The books cradled her feet; the overcoat lay heavy across her arm; but it was only mid-afternoon, and the color as noise of TerraeAndrae was all about her. Food she did not need; excitement she did. The citizens clad in blue and gold and orange jostled her, the sheep pushed past her, the children ran shouting about her, and the paving stones pushed their way along her shoes. In one of the streets spoking from a trading square, she turned in a circle, looking at the panoply of images. So much movement, she thought: and just outside the gates, all was quiet and empty. Empty was not always undesirable: she could welcome a little empty now, a small space in which to think about everything that was happening. No matter what the wares, how expensive or how cheap the prices: all was mobbed, every store and every stall. Her eyes moved down the shop fronts: dyed woolskins, draped over poles and fingered by buyers… hanks of root vegetables, smelling of dirt and sun, trading hands… strings of deep blue and turquoise, ruby and maroon yellow and periwinkle beads and silk rolled into beads, caressed by seller and eager purchasers…a many-paned window empty of viewers.
Empty? It must be an empty stall – but in all the streets she had walked, she had seen no space empty of buyer and seller. Pushing the overcoat further into the corner of her arms behind the package of boots, she walked along the paving stones, looking at this unusual place.
Grundle’s Icons read a gold-leafed and blue scrolled sign over the doorway. That too was strange: most of the marketers set up bins and poles in the open air. Few had sides to their shops; very few had doors that closed. Her hand was on the door latch before her mind could do more than offer that idea.
The store was closed: the door stuck. No, the door pulled open, but tight in its frame. And she was inside. A center space where customers might stand and bicker or visit. A long counter of dark wood in front of her, that ran the width of the store, and behind it two doorways – one on each end of the wall behind the counter – to a dimmer space she could not see, though there were not curtains on the doorways. The walls on either side of her were filled with closed bins and drawers, from the large ones at the floor, big enough for her to crawl inside, to the small ones near the ceiling. Most of the drawer fronts were square, but several were rectangles, and some were circles or star-shaped, or eight-sided. Each drawer or bin had a handle, and many of them were different from the others: many square-shaped, but some shaped like flowers, or half-moons, sea creatures, trees, tiny sun shapes, and some that looked like stones.
It was dim in the building, dim and smelling of spices: orris and clove, palm heart and sawgrass, with a nose-tickling smell she could not identify.
“It’s curiosity and time,” said a grizzled man behind the counter. “Time. Time’s the main ingredient.”
“Can you hold and compound time?”
“If you know how to do it, you can.”
“Would you want to?”
The man clapped his hands sharply and bits of yellow light flew from them. “Now there’s a questions I’ve not heard in a long time. ‘Would you want to?’ You’re not from here but you’re going to upset the ones who are here if you keep opening your mouth. The Telos would like you. You might even wake him.”
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
A New Friend
Tina, who can be depended on not only to find new authors, but to produce the new authors that other books have told be about, recently sent a packet of Josephine Tey novels. Tey writes mysteries, and she’s been billed as “the best mystery writer.” There’s a title I need to explore, I thought when I first read that claim, because I don’t condone “best” being liberally applied to anyone: I’d like to see for myself. I told Tina about my quest to locate Tey stories, and as happens when I ask Tina about books, they appeared shortly after: four Tey stories, enough of a sampling for a few nights’ reading and a conclusion.
Whoever labeled Tey “best” certainly has a point. If you are hunting for mysteries with a lot of flash-bang, a high body count, and buildings regularly set on fire, she’s not your author. If on the other hand, you would like to know about the society where problems take place, and perhaps why the problems occur, and even where we might go from those problems to forestall more of them from happening, then Tey is definitely a read for you.
It’s another world, completely furnished (just as the Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs novels are; and if you enjoy Maisie, you are likely to be just as entertained by Tey). Not for Tey the “a man walked down the dark alley, pulled out a revolver, and pumped ten rounds in to the person cowering behind trash cans.” Before the body, it’s likely we have a story, set in England. It’s not the England of rich aristocrats or jet set glamour [sic]; it’s the England of the people who go to work, who term themselves “civil servant” rather than Scotland Yard Inspector (your conversationalists are much more likely to talk). It’s the England of people who know where they live: the vagaries of the local river (Bodies dumped above the Rushmere bridge don’t surface for more than thirty years – if ever; bodies dumped below the bridge may surface in a day.) There are home crafted fishing lures, topographical maps of the land, and someone standing on the outer edges of the Scottish Islands can look across the crashing waves toward America.
Inspector Grant, that human and humane Scotland Yard civil servant shares quite a few qualities with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey (Where my Whimsy leads me). He’s thoughtful, unorthodox, intelligent, and humane. He deduces and (like Maisie) he faces his own demons. These are not confined to England; the personality quirks and lack are also the ones that tear apart the United States in the 21st Century.
Miss Pym, another Tey character has been surprised by her own literary success, and at the importuning of her school years’ friend, is guest speaker at a girls’ college: we learn about the fields of study, we follow the collegiates’ worries and The Nut Tart’s escapades; by the end of the story we understand completely why Miss Pym makes the decisions she does, and why the murderer will never be punished. We know why Innes’ face looks the type to support nations. We feel for her.
Tey was worth four books of reading, and she’s worth quite a few more. Humor, irony, insight, character development. Reasoning. Good stories bring us not only plot, but people and national character. Thank you, Josephine Tey. Thank you, Tina.
Whoever labeled Tey “best” certainly has a point. If you are hunting for mysteries with a lot of flash-bang, a high body count, and buildings regularly set on fire, she’s not your author. If on the other hand, you would like to know about the society where problems take place, and perhaps why the problems occur, and even where we might go from those problems to forestall more of them from happening, then Tey is definitely a read for you.
It’s another world, completely furnished (just as the Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs novels are; and if you enjoy Maisie, you are likely to be just as entertained by Tey). Not for Tey the “a man walked down the dark alley, pulled out a revolver, and pumped ten rounds in to the person cowering behind trash cans.” Before the body, it’s likely we have a story, set in England. It’s not the England of rich aristocrats or jet set glamour [sic]; it’s the England of the people who go to work, who term themselves “civil servant” rather than Scotland Yard Inspector (your conversationalists are much more likely to talk). It’s the England of people who know where they live: the vagaries of the local river (Bodies dumped above the Rushmere bridge don’t surface for more than thirty years – if ever; bodies dumped below the bridge may surface in a day.) There are home crafted fishing lures, topographical maps of the land, and someone standing on the outer edges of the Scottish Islands can look across the crashing waves toward America.
Inspector Grant, that human and humane Scotland Yard civil servant shares quite a few qualities with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey (Where my Whimsy leads me). He’s thoughtful, unorthodox, intelligent, and humane. He deduces and (like Maisie) he faces his own demons. These are not confined to England; the personality quirks and lack are also the ones that tear apart the United States in the 21st Century.
Miss Pym, another Tey character has been surprised by her own literary success, and at the importuning of her school years’ friend, is guest speaker at a girls’ college: we learn about the fields of study, we follow the collegiates’ worries and The Nut Tart’s escapades; by the end of the story we understand completely why Miss Pym makes the decisions she does, and why the murderer will never be punished. We know why Innes’ face looks the type to support nations. We feel for her.
Tey was worth four books of reading, and she’s worth quite a few more. Humor, irony, insight, character development. Reasoning. Good stories bring us not only plot, but people and national character. Thank you, Josephine Tey. Thank you, Tina.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Divots in the Yard
Today I made divots in the yard: enormous wedges of dirt that turned over the ends of worms: startled out of their darkness, searching for the next bit of soul to till. Their tails (heads?) hung like looping cables. Their middles swung from the dirt molded into shovel shape. Tree rootlets came along with the dirt, in scratching tearing pieces. The shovel tore white grass roots from the soil. And all to plant some flowers.
One of the rites of spring is when one of us is busy counting clumps of flowers naturalized in the grass, and the other of us is pondering how a clandestine lawn mowing can guillotine their blossoms, leaving a level field behind. “Just another week,” I beg. “Have you seen what the lawn looks like? It’s ragged.” is the answer.
My fascination with scilla was born many years ago, when I marveled at their sky blue petals in my grandparents’ yard. Summer sky blue color, backlit by the rising sun, beaded with dew, the flowers bent over their grass-blade leaves. They come before the roses, and frolic below the heavy-belled tulips, like baby goats dancing amid cows.
Then one spring in Madison, we saw two ordinary yards, that were extraordinary for their rivers of blue: scilla packed tightly together in a tossing curling cloud of color. “That’s what I want in our yard,” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he answered.
I planted 25 bulbs, hoping to see them spread across the yard. The first year, we had a sprinkle of blooms, almost invisible in the grass. I planted 50 the next year, hoping the original 25 had multiplied, and would now greet their friends. There were blooms, but not enough. After some years, the scilla have formed clumps of flowers, nodding in the wind, making blue in the green spring grass. But not enough. And not close enough together.
“At least let me cut part of the lawn,” he said. So this afternoon, apologizing to the worms and tree roots for disturbing their existence, I planted 400 scilla bulbs in the front yard, where we can see them from the window. May they and their relations have a safe sleep and a bright spring.
One of the rites of spring is when one of us is busy counting clumps of flowers naturalized in the grass, and the other of us is pondering how a clandestine lawn mowing can guillotine their blossoms, leaving a level field behind. “Just another week,” I beg. “Have you seen what the lawn looks like? It’s ragged.” is the answer.
My fascination with scilla was born many years ago, when I marveled at their sky blue petals in my grandparents’ yard. Summer sky blue color, backlit by the rising sun, beaded with dew, the flowers bent over their grass-blade leaves. They come before the roses, and frolic below the heavy-belled tulips, like baby goats dancing amid cows.
Then one spring in Madison, we saw two ordinary yards, that were extraordinary for their rivers of blue: scilla packed tightly together in a tossing curling cloud of color. “That’s what I want in our yard,” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he answered.
I planted 25 bulbs, hoping to see them spread across the yard. The first year, we had a sprinkle of blooms, almost invisible in the grass. I planted 50 the next year, hoping the original 25 had multiplied, and would now greet their friends. There were blooms, but not enough. After some years, the scilla have formed clumps of flowers, nodding in the wind, making blue in the green spring grass. But not enough. And not close enough together.
“At least let me cut part of the lawn,” he said. So this afternoon, apologizing to the worms and tree roots for disturbing their existence, I planted 400 scilla bulbs in the front yard, where we can see them from the window. May they and their relations have a safe sleep and a bright spring.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Cafe Curtains
Never say never, as my mother would tell us.
I’ve never wanted café curtains: if a prowler is taller than 5 feet (and what prowler isn’t), he’s going to be looking in from the dark scary night to our lighted home, anyway. Curtaining the bottom two-thirds of the window blocks sunlight and my view of what’s happening outside (a rabbit crosses the lawn, a squirrel considers hacking off a geranium head for his lunch, and decides it resembles cauliflower: don’t bother). But just lately, with the noise aspect of the house, I’m thinking café curtains are not as evil as their pseudo French origins.
They’d keep the dogs from looking out. Dogs behave on the pack mentality: you bark, I bark, we all bark. You have a treat, I want it, and of course it’s mine. We can have three dogs barking, but their combined din sounds like thirty, reverberating off the uncarpeted floor (with all those little feet tracking in dirt, who needs carpeting).
Curtains would keep the squirrels feeling safer, the grass able to blow without canine commentary, and the human lives quieter. Quiet is good.
I’ve never wanted café curtains: if a prowler is taller than 5 feet (and what prowler isn’t), he’s going to be looking in from the dark scary night to our lighted home, anyway. Curtaining the bottom two-thirds of the window blocks sunlight and my view of what’s happening outside (a rabbit crosses the lawn, a squirrel considers hacking off a geranium head for his lunch, and decides it resembles cauliflower: don’t bother). But just lately, with the noise aspect of the house, I’m thinking café curtains are not as evil as their pseudo French origins.
They’d keep the dogs from looking out. Dogs behave on the pack mentality: you bark, I bark, we all bark. You have a treat, I want it, and of course it’s mine. We can have three dogs barking, but their combined din sounds like thirty, reverberating off the uncarpeted floor (with all those little feet tracking in dirt, who needs carpeting).
Curtains would keep the squirrels feeling safer, the grass able to blow without canine commentary, and the human lives quieter. Quiet is good.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Trimming the Size of Dreams
Over the summer, we built an Arts & Crafts style bookcase: solid wood, heavy as a piano, six feet tall, and bearing that sweeping curve combined with straight lines that sing Arts & Crafts. At the same time, the family room was undergoing a facelift, with board and stile paneling. The two projects would look beautiful together. When we moved the bookcase in though, the extended stiles plus the decrease in wall width of 1.5” meant that the bookcase didn’t fit in its designated niche. We could have moved it to the center of the wall, where it could be admired (who needs a sofa anyway). We could have displaced the tv (but the sports teams would have missed us).
We moved the bookcase to another room, and said, “We’ll build another with adjusted dimensions next year.” Maybe we will; maybe we will be following another project’s lure. [Arts & Crafts style end table with a cabin underneath for the dogs.]
We could say that we muffed the project: should have, could have. We say, we built something that we enjoyed building. We’re happy it turned out as well as it did. We learned things. And we had fun.
This dream turned out to need a decrease of 6” to fit easily into the space; we chose to use another space. That’s okay. I’d rather start with a dream too big, than one too small; rather want to earn enough money that I have money to share with others, than earn just enough to pay my bills, budgeting to the penny each month.
If we have a dream that’s too large for the existing space, maybe we need to look for a larger space. Don’t dream too small. Yes, we need to ensure that the dream is right for us. We need to find a dream that we can devote our energy and time to. We need to match our dreams and our souls. But we also need to remember that when we trim the size of our dreams so they don’t require us to stretch our beings, then we are settling, not dreaming.
We moved the bookcase to another room, and said, “We’ll build another with adjusted dimensions next year.” Maybe we will; maybe we will be following another project’s lure. [Arts & Crafts style end table with a cabin underneath for the dogs.]
We could say that we muffed the project: should have, could have. We say, we built something that we enjoyed building. We’re happy it turned out as well as it did. We learned things. And we had fun.
This dream turned out to need a decrease of 6” to fit easily into the space; we chose to use another space. That’s okay. I’d rather start with a dream too big, than one too small; rather want to earn enough money that I have money to share with others, than earn just enough to pay my bills, budgeting to the penny each month.
If we have a dream that’s too large for the existing space, maybe we need to look for a larger space. Don’t dream too small. Yes, we need to ensure that the dream is right for us. We need to find a dream that we can devote our energy and time to. We need to match our dreams and our souls. But we also need to remember that when we trim the size of our dreams so they don’t require us to stretch our beings, then we are settling, not dreaming.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Gender Roles
In the Women’s Lit class, we’ve been discussing (arguing through) gender roles. Each participant has her or his own concept of what those roles are, and how we should meet expectations. In between online discussion, we at home have been getting ready for dinner company.
He’s scrubbing the floor, and I track through the kitchen, an extension cord looped over my shoulder, a 3/8” variable speed drill in my arm, the metal 25’ retractable tape and the extra screw eyes in my hands. The dogs follow (one set of big footprints, many sets of small foot prints) because they harbor suspicions about the floor scrubber eating their toes. If we had framed the 40 x 60 inch poster in the garage that wouldn’t have been necessary, but the only empty space large enough was the extended dining room table. Tonight, with guests coming, we need to clear off the woodworking project and bring ourselves up to standards. [Whose standards? I ask myself. Yes, but nobody wants to eat on top of the picture, I answer.]
This morning, he made a grocery store run for milk (tonight’s dessert) and liversausage (what makes the dog world go ‘round).
While he slept, I baked a cherry pie and formed the first two layers of Millie’s Butterscotch Dessert. He will cook the meat, because he's better at it than I am. I could have gone to the store for milk; instead I did laundry and worked on the college lit class.
The bottom line is that I can run around with drill and tape measure, my hands smelling of 30 year old hardware because he makes it possible by electing to scrub the floor, and he can sleep late because I enjoy early the everything’s possible potential (and its resultant ability to get the baking finished) of early morning. It works because we want it to, because we have learned over time (and usually remembered) that gender roles exist, but they exist to serve us, not the other way ‘round. Each of us doing what we like to do best - mixed with love and compassion - result in a world turning ‘round the right way, and good things to eat for us all.
He’s scrubbing the floor, and I track through the kitchen, an extension cord looped over my shoulder, a 3/8” variable speed drill in my arm, the metal 25’ retractable tape and the extra screw eyes in my hands. The dogs follow (one set of big footprints, many sets of small foot prints) because they harbor suspicions about the floor scrubber eating their toes. If we had framed the 40 x 60 inch poster in the garage that wouldn’t have been necessary, but the only empty space large enough was the extended dining room table. Tonight, with guests coming, we need to clear off the woodworking project and bring ourselves up to standards. [Whose standards? I ask myself. Yes, but nobody wants to eat on top of the picture, I answer.]
