’t go on forever and I’ve been seeing land on the horizon for a while.  Land fall is tomorrow and so the rolling, tide-like cycle can end.  Sorry for the nautical metaphors.  The hazards of the combination of the book I’m reading and the movie I’m watching right now.

Wednesday is the next of the big dental apointments.  And while th end is in sight, it’s still pretty far away.  I reserve the right to still have an emotional meltdown after each apointment.  I’ll probably come out of all of this needing therapy just to go into a dentist’s office again.  Or maybe I’ll take my mom’s advice and take valium before the appointments.  Not to be all drama queen or anything but the whole dental episode is still damn upsetting.  I am very glad to have friends around.  Everyone’s been very good to me and hopefully will continue to be even as I am prickly and unpleasent.

And all that said, I would give a lot, a whole lot to spend five days or a week alone at the beach when this is all over.

—

Crackjack Sister gets here tomorrow.  I can recuperate and be touristy and half-way vacation at the same time.  Having family here is the best because I never have to explain how I feel or why I’d do something a certain way.  No, that’s not explaining it right. Suffice to say, I’m looking forward to relaxing with my sister.  Sometimes there are Monday’s to look forward too.

Jun22

read me

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read me

I need to pick my next book to read.  I just finished The Unicorn Road (excellent), Crooked Little Vein (incredibly lame) and Woken Furies (awesome).

My current options are  Thirteen, Anansi Boys, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Children of God, The Lark’s Lament or The Catalans.  I have excellent reccomendations on the last two.  The Marquez one is surely good.  I’m sure I’ll probably pick one by the time any of you read this, but let’s talk about books anyway. What’s good, kids? Tell me what you are reading.

Mar25

a little philosophical, bookish, and sleep deprived

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a little philosophical, bookish, and sleep deprived

In the last twelve hours I have: driven home from work, checked my email & rss feeds, written a letter that I will never send, listened to a storm roll in, slept, dreamt, read the entirety of Coupland’s Eleanor Rigby (cover to cover), made coffee, had breakfast, texted with Libelle, checked Facebook, listened to hours of NPR, made a list of things to do, ignored said list, checked my email again, contemplated what to wear, worried over what I am not getting done, watched the rain fall and my yard flood, listened carefully to the bird calls outside to see which new ones have arrived for spring.  Perhaps not all exactly in that order.

I did all of this without ever seeing another human being, or hearing the voice of one, even over the phone.  I have texted, chatted, emailed and read FB status updates.  I have, I guess, interacted, though not directly or immediately. This is particularly interesting to me today.  It is not an abnormal twelve hours for me to have had, but Eleanor Rigby really was book almost entirely about loneliness and the nature of it in the modern world.

I really like Coupland.  I haven’t read his last 3 or 4 books, but I read all the previous ones and have nothing negative to say.  They are fast and engaging reads.  I always leave them feeling very thoughtful and slightly changed.  I admire his minor use of magical realism.  I appreciate his characters and generally find them likable.  I love reading about Vancouver and other parts of the northwest.  I love the way his characters always have mirrors to my own life.  Growing up in the 70s, in the northwest is entirely it’s own thing.  I’m sure his characters are relatable to many people of all ages and from all places, but I find a small, special sort of connection. Which is, perhaps, the root of what makes me like Coupland’s work.

I can’t say whether you would like the book or not.  Probably, if you like Coupland already.  I can’t say much about it at all.  My response to it was very personal.  As would be, I hope, anyone’s, since I guess that’s what loneliness is: something very internal and intensely personal.  I can’t decide right now if I think loneliness is something we should cast out of ourselves entirely, or if it is something to be reduced, shrunk, and then treasured.

In the last twelve hours, I have lived my life, alone, exactly the way I would want too.  In the last twelve hours, I have lived entirely outside my life, away from it.  It was my life and yet a nice escape, restorative.  I am glad to have done it, and yet, though I know I know I will do it again, it is not necessarily what I would choose for myself.