I have a visitor (we'll call him or her "Tom") who's in town for an art conference. This morning he did something quite remarkable.
He put a couple of spoonfuls of salt into his coffee and drank half the cup. Only then did he point to a container on the table and ask me, "Is this salt?"
Ha ha ha!
Okay - I admit, I'm being unfair to poor "Tom" when I laugh at him, because most people put salt in salt shakers and sugar in large containers with spoons (at least on the table). So, visitors be warned - we are not strong on logic in this house...
Still, it's very remarkable that he drank half the cup!
P.S. Again, I'm being unfair to the artist. The coffee hadn't been hot enough when he drank it and a lot of the salt was still sitting at the bottom of the cup when I rinsed it out. It probably wasn't all that salty until he got half-way through.
P.P.S. I apologize to anyone who read this post hoping for a discussion on the nature of artists...
10 February 2011
07 February 2011
rites of passage
About three weeks ago I hurt my back sweeping snow. Yes, I was pushing the snow off my front porch steps with a broom when it happened. It was too much snow for a broom, perhaps, but it shouldn’t have been too much snow for my back. Then, yesterday, I moved a heavy box that daughter V had left on the front porch and, twang, I felt something.
twang
One painful incident means hmmmm.... But two? There is no escaping the division of my life into pre- and post-twang.
Picture a very cool old dresser sitting on the side of the road about a block from my house, SIX drawers and old enough to have some character (rounded front, carved) and some weight. The pre-twang me, picked that dresser up and put it in the back of her station wagon (somehow – without closing the hatch, of course. That foolish person got the dresser out of the car, up the five front porch steps, up the narrow steps to our attic room... Later, the idiot (yes, me) would get this dresser back down the stairs and even farther - down the rickety stairs into our basement. All of this, with absolutely no help.
That’s the sort of thing I was doing at forty and even after.
Okay, I know it was stupid, an accident waiting to happen. (Can you say, heavy furniture through the wall?) But I could lift and move and push and roughhouse pretty much without thinking about it. Now, that me is gone.
This got me thinking about “rites of passage” and remembering how I felt when my mother died. Even though I wasn’t incredibly close to her, her death was a turning point in my life: all the difficult trips to see her; the unfamiliar need to worry about her; watching her labored breathing; sitting in doctors' offices and hospitals, managing medications; after she died, the tension when my step-father got a bit paranoid as we helped him clean out the condominium, worried, it seems, that my sisters and I would take his things.
After those long months, I began to see the world as divided into two groups, those who had lost a parent and those who hadn’t. I know it isn’t really a “rite of passage,” but it so felt that way to me. A lot of the people I spoke to would share some of their stories and something seemed to unite us as a group. It’s not about how much we loved and miss the parent who died (because, face it, that isn’t universal). Anyway, this isn't the post to talk about grief.
As I think about it, the conversations I had really focused not on love or grief per se, but upon how physically and emotionally taxing the whole experience had been for us and for our families. It is hard to escape the only thing that really ties this diverse group of people together; this hole in the family tree somehow pulls us up into a new generation. Nature abhors a vacuum. It is that kind of uncontrollable shift in the universe. Not so much a rite as a tectonic shift that takes us, ready or not.
twang
03 February 2011
Conversacion en La Catedral
Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel prize, and a few months later this book (Conversación en La Catedral) came to me through a sad circumstance. It was a book I'd always meant to read and this settled it. I was predicting a hard slog, but it's really a novel. As of page 287, I'm engrossed and recommend it enthusiastically.
The first book I ever read in Spanish, just for pleasure, was La tia Julia y el escribidor (also by Vargas Llosa). The novel fills H (husband) with a sense of nostalgia because he remembers the radio plays and the culture of the book's setting. For me, the nostalgia is about thinking of how little I understood about anything when I read that book at twenty. But, anyway, I liked it.
Too bad for Vargas Llosa (ha ha) that I also read La niña mala - which I thought was ... I don't know .... almost perfunctory. It seemed to be a kind of Latin American Forest Gump one life through history. It feels unfair to say this because, for all I know, it was a very personal kind of chronicle of the author's era.
Lo siento, Sr. Vargas Llosa.
It makes me feel a bit better to add what Zadie Smith said yesterday on an interview in NPR. She was saying that book critics who are also novelists, as opposed to those who are only literary critics, have a better sense of how a BAD book happens. I can't do justice to her explanation, but the idea is clear I think: the author is incapable of seeing what she has created at first. Only years later does the author have the necessary distance to read her own book. I think for very successful authors there must be a real danger of this because they aren't obligated to listen to anybody tell them that they've gone astray with book X or Y.