This morning, he made a grocery store run for milk (tonight’s dessert) and liversausage (what makes the dog world go ‘round).
While he slept, I baked a cherry pie and formed the first two layers of Millie’s Butterscotch Dessert. He will cook the meat, because he's better at it than I am. I could have gone to the store for milk; instead I did laundry and worked on the college lit class.
The bottom line is that I can run around with drill and tape measure, my hands smelling of 30 year old hardware because he makes it possible by electing to scrub the floor, and he can sleep late because I enjoy early the everything’s possible potential (and its resultant ability to get the baking finished) of early morning. It works because we want it to, because we have learned over time (and usually remembered) that gender roles exist, but they exist to serve us, not the other way ‘round. Each of us doing what we like to do best - mixed with love and compassion - result in a world turning ‘round the right way, and good things to eat for us all.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Thievery without Conscience
Once or twice a summer, we have the Boy Scouts to swim: an exuberant bunch of mid-teen boys, who arrive vibrating with anticipation, and spend several hours splashing, yelling, diving, and pretty much being boys, in the pool. As part of this, we make a cookout: burgers, brats, hot dogs, and one of the things that mothers avoid: dessert to excess. We know that sugar plus male adolescence makes an even more exciting time, but we do it anyway.
This cookout, we had 15 scouts, three semi-portly scout masters, one Scout master wife, and the dogs, who could be counted on to make noise, get underfoot, and be tired enough by the end of the day to sleep deeply. We also had 5 pounds of jumbo hot dogs, 5 pounds of brats, a vat of potato chips, 7 12-packs of assorted soda, and 6 boxes of Hostess cupcakes, Twinkies, Suzy Q’s, and Zingers (chocolate and salt are an unbeatable combination), though we did include a large bottle of ketchup (lycopene?) for health.
We’d set out the cookie trays of grilled meat and refilled the largest mixing bowl (the one I use to bake bread) with potato chips. The boys descended on the food, were silent for ten minutes, swinging their water wrinkled toes at the picnic table and the patio umbrella table. Then the thrash and bustle began: back to the water, jousting, diving, jumping and thrashing with all the energy accumulated in a few minutes of quiet.. The adults sat in fat-embedded satisfaction and watched. Water sparkled, sun shone: we were mostly all happy.
Just then, we saw something we could not believe: a whisk of movement at the umbrella table. Rosemary the dachs was on the table, scrounging among the plates. Before we could reach her, she removed the remainder of a jumbo dog (more than the length of her nose) from someone’s plate, jumped from the table to the chair, to the patio, and trotted past us, the jumbo dog projecting from her mouth. Rosie and hot dog rounded the corner into the grass, where she feasted on her ill-gotten treat.
This cookout, we had 15 scouts, three semi-portly scout masters, one Scout master wife, and the dogs, who could be counted on to make noise, get underfoot, and be tired enough by the end of the day to sleep deeply. We also had 5 pounds of jumbo hot dogs, 5 pounds of brats, a vat of potato chips, 7 12-packs of assorted soda, and 6 boxes of Hostess cupcakes, Twinkies, Suzy Q’s, and Zingers (chocolate and salt are an unbeatable combination), though we did include a large bottle of ketchup (lycopene?) for health.
We’d set out the cookie trays of grilled meat and refilled the largest mixing bowl (the one I use to bake bread) with potato chips. The boys descended on the food, were silent for ten minutes, swinging their water wrinkled toes at the picnic table and the patio umbrella table. Then the thrash and bustle began: back to the water, jousting, diving, jumping and thrashing with all the energy accumulated in a few minutes of quiet.. The adults sat in fat-embedded satisfaction and watched. Water sparkled, sun shone: we were mostly all happy.
Just then, we saw something we could not believe: a whisk of movement at the umbrella table. Rosemary the dachs was on the table, scrounging among the plates. Before we could reach her, she removed the remainder of a jumbo dog (more than the length of her nose) from someone’s plate, jumped from the table to the chair, to the patio, and trotted past us, the jumbo dog projecting from her mouth. Rosie and hot dog rounded the corner into the grass, where she feasted on her ill-gotten treat.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Go Klaus! Go!
“Are you Klaus’s mother?” I asked the trim lady with gold earrings, a denim skirt, and a neon chartreuse t shirt.
“No, I’m Klaus’s aunt.” Klaus’s aunt proceeded to lay down money for raffle tickets (quilt), but declined to buy spit-imbued dog kisses at the rescue kissing booth, since she already had many of those via Klaus.
Klaus was running in one of the heats for the dachs races, and his dad explained the family strategy. “He loves my wife. He rushes up to her when she comes home from work. So we’re making sure he does not see her, until the race, and she’s going to be at the finish line.” So were the rest of Klaus’s extended family, wearing their t shirts: Go Klaus! Go! on the front, and another message on the back.
Klaus, bathing in the sunshine, excitement, and a cornucopia of smells, was blissful. He has a loving family, a full food dish, and a crowd of human relatives cheering for him. No matter how he places in the race, he and they know that he’s a winner.
Support the rescue of your choice. Rescue exists so more dogs have loving families, just like Klaus.
“No, I’m Klaus’s aunt.” Klaus’s aunt proceeded to lay down money for raffle tickets (quilt), but declined to buy spit-imbued dog kisses at the rescue kissing booth, since she already had many of those via Klaus.
Klaus was running in one of the heats for the dachs races, and his dad explained the family strategy. “He loves my wife. He rushes up to her when she comes home from work. So we’re making sure he does not see her, until the race, and she’s going to be at the finish line.” So were the rest of Klaus’s extended family, wearing their t shirts: Go Klaus! Go! on the front, and another message on the back.
Klaus, bathing in the sunshine, excitement, and a cornucopia of smells, was blissful. He has a loving family, a full food dish, and a crowd of human relatives cheering for him. No matter how he places in the race, he and they know that he’s a winner.
Support the rescue of your choice. Rescue exists so more dogs have loving families, just like Klaus.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
No Guarantees but Love
Recently we volunteered at a festival booth, for a dog rescue. I held Buster. Most clearly, Buster’s melting acceptance held me. He resettled his head against my arm, he didn’t complain when I shifted him to make change or tear off raffle tickets; and when we sat down during the dachshund races, he lay against my shirt (Proud Owner of a Rescued Dog) without fuss and with a good deal of contentment.
Several people were interested in him, but most of them drew back when they learned his age: 9. “I want a dog that will live a long time.” “I want a dog that’s playful.”
The Make a Wish foundation is built on the dreams of the tragically and very young ill. Last night’s news had a thirty second clip on a 14 year old, shot dead at a house party. Maybe we should comment that she had 8 years on the 6 year old who was killed in a drive by shooting, or 12 years on the 2 year old who was squashed by a pet python, or 13 years on the baby who died a crib death. But those are people, you could say: what about dogs?
We could remember the loved 1 year old dog who died of reaction to a routine immunization vaccination, or the 5 year old who developed cancer, or the puppies who never survived in that dog mill – because their mom never had even the most basic care. There are no guarantees of tomorrow – for any of us, no matter what our age, financial status, social standing, or happiness level. Each day is a gift. What the people in rescue do, is accept today, and work their butts off in hope for tomorrow.
Dogs come into rescue from three major areas: overloaded shelters, owner turn ins, and mill busts. Maybe we laud the release of dogs from the hell holes of mills, and understand how a shelter built to house 50 animals now faces housing 250, but how could an owner turn in a dog?
Very heart-breakingly. The owner dies, and the family members have no space in their homes for an animal that Grandma loved. The owner goes into assisted living. The owner loses a job, moves into an apartment that won’t accept animals. The owner is going through a divorce, being deployed overseas, must get the animal away from abusive boyfriend. There are many stories of despair and loss behind the dogs who come in, dogs who are deeply loved.
Very easily. Owners have turned dogs in to rescue because, “We redecorated the living room and the dog no longer matches the furniture. Do you have any in our new color scheme?” Or, “He’s 10 years old, and we want a puppy.” Or, “My husband’s getting a sex change operation and we can’t afford both the operation and the dog.”
The dogs are heart-breakingly grateful to escape the mills, the abuse, and the chaos. But when they come into rescue through owner turn in, they’re often stunned. The world that existed for them, for 5 of 8 or 10 years has disappeared. They grieve. Eventually, most of them find love with a new family. For a long time, they remember the people they gave their lives and hearts to.
Buster was an owner turn in. He’s 9 years old – too old for many prospective adopters to seriously consider him. One lady with two children and tears in her eyes held him close to her, and he snuggled in. Maybe she is his new mom. Maybe his family will appear in two weeks or two months. In the meanwhile, he is safe in body and learning to life with his grief as he moves toward a new life: a dental, getting his vaccinations up to date, high quality food, and lots of compassion. We do what we can: we do everything we can.
There are no guarantees in life, except love. The best guarantee of all.
Several people were interested in him, but most of them drew back when they learned his age: 9. “I want a dog that will live a long time.” “I want a dog that’s playful.”
The Make a Wish foundation is built on the dreams of the tragically and very young ill. Last night’s news had a thirty second clip on a 14 year old, shot dead at a house party. Maybe we should comment that she had 8 years on the 6 year old who was killed in a drive by shooting, or 12 years on the 2 year old who was squashed by a pet python, or 13 years on the baby who died a crib death. But those are people, you could say: what about dogs?
We could remember the loved 1 year old dog who died of reaction to a routine immunization vaccination, or the 5 year old who developed cancer, or the puppies who never survived in that dog mill – because their mom never had even the most basic care. There are no guarantees of tomorrow – for any of us, no matter what our age, financial status, social standing, or happiness level. Each day is a gift. What the people in rescue do, is accept today, and work their butts off in hope for tomorrow.
Dogs come into rescue from three major areas: overloaded shelters, owner turn ins, and mill busts. Maybe we laud the release of dogs from the hell holes of mills, and understand how a shelter built to house 50 animals now faces housing 250, but how could an owner turn in a dog?
Very heart-breakingly. The owner dies, and the family members have no space in their homes for an animal that Grandma loved. The owner goes into assisted living. The owner loses a job, moves into an apartment that won’t accept animals. The owner is going through a divorce, being deployed overseas, must get the animal away from abusive boyfriend. There are many stories of despair and loss behind the dogs who come in, dogs who are deeply loved.
Very easily. Owners have turned dogs in to rescue because, “We redecorated the living room and the dog no longer matches the furniture. Do you have any in our new color scheme?” Or, “He’s 10 years old, and we want a puppy.” Or, “My husband’s getting a sex change operation and we can’t afford both the operation and the dog.”
The dogs are heart-breakingly grateful to escape the mills, the abuse, and the chaos. But when they come into rescue through owner turn in, they’re often stunned. The world that existed for them, for 5 of 8 or 10 years has disappeared. They grieve. Eventually, most of them find love with a new family. For a long time, they remember the people they gave their lives and hearts to.
Buster was an owner turn in. He’s 9 years old – too old for many prospective adopters to seriously consider him. One lady with two children and tears in her eyes held him close to her, and he snuggled in. Maybe she is his new mom. Maybe his family will appear in two weeks or two months. In the meanwhile, he is safe in body and learning to life with his grief as he moves toward a new life: a dental, getting his vaccinations up to date, high quality food, and lots of compassion. We do what we can: we do everything we can.
There are no guarantees in life, except love. The best guarantee of all.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Space
We built a wonderful new bookcase, modified Arts & Crafts, and decided we are finished buying books. Books on the shelves are wonderful; books that need to be moved from the shelf, to the shelf, to another room on the shelf, multiply. How could we have found so many books that we need? At one time and another we did, and the books, never leaving home, reflect our past and present interests. They are beguiling to read, challenging to ponder, and in toto, difficult to contemplate. Since we avoid taking them off the shelves unless we’re forced into it, when it was time to return them to order, we behaved in character.
Our first response was mutual denial. “This is your book,” extending a volume toward each other, “I was never interested in this, so you need to find a place for it on the shelves. Your shelves.”
Our second response, as predictable, was to reshelve books, sort books (discover multiple copies of some of our books), rediscover books we had enjoyed reading, wanted to reread, never got around to reading but wanted to. And realize that indeed, somehow let off the shelves, they had expanded and we had more books.
“I have a problem,” I told him.
“That sounds personal.”
Undeterred, as well as unwilling to admit personal culpability for all the books I had needed at various points in the past, I explained that though the new bookcase was full, I still had six sagging stacks of books on the floor. They were categorized, though. “The acupressure and acupuncture.”
“Well, stick it to ‘em.”
Philosophy.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Before I ran out of their space, most of the religion books made it on the shelf.”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Astronomy. Half on the shelf and half on the floor.”
Instead of telling me to find an answer in the night sky, he did one of the things that makes him endearing. “Tomorrow, let’s go out and buy you another bookcase.”
Our first response was mutual denial. “This is your book,” extending a volume toward each other, “I was never interested in this, so you need to find a place for it on the shelves. Your shelves.”
Our second response, as predictable, was to reshelve books, sort books (discover multiple copies of some of our books), rediscover books we had enjoyed reading, wanted to reread, never got around to reading but wanted to. And realize that indeed, somehow let off the shelves, they had expanded and we had more books.
“I have a problem,” I told him.
“That sounds personal.”
Undeterred, as well as unwilling to admit personal culpability for all the books I had needed at various points in the past, I explained that though the new bookcase was full, I still had six sagging stacks of books on the floor. They were categorized, though. “The acupressure and acupuncture.”
“Well, stick it to ‘em.”
Philosophy.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Before I ran out of their space, most of the religion books made it on the shelf.”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Astronomy. Half on the shelf and half on the floor.”
Instead of telling me to find an answer in the night sky, he did one of the things that makes him endearing. “Tomorrow, let’s go out and buy you another bookcase.”
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Book excerpt
When I was demoted to minister of the Cigarette Depot Acts of God Bible Ministry Church, I cried.
"I want to do," I argued with the circle of whiskered and rouged faces clustered on a street corner, "not be."
"You're the best listener."
"You smile like you're sad and you never yell."
"You laugh when you talk with children, even when you're soused."
"You're getting too old to roll drunks."
"I don't care." That's what I said. What I wanted to say was, 'I want to be alive.'
Their heads shook slowly, their eyeballs rolled white under the streetlight. "No, man. You're the best we've got to offer."
"I can trust you with my girls."
"I've never seen you do a bad thing."
"That's because you haven't looked, man." I didn't want to be good. I didn't want impotence and white senility. I wanted electricity crackling from my fingertips. I wanted to be bright lightning. I wanted to be the actor, not the audience. Have you ever seen a minister man who was whole?
"You're the one we need, man."
Then Emmaline’s predictable, “You gots to be minister. A minister gots to be a man, and you is a man who knows how it goes to talk to people.”
"I don't care."
Maybe I didn’t, but they didn’t listen, either.
Puking up rotgut booze behind the dumpster is better than sitting on Emmaline's cracked steps and feeling its dampness seep into the worn seat of my trousers while Emmaline tells me how her second man beat her when she reminded him he had told her they would get married. "Maybe he forgot," I reached past myself to scratch a fingernail across the chalky paint, feeling vibrations shiver along my fingerbone.
"Maybe he got drunk," Emmaline answered, leaning on the fat roll above her hip. "I tell you, maybe he didn't never want to get married. And here I was, living with him. What's my mama going to say?" She waved her arms, then stood motionless except for the loose flesh at the backs of her arms jiggling in echoes. She frowned. Then she laughed. "So I kicked him out. What's my mama going to say about that?"
"Maybe he changed his mind."
"What do you mean by that?" Her head bent forward above her double chin like a turkey gobbler hunting for his beak.
What did I care what I meant by that? I meant nothing except anything: lifting a shot glass of amber oblivion, filching the last packet of peach jam from a table at Nellie Slimey's Restaurant, leaning back against a winter doorway in an overcoat stiff with dirt, even beating Emmaline myself: anything was better than sitting on the cement stoop listening to her go on. I'd rather be a wife beater than a woman's listening post.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Kitchen Wars
We are having company for dinner. The peanut butter cookies are cooling on the table, the chopped vegetables are marinating. I am cooking milk and cream, to stir into chopped chocolate (Emilie recommends the $22.95/lb; I resist and designate Ghiradelli as chocolate-of-the-day.) It’s a new recipe, so I read it over and over, mouthing the directions to myself. ‘Whisk the first 3 ingredients…the first 3 ingredients are…the size of the bowl should be…whisk the first 3 ingredients.’
He arrives to clean up my mess: any loose pot, bowl, mixing spoon, or utensil, sometimes the one set ready for me to use. [“What’s this doing here? It should be in the cabinet.” “Where’s the spoon I had right here?”]
We’ve had many discussions about how even rinse water does deadly things to melting chocolate. We’ve discussed the necessity of having the baking soda, sea salt, baking powder (gluten free, aluminum free), and chocolate chips where I can open the cabinet door and reach them while my eyes are on the mixture blending in the bowl. “I straightened up the cabinet for you,” translates to my resultant clandestine operation: dump the chocolate bits packages back where they belong and set the baking soda, open-side-in, on the first shelf (rather then the third it had been relegated to in the sorting). A clean kitchen is a better kitchen, is his motto. A kitchen where I can find the teaspoon measure I set down thirty seconds ago is a sane kitchen, I mutter.
“This is the Maginot Line,” I said, extending my arm across the counter, to separate the may-wash from the in-use.
“The Germans flew over it. I could too.”
“Yes, you could.” I left unspoken the rest of my response, ‘But if you do, there will be war.’
He washed and dried the dishes; I dirtied more of them, talking the recipe to myself, stirring chocolate cream. It was less than a skirmish when he opened the drawer and dumped silverware as I poured hot milk into the chopped chocolate, jostled my stirring arm, and the hot white liquid splattered onto the burner and smoked into brown bits.
While I wasn’t watching, the mixer was decapitated (“If you take off the motor, it stores more easily, on two shelves”), and the beaters escaped captivity to nestle on the kitchen table, next to a box of eggs (Phil’s, cage-free). They might have kept their freedom, huddling under the page of glorious chocolate cream in a teacup (Emilie is not stingy with her portions), if he had not abandoned the tv to join in my hunt for them.
In a few hours the company will arrive, and we will greet them: tidy and organized. The chocolate chips will rustle in their squatter acreage at the back of the first shelf. Many people will make many dishes dirty, so he can wash up. And I will agree wholeheartedly with our company: it’s very special having a person who not only loves me and my foibles, but is willing to clean up after them.
He arrives to clean up my mess: any loose pot, bowl, mixing spoon, or utensil, sometimes the one set ready for me to use. [“What’s this doing here? It should be in the cabinet.” “Where’s the spoon I had right here?”]
We’ve had many discussions about how even rinse water does deadly things to melting chocolate. We’ve discussed the necessity of having the baking soda, sea salt, baking powder (gluten free, aluminum free), and chocolate chips where I can open the cabinet door and reach them while my eyes are on the mixture blending in the bowl. “I straightened up the cabinet for you,” translates to my resultant clandestine operation: dump the chocolate bits packages back where they belong and set the baking soda, open-side-in, on the first shelf (rather then the third it had been relegated to in the sorting). A clean kitchen is a better kitchen, is his motto. A kitchen where I can find the teaspoon measure I set down thirty seconds ago is a sane kitchen, I mutter.
“This is the Maginot Line,” I said, extending my arm across the counter, to separate the may-wash from the in-use.
“The Germans flew over it. I could too.”
“Yes, you could.” I left unspoken the rest of my response, ‘But if you do, there will be war.’
He washed and dried the dishes; I dirtied more of them, talking the recipe to myself, stirring chocolate cream. It was less than a skirmish when he opened the drawer and dumped silverware as I poured hot milk into the chopped chocolate, jostled my stirring arm, and the hot white liquid splattered onto the burner and smoked into brown bits.
While I wasn’t watching, the mixer was decapitated (“If you take off the motor, it stores more easily, on two shelves”), and the beaters escaped captivity to nestle on the kitchen table, next to a box of eggs (Phil’s, cage-free). They might have kept their freedom, huddling under the page of glorious chocolate cream in a teacup (Emilie is not stingy with her portions), if he had not abandoned the tv to join in my hunt for them.
In a few hours the company will arrive, and we will greet them: tidy and organized. The chocolate chips will rustle in their squatter acreage at the back of the first shelf. Many people will make many dishes dirty, so he can wash up. And I will agree wholeheartedly with our company: it’s very special having a person who not only loves me and my foibles, but is willing to clean up after them.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
We love dogs
This week I was on the phone to the vet about Tickie, who had absconded with, and ingested, several Heartgard chewables not his own. “It’s okay,” the tech said, “in the trials they use 600 times the strength, with no effects.” Tickie wagged up at me, from the floor, asking for more of those tasty treats. “You are a turd,” I told him.
Last week it was Ernie, who decided to lie on the sofa, playing Dying. Clear eyes, pink gums, no wincing or complaining when I palpated his body. Ernie played Dying until that evening, when he begged vigorously for liversausage, and announced he was Happy to Be Living and Just Fine.
Squeege had an affection for books, and as a one year old, munched on volume 38 of 60 of the set (formerly mint condition, hardcover with gold stamping) and was startled at our dismay. Kibbles chewed the delicate tissue paper of sewing patterns, and stopped – nonplussed, with a critical piece dangling from her mouth, when I screeched at her.
Dogs, as everyone knows who has an acquaintance with one, have personalities, lives, and are often nicer to their families than some people or friends we could name. Dogs bring emotion, life, happiness, and yes – occasionally frustration as well as hefty vet bills – into our lives. Dogs are made of love and memories.
If we and they could communicate in terms we fragile and dull humans could understand, how much anxiety and dismay might be saved us. If we thought like dogs, how much frustration we could save ourselves.
Last week it was Ernie, who decided to lie on the sofa, playing Dying. Clear eyes, pink gums, no wincing or complaining when I palpated his body. Ernie played Dying until that evening, when he begged vigorously for liversausage, and announced he was Happy to Be Living and Just Fine.
Squeege had an affection for books, and as a one year old, munched on volume 38 of 60 of the set (formerly mint condition, hardcover with gold stamping) and was startled at our dismay. Kibbles chewed the delicate tissue paper of sewing patterns, and stopped – nonplussed, with a critical piece dangling from her mouth, when I screeched at her.
Dogs, as everyone knows who has an acquaintance with one, have personalities, lives, and are often nicer to their families than some people or friends we could name. Dogs bring emotion, life, happiness, and yes – occasionally frustration as well as hefty vet bills – into our lives. Dogs are made of love and memories.
If we and they could communicate in terms we fragile and dull humans could understand, how much anxiety and dismay might be saved us. If we thought like dogs, how much frustration we could save ourselves.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Predictions of the end of Books
In today’s mail, in a note from a friend, I received a recent Newsweek article touting the hand held readers available from amazon, which also predicted the demise of the publishing industry and books as we read, check out from the library, and buy. As my friend points out, had I “been born in 1990 you would not have the problems of stacks of books. You would read off Kindle and then erase.” He also sent a copy of a 1976 letter sent to him from the mystery writer Jonathan Latimer.
Also in the mail was a note from the owner of my favorite book shop, and a book I bought used (yes, through amazon, though I patronize alibris gladly and often).
Recently, we visited Thimbleberry, a quintessential used book store in Marshfield, WI, where (surprise!) we found books that needed come home with us, and were allowed by the resident cat to massage its ears. Cat ears have a satisfying texture under the fingers, like gentle lettuce, and this cat was gracious enough to allow its ears to be touched. In addition to smelling of old, used books, and offering us gateways to authors like Latimer (who respond to paper letters sent by their admirers), Thimbleberry possessed a wide low table, made of leather and wood, that looked like three stacked leather-bound books. I was enchanted, and desired one for my very own.
Some research on the infamous www led me to Maitland-Smith, people who make furniture that dust is afraid to sit on, and, in addition to that table [“Hand tooled Savannah Brown Leather Book Cocktail Table with Drawers”], a trunk that looks like a stack of books.
Without a computer and a line running electricity, or whatever energy telephone lines are made of, I would never had known that, just as I would never be able to order books at 6 a.m., ask my favorite store what was in stock, and obtain many interesting pieces of information (like Thimbleberry’s address). But despite Kindle’s touted easability, eras-ability, and immediacy, despite that prognosticator’s assurance, I still want to hold a book in my hand. How else could my fingers turn the same pages that were turned by hundreds of library patrons, or know that the Cornelia Funke Ink-trilogy books fit perfectly in my palms? How else would I know what time feels like? We need time, and space to read a book. That’s what Kindle forgets. Thank you no: I don’t want a plastic contraption that lights up, and allows me to read whatever, wherever (though I do admit that shutting it off is tempting). I don’t want to erase the books I have read, because I want to reread them, lend them to trustworthy friends, and refer to a sentence in them. I want the comforting weight of a volume that someone else has valued; I want the smell of glue and paper. I want the old amber color of light falling across the page, not a page that illuminates itself from the inside out. I’ll take my illumination in the ideas that transfer from book to mind.
There are those who will argue that we need to modernize: we save trees, we speed communication, we erase what we don’t want (economizing on space and brain cells). They have an ecological point. I’ll take the books I’m finished reading to a store where they will become someone’s find-of-the-day. I’ll pass along the illumination.
Where do we get our information, how do we want to receive information, and how do we want to interact with the world (as well as others)? Is time, or convenience, or the communication itself most significant? Thank you, we’ll choose cat ears to massage, paper notes in the mail, and real books.
Also in the mail was a note from the owner of my favorite book shop, and a book I bought used (yes, through amazon, though I patronize alibris gladly and often).
Recently, we visited Thimbleberry, a quintessential used book store in Marshfield, WI, where (surprise!) we found books that needed come home with us, and were allowed by the resident cat to massage its ears. Cat ears have a satisfying texture under the fingers, like gentle lettuce, and this cat was gracious enough to allow its ears to be touched. In addition to smelling of old, used books, and offering us gateways to authors like Latimer (who respond to paper letters sent by their admirers), Thimbleberry possessed a wide low table, made of leather and wood, that looked like three stacked leather-bound books. I was enchanted, and desired one for my very own.
Some research on the infamous www led me to Maitland-Smith, people who make furniture that dust is afraid to sit on, and, in addition to that table [“Hand tooled Savannah Brown Leather Book Cocktail Table with Drawers”], a trunk that looks like a stack of books.
Without a computer and a line running electricity, or whatever energy telephone lines are made of, I would never had known that, just as I would never be able to order books at 6 a.m., ask my favorite store what was in stock, and obtain many interesting pieces of information (like Thimbleberry’s address). But despite Kindle’s touted easability, eras-ability, and immediacy, despite that prognosticator’s assurance, I still want to hold a book in my hand. How else could my fingers turn the same pages that were turned by hundreds of library patrons, or know that the Cornelia Funke Ink-trilogy books fit perfectly in my palms? How else would I know what time feels like? We need time, and space to read a book. That’s what Kindle forgets. Thank you no: I don’t want a plastic contraption that lights up, and allows me to read whatever, wherever (though I do admit that shutting it off is tempting). I don’t want to erase the books I have read, because I want to reread them, lend them to trustworthy friends, and refer to a sentence in them. I want the comforting weight of a volume that someone else has valued; I want the smell of glue and paper. I want the old amber color of light falling across the page, not a page that illuminates itself from the inside out. I’ll take my illumination in the ideas that transfer from book to mind.
There are those who will argue that we need to modernize: we save trees, we speed communication, we erase what we don’t want (economizing on space and brain cells). They have an ecological point. I’ll take the books I’m finished reading to a store where they will become someone’s find-of-the-day. I’ll pass along the illumination.
Where do we get our information, how do we want to receive information, and how do we want to interact with the world (as well as others)? Is time, or convenience, or the communication itself most significant? Thank you, we’ll choose cat ears to massage, paper notes in the mail, and real books.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Karmic thought
Revenge may thump us (or our enemies) on the head, but karma chews away – usually for longer, and usually more annoyingly. Karma’s also the one more likely to lead us to change.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Incongruity and Coexistence
The show had artifacts, books, statues, period photographs (mostly of historical figures) in gilt frames. There were buttons and portable writing desks, Victorian jewelry, and a book with a title perfect for the day: Original Revised Manual. There was also a lunch counter (pulled pork, ham and cheese, roast beef and cheese, brownies, soda) and guns. Next to the guns and the lunch table was another table where two nuns, in full-to-the-floor black nun habits and full-to-the-side nun wimples, were selling fruit breads, glazed fruit custard tarts, and coffee.
I wore my “Proud Owner of a Rescued Dog” t shirt, and several people started up conversations that began with, “I own a rescued dog,” and developed into stories about their dogs. In fact I re-met a woman who had talked with me two years ago about adopting a rescue (she found her heart dog through a different rescue group: he’s a 16 pound dog with pointed ears, a white bib and paw tips, and a wonderful disposition. They’re perfect for each other). She found her boyfriend online; they’re perfect for each other, also, she said – though she might not have described him as the perfect boyfriend before she met and talked with him, just as she never knew her perfect dog match before she saw him and knew they were meant to be together. She recognized me by the shirt.
I’ve seen the Coexist bumper sticker formed of a variety of religious symbols, and I’ve also see the Coexist bumper sticker with some of its letters formed from the crosshairs on a target finder and a skull and crossbones. But what I saw at the show was coexistence.
Life is wonderful, and beautiful, and wide, when we have enough space in it for nuns to sell their wares next to gun and artifact dealers selling their wares, and nobody is busy actively hating anyone else.
I wore my “Proud Owner of a Rescued Dog” t shirt, and several people started up conversations that began with, “I own a rescued dog,” and developed into stories about their dogs. In fact I re-met a woman who had talked with me two years ago about adopting a rescue (she found her heart dog through a different rescue group: he’s a 16 pound dog with pointed ears, a white bib and paw tips, and a wonderful disposition. They’re perfect for each other). She found her boyfriend online; they’re perfect for each other, also, she said – though she might not have described him as the perfect boyfriend before she met and talked with him, just as she never knew her perfect dog match before she saw him and knew they were meant to be together. She recognized me by the shirt.
I’ve seen the Coexist bumper sticker formed of a variety of religious symbols, and I’ve also see the Coexist bumper sticker with some of its letters formed from the crosshairs on a target finder and a skull and crossbones. But what I saw at the show was coexistence.
Life is wonderful, and beautiful, and wide, when we have enough space in it for nuns to sell their wares next to gun and artifact dealers selling their wares, and nobody is busy actively hating anyone else.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Excerpt from a novel
Sleep's an intermission between car exhaust and drugs. It's the next oblivion, after liquor and sex lose their variety. 'At night all cats are grey,' the French sneer. If you don't understand that, you haven't been with enough women. Or men. Sleep is the epilogue: When there’s no juice left you sprawl like a stack of dried twigs, blanket piled around your hips. Wade claims the most fun sleep is with two broads working you over. I think the most honest sleep is with yourself.
There's been times when what I wanted most was to lie down in a convenient gutter, pull a blanket of slush over me, and go to sleep. I agreed with Sid: I could have used sleep in a cardboard box, if anyone offered some. But apparently I didn't fit any longer; there was no room at the bridge inn.
I sat still there in the dirty sunshine, maybe looking like I was asleep, listening to rat scratchings, car whines, and the low boom of railroad cars hunting for a permanent love.
"You gettin' out of here?" Sid asked. "You gonna tell that bitch to leave me alone?"
"Yeah."
"Then give me the smokes."
I threw the pack toward him. "Go to hell, Sid."
"Yeah, you too. Got any booze?"
"Not on me. For that you would kill me."
A sigh. "Yeah, you're right again, man. Tell that old fart if she shows up with a bottle I'll talk to her." He crawled into one of the boxes.
"Yeah, man," I whispered after him.
He didn't answer, but I could hear long drags from inside the box. I sat there for a while longer, smelling the warm cardboard, listening to some flies. Then I sidled along the boxes until I could angle around the bridge roots and come, blinking, into the remnants of a day.
Fifty feet behind me Sid squatted in his box blowing cancer spores into his lungs. On the other side of a concrete railing cars rushed past, hunting. A few miles away Emmaline sat, waiting for someone to bring life's news back to her. "You got to talk to my brother," she had said. "You got to bring him back. Got to save him."
I brushed my palms over my pants and ambled down the sidewalk. Stories where the beast transforms into a beauty aren't true. Beauty can't exist without a beast inside. A pack of cigarettes might entice Sid into daylight, but the sun wouldn't change him. A revival meeting, NA, six hot whores, a social worker, or love wouldn't either. Emmaline thought faith might, but either she or the faith was wrong. Remember high school physics? Two things do occupy the same place at the same time.
I dug in my pocket for the smoke. Creased and leaking tobacco shreds, lost behind Sid’s brand new rollups, but I stuck it between my teeth, scratched a match along the bridge to get a light, and started back to Emmaline's disapproval. As I walked, I watched sunshine change bits of trash and lost tin cans from pale gold to amber, rose, cinnamon, and finally a dark, rich red shadowed with royal purple.
There's been times when what I wanted most was to lie down in a convenient gutter, pull a blanket of slush over me, and go to sleep. I agreed with Sid: I could have used sleep in a cardboard box, if anyone offered some. But apparently I didn't fit any longer; there was no room at the bridge inn.
I sat still there in the dirty sunshine, maybe looking like I was asleep, listening to rat scratchings, car whines, and the low boom of railroad cars hunting for a permanent love.
"You gettin' out of here?" Sid asked. "You gonna tell that bitch to leave me alone?"
"Yeah."
"Then give me the smokes."
I threw the pack toward him. "Go to hell, Sid."