That is, the fact that La niña mala was mediocre is almost to be expected. These things happen, according to Zadie Smith, and the successful author faces a particular peril according to me (and who knows how many others).
Here's another group who (which? that?) can write as badly as we want: bloggers with no readers - which is why I'm going to spend hours toiling over this last line... Oh God. Must prevail. So profound my thoughts.
I'm considering this more symbolically charged version (a bit more obtuse)
Is "red beating tears" (i.e. blood) better than beating red tears? I went with the latter because the "red beating" part started to sound like McCarthyists to me. God, great writing is a burden.
The first book I ever read in Spanish, just for pleasure, was La tia Julia y el escribidor (also by Vargas Llosa). The novel fills H (husband) with a sense of nostalgia because he remembers the radio plays and the culture of the book's setting. For me, the nostalgia is about thinking of how little I understood about anything when I read that book at twenty. But, anyway, I liked it.
Too bad for Vargas Llosa (ha ha) that I also read La niña mala - which I thought was ... I don't know .... almost perfunctory. It seemed to be a kind of Latin American Forest Gump one life through history. It feels unfair to say this because, for all I know, it was a very personal kind of chronicle of the author's era.
Lo siento, Sr. Vargas Llosa.
It makes me feel a bit better to add what Zadie Smith said yesterday on an interview in NPR. She was saying that book critics who are also novelists, as opposed to those who are only literary critics, have a better sense of how a BAD book happens. I can't do justice to her explanation, but the idea is clear I think: the author is incapable of seeing what she has created at first. Only years later does the author have the necessary distance to read her own book. I think for very successful authors there must be a real danger of this because they aren't obligated to listen to anybody tell them that they've gone astray with book X or Y.
That is, the fact that La niña mala was mediocre is almost to be expected. These things happen, according to Zadie Smith, and the successful author faces a particular peril according to me (and who knows how many others).
Here's another group who (which? that?) can write as badly as we want: bloggers with no readers - which is why I'm going to spend hours toiling over this last line... Oh God. Must prevail. So profound my thoughts.
He who struggleth not, knows but plastic roses. As these can never bring forth his blood, no chemical perfume therein can bring true pleasure.
I'm considering this more symbolically charged version (a bit more obtuse)
He who hath ne'er struggled, knows but plastic roses. As these exact not his beating red tears,
no essence of this imitation of nature's beauty can truly gratify.
no essence of this imitation of nature's beauty can truly gratify.
Is "red beating tears" (i.e. blood) better than beating red tears? I went with the latter because the "red beating" part started to sound like McCarthyists to me. God, great writing is a burden.
31 January 2011
favor for brother
Took L to New York to have a voice lesson with P. Afterward we met his girlfriend (E) for pizza. P and I told the old standard "cute little brother" story about the time L had been playing starwars with P...
Wow - come to think of it - L learned how to talk early. We lived in a specific apartment for 1 year which is why I can place his age so well. We always say L was three years old when this story happened, and he may have been, but he was barely three. We moved out of this apartment in July and P left for his summer trip in June.... So, I can fix pretty exactly the latest date in which this exchange could have happened.
The anecdote goes that L and P were playing Starwars and at a certain point L delivered the key line from the fight scene between Skywalker and Vader, "Luke, I am your papa." At least that was this adorable 2-3 year old's version of this dialogue.
The point of this story is that we were joking about how we always tell this story because it's just too cute and L said something about how we tell it to "all of P's girlfriends." Ha ha. L is oblivious, but I think I detect a micro-expression flit across the face of current girlfriend. Sigh... I said, "We tell that anecdote to everyone who comes into our lives."
In the metro station, as we head toward home, I told L he could do his brother a big favor by never saying things like, "We tell that story to ALL of his girlfriends." He was painfully cute because the sudden understanding on his face was so evident. I said not to worry, that unless P and E broke up that very day there was no harm done (God forbid).... but for the future...
Wow - come to think of it - L learned how to talk early. We lived in a specific apartment for 1 year which is why I can place his age so well. We always say L was three years old when this story happened, and he may have been, but he was barely three. We moved out of this apartment in July and P left for his summer trip in June.... So, I can fix pretty exactly the latest date in which this exchange could have happened.