"Yeah, you too. Got any booze?"
"Not on me. For that you would kill me."
A sigh. "Yeah, you're right again, man. Tell that old fart if she shows up with a bottle I'll talk to her." He crawled into one of the boxes.
"Yeah, man," I whispered after him.
He didn't answer, but I could hear long drags from inside the box. I sat there for a while longer, smelling the warm cardboard, listening to some flies. Then I sidled along the boxes until I could angle around the bridge roots and come, blinking, into the remnants of a day.
Fifty feet behind me Sid squatted in his box blowing cancer spores into his lungs. On the other side of a concrete railing cars rushed past, hunting. A few miles away Emmaline sat, waiting for someone to bring life's news back to her. "You got to talk to my brother," she had said. "You got to bring him back. Got to save him."
I brushed my palms over my pants and ambled down the sidewalk. Stories where the beast transforms into a beauty aren't true. Beauty can't exist without a beast inside. A pack of cigarettes might entice Sid into daylight, but the sun wouldn't change him. A revival meeting, NA, six hot whores, a social worker, or love wouldn't either. Emmaline thought faith might, but either she or the faith was wrong. Remember high school physics? Two things do occupy the same place at the same time.
I dug in my pocket for the smoke. Creased and leaking tobacco shreds, lost behind Sid’s brand new rollups, but I stuck it between my teeth, scratched a match along the bridge to get a light, and started back to Emmaline's disapproval. As I walked, I watched sunshine change bits of trash and lost tin cans from pale gold to amber, rose, cinnamon, and finally a dark, rich red shadowed with royal purple.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Excerpt from Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness: The Taxi Driver
My parents don't travel very often. They would argue with this statement. My father would say he travels to an aberrant reality every day he goes to work, and my mother would say that, with all the traveling she does in books, why should she pack up fifty pounds of books with whatever shirt and pants are clean in order to travel? Then she would ask about reading lights plugging into trees along the campground, and home baked granola for breakfast. The only exception to her objections was once, when we heard her say she would drive to a large Oregon bookstore to buy more books, but that was about all she would concede for voluntary travel.
"Why not fly?" my father asked, head lifting at the mention of travel. "That way you would have more time there."
"But how would I get the books home? Airlines have weight limits."
"Have the bookstore ship them."
"Listen, if I went to get books I loved, I would drive them back. If I'm going to go to Oregon to find books, I'm not going to trust the books to anyone else once they and I have found each other."
"True love is difficult," my father agreed. He turned to me. "Listen, if she starts talking to her books, then we need to worry. Right now she's just talking about her books."
"Got you."
With this attitude toward traveling in general, it was a bit unusual my parents were cruising around Madison in the evening, and it was even more unusual they were not cruising toward a grocery store, which is my father's hobby, or a bookstore, which is my mother's addiction and salvation.
They were, instead, looking for a motel where they were supposed to meet some distant relatives in town to meet each other. My parents were, as they describe it, on the happy periphery of any relationships, but my father said it was important to put in an appearance. "We don't want them to think we don't like them."
"Why not?" my mother asked. "And it's not that we don't like them; it's just that we have more important things to do."
"Like what?"
"Go to bookstores. Read the books we find at bookstores. Take the dogs for a walk."
"The dogs are safely locked up at home."
"See what I mean? Go home, read the books waiting for us, and take the dogs for a walk."
"You're just getting testy because you didn't bring a book along in the car."
"It's dark," my mother said. "I know I can't read in the dark. But I have a few books slid alongside the seat."
"And we don't know where we're going because you didn't get specific directions," my father agreed.
"They said, 'slightly south of Mineral Point Road, after the expressway.'"
"Do you know how much of the city is 'slightly south'?"
"I know the name of the hotel where they are staying. It's Roadway. Or road-something."
"We could find a Yellow Pages," I offered helpfully from the safe darkness of the back seat. I was sitting on something with an edge that might be a book, I had no access to a video game, and the sooner we paid our respectful hellos to the distant relatives, the sooner we had a chance of finding what I wanted to find: electricity and a video game.
"If we can find a phone booth that hasn't been vandalized," said my father, "we could look up this place. How many hotels do you think begin with 'Road'?"
"We could check a library, but they probably are all closed," said my mother sadly.
Suddenly my father swung the car sharply to the right and pressed hard on the accelerator. "A taxi driver," he announced. "See? Over there. Two lanes to the right and three cars ahead. Taxi drivers know where everything is. I'll get next to him and we can ask him. I'll even give him some money if he will show us the way."
"You can't ask a taxi driver," my mother protested.
"Why not?" This last was said through his teeth, because my father was trying to maneuver the car as we cruised the six lanes of busy highway. "Darn truck. Why did he have to be in my way?"
"You can't ask a taxi driver. You can't just go up to a stranger and ask how to get somewhere? What if he is a crazed killer? What if he's strange? What if he leads us to a deserted part of the city and we never see daylight again?"
"Or bookstores," I added. "You forgot bookstores."
"Or bookstores," my mother repeated obediently. "He might be ... oh you can't."
"Watch me. As soon as I get ahead of the sports car." My father pushed hard on the gas pedal, shifted his weight, and mashed the brake. We paused, like a bird braking in flight.
"Be careful! You just missed the fender of that BMW."
"He just missed me. Why doesn't he get out of my way? You just watch the taxi. Don't lose the taxi." Dad added a word or two under his breath which I stuffed into my mind to add to Ben's collection.
"The taxi driver's accelerating," mother said. Her voice sounded relieved.
"He is not. He is going to get caught by the red light up ahead."
"You never know. Taxi drivers might go through red lights. That's another reason not to trust them. Anyone who goes through red lights..."
"Anyone who drives five miles an hour under the limit like you do," my father countered. "Now, I'm going to edge in here. I want you to roll down your window."
"Me? Roll down my window?"
"I can't turn the car around so I can talk to him through mine. Which is already down so I can easily hear the comments of the other motorists. Now roll down your window."
We slowed to a heated stop only three feet from the taxi. Streetlights winkled along the cars, store lights blinked off and on in red fluorescence, the smell of hot grease and burnt sugar seeped along the black air. All about us engines idled. The air pulsed with exhaust, radios, frustration, and night.
"I don't want to talk to strange taxi drivers," my mother announced as she lowered her window.
"Why not? You have so much in common." My father leaned across the front seat. "Excuse me," he bellowed.
"Look, you already cut me off; why bother," came a retort from Dad's other side.
"Smart aleck." My father took a deep breath. "Excuse me," he shouted.
The taxi driver shifted against his open window and swiveled his head. Then the traffic light clanked to green, and around us fifteen cars let off their brakes.
"Don't let him get away," my father called.
Fifteen cars spat ozone into the Madison night. The taxi driver looked over his shoulder at Dad, waved to his passenger, and began to slide to the right.
"He's turning," screamed my father. "Catch him."
"I'm sure a good library would be able to tell us the same thing. Or maybe maps at a gas station. I'll even go in and ask for a map."
"The taxi driver is waiting for us," I announced.
With a flourish of brakes we decelerated at the next stop light. Someone three cars back honked a drumbeat, and the sound wavered between warm metal bodies.
"Excuse me," screeched my father. "We're looking for the Roadway Motel. Do you know where it is?"
"Do you mean Roadstar?" the driver asked.
"Do we mean 'Roadstar'?" my father asked my mother.
"I guess so. How many motels have 'road' in their name?"
"Yes we do," Dad called back to the taxi driver.
The cross traffic's light changed from green to amber. We shifted forward in anticipation. "I'm going there," called the driver. "It's ahead about half a mile, but it's not easy to find. Follow me."
The taxi driver executed a cloverleaf maneuver and slid in front of us. Dad edged forward to the taxi's bumper. "See?" He chortled. "'I'm going there.' How much luckier can you get? I told you to ask the taxi driver."
Mother peered through her window into the night. I memorized the taxi license plate, and then slid off into a reverie about video game car chases.
We swerved through two more intersections. We ducked under an elevated highway, threaded along a shopping center, and nipped into the middle one of three dark driveways.
"Is that a grocery store?" asked my father.
"Follow the taxi," my mother reminded him. "You want to follow the taxi."
But we no longer needed to follow the taxi. Above a rise of ground we could see a large white building, and along its side in letters one story high: Roadstar Inn.
The taxi and our car slid together into a rectangle of lemon light. Above us, the square yellow moon of the Roadstar Motel's sign shone calmly.
"See?" said my father. "You can always trust a taxi driver in a strange city." He honked the horn and waved to the taxi driver.
No one moved. We all sat silent in relief. “It turned out okay,” my mother said finally. “Even without a library.” It was a radical statement for her.
I leaned back looked again at the Roadstar sign, and considered. Maybe people could change and start fresh somewhere else. I wondered if the same precept applied to dating girls.
"Why not fly?" my father asked, head lifting at the mention of travel. "That way you would have more time there."
"But how would I get the books home? Airlines have weight limits."
"Have the bookstore ship them."
"Listen, if I went to get books I loved, I would drive them back. If I'm going to go to Oregon to find books, I'm not going to trust the books to anyone else once they and I have found each other."
"True love is difficult," my father agreed. He turned to me. "Listen, if she starts talking to her books, then we need to worry. Right now she's just talking about her books."
"Got you."
With this attitude toward traveling in general, it was a bit unusual my parents were cruising around Madison in the evening, and it was even more unusual they were not cruising toward a grocery store, which is my father's hobby, or a bookstore, which is my mother's addiction and salvation.
They were, instead, looking for a motel where they were supposed to meet some distant relatives in town to meet each other. My parents were, as they describe it, on the happy periphery of any relationships, but my father said it was important to put in an appearance. "We don't want them to think we don't like them."
"Why not?" my mother asked. "And it's not that we don't like them; it's just that we have more important things to do."
"Like what?"
"Go to bookstores. Read the books we find at bookstores. Take the dogs for a walk."
"The dogs are safely locked up at home."
"See what I mean? Go home, read the books waiting for us, and take the dogs for a walk."
"You're just getting testy because you didn't bring a book along in the car."
"It's dark," my mother said. "I know I can't read in the dark. But I have a few books slid alongside the seat."
"And we don't know where we're going because you didn't get specific directions," my father agreed.
"They said, 'slightly south of Mineral Point Road, after the expressway.'"
"Do you know how much of the city is 'slightly south'?"
"I know the name of the hotel where they are staying. It's Roadway. Or road-something."
"We could find a Yellow Pages," I offered helpfully from the safe darkness of the back seat. I was sitting on something with an edge that might be a book, I had no access to a video game, and the sooner we paid our respectful hellos to the distant relatives, the sooner we had a chance of finding what I wanted to find: electricity and a video game.
"If we can find a phone booth that hasn't been vandalized," said my father, "we could look up this place. How many hotels do you think begin with 'Road'?"
"We could check a library, but they probably are all closed," said my mother sadly.
Suddenly my father swung the car sharply to the right and pressed hard on the accelerator. "A taxi driver," he announced. "See? Over there. Two lanes to the right and three cars ahead. Taxi drivers know where everything is. I'll get next to him and we can ask him. I'll even give him some money if he will show us the way."
"You can't ask a taxi driver," my mother protested.
"Why not?" This last was said through his teeth, because my father was trying to maneuver the car as we cruised the six lanes of busy highway. "Darn truck. Why did he have to be in my way?"
"You can't ask a taxi driver. You can't just go up to a stranger and ask how to get somewhere? What if he is a crazed killer? What if he's strange? What if he leads us to a deserted part of the city and we never see daylight again?"
"Or bookstores," I added. "You forgot bookstores."
"Or bookstores," my mother repeated obediently. "He might be ... oh you can't."
"Watch me. As soon as I get ahead of the sports car." My father pushed hard on the gas pedal, shifted his weight, and mashed the brake. We paused, like a bird braking in flight.
"Be careful! You just missed the fender of that BMW."
"He just missed me. Why doesn't he get out of my way? You just watch the taxi. Don't lose the taxi." Dad added a word or two under his breath which I stuffed into my mind to add to Ben's collection.
"The taxi driver's accelerating," mother said. Her voice sounded relieved.
"He is not. He is going to get caught by the red light up ahead."
"You never know. Taxi drivers might go through red lights. That's another reason not to trust them. Anyone who goes through red lights..."
"Anyone who drives five miles an hour under the limit like you do," my father countered. "Now, I'm going to edge in here. I want you to roll down your window."
"Me? Roll down my window?"
"I can't turn the car around so I can talk to him through mine. Which is already down so I can easily hear the comments of the other motorists. Now roll down your window."
We slowed to a heated stop only three feet from the taxi. Streetlights winkled along the cars, store lights blinked off and on in red fluorescence, the smell of hot grease and burnt sugar seeped along the black air. All about us engines idled. The air pulsed with exhaust, radios, frustration, and night.
"I don't want to talk to strange taxi drivers," my mother announced as she lowered her window.
"Why not? You have so much in common." My father leaned across the front seat. "Excuse me," he bellowed.
"Look, you already cut me off; why bother," came a retort from Dad's other side.
"Smart aleck." My father took a deep breath. "Excuse me," he shouted.
The taxi driver shifted against his open window and swiveled his head. Then the traffic light clanked to green, and around us fifteen cars let off their brakes.
"Don't let him get away," my father called.
Fifteen cars spat ozone into the Madison night. The taxi driver looked over his shoulder at Dad, waved to his passenger, and began to slide to the right.
"He's turning," screamed my father. "Catch him."
"I'm sure a good library would be able to tell us the same thing. Or maybe maps at a gas station. I'll even go in and ask for a map."
"The taxi driver is waiting for us," I announced.
With a flourish of brakes we decelerated at the next stop light. Someone three cars back honked a drumbeat, and the sound wavered between warm metal bodies.
"Excuse me," screeched my father. "We're looking for the Roadway Motel. Do you know where it is?"
"Do you mean Roadstar?" the driver asked.
"Do we mean 'Roadstar'?" my father asked my mother.
"I guess so. How many motels have 'road' in their name?"
"Yes we do," Dad called back to the taxi driver.
The cross traffic's light changed from green to amber. We shifted forward in anticipation. "I'm going there," called the driver. "It's ahead about half a mile, but it's not easy to find. Follow me."
The taxi driver executed a cloverleaf maneuver and slid in front of us. Dad edged forward to the taxi's bumper. "See?" He chortled. "'I'm going there.' How much luckier can you get? I told you to ask the taxi driver."
Mother peered through her window into the night. I memorized the taxi license plate, and then slid off into a reverie about video game car chases.
We swerved through two more intersections. We ducked under an elevated highway, threaded along a shopping center, and nipped into the middle one of three dark driveways.
"Is that a grocery store?" asked my father.
"Follow the taxi," my mother reminded him. "You want to follow the taxi."
But we no longer needed to follow the taxi. Above a rise of ground we could see a large white building, and along its side in letters one story high: Roadstar Inn.
The taxi and our car slid together into a rectangle of lemon light. Above us, the square yellow moon of the Roadstar Motel's sign shone calmly.
"See?" said my father. "You can always trust a taxi driver in a strange city." He honked the horn and waved to the taxi driver.
No one moved. We all sat silent in relief. “It turned out okay,” my mother said finally. “Even without a library.” It was a radical statement for her.
I leaned back looked again at the Roadstar sign, and considered. Maybe people could change and start fresh somewhere else. I wondered if the same precept applied to dating girls.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness - excerpt
"I'm here about an accident," the police officer began.
"Whose accident?" asked my father. "None of us have had any accidents. Kent," he turned, "were you in an accident?"
"No sir," the police officer answered for me, "this is about witnessing an accident. I think it's your wife we need."
"What did you do this time?" my father asked my mother.
"This is pretty routine and shouldn't take more than a few minutes."
"Like the surveys in the grocery store?" I asked. "They always say that, and then it takes half an hour, but they give you some food samples at the end."
"I don't think we get any samples," my father said.
"Come in," said my mother, opening the screen door. "Would you like a cookie while we talk?"
"No thank you, ma'am. But do you have a table, like a kitchen table, where I could put my notebook down?"
We all wandered to the kitchen table. "This is about the accident this morning," the officer began.
"Were you in it?" my father asked my mother.
"I saw it," said my mother.
"No damage to our car?" my father continued.
"I saw it," my mother repeated. "The car next to me started up and gently drove into the car before it. We were all at a stoplight."
The officer's pen scribbled. "Were there any distractions, say an emergency vehicle? Was the light changing? Did the drivers say anything to each other? I mean, before the accident?"
"No, no, and no," said my mother.
"He needs more than that," said my father. "This is an official report. And a statement for the insurance companies."
"I'm sure they will all sort it out," said my mother. "Are you sure you would not like a cookie? Fresh. Chocolate chip. I baked them this evening."
"No thank you, ma'am," answered the officer. "So there was no apparent cause, like the first car did not move forward, and the second car did not think the light had changed or something?"
"Cars don't think," said my mother. "Drivers do. Or not. Sometimes I think it would be better if they let cars drive themselves; maybe cars would think better than drivers."
"Yes ma'am," murmured the police officer. "But what was the driver of the second car thinking when she let her car hit someone?"
"I knew it was a 'she,'" said my father.
"'What was she thinking?'" my mother repeated. "What do you mean, 'What was she thinking?' How am I supposed to know what she was thinking? I don’t know what goes on in people's minds. Do you know how impenetrable a mind is? Do you know how people can be thinking almost anything, that they like you, or hate you, or love you, or would like broccoli cheddar soup for supper, and none of that shows on the outside of their head?
"I don't know what my husband is thinking. I've been married to him for twenty-five years, and I have no idea what he is thinking. I never met this woman. She drove her car to the same stop light as I did. I never saw her before. How would I know what she was thinking?" My mother stopped, breathing hard.
"When they ask me, 'How long have you been married?' I say, 'Ten happy years. And out of twenty-five, that isn’t' bad,'" said my father. "Of course my wife doesn't like that answer. So I guess I should just say, 'Twenty-five years.'"
"What is truth?" asked my mother. "How do you know what truth is? Let alone know someone's thoughts."
“Of course she used to talk with me more," added my father to clarify his opinions.
"Truth is an abstract. There is a truth for each person," continued my mother. She waved her hand at Truth, somewhere beyond the ceiling.
The officer's pen remained above his paper, poised for its swan dive. "What I meant was," he interrupted, looking from one of my parents to the other, "What I meant was, did she say anything to indicate why she might have done that?"
"I don't talk to strangers," said my mother.
"She is a stranger," said my father.
The police officer capped his pen. "Thank you for your time," he said slowly, "I'll add this to the report, but I don't think the insurance company or the department will be contacting you again. It all seems pretty straightforward."
"Whose accident?" asked my father. "None of us have had any accidents. Kent," he turned, "were you in an accident?"
"No sir," the police officer answered for me, "this is about witnessing an accident. I think it's your wife we need."
"What did you do this time?" my father asked my mother.
"This is pretty routine and shouldn't take more than a few minutes."
"Like the surveys in the grocery store?" I asked. "They always say that, and then it takes half an hour, but they give you some food samples at the end."
"I don't think we get any samples," my father said.
"Come in," said my mother, opening the screen door. "Would you like a cookie while we talk?"
"No thank you, ma'am. But do you have a table, like a kitchen table, where I could put my notebook down?"
We all wandered to the kitchen table. "This is about the accident this morning," the officer began.
"Were you in it?" my father asked my mother.
"I saw it," said my mother.
"No damage to our car?" my father continued.
"I saw it," my mother repeated. "The car next to me started up and gently drove into the car before it. We were all at a stoplight."
The officer's pen scribbled. "Were there any distractions, say an emergency vehicle? Was the light changing? Did the drivers say anything to each other? I mean, before the accident?"
"No, no, and no," said my mother.
"He needs more than that," said my father. "This is an official report. And a statement for the insurance companies."
"I'm sure they will all sort it out," said my mother. "Are you sure you would not like a cookie? Fresh. Chocolate chip. I baked them this evening."
"No thank you, ma'am," answered the officer. "So there was no apparent cause, like the first car did not move forward, and the second car did not think the light had changed or something?"
"Cars don't think," said my mother. "Drivers do. Or not. Sometimes I think it would be better if they let cars drive themselves; maybe cars would think better than drivers."
"Yes ma'am," murmured the police officer. "But what was the driver of the second car thinking when she let her car hit someone?"
"I knew it was a 'she,'" said my father.
"'What was she thinking?'" my mother repeated. "What do you mean, 'What was she thinking?' How am I supposed to know what she was thinking? I don’t know what goes on in people's minds. Do you know how impenetrable a mind is? Do you know how people can be thinking almost anything, that they like you, or hate you, or love you, or would like broccoli cheddar soup for supper, and none of that shows on the outside of their head?
"I don't know what my husband is thinking. I've been married to him for twenty-five years, and I have no idea what he is thinking. I never met this woman. She drove her car to the same stop light as I did. I never saw her before. How would I know what she was thinking?" My mother stopped, breathing hard.
"When they ask me, 'How long have you been married?' I say, 'Ten happy years. And out of twenty-five, that isn’t' bad,'" said my father. "Of course my wife doesn't like that answer. So I guess I should just say, 'Twenty-five years.'"
"What is truth?" asked my mother. "How do you know what truth is? Let alone know someone's thoughts."
“Of course she used to talk with me more," added my father to clarify his opinions.
"Truth is an abstract. There is a truth for each person," continued my mother. She waved her hand at Truth, somewhere beyond the ceiling.
The officer's pen remained above his paper, poised for its swan dive. "What I meant was," he interrupted, looking from one of my parents to the other, "What I meant was, did she say anything to indicate why she might have done that?"
"I don't talk to strangers," said my mother.
"She is a stranger," said my father.
The police officer capped his pen. "Thank you for your time," he said slowly, "I'll add this to the report, but I don't think the insurance company or the department will be contacting you again. It all seems pretty straightforward."
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Searching for X - excerpt
Recently, I remembered that I have never led a careful life. I will not begin now.
It was time to do the things he’d always wanted to see, do, be: the little things that made life. A sunset, a sunrise, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee. Watching people. If he could find enough of those little things that summed up life on the way, maybe he would also have found the right answer. If not, maybe it was what you did before you got there that counted.
The first day he didn’t drive far. He picked up some speed along the straight ways, dallied along the curves, pulled over a few time to sit watching traffic, deliberately thinking of nothing until he saw a set of tiny headlights, like hope coming toward him, become larger and brighter, and carry past him on a whish of sound. He’d blink, and go back to thinking of nothing. After a few hours on the road, always moving south, he stopped at one of the small Mississippi river towns. It wasn’t famous for the river; it was famous for the home made farm country pies. One of the things he had always wished he had done was to sit in a restaurant for hours, watching people come and go, a cup of smoking hot coffee and a piece of pie in front of him. There was never time, or the right restaurant handy. It was time to change the equation.
Farm country he would have called it, with local patrons were at their brown laminate tables, bent over the newspaper (most of them trucked in from the Twin Cities, he noted with quiet pride) or staring bleared ahead of them, forearms along the table. Their eyes were concentrating on yesterday’s news or today’s hopes. There were plenty of empty chairs and almost as many open tables. He asked politely for one at the wall, where he could see the view from across the restaurant.
“There isn’t much to see, just the street where people leave their cars,” the blonde and young waitress told him solemnly. It’s just a small town.”
She could have been one of his students, home for the day, picking up a little extra money by working her summer job, even though now it was fall.
“That’s okay. I like to lean against the wall while I sip my coffee. Just coffee, please.” And he had gotten what he wanted: a table for two, with nothing behind him except fake paneling and everything in front of him: tables, waitresses moving briskly among them, the smell of pancakes and sugar, sunrise turning the fog in the air translucent and the dust on the cars outside to pollen yellow. Time.
He came back to himself from a formless reverie about time and fog. The coffee, newspaper, breakfast group had left. The waitresses were mopping clean tables, setting out new paper mats, shifting the pies in their lighted cases. That was one reason he had turned the car here. If he was going to waste time over a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, it might as well be somewhere where they were known for their pies. Apple, apple with streusel crumb topping, banana cream, blueberry, cherry, chocolate cream, cranberry apple, currant, lemon meringue, peach, pecan, raspberry, rhubarb, strawberry. ‘Streusel crumb’ was a cheating name, for the tourists. Anyone from a German or Polish background knew that streusel was crumbs. But it was the pies, pies from generous farm kitchens, that were important. He looked up from consideration of the pie list, out the window. More cars, the early scouts for today’s stream of tourists, were moving into open spaces on the main street. Take one farm town where people knew how to cook, subtract three failed businesses factored into the reduced price of bulk milk, add the byproduct of traveler runoff from a highway, compound multiply by word of mouth. What did you have? A list of thirty-five kinds of pie (most of them indigenous) and enough rebuilt economy to keep the town’s women employed while their men either drank the coffee the women poured into restaurant cups or went back to the fields and barns, hoping for an upturn in the price of corn, wheat, milk, and beef. Pie. He studied the list, and tipped a smile toward one of the waitresses.
“And which will it be?” she asked, as she poured a coffee refill.
“Rhubarb, please.” His grandma used to make rhubarb pie in early spring, pink and green stalks bound in a yellow egg custard. Sticky, sour, and full of promise.
By the time he laid his fork across the smeared plate, the tables had refilled. The restaurant was sloshing in coffee, sugar, and noise. “Got to make Sioux Falls today.” And, “Remember Sasie, we want to see the Effinghams when we’re in Detroit.” Or, “Did you pack the camera? Do you think you could get a photo of us – maybe outside? Do you think they would let us take our plates out in front? Mehitabel would love to see this place.” “Mehitabel would love the pies. That woman never missed a meal in her life.” He sipped his coffee and watched people who didn’t know when they would run out of distance or time.
The restaurant traffic never slowed down after that. At one in the afternoon, hemmed in by the people who had been shifting their weight in the vestibule, watching for an empty table, he ordered a piece of lemon pie. “Not the meringue.”
The waitress frowned, her skirts still riding the air currents from her movements between the tables. “Not the meringue? That’s the only lemon we have.”
“Okay. How about banana cream?”
“That we can do.”
About half were round tables and the rest were square. The restaurant contains twenty-five round tables and sixteen square. If a round table seats four comfortably, as does the square, but if customers leave the square tables on the average of 2.3 minutes sooner than the round, and if the traffic flow can be assumed as constant for twelve hours of operation, with an increased 40% for the two-hour periods of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, how much of a financial advantage is it to replace the round tables with the square, assuming a 30% depreciation each year, with the initial cost of the round tables exceeding the square by 5%. Or was that .05? He frowned in concentration. Someone at a nearby table muttered about going to use the john.
There were five stalls and the requisite two urinals. On the women’s side it would be six stalls and a Kotex dispenser. Assuming a usage of 5 gallons per flush, and usage increase of 35% on the female side of the restrooms versus the male, at what point was it environmentally less costly to install porta potties, to be periodically emptied at the nearest large city, which was…Chicago? Rochester?
About three-thirty in the afternoon, when some of the tables had opened and the restaurant was quieter, he ordered a slice of apple pie (no streusel, just the regular crust, please) and a cup of tea. His stomach was wrinkled from coffee. His mind felt quieter, though. He ate the piece in tidy bites, saving its triangular point until last: the wish bite. Years ago when he had been a child, swinging his legs from a too-tall chair at the table, “I wish for another piece of pie,” was his grandfather’s line. What did he wish for? He pushed back his chair, left a generous tip for the waitress (his third, he smiled sadly: he had managed to hang on to his table through three shifts, two-thirds of a day’s traffic, and five trips to the restroom). Soon it would be the dinner group: round steak with mashed potatoes and field green beans; chicken smothered in cream gravy with baked potatoes and pickled beets. Supper meant people coming home, lights coming on in the houses, quiet before sleep. Supper meant: when are you heading home? He was close enough to the house in the Twin Cities that he could be back before midnight, far enough away it could not reach out and pull him in. He had made one decision this morning. But one decision was just the first in this chain, or the end link in the chain before. He could get out on the road and drive north for a few hours, his body jazzed with caffeine and his mind lulled by pie and memories. Or he could head south and west toward. Or he could make the decision tomorrow.
It was time to do the things he’d always wanted to see, do, be: the little things that made life. A sunset, a sunrise, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee. Watching people. If he could find enough of those little things that summed up life on the way, maybe he would also have found the right answer. If not, maybe it was what you did before you got there that counted.
The first day he didn’t drive far. He picked up some speed along the straight ways, dallied along the curves, pulled over a few time to sit watching traffic, deliberately thinking of nothing until he saw a set of tiny headlights, like hope coming toward him, become larger and brighter, and carry past him on a whish of sound. He’d blink, and go back to thinking of nothing. After a few hours on the road, always moving south, he stopped at one of the small Mississippi river towns. It wasn’t famous for the river; it was famous for the home made farm country pies. One of the things he had always wished he had done was to sit in a restaurant for hours, watching people come and go, a cup of smoking hot coffee and a piece of pie in front of him. There was never time, or the right restaurant handy. It was time to change the equation.
Farm country he would have called it, with local patrons were at their brown laminate tables, bent over the newspaper (most of them trucked in from the Twin Cities, he noted with quiet pride) or staring bleared ahead of them, forearms along the table. Their eyes were concentrating on yesterday’s news or today’s hopes. There were plenty of empty chairs and almost as many open tables. He asked politely for one at the wall, where he could see the view from across the restaurant.
“There isn’t much to see, just the street where people leave their cars,” the blonde and young waitress told him solemnly. It’s just a small town.”
She could have been one of his students, home for the day, picking up a little extra money by working her summer job, even though now it was fall.
“That’s okay. I like to lean against the wall while I sip my coffee. Just coffee, please.” And he had gotten what he wanted: a table for two, with nothing behind him except fake paneling and everything in front of him: tables, waitresses moving briskly among them, the smell of pancakes and sugar, sunrise turning the fog in the air translucent and the dust on the cars outside to pollen yellow. Time.
He came back to himself from a formless reverie about time and fog. The coffee, newspaper, breakfast group had left. The waitresses were mopping clean tables, setting out new paper mats, shifting the pies in their lighted cases. That was one reason he had turned the car here. If he was going to waste time over a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, it might as well be somewhere where they were known for their pies. Apple, apple with streusel crumb topping, banana cream, blueberry, cherry, chocolate cream, cranberry apple, currant, lemon meringue, peach, pecan, raspberry, rhubarb, strawberry. ‘Streusel crumb’ was a cheating name, for the tourists. Anyone from a German or Polish background knew that streusel was crumbs. But it was the pies, pies from generous farm kitchens, that were important. He looked up from consideration of the pie list, out the window. More cars, the early scouts for today’s stream of tourists, were moving into open spaces on the main street. Take one farm town where people knew how to cook, subtract three failed businesses factored into the reduced price of bulk milk, add the byproduct of traveler runoff from a highway, compound multiply by word of mouth. What did you have? A list of thirty-five kinds of pie (most of them indigenous) and enough rebuilt economy to keep the town’s women employed while their men either drank the coffee the women poured into restaurant cups or went back to the fields and barns, hoping for an upturn in the price of corn, wheat, milk, and beef. Pie. He studied the list, and tipped a smile toward one of the waitresses.
“And which will it be?” she asked, as she poured a coffee refill.
“Rhubarb, please.” His grandma used to make rhubarb pie in early spring, pink and green stalks bound in a yellow egg custard. Sticky, sour, and full of promise.
By the time he laid his fork across the smeared plate, the tables had refilled. The restaurant was sloshing in coffee, sugar, and noise. “Got to make Sioux Falls today.” And, “Remember Sasie, we want to see the Effinghams when we’re in Detroit.” Or, “Did you pack the camera? Do you think you could get a photo of us – maybe outside? Do you think they would let us take our plates out in front? Mehitabel would love to see this place.” “Mehitabel would love the pies. That woman never missed a meal in her life.” He sipped his coffee and watched people who didn’t know when they would run out of distance or time.
The restaurant traffic never slowed down after that. At one in the afternoon, hemmed in by the people who had been shifting their weight in the vestibule, watching for an empty table, he ordered a piece of lemon pie. “Not the meringue.”
The waitress frowned, her skirts still riding the air currents from her movements between the tables. “Not the meringue? That’s the only lemon we have.”
“Okay. How about banana cream?”
“That we can do.”
About half were round tables and the rest were square. The restaurant contains twenty-five round tables and sixteen square. If a round table seats four comfortably, as does the square, but if customers leave the square tables on the average of 2.3 minutes sooner than the round, and if the traffic flow can be assumed as constant for twelve hours of operation, with an increased 40% for the two-hour periods of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, how much of a financial advantage is it to replace the round tables with the square, assuming a 30% depreciation each year, with the initial cost of the round tables exceeding the square by 5%. Or was that .05? He frowned in concentration. Someone at a nearby table muttered about going to use the john.
There were five stalls and the requisite two urinals. On the women’s side it would be six stalls and a Kotex dispenser. Assuming a usage of 5 gallons per flush, and usage increase of 35% on the female side of the restrooms versus the male, at what point was it environmentally less costly to install porta potties, to be periodically emptied at the nearest large city, which was…Chicago? Rochester?