The anecdote goes that L and P were playing Starwars and at a certain point L delivered the key line from the fight scene between Skywalker and Vader, "Luke, I am your papa." At least that was this adorable 2-3 year old's version of this dialogue.
The point of this story is that we were joking about how we always tell this story because it's just too cute and L said something about how we tell it to "all of P's girlfriends." Ha ha. L is oblivious, but I think I detect a micro-expression flit across the face of current girlfriend. Sigh... I said, "We tell that anecdote to everyone who comes into our lives."
In the metro station, as we head toward home, I told L he could do his brother a big favor by never saying things like, "We tell that story to ALL of his girlfriends." He was painfully cute because the sudden understanding on his face was so evident. I said not to worry, that unless P and E broke up that very day there was no harm done (God forbid).... but for the future...
29 January 2011
Cymbeline
Before a few days ago, I wouldn't have recognized this name... Turns out that it's one of Shakespeare's lesser achievements, but, for me, it has become one of his most memorable. Credit goes to the theater group (called Fiasco) which staged it in the New Victory Theater (NYC).
Sorry - once again - I give my enthusiastic thumbs up to a show that's about to close. Six actors play all thirteen or fourteen roles (don't really know how many there were - too lazy to find the program I brought home).
Anyway - the actors have a pretty easy time doubling and tripling up on roles until the very end, which is when almost all the characters are on stage together, where everything becomes clear and all is forgiven. At that point, the switching from role to role adds an extra layer of humor (I called it slap-stick and my son P qualified: "intelligent slap-stick"). It's so interesting how the modern choreography and staging worked incredibly well to bolster the spoken word and to highlight the play's "comedy." (You know Shakespeare - betrayal, talk of seduction, rape, murder, ha ha ha HA!!)
At first I wondered if it was unfaithful to the play, in a way, to get the audience to laugh at things unrelated to the script - but, in the end, really - who cares? Even in the bard's time males played females and the actors had to convey much through their gestures etc. Come to think of it, the female lead has to disguise herself as a male in the second half of the play; in the 1600s there might have been a lot of hilarity for the audience in that male plays female imitating male.
It's all true to the spirit of the play which, after-all, had a happy ending. Why not milk it for laughs? (It only works because the actors were talented and the direction so creative).
Thanks to P. for suggesting this play. It was my Christmas present to him, but a very selfish one - no? I got out of the house and L got me out of the house. (Laugh at that, but it's true.) Oh, I got to meet P's new girlfriend (E) who is very nice and intelligent.
P treated me to lunch and I was hoping that I might get out of cooking all day long. But, when I got home, I found husband was waiting for me to eat... Sigh... the day's dirty dishes were waiting too and L's bottomless-pit/stomach.
Still, now that the kitchen is close to clean and everyone ate something fairly healthy (thank God for burritos - L- and hunk of meat - hubby), I'm feeling very pleased with myself for arranging such a great day.
Oh, wait, about my hubby's "hunk" of meat... It was only a small piece big enough for half a sandwich once he had given L a huge chunk. He just loves to watch L put it all away. I wonder if he's thinking, I wish someone had given me this much meat when I was 14.
Sorry - once again - I give my enthusiastic thumbs up to a show that's about to close. Six actors play all thirteen or fourteen roles (don't really know how many there were - too lazy to find the program I brought home).
Anyway - the actors have a pretty easy time doubling and tripling up on roles until the very end, which is when almost all the characters are on stage together, where everything becomes clear and all is forgiven. At that point, the switching from role to role adds an extra layer of humor (I called it slap-stick and my son P qualified: "intelligent slap-stick"). It's so interesting how the modern choreography and staging worked incredibly well to bolster the spoken word and to highlight the play's "comedy." (You know Shakespeare - betrayal, talk of seduction, rape, murder, ha ha ha HA!!)
At first I wondered if it was unfaithful to the play, in a way, to get the audience to laugh at things unrelated to the script - but, in the end, really - who cares? Even in the bard's time males played females and the actors had to convey much through their gestures etc. Come to think of it, the female lead has to disguise herself as a male in the second half of the play; in the 1600s there might have been a lot of hilarity for the audience in that male plays female imitating male.
It's all true to the spirit of the play which, after-all, had a happy ending. Why not milk it for laughs? (It only works because the actors were talented and the direction so creative).
Thanks to P. for suggesting this play. It was my Christmas present to him, but a very selfish one - no? I got out of the house and L got me out of the house. (Laugh at that, but it's true.) Oh, I got to meet P's new girlfriend (E) who is very nice and intelligent.