About three-thirty in the afternoon, when some of the tables had opened and the restaurant was quieter, he ordered a slice of apple pie (no streusel, just the regular crust, please) and a cup of tea. His stomach was wrinkled from coffee. His mind felt quieter, though. He ate the piece in tidy bites, saving its triangular point until last: the wish bite. Years ago when he had been a child, swinging his legs from a too-tall chair at the table, “I wish for another piece of pie,” was his grandfather’s line. What did he wish for? He pushed back his chair, left a generous tip for the waitress (his third, he smiled sadly: he had managed to hang on to his table through three shifts, two-thirds of a day’s traffic, and five trips to the restroom). Soon it would be the dinner group: round steak with mashed potatoes and field green beans; chicken smothered in cream gravy with baked potatoes and pickled beets. Supper meant people coming home, lights coming on in the houses, quiet before sleep. Supper meant: when are you heading home? He was close enough to the house in the Twin Cities that he could be back before midnight, far enough away it could not reach out and pull him in. He had made one decision this morning. But one decision was just the first in this chain, or the end link in the chain before. He could get out on the road and drive north for a few hours, his body jazzed with caffeine and his mind lulled by pie and memories. Or he could head south and west toward. Or he could make the decision tomorrow.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Dreams of Many Colored Glass - excerpt
Authenticity, condition-condition-condition, line and color. Fritz had been doing this for a long time. I was a neophyte, but as the auctions, the books, the stories, and the pop quizzes accumulated, I could feel my Louis Comfort knowledge building. It wasn’t always the easiest feeling, but there were compensations, bits of information that just fit, like a piece of glass into its slot.
Louis Comfort found out that the most boring glass was the purest. Taking out the impurities gave you window glass: nice to look through, useful because you didn’t notice it. Like people, I guess. What made the glass wasn’t the glass ingredients: silica sand, soda ash, potash, limestone, lead oxide, borax and boric acid. It was the stuff that could have gotten into the batch by daring or design: Iron oxide, manganese oxide, copper, gold, cobalt, coal. Fritz told me more than once that the Nash men had a magic room where they puttered with their secret formulas, banks of drawers of ingredients, not a few of them labeled “poison.”
It’s what made the glass impure that made it beautiful.
This theory failed to explain the grandkids, who also turned out to be 99% less than pure. Less than desirable I already knew, from the way Fish Eyes thinned her mouth when she mentioned them. One day I managed to extract more information.
“Tell me about the grandkids. Have they always been like this?” Oblivious to germs and flour, I had slung up against the counter where Fish Eyes was turning out pumpernickel bread dough.
“I wouldn’t know.”
I didn’t believe her. Fish Eyes could have been stirring her cauldron with a fingerbone, and she would have been right in character. “So they haven’t always been despicable,” I led her on.
She slung the dough with enough force to flatten it on the counter.
“What did they do? When did you first know about them?”
“They used to squash caterpillars so they could drive the Tonka trucks to their play hospital and pretend to sue the other driver.”
“I’m sorry, but all kids are mean to bugs. Then their consciences kick in, and they grow up to be kind adults.”
“These didn’t.”
“Okay, so what did they do that was so bad?”
“The day after they graduated out of law school, they got my granddaughter convinced that if she turned her trust fund into cash and gave it to them, they could double the money in two months.”
“Oh.”
“She gave it to them.”
“Oh.”
“When she needed some of the money for a down payment on a car go to work, they said they never heard of any trust fund, any money, or any company like the one they talked to her about.”
“Oh.”
“Fritz put back the money in her account. He doubled it.”
Illegal and scam artists Fish Eyes could testify to. Vandals and unscrupulous I was going to experience by myself.
Louis Comfort found out that the most boring glass was the purest. Taking out the impurities gave you window glass: nice to look through, useful because you didn’t notice it. Like people, I guess. What made the glass wasn’t the glass ingredients: silica sand, soda ash, potash, limestone, lead oxide, borax and boric acid. It was the stuff that could have gotten into the batch by daring or design: Iron oxide, manganese oxide, copper, gold, cobalt, coal. Fritz told me more than once that the Nash men had a magic room where they puttered with their secret formulas, banks of drawers of ingredients, not a few of them labeled “poison.”
It’s what made the glass impure that made it beautiful.
This theory failed to explain the grandkids, who also turned out to be 99% less than pure. Less than desirable I already knew, from the way Fish Eyes thinned her mouth when she mentioned them. One day I managed to extract more information.
“Tell me about the grandkids. Have they always been like this?” Oblivious to germs and flour, I had slung up against the counter where Fish Eyes was turning out pumpernickel bread dough.
“I wouldn’t know.”
I didn’t believe her. Fish Eyes could have been stirring her cauldron with a fingerbone, and she would have been right in character. “So they haven’t always been despicable,” I led her on.
She slung the dough with enough force to flatten it on the counter.
“What did they do? When did you first know about them?”
“They used to squash caterpillars so they could drive the Tonka trucks to their play hospital and pretend to sue the other driver.”
“I’m sorry, but all kids are mean to bugs. Then their consciences kick in, and they grow up to be kind adults.”
“These didn’t.”
“Okay, so what did they do that was so bad?”
“The day after they graduated out of law school, they got my granddaughter convinced that if she turned her trust fund into cash and gave it to them, they could double the money in two months.”
“Oh.”
“She gave it to them.”
“Oh.”
“When she needed some of the money for a down payment on a car go to work, they said they never heard of any trust fund, any money, or any company like the one they talked to her about.”
“Oh.”
“Fritz put back the money in her account. He doubled it.”
Illegal and scam artists Fish Eyes could testify to. Vandals and unscrupulous I was going to experience by myself.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Mirror me, mirror you
Mirrors are fascinating, as well as sometimes horrifying, depending on what we hope to see. Simple idea: clear glass with a reflective back. Yet we can lose ourselves in a mirror. Mirrors double the size of rooms. They are double rooms, showing us life opposite. There’s double the number of books and chairs and clutter and dust. There’s our double, too.
Mirrors change the rules: Alice fell into a mirror, and her world turned Wonderland upside down, even more than when she tumbled into that rabbit hole in her first trip. For a child, the room’s double reflected in a mirror can be a magical place where things are the same and yet not the same. The rooms we see in mirrors are mysterious, with even more hidden beyond their walls and windows.
We use the mirror to comb our hair, straighten our tie, and then suddenly one day when we look at the mirror: we see ourselves. We look into a mirror, searching for something as we reel from the shock of an event, and there in the silver rectangle confronting us, is someone who feels just the same as we do inside, someone whose look of bewilderment confirms our confusion. We look in the mirror to affirm the placement of our ego: and are instead troubled at what we see. We see what used to be us, the same image reflected back from the mirror for five or ten or twenty years, until a comment (“You’ve gone gray lately”) sends us back to the mirror with fresh eyes for another look. It’s not a coincidence that the potential scales on our eyes and the backs of mirrors both shine.
Mirrors reflect life events. How many people looked at themselves in this washroom mirror, on the way to class, to an interview, back to the school dance? How much of their experience, whether or anticipation or fear, still wriggles beneath its surface? If we could look into that experience, what the mirror has seen, what would we see and who would look back at us? Narcissus fell in love with himself; so do teenagers, when they’re not despairing at their reflections.
Mirrors let us scry, looking into the past or the future. We suspend our knowledge of what we will see, and look at what is there. The best mirrors for scrying are old ones, their silver clouded in places, perhaps splotched, maybe crazed (like the people looking into them) – but old mirrors hold old memories. Whose image has been reflected, whose image caught in the glass.
Mirrors mimic water, just as water mirrors the world: the perfect photo with trees above, and water-reflected trees at their feet. The sea and the sky are two blue plates mirroring each other, between which we live.
Like the moon, mirrors are mostly silver and reflect light. They’re not light sources, but they are the source of our frequent enlightenment.
There’s the mirror in the oven window (behind which we see bread baking or a roast simmering in juice); the mirror in the frame; the mirror which can be flat glass or beveled with that extra angle giving the reflection value and depth.
People mirror us back to ourselves, if we choose to notice. Sometimes we don’t want to see, and sometimes they don’t want to see what we project (or think we project) about them. Even so, how people treat us can be how they perceive we mirror ourselves.
There’s an awful (and awe-full) lot to find in mirrors.
Mirrors change the rules: Alice fell into a mirror, and her world turned Wonderland upside down, even more than when she tumbled into that rabbit hole in her first trip. For a child, the room’s double reflected in a mirror can be a magical place where things are the same and yet not the same. The rooms we see in mirrors are mysterious, with even more hidden beyond their walls and windows.
We use the mirror to comb our hair, straighten our tie, and then suddenly one day when we look at the mirror: we see ourselves. We look into a mirror, searching for something as we reel from the shock of an event, and there in the silver rectangle confronting us, is someone who feels just the same as we do inside, someone whose look of bewilderment confirms our confusion. We look in the mirror to affirm the placement of our ego: and are instead troubled at what we see. We see what used to be us, the same image reflected back from the mirror for five or ten or twenty years, until a comment (“You’ve gone gray lately”) sends us back to the mirror with fresh eyes for another look. It’s not a coincidence that the potential scales on our eyes and the backs of mirrors both shine.
Mirrors reflect life events. How many people looked at themselves in this washroom mirror, on the way to class, to an interview, back to the school dance? How much of their experience, whether or anticipation or fear, still wriggles beneath its surface? If we could look into that experience, what the mirror has seen, what would we see and who would look back at us? Narcissus fell in love with himself; so do teenagers, when they’re not despairing at their reflections.
Mirrors let us scry, looking into the past or the future. We suspend our knowledge of what we will see, and look at what is there. The best mirrors for scrying are old ones, their silver clouded in places, perhaps splotched, maybe crazed (like the people looking into them) – but old mirrors hold old memories. Whose image has been reflected, whose image caught in the glass.
Mirrors mimic water, just as water mirrors the world: the perfect photo with trees above, and water-reflected trees at their feet. The sea and the sky are two blue plates mirroring each other, between which we live.
Like the moon, mirrors are mostly silver and reflect light. They’re not light sources, but they are the source of our frequent enlightenment.
There’s the mirror in the oven window (behind which we see bread baking or a roast simmering in juice); the mirror in the frame; the mirror which can be flat glass or beveled with that extra angle giving the reflection value and depth.
People mirror us back to ourselves, if we choose to notice. Sometimes we don’t want to see, and sometimes they don’t want to see what we project (or think we project) about them. Even so, how people treat us can be how they perceive we mirror ourselves.
There’s an awful (and awe-full) lot to find in mirrors.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Dreams of Many Colored Glass - excerpt
Einstein was right. A reference book existed for reference. You didn’t need to read it, because in case you ever needed it, the book was on the shelf. Your job in life was to make sure you didn’t need it, so it could stay in its home – preferably in a library. Fritz believed the more books you were familiar with, the better chance you had to find things you wanted, to know how to get wherever the things were when you wanted, and the much better chance you had to pay the best price for the things you wanted. Since I was being paid to look at the reference books, I would drift to the beat of Metallica and let my attention wander while I was leafing over pages.
Some days we browsed and some days we researched. I liked it less when we researched. Usually, when we researched, I complained. “This is not 2004. So why do I need to check what a lamp sold for in 2004? It’s not on the market. Here, for example you’ve got a leaf and berry lamp, which doesn’t look much leaf and berry to me…looks to me more like dishpan with a sieve on the bottom setting on top of a restaurant thermal coffee pot painted with black Rust-o-leum.”
“That’s pyramidal,” said Fritz without looking up. “We want to calculate change in value.”
“Why don’t we just go out and buy the lamp, and find out?”
“It’s not for sale.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“If you don’t calculate changes in value, then you’re going to be fleeced by one of your agents. Additionally, you won’t know what your own collection is worth.”
“Green, red, yellow, blue, purple, striated and rippled,” I continued reading, “Cripes, who’d want something like this, with fake Queen Anne’s lace pierced metal. I can’t believe the combinations he used; it must be gosh-awful ugly.”
“Check on the upstairs landing. See for yourself.”
“Two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars…what?”
“Plus commission.”
There was silence before I tiptoed to the upstairs landing and stood at a respectful distance. “Don’t breathe on it,” Fritz called after me.
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of answering.
Some days we browsed and some days we researched. I liked it less when we researched. Usually, when we researched, I complained. “This is not 2004. So why do I need to check what a lamp sold for in 2004? It’s not on the market. Here, for example you’ve got a leaf and berry lamp, which doesn’t look much leaf and berry to me…looks to me more like dishpan with a sieve on the bottom setting on top of a restaurant thermal coffee pot painted with black Rust-o-leum.”
“That’s pyramidal,” said Fritz without looking up. “We want to calculate change in value.”
“Why don’t we just go out and buy the lamp, and find out?”
“It’s not for sale.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“If you don’t calculate changes in value, then you’re going to be fleeced by one of your agents. Additionally, you won’t know what your own collection is worth.”
“Green, red, yellow, blue, purple, striated and rippled,” I continued reading, “Cripes, who’d want something like this, with fake Queen Anne’s lace pierced metal. I can’t believe the combinations he used; it must be gosh-awful ugly.”
“Check on the upstairs landing. See for yourself.”
“Two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars…what?”
“Plus commission.”
There was silence before I tiptoed to the upstairs landing and stood at a respectful distance. “Don’t breathe on it,” Fritz called after me.
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of answering.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Romance
I am skimming the book 1001 Ways to be Romantic, for my Women’s Lit class. Yes, Women’s Lit-ers are romantic and no, we are not male bashers. Also no, we do not burn our bras, though in the early years of “the movement” women did discard their aprons, a much more appropriate emblem of what they were rebelling against. [That bra burning was a plant of deliberately erroneous information. One of the protestors said it would be unsafe to burn the items women had thrown into the trash can at that Atlantic City protest; moms are concerned about safety.] Why do I plan to bring this particular book to class for enrichment? It’s another in the collection of pictures, opinions, histories, and essays that enrich our discussions. Some of us will agree with the advice, and some of us will point out parallels in our required textbook readings. Some of us will disagree with the advice, which is great because in WoLit we listen to everyone's opinion.
Inside or outside the class, Romance is what many of us want more of, apparently, especially if it’s tied to understanding. One of 1001’s suggestions is to sit “your” wife in front of the refrigerator, blindfold her, and use your fingers to feed her small and luscious bits of food: a piece of chocolate, a fresh raspberry, and so forth. Two people, one refrigerator of food, one blindfold, and sensuality: romance. [Does the tub of 50 mini éclairs count?]
What we practice in Women’s Lit, is that no matter what the topic (or question) there are many ways we can consider it. There’s the immediate reaction: Oh good, food! There’s the consequences: do I look like one of Reubens’ women, much as they are adored? Are the raspberries that you’re feeding me fresh, or are they the ones with the grey mold on the bottom? What do I need to see, in order to remain safe? In our house, there’s the safety issue: no one approaches the refrigerator unattended. The dogs are there first, waiting for the magic door to open, jostling for position, and ready to walk or crawl over anyone who is blindfolded (and therefore incapable of defending the food that’s being handed out). They are not un-romantic; they simply believe that in situations involving food there’s one adjective: mine.
So how do we keep romance in the house, and fur out of the food? Eat from the countertops; find a cheap restaurant where we can gaze into each other’s eyes, take a sip of coffee without ingesting hair, and be as romantic as it’s possible to be amid crackling burger paper and Formica countertops. Go back to Women’s Lit, where “mine” becomes “ours”: our ongoing discussion about romance, life, and how we relate the genders in our lives (without physical blindfolds, realizing we often wear emotional ones). Tell students that Women’s Lit is not about male bashing; it’s about humanism, and the rule that is enforced in this section of Women’s Lit is: You cannot bash men. We’re all in life together.
Inside or outside the class, Romance is what many of us want more of, apparently, especially if it’s tied to understanding. One of 1001’s suggestions is to sit “your” wife in front of the refrigerator, blindfold her, and use your fingers to feed her small and luscious bits of food: a piece of chocolate, a fresh raspberry, and so forth. Two people, one refrigerator of food, one blindfold, and sensuality: romance. [Does the tub of 50 mini éclairs count?]
What we practice in Women’s Lit, is that no matter what the topic (or question) there are many ways we can consider it. There’s the immediate reaction: Oh good, food! There’s the consequences: do I look like one of Reubens’ women, much as they are adored? Are the raspberries that you’re feeding me fresh, or are they the ones with the grey mold on the bottom? What do I need to see, in order to remain safe? In our house, there’s the safety issue: no one approaches the refrigerator unattended. The dogs are there first, waiting for the magic door to open, jostling for position, and ready to walk or crawl over anyone who is blindfolded (and therefore incapable of defending the food that’s being handed out). They are not un-romantic; they simply believe that in situations involving food there’s one adjective: mine.
So how do we keep romance in the house, and fur out of the food? Eat from the countertops; find a cheap restaurant where we can gaze into each other’s eyes, take a sip of coffee without ingesting hair, and be as romantic as it’s possible to be amid crackling burger paper and Formica countertops. Go back to Women’s Lit, where “mine” becomes “ours”: our ongoing discussion about romance, life, and how we relate the genders in our lives (without physical blindfolds, realizing we often wear emotional ones). Tell students that Women’s Lit is not about male bashing; it’s about humanism, and the rule that is enforced in this section of Women’s Lit is: You cannot bash men. We’re all in life together.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness - excerpt
This is an excerpt from a novel.
"I need a new purse," Mother said abruptly, staring at the green beans on her fork.
"So get one," Dad answered. Dad believes in solving problems.
"You don't understand. 'Getting' a purse is not something you do everyday."
"It's something I don't do at all," I offered. "I think there are perceptions about people carrying purses."
Mother ignored me. "A purse is something you have with you all the time."
"Like a husband," Dad suggested helpfully.
"More so."
"How can anything be more so than a husband?"
Mother sighed. "I ask myself that sometimes. But I need a purse."
"How can anything be more so than a husband?" Dad asked himself. While he considered that conundrum, he tendered a solution to Mother's, "So go to the store and get one."
"What if I can't find exactly what I want?"
"Tell the clerk to find you a purse. What's so hard about a purse? You use it to carry things."
"You will never know what's waiting for you if you don't try," I added.
We considered pursing as a sport. Mother stirred her vegetable with a fork; Dad hummed a tune to himself; I tried rehearsing what I would say if anyone asked me if I planned to carry a purse. Then I thought of all the girls I had seen and what purses they carried. Mostly they had miniscule packets on long strings, or, if they were athletes, backpacks. Maybe purses were a by-product of girls turning into mothers.
"And it has to be the right color."
"Why is color important? My mother used to have fifty purses; one for every pair of shoes she owned. If she had fifty, you can have two. So buy two."
"I can't. That would be like double-dating. When I swear allegiance, I mean what I say."
"You're not marrying the sack; you're using it to haul things around."
"We need a strong connection," Mother continued, staring past Dad. "A purse means something."
"It means there better be enough money in it to pay bills."
"Just like wallets. Can wallets be black? Oh, no. Wallets are brown."
Dad and I stared at each other across the tablecloth.
"Funny," Dad observed. "I saw black wallets the last time I was in the leather goods department. In fact I think I even may have a black wallet here." He squirmed sideways in his chair and from his pants pocket produced a black wallet curved into a half moon shape, which rocked gently on his palm.
"Wallets are brown," Mother continued, staring past the half-cylinder held before her. "And purses, generally. Black purses block the flow of energy."
"They block what? What are you talking about?" Dad looked at his wallet, looked at me ("Black," I mouthed), and shoveled his wallet back into his rear pocket. He excavated his fork from his spaghetti, and analyzed it carefully.
"Once I had a black purse, and the top came off. My father fixed it by screwing in a brass bar across the top of the whole purse. 'It will never come off again,' he promised me. It didn't, but the purse was awfully heavy, especially for a shoulder purse. For six months I leant to one side and had one very strong shoulder."
"I promise I won't put metal into your purse," Dad held up one hand. "Especially round metal objects with pictures stamped on them."
"Although it's generally not possible to know what the right purse should be before you see it. There are certain requirements."
"Like what? Although I know I shouldn't be asking."
"It needs to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. Like an onion."
"Or a report card," I added.
"Like a report card," Mother repeated. "It keeps track of things."
"Big sack," Dad agreed. "We've got plenty of grocery bags underneath the sink if you want something brown and large."
"Waterproof," said Mother firmly. "Grocery bags aren't waterproof."
"I'll say. Did I ever tell you time I was carrying groceries out of the store for one of my mother’s parties? It was raining, and the bottom fell out. Artichokes bouncing along the parking lot, that funny lettuce that looks like the weeds in the lawn just lying on the asphalt, limp and flat."
"What did you do?"
"Picked up the stuff. Of course I lost one artichoke in the sewer, and got yelled at by my mother for not buying enough."
"Did she ever know?"
"Nope. I told her there was a freeze in Chile, and the price of artichokes almost doubled in a week; I didn't have enough to get all she put on the list."
"But you really just packed up the groceries and took them home?"
"Yup. The people at her dinner party never knew the difference. I remember watching them eat their salads, thinking of the parking lot, the rain, and where the car tires had been." Dad cleared his throat. "Same thing with a purse. If you need a purse, just go out and get one. Make sure it's big enough to hold all the stuff you want to carry around, and you're set. I'll even go with you. It shouldn't take more than five minutes."
"I need a new purse," Mother said abruptly, staring at the green beans on her fork.
"So get one," Dad answered. Dad believes in solving problems.
"You don't understand. 'Getting' a purse is not something you do everyday."
"It's something I don't do at all," I offered. "I think there are perceptions about people carrying purses."
Mother ignored me. "A purse is something you have with you all the time."
"Like a husband," Dad suggested helpfully.
"More so."
"How can anything be more so than a husband?"
Mother sighed. "I ask myself that sometimes. But I need a purse."
"How can anything be more so than a husband?" Dad asked himself. While he considered that conundrum, he tendered a solution to Mother's, "So go to the store and get one."
"What if I can't find exactly what I want?"
"Tell the clerk to find you a purse. What's so hard about a purse? You use it to carry things."
"You will never know what's waiting for you if you don't try," I added.
We considered pursing as a sport. Mother stirred her vegetable with a fork; Dad hummed a tune to himself; I tried rehearsing what I would say if anyone asked me if I planned to carry a purse. Then I thought of all the girls I had seen and what purses they carried. Mostly they had miniscule packets on long strings, or, if they were athletes, backpacks. Maybe purses were a by-product of girls turning into mothers.
"And it has to be the right color."
"Why is color important? My mother used to have fifty purses; one for every pair of shoes she owned. If she had fifty, you can have two. So buy two."
"I can't. That would be like double-dating. When I swear allegiance, I mean what I say."
"You're not marrying the sack; you're using it to haul things around."
"We need a strong connection," Mother continued, staring past Dad. "A purse means something."
"It means there better be enough money in it to pay bills."
"Just like wallets. Can wallets be black? Oh, no. Wallets are brown."
Dad and I stared at each other across the tablecloth.
"Funny," Dad observed. "I saw black wallets the last time I was in the leather goods department. In fact I think I even may have a black wallet here." He squirmed sideways in his chair and from his pants pocket produced a black wallet curved into a half moon shape, which rocked gently on his palm.
"Wallets are brown," Mother continued, staring past the half-cylinder held before her. "And purses, generally. Black purses block the flow of energy."
"They block what? What are you talking about?" Dad looked at his wallet, looked at me ("Black," I mouthed), and shoveled his wallet back into his rear pocket. He excavated his fork from his spaghetti, and analyzed it carefully.
"Once I had a black purse, and the top came off. My father fixed it by screwing in a brass bar across the top of the whole purse. 'It will never come off again,' he promised me. It didn't, but the purse was awfully heavy, especially for a shoulder purse. For six months I leant to one side and had one very strong shoulder."
"I promise I won't put metal into your purse," Dad held up one hand. "Especially round metal objects with pictures stamped on them."
"Although it's generally not possible to know what the right purse should be before you see it. There are certain requirements."
"Like what? Although I know I shouldn't be asking."
"It needs to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. Like an onion."
"Or a report card," I added.
"Like a report card," Mother repeated. "It keeps track of things."
"Big sack," Dad agreed. "We've got plenty of grocery bags underneath the sink if you want something brown and large."
"Waterproof," said Mother firmly. "Grocery bags aren't waterproof."
"I'll say. Did I ever tell you time I was carrying groceries out of the store for one of my mother’s parties? It was raining, and the bottom fell out. Artichokes bouncing along the parking lot, that funny lettuce that looks like the weeds in the lawn just lying on the asphalt, limp and flat."
"What did you do?"
"Picked up the stuff. Of course I lost one artichoke in the sewer, and got yelled at by my mother for not buying enough."
"Did she ever know?"
"Nope. I told her there was a freeze in Chile, and the price of artichokes almost doubled in a week; I didn't have enough to get all she put on the list."
"But you really just packed up the groceries and took them home?"
"Yup. The people at her dinner party never knew the difference. I remember watching them eat their salads, thinking of the parking lot, the rain, and where the car tires had been." Dad cleared his throat. "Same thing with a purse. If you need a purse, just go out and get one. Make sure it's big enough to hold all the stuff you want to carry around, and you're set. I'll even go with you. It shouldn't take more than five minutes."
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Dreams of Many Colored Glass - excerpt
This entry is especially for the reader in the television industry who enjoyed last week's description. Thank you, Jan.
For three months I spent most of my time there, sitting on a chair in a corner of the dim gallery, not watching the red hatted women on their luncheon tours, not listening to the people with squinty eyes discuss how much a particular item would bring. It became easy to block most of them out. The people I remember were the ones who came around the stone corridor, stopped, and gasped at their first view of the lamps, glowing with color against the dark walls.
They got their money’s worth. Gold, red, orange, blue, green: all the colors in the world. The poppy lamp could have been garish, with its red and green coloring, but it wasn’t: it was a garden of poppies in the sun. The sugar cube lamp was clear blocks, layer on layer like an Aztec pyramid of clear glass, gold glass, and bronze. If you stared at it straight on, sometimes you didn’t see the sugar cube lumps , you just fell into their quartz spaces, rimmed with a border that looked like someone was braiding lines of gold and bronze. Then you looked at the size of the lamp, and you could see the cubes, marching up the side of the lamp, evenly spaced and descending in size. There were multiple dragonfly lamps, depending on how you liked them colored, but the one I looked at when I felt cold inside was bugs at the bottom of the shade, facing down, wearing red wings with that filigree, long green bodies, and bulging red eyes, like aviators with goggles – and above them the lampshade formed of scales in flame colored orange, set with a border of glass jewels. The 18 light lily lamp looked like an orchestra section turned pearl, but one of my favorites was the pond lily, because I could imagine myself sitting on the side of a pond, waiting for the goldfish to pop the surface. White petals with enough yellow to look like the sun was shining on them, platter leaves in striped green, and the glass between looked like water in sunlight. The base on that one wasn’t bad either: a stalk twisted of old bronze.
For three months I spent most of my time there, sitting on a chair in a corner of the dim gallery, not watching the red hatted women on their luncheon tours, not listening to the people with squinty eyes discuss how much a particular item would bring. It became easy to block most of them out. The people I remember were the ones who came around the stone corridor, stopped, and gasped at their first view of the lamps, glowing with color against the dark walls.
They got their money’s worth. Gold, red, orange, blue, green: all the colors in the world. The poppy lamp could have been garish, with its red and green coloring, but it wasn’t: it was a garden of poppies in the sun. The sugar cube lamp was clear blocks, layer on layer like an Aztec pyramid of clear glass, gold glass, and bronze. If you stared at it straight on, sometimes you didn’t see the sugar cube lumps , you just fell into their quartz spaces, rimmed with a border that looked like someone was braiding lines of gold and bronze. Then you looked at the size of the lamp, and you could see the cubes, marching up the side of the lamp, evenly spaced and descending in size. There were multiple dragonfly lamps, depending on how you liked them colored, but the one I looked at when I felt cold inside was bugs at the bottom of the shade, facing down, wearing red wings with that filigree, long green bodies, and bulging red eyes, like aviators with goggles – and above them the lampshade formed of scales in flame colored orange, set with a border of glass jewels. The 18 light lily lamp looked like an orchestra section turned pearl, but one of my favorites was the pond lily, because I could imagine myself sitting on the side of a pond, waiting for the goldfish to pop the surface. White petals with enough yellow to look like the sun was shining on them, platter leaves in striped green, and the glass between looked like water in sunlight. The base on that one wasn’t bad either: a stalk twisted of old bronze.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Scene from a story
This is a scene description from a story.
They passed under a gateway, with the tall gates standing wide, and she was finally inside. TerraeAndrea: inside the city, where instead of shadow flickers, she saw real movement, more movement, more smells, and more people than she had expected to exist anywhere. Paved stones took the place of packed dirt. Buildings, market stalls with their awnings, sellers, buyers, and water troughs lined the stone-flagged lanes. She sidestepped cart wheels, watched the tumbling of coins from one hand to another. She listened to conversations in languages she could not understand, and gestures she could.
The merchants were robed in brown and blue, green and grey, orange and umber, their robes swirling about their bellies, and fluttering the road dust at their feet. Sheep bleated, cows lowed, children wearing scraps of clothing chased each other through the trading stalls and were chased in their turn by the traders. The girl followed the children with her eyes, and the crowd moving slowly along the market stalls with her feet.
Walking with the pace of the crowd, following the pointed finger or the shrugged shoulder, she wound through the city of TerraeAndrea. She dodged the high-smelling sheep, and their manure that clotted the cobblestones and slid toward the gutter in the middle of the way. She skirted the cinnamon-trousered and shouting traders, their embroidered fabrics dangling from poles, their bags of roots set in high stacks, and small pouches. Leather makers displayed shoes and boots and leggings, tunics and overcoats dyed from plants and sea salts and blood. Harlequin clad players juggled copper spheres and patched thieves pilfered. At the edges of the streets were booths displaying food: trays of dried fruit and pans of stew, piles of cinnabar fruit and strings of root dried vegetables. There were bags of grain and strings of colored beads. Where the streets crossed, bins of blue and yellow flowers bloomed.
She watched the people working between the stalls and booths, sometimes moving at the pace of the shoppers, sometimes standing still at the edge of the crowd. The orange-robed merchant laid a thick finger on the side of the scale as he weighed out orris root. A thin boy darted from bag to bag, until he found one with the ties unloosened, and before he could be caught by the neck, had disappeared in the crowd – but not before he had pulled from the sack a handful of coin. Two men stood in a shadowed alleyway, one counting change into the palm of the other, who looked about for watchers. The shoppers held purses and head wraps, bags of dried seaweed and bins of cloth. They spoke in dialect and language.
“Best dried fish you’ll get, else you visit the coast.”
“My leather boots will never wear through.”
“Grain from the plains. Grain from the plains.”
“Dragon’s tooth. Retch seed. Chickleweed berries.”
“You will not find cloth better. Brought here on the boats of Catalpha.”
Much later, she stood noise-dazed and half smiling, peering inside a grey stone archway, up grey stone steps that sagged into the grey stone dimness. On one side, the street at her back was as clogged as any near the gate: this one with merchants selling long sticks with thin strips of colored cloth flying in the wind, bits of leather, feathers and small baskets of sea stones. On the other side of the street, the side where she stood, was a squared building of grey stone, no sellers squatting at its base, no walkers loitering against its walls. Lengths of dun color fabric billowed outward from openings in the walls high above her. There were no people or market stalls on that side of the road near the building, just long pieces of pale fabric, flapping in the wind.
They passed under a gateway, with the tall gates standing wide, and she was finally inside. TerraeAndrea: inside the city, where instead of shadow flickers, she saw real movement, more movement, more smells, and more people than she had expected to exist anywhere. Paved stones took the place of packed dirt. Buildings, market stalls with their awnings, sellers, buyers, and water troughs lined the stone-flagged lanes. She sidestepped cart wheels, watched the tumbling of coins from one hand to another. She listened to conversations in languages she could not understand, and gestures she could.
The merchants were robed in brown and blue, green and grey, orange and umber, their robes swirling about their bellies, and fluttering the road dust at their feet. Sheep bleated, cows lowed, children wearing scraps of clothing chased each other through the trading stalls and were chased in their turn by the traders. The girl followed the children with her eyes, and the crowd moving slowly along the market stalls with her feet.
Walking with the pace of the crowd, following the pointed finger or the shrugged shoulder, she wound through the city of TerraeAndrea. She dodged the high-smelling sheep, and their manure that clotted the cobblestones and slid toward the gutter in the middle of the way. She skirted the cinnamon-trousered and shouting traders, their embroidered fabrics dangling from poles, their bags of roots set in high stacks, and small pouches. Leather makers displayed shoes and boots and leggings, tunics and overcoats dyed from plants and sea salts and blood. Harlequin clad players juggled copper spheres and patched thieves pilfered. At the edges of the streets were booths displaying food: trays of dried fruit and pans of stew, piles of cinnabar fruit and strings of root dried vegetables. There were bags of grain and strings of colored beads. Where the streets crossed, bins of blue and yellow flowers bloomed.
She watched the people working between the stalls and booths, sometimes moving at the pace of the shoppers, sometimes standing still at the edge of the crowd. The orange-robed merchant laid a thick finger on the side of the scale as he weighed out orris root. A thin boy darted from bag to bag, until he found one with the ties unloosened, and before he could be caught by the neck, had disappeared in the crowd – but not before he had pulled from the sack a handful of coin. Two men stood in a shadowed alleyway, one counting change into the palm of the other, who looked about for watchers. The shoppers held purses and head wraps, bags of dried seaweed and bins of cloth. They spoke in dialect and language.
“Best dried fish you’ll get, else you visit the coast.”
“My leather boots will never wear through.”
“Grain from the plains. Grain from the plains.”
“Dragon’s tooth. Retch seed. Chickleweed berries.”
“You will not find cloth better. Brought here on the boats of Catalpha.”
Much later, she stood noise-dazed and half smiling, peering inside a grey stone archway, up grey stone steps that sagged into the grey stone dimness. On one side, the street at her back was as clogged as any near the gate: this one with merchants selling long sticks with thin strips of colored cloth flying in the wind, bits of leather, feathers and small baskets of sea stones. On the other side of the street, the side where she stood, was a squared building of grey stone, no sellers squatting at its base, no walkers loitering against its walls. Lengths of dun color fabric billowed outward from openings in the walls high above her. There were no people or market stalls on that side of the road near the building, just long pieces of pale fabric, flapping in the wind.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Books and Inspiration
Despite the ease of its acquisition, obtaining information on the Internet is not always the most satisfying avenue. Quick: yes. Colorful and noisy: absolutely. Entertaining: of course. Accurate: generally. Up to date: enough to cause apoplexy hysteria as the daily news streams into our monitors. No matter how enticing browsing the Internet – and we have used it, asking students to locate and evaluate online literary magazines, quickly locating a photo of chrysanthemums, checking an address – the heart of knowledge for some of us, remains books.
Books are a satisfying weight in our hands, a tactile sensation, the smell of old pages from libraries or the fresh, sharp aroma of new paper and fresh ink. Did a hundred forefingers turn this page, or am I the first? Amazon earned points in my book, when it incorporated the used book sellers. [New copy: $23.99; used copies starting at low price of .02]
When we borrow them from the library, we are honor bound to return the books. When we buy them, we not only have them when they call to us, we have stacks of them to search when we don’t quite know what we want to read. In doing so, we find the books we set aside for another day. It’s like rummaging in the refrigerator, but without the worry of finding moldering pears in the vegetable bin. We are not the only people who need to live with books.
C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy: the Shape of my Early Life, described his parents’ house:
“I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cistern and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books more emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass. Where all these books had been before we came to the New House is a problem that never occurred to me until I began writing this paragraph. I have no idea of the answer.”
That, as I tell my English 1 students, is a perfect example of repetition, as well as question-and-answer.
In The Little Bookroom, Eleanor Farjean describes the origin of her story ideas:
“Of all the rooms in the house, the Little Bookroom was yielded up to books as an untended garden is left to its flowers and weeds. There was no selection or sense of order here. In dining-room, study, and nursery there was choice and arrangement; but the Little Bookroom gathered to itself a motley crew of strays and vagabonds, outcasts from the ordered shelves below, the overflow of parcels bought wholesale by my father in the sales-rooms. Much trash, and more treasure. A lottery, a lucky dip for a child who had never been forbidden to handle anything between covers. That dusty bookroom, whose windows were never opened, through whose panes the summer sun struck a dingy shaft where gold specs danced and shimmered, opened magic casements for me through which I looked out on other worlds and times….
“Crammed with all sorts of reading, the narrow shelves rose halfway up the walls; their tops piled with untidy layers that almost touched the ceiling. The heaps on the floor had to be climbed over, columns of books flanked the window, toppling at a touch. You tugged at a promising binding, and left a new surge of literature underfoot; and you dropped the book that had attracted your for something that came to the surface in the upheaval. Here, in the Little Bookroom, I learned, like Charles Lamb, to read anything that can be called a book. The dust got up my nose and made my eyes smart, as I crouched on the floor or stood propped against a bookcase, physically uncomfortable, and mentally lost. I was only conscious of my awkward posture and the stifling atmosphere when I had ceased to wander in realms where fancy seemed to me more true than facts, and set sail on voyages of discovery to regions in which fact was often far more curious than fancy. If some of my frequent sore throats were due to the dust in the Little Bookroom, I cannot regret them.
“No servant ever came with duster and broom to polish the dim panes through which the sunlight danced, or sweep from the floor the dust of long-ago. The room would not have been the same without its dust: star-dust, gold-dust, fern-dust, the dust that returns to dust under the earth and comes from her lap in the shape of a hyacinth.”
--
What strikes me as I ponder those passages is the luxury of time and exploration. No one stands by with a schedule of activities, determined these children will conform to their classmates’ mold. And no one censors their books. Maybe the world has changed; maybe to protect our children we must decide what is suitable for their reading and what is not. Maybe we censor the television and not the bookshelves. If a book or a tv show is a pasting-up of only the bits to shock, then it preys on our emotions. If the bits that shock and startle are part of the characters’ stories, perhaps they are included for the plot and not for the readers’ salacious enjoyment.
But when we censor books, we state that we can form imagination according to our preconceived rules. We control ideas. Societies have done that. Those places were also unkind to thinkers, writers, children and animals, and any part of the environment that did not serve those in power. Perhaps if we wish their spirits as well as their bodies to grow, we need to be very, very careful to open our children and ourselves to the complete world of books.
Books are a satisfying weight in our hands, a tactile sensation, the smell of old pages from libraries or the fresh, sharp aroma of new paper and fresh ink. Did a hundred forefingers turn this page, or am I the first? Amazon earned points in my book, when it incorporated the used book sellers. [New copy: $23.99; used copies starting at low price of .02]
When we borrow them from the library, we are honor bound to return the books. When we buy them, we not only have them when they call to us, we have stacks of them to search when we don’t quite know what we want to read. In doing so, we find the books we set aside for another day. It’s like rummaging in the refrigerator, but without the worry of finding moldering pears in the vegetable bin. We are not the only people who need to live with books.
C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy: the Shape of my Early Life, described his parents’ house:
“I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cistern and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books more emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass. Where all these books had been before we came to the New House is a problem that never occurred to me until I began writing this paragraph. I have no idea of the answer.”
That, as I tell my English 1 students, is a perfect example of repetition, as well as question-and-answer.
In The Little Bookroom, Eleanor Farjean describes the origin of her story ideas:
“Of all the rooms in the house, the Little Bookroom was yielded up to books as an untended garden is left to its flowers and weeds. There was no selection or sense of order here. In dining-room, study, and nursery there was choice and arrangement; but the Little Bookroom gathered to itself a motley crew of strays and vagabonds, outcasts from the ordered shelves below, the overflow of parcels bought wholesale by my father in the sales-rooms. Much trash, and more treasure. A lottery, a lucky dip for a child who had never been forbidden to handle anything between covers. That dusty bookroom, whose windows were never opened, through whose panes the summer sun struck a dingy shaft where gold specs danced and shimmered, opened magic casements for me through which I looked out on other worlds and times….
“Crammed with all sorts of reading, the narrow shelves rose halfway up the walls; their tops piled with untidy layers that almost touched the ceiling. The heaps on the floor had to be climbed over, columns of books flanked the window, toppling at a touch. You tugged at a promising binding, and left a new surge of literature underfoot; and you dropped the book that had attracted your for something that came to the surface in the upheaval. Here, in the Little Bookroom, I learned, like Charles Lamb, to read anything that can be called a book. The dust got up my nose and made my eyes smart, as I crouched on the floor or stood propped against a bookcase, physically uncomfortable, and mentally lost. I was only conscious of my awkward posture and the stifling atmosphere when I had ceased to wander in realms where fancy seemed to me more true than facts, and set sail on voyages of discovery to regions in which fact was often far more curious than fancy. If some of my frequent sore throats were due to the dust in the Little Bookroom, I cannot regret them.
“No servant ever came with duster and broom to polish the dim panes through which the sunlight danced, or sweep from the floor the dust of long-ago. The room would not have been the same without its dust: star-dust, gold-dust, fern-dust, the dust that returns to dust under the earth and comes from her lap in the shape of a hyacinth.”
--
What strikes me as I ponder those passages is the luxury of time and exploration. No one stands by with a schedule of activities, determined these children will conform to their classmates’ mold. And no one censors their books. Maybe the world has changed; maybe to protect our children we must decide what is suitable for their reading and what is not. Maybe we censor the television and not the bookshelves. If a book or a tv show is a pasting-up of only the bits to shock, then it preys on our emotions. If the bits that shock and startle are part of the characters’ stories, perhaps they are included for the plot and not for the readers’ salacious enjoyment.
But when we censor books, we state that we can form imagination according to our preconceived rules. We control ideas. Societies have done that. Those places were also unkind to thinkers, writers, children and animals, and any part of the environment that did not serve those in power. Perhaps if we wish their spirits as well as their bodies to grow, we need to be very, very careful to open our children and ourselves to the complete world of books.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Minimalist Decorating
Somewhere in the books, journals, boxes and drawers of things-to-read, there is an article about a decorator whose London home was awe-inspiring in its simplicity and beauty. His entry stairs glowed with light and stairs: no pictures, no stair carpeting. Stairs. His dining room was a table and bench. No pictures on the walls, flowers on the hearth or table runner down the center board. His kitchen countertops were themselves: countertops, and when his wife prepared ten pounds of leeks for a dinner party, she had all the counter space in the kitchen to engage the leeks (since there were no flour or sugar jars, no toaster, no coffee maker or bean grinder staking territories). It was a lovely house. It was a peaceful house, easy to dust and very tidy since there was nothing to put away.
All of it was away: in drawers and closets. The decorator’s children were tidy with their toys. The decorator’s wife kept her cosmetics behind cabinet doors. Was it difficult to live in such peace and spareness, one of the magazine article writers asked. “We have a house in the country,” she answered, “where I decorate with cabbage rose prints and lots of swags and ruffles. This is a nice change, and so is that.” Very diplomatic. Instead of moving through the cycle of finding and bringing home, decorating with, and then shoving into a closet in order to reach a modicum of space, one decamps from the city to the country to enjoy the volte face of décor.
Not having the luxury of two houses, we need to decide how spare or how decorated our rooms are to be. Pictures or bare walls? Upholstered furniture with pillows or teak stools? Rugs and carpets? Bibelots - from the pot scouring mesh to the piece of colored glass on our counters? Family heirlooms on the table or put away in the drawers?
The furniture stores’ pseudo room arrangements now feature plastic glasses of plastic orange juice, a cereal bowl half-filled with plastic bran flakes never dissolving in their plastic milk. There’s a mixed drink on the sofa pull-out, and a bowl of fruit on the coffee table. Why? So we the browsers more clearly understand how the furniture would welcome us home. What is home? A place to share our food and our warmth, a place to learn, an operating room for leeks? Home is what each of us searches for: along with peace, and mother and love, it’s a word with strong connotations. Once we arrive, as we build it, what does our home say about us?
“You have an obsession with order and schedule,” someone comments, looking at the clocks in my home. True, though each of them registers a different time. “You like books,” says another visitor, stating the obvious. Books, clocks, places to read, colored glass. Dogs. Cats and children. Finds from our adventures. Photographs and pictures. Memories. Friendships. Leeks jostle the coffee maker and the breadboard where I am slicing homemade honey wheat bread. The dining room table bears school texts, a collection of pens, a jar of colored marbles. It may be cluttered, but it’s home. For some, the spare look works. We do not believe in minimalist decorating.
All of it was away: in drawers and closets. The decorator’s children were tidy with their toys. The decorator’s wife kept her cosmetics behind cabinet doors. Was it difficult to live in such peace and spareness, one of the magazine article writers asked. “We have a house in the country,” she answered, “where I decorate with cabbage rose prints and lots of swags and ruffles. This is a nice change, and so is that.” Very diplomatic. Instead of moving through the cycle of finding and bringing home, decorating with, and then shoving into a closet in order to reach a modicum of space, one decamps from the city to the country to enjoy the volte face of décor.
Not having the luxury of two houses, we need to decide how spare or how decorated our rooms are to be. Pictures or bare walls? Upholstered furniture with pillows or teak stools? Rugs and carpets? Bibelots - from the pot scouring mesh to the piece of colored glass on our counters? Family heirlooms on the table or put away in the drawers?
The furniture stores’ pseudo room arrangements now feature plastic glasses of plastic orange juice, a cereal bowl half-filled with plastic bran flakes never dissolving in their plastic milk. There’s a mixed drink on the sofa pull-out, and a bowl of fruit on the coffee table. Why? So we the browsers more clearly understand how the furniture would welcome us home. What is home? A place to share our food and our warmth, a place to learn, an operating room for leeks? Home is what each of us searches for: along with peace, and mother and love, it’s a word with strong connotations. Once we arrive, as we build it, what does our home say about us?
“You have an obsession with order and schedule,” someone comments, looking at the clocks in my home. True, though each of them registers a different time. “You like books,” says another visitor, stating the obvious. Books, clocks, places to read, colored glass. Dogs. Cats and children. Finds from our adventures. Photographs and pictures. Memories. Friendships. Leeks jostle the coffee maker and the breadboard where I am slicing homemade honey wheat bread. The dining room table bears school texts, a collection of pens, a jar of colored marbles. It may be cluttered, but it’s home. For some, the spare look works. We do not believe in minimalist decorating.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Betrayal
The wife of the man up the street is having an affair with a co-worker. He knows this because his best friend told him so. We are discussing Othello – but as we always do, we’re talking about the ideas behind the story: the plot and its relevance to our lives and times. There’s a lot of betrayal in Othello: friendship, truth, morals. Some of it is real, and some of it is real only in the minds of those who are deceived by their best friends. My students, who approach Shakespeare with as much enthusiasm as they do beets, are no strangers to fear and betrayal. They’ve lost friends, secrets, babysitters, boy and girl-friends, spouses and marriages, jobs and cars, to circumstances, or the economy, or betrayal.
Like most of us, sometimes they have betrayed their own long-range goals for short-term satisfaction: sleeping in rather than coming to class. They’ve felt betrayed by their bosses, and sometimes the educational system, whether their conclusions are based on fact or emotion. They know betrayal. Shakespeare may sound funny, as they tell me, the costumes may look strange (more unique than multiple face piercings?), but the stories don’t change – and that’s the important reason why we need to keep reading: that, and the beauty of the language.
We need to move into story and outside our private stories to understand and accept the part of those events in our lives. As Earl points out, King Arthur was also familiar with betrayal. Othello killed his wife for it, doing his civic duty, so - as he pointed out - Desdemona would not live to betray more men.
The students already know that betrayal doesn’t just happen to someone like Othello: betrayal is a relationship they can enter or something they can pity and learn from. Our reaction can depend, as Lori and Amber and Earl argue, on how much we still love the people who betrayed us. There are no simple rules, just people in their own stories, hunting for the plot.
Betrayal is part of life. We welcome someone into our lives, our love, our families, our friendship. Sometimes that relationship strengthens and grows. Sometimes we discover that the person or company we trusted has not been true. Sometimes we only believe this: but belief becomes our reality.
Othello’s response to perceived betrayal supported grew from not only his occupation and torment, but the rights of men everywhere to ensure that wives do not trash their husbands’ public reputation. [Then it was husbands; now we’re equal opportunity.] Arthur’s response fractured his heart, his knights, and his kingdom. Fatal flaw? Maybe: If love is a fatal flaw. Depending on what we do with our beliefs and the information we are given.
Maybe out of love we choose to say nothing, do nothing. Peace. Karma. Maybe we react. Maybe we avenge. Maybe, like Othello, we attempt to serve the public good.
Maybe if we read and talk about the betrayal our fictional characters encounter, or the betrayal they believe exists, peace will come more easily to us, in the stories and plots of our lives. We can learn from the past and from the actions of others, as Amber vigorously asserts to her classmates that we do.
Like most of us, sometimes they have betrayed their own long-range goals for short-term satisfaction: sleeping in rather than coming to class. They’ve felt betrayed by their bosses, and sometimes the educational system, whether their conclusions are based on fact or emotion. They know betrayal. Shakespeare may sound funny, as they tell me, the costumes may look strange (more unique than multiple face piercings?), but the stories don’t change – and that’s the important reason why we need to keep reading: that, and the beauty of the language.
We need to move into story and outside our private stories to understand and accept the part of those events in our lives. As Earl points out, King Arthur was also familiar with betrayal. Othello killed his wife for it, doing his civic duty, so - as he pointed out - Desdemona would not live to betray more men.
The students already know that betrayal doesn’t just happen to someone like Othello: betrayal is a relationship they can enter or something they can pity and learn from. Our reaction can depend, as Lori and Amber and Earl argue, on how much we still love the people who betrayed us. There are no simple rules, just people in their own stories, hunting for the plot.
Betrayal is part of life. We welcome someone into our lives, our love, our families, our friendship. Sometimes that relationship strengthens and grows. Sometimes we discover that the person or company we trusted has not been true. Sometimes we only believe this: but belief becomes our reality.
Othello’s response to perceived betrayal supported grew from not only his occupation and torment, but the rights of men everywhere to ensure that wives do not trash their husbands’ public reputation. [Then it was husbands; now we’re equal opportunity.] Arthur’s response fractured his heart, his knights, and his kingdom. Fatal flaw? Maybe: If love is a fatal flaw. Depending on what we do with our beliefs and the information we are given.
Maybe out of love we choose to say nothing, do nothing. Peace. Karma. Maybe we react. Maybe we avenge. Maybe, like Othello, we attempt to serve the public good.
Maybe if we read and talk about the betrayal our fictional characters encounter, or the betrayal they believe exists, peace will come more easily to us, in the stories and plots of our lives. We can learn from the past and from the actions of others, as Amber vigorously asserts to her classmates that we do.
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