P treated me to lunch and I was hoping that I might get out of cooking all day long. But, when I got home, I found husband was waiting for me to eat... Sigh... the day's dirty dishes were waiting too and L's bottomless-pit/stomach.
Still, now that the kitchen is close to clean and everyone ate something fairly healthy (thank God for burritos - L- and hunk of meat - hubby), I'm feeling very pleased with myself for arranging such a great day.
Oh, wait, about my hubby's "hunk" of meat... It was only a small piece big enough for half a sandwich once he had given L a huge chunk. He just loves to watch L put it all away. I wonder if he's thinking, I wish someone had given me this much meat when I was 14.
23 January 2011
Spoiler alert
Historians + time travel. What's not to love in Connie Willis's book, Blackout? I was so caught up in the action that I barely paused to wonder how Willis was going to wrap this up in the rapidly dwindling number of pages until the end of the book.
IT'S ONLY THE FIRST HALF!
Who does that? There's not any ending, period. We're not talking volume 1, we're talking half a book.
On a personal note: what sort of friend sends a book that stops abruptly with a note that you'll have to buy the second half (All Clear) if you want to know what happens? Friends should not trick friends into starting books that
ha ha - just kidding NOT
So, in 20 degree weather, and with a sore back, I trudged three blocks to the library... Would it be open? (Budget cuts). What would I do if it weren't? It was. The book was there. Wow.
My thoughts so far: read the first two sentences of this post....
But, I do have some nagging doubts - I think I know some crucial plot twists and I'm wondering if the author was a little too heavy handed. My predictions (what I predicted last night when I turned off the light at 1 a.m. - about 2/3rds of the way through Blackout): 1) Sir Godfey Something- or-Other who lives in wartime London and is a Shakespearean actor, will turn out to be Colin Whats-his-face who lives in the future and is enamored of one of the main characters, Polly. 2) The Vicar will be someone from future. He is too nice and he has said too many things which one could interpret as directed squarely at those stuck in the past... Well, I'm not so sure about #2.
Another minor grievance is that when Willis tries to include the "internal conflict" of two of the characters, it gets tedious**.
I get it; she wants us to see how they are constantly tormented by doubts. But, these interior monologues just aren't interesting enough to bear so much repetition - especially when I think that, instead, she could have put an ending on the first half. Ehem, I mean, especially when the deep thoughts are so limited for someone with my deep understanding of human psychology. The characters are incredibly single-minded - all of them. Nobody is caught thinking about mom, or a warm shower, or the person they have a crush on. That is, if the repetition is supposed to be an accurate portrayal of the psyche - the inner workings of these characters, it leaves them pretty flat. hmmm... . Am I not a man? etc. etc.
Willis isn't writing the next masterpiece of English literature (my guess about her intentions)- she's writing an exciting book which allows us to think about the nature of time, history, historians, life in the future, life in the past. You know, escapist reading with a bit of meat on the bones. Time traveling historian - I actually thought about whether I might be qualified to pursue this as a career.
OK - too lazy for more predictions. Must read.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
** Note added later - I reworded this sentence about my "minor grievance" because the first version didn't include the adjective, "tedious". When I finished the first book, it was still a fairly minor grievance. But, by the end of the second book, I had lost patience with the plodding repetition of the time-travelers' doubts and fears. I found myself skimming a lot. I wish I could have written this book - seriously - both because I'm jealous of a talented author's ideas - but also because (in my juvenile fantasies) I would have sat on it while I figured out how to make it move without losing the details that I enjoy. It might take me years (once again, in my juvenile...) No easy solution. Y'see - the terrific "details" about lo cotidiano in WWII seem to come out in the day-to-day organization of the material (very chronological - almost a diary - which is not ironic at all in a time-traveling book, but I won't explain what I mean by that). This organization is also the root of the repetition ... speaking of repeti---
ha ha - and I complain the book got dull - I do go on...
IT'S ONLY THE FIRST HALF!
Who does that? There's not any ending, period. We're not talking volume 1, we're talking half a book.
On a personal note: what sort of friend sends a book that stops abruptly with a note that you'll have to buy the second half (All Clear) if you want to know what happens? Friends should not trick friends into starting books that
ha ha - just kidding NOT
So, in 20 degree weather, and with a sore back, I trudged three blocks to the library... Would it be open? (Budget cuts). What would I do if it weren't? It was. The book was there. Wow.
My thoughts so far: read the first two sentences of this post....
But, I do have some nagging doubts - I think I know some crucial plot twists and I'm wondering if the author was a little too heavy handed. My predictions (what I predicted last night when I turned off the light at 1 a.m. - about 2/3rds of the way through Blackout): 1) Sir Godfey Something- or-Other who lives in wartime London and is a Shakespearean actor, will turn out to be Colin Whats-his-face who lives in the future and is enamored of one of the main characters, Polly. 2) The Vicar will be someone from future. He is too nice and he has said too many things which one could interpret as directed squarely at those stuck in the past... Well, I'm not so sure about #2.
Another minor grievance is that when Willis tries to include the "internal conflict" of two of the characters, it gets tedious**.
I get it; she wants us to see how they are constantly tormented by doubts. But, these interior monologues just aren't interesting enough to bear so much repetition - especially when I think that, instead, she could have put an ending on the first half. Ehem, I mean, especially when the deep thoughts are so limited for someone with my deep understanding of human psychology. The characters are incredibly single-minded - all of them. Nobody is caught thinking about mom, or a warm shower, or the person they have a crush on. That is, if the repetition is supposed to be an accurate portrayal of the psyche - the inner workings of these characters, it leaves them pretty flat. hmmm... . Am I not a man? etc. etc.
Willis isn't writing the next masterpiece of English literature (my guess about her intentions)- she's writing an exciting book which allows us to think about the nature of time, history, historians, life in the future, life in the past. You know, escapist reading with a bit of meat on the bones. Time traveling historian - I actually thought about whether I might be qualified to pursue this as a career.
OK - too lazy for more predictions. Must read.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
** Note added later - I reworded this sentence about my "minor grievance" because the first version didn't include the adjective, "tedious". When I finished the first book, it was still a fairly minor grievance. But, by the end of the second book, I had lost patience with the plodding repetition of the time-travelers' doubts and fears. I found myself skimming a lot. I wish I could have written this book - seriously - both because I'm jealous of a talented author's ideas - but also because (in my juvenile fantasies) I would have sat on it while I figured out how to make it move without losing the details that I enjoy. It might take me years (once again, in my juvenile...) No easy solution. Y'see - the terrific "details" about lo cotidiano in WWII seem to come out in the day-to-day organization of the material (very chronological - almost a diary - which is not ironic at all in a time-traveling book, but I won't explain what I mean by that). This organization is also the root of the repetition ... speaking of repeti---
ha ha - and I complain the book got dull - I do go on...
22 January 2011
forgiving...
We had guests (family) for Christmas and we were talking about the youngest member of the family, L. Well, he had been engaging in debates with very religious people on a Christian chat site (a friend of his, "E," started the practice). Older brother P. noted that he had told L. that the problem with these on-line conversations was that L and his friend were going to these sites to start this debate. When insults started flowing, a few from my son, he had to accept his role in initiating confrontation. These very religious pages hadn't sent their members out looking for adolescent guys to poke fights with.
I'm starting with that story to fill in the setting: all of us family sitting around a table - and L was a good topic of conversation for the new-comers. He unites everyone in this large blended family. We all love him like crazy, but it's not a simplistic "ain't he cute" sort of conversation - Even though we're also laughing a lot.
Anyway, at a certain moment we started telling the very very funny story of L's "thank-you" conversation with his aunt on Christmas - in which he had proceeded to insult the heck out of the present she sent (a movie) and then, when he realized his gaffe, tried to apologize indirectly. The story is so funny that I'll try to do it justice in a separate post.
Well, I'm guessing L. heard our entire conversation. He was playing video games in the living room and we were in the kitchen. At a certain point he couldn't take it any more.... I must have been guilty of emphasizing some egregious detail (because we were all telling the story to the two in our group who had missed the moment). Or maybe it was that I added another short story. I don't remember, but at a certain point L came into the kitchen and said something only to me about how I was making him sound like an idiot - and he shot me this look.
At that moment I felt really bad. I went to the living room in a few minutes and told him that I was sorry - but that he knows how I don't tell "show-offy" stories about my kids even though I think they are the greatest. That is actually something we have talked about (and we've talked about those insufferable people who only boast about their kids etc.)
Still, I did feel bad - I know it's not cool to feel like the butt of the joke for too long. L didn't really buy my apology and I decided not to try to convince him. Sometimes you have to allow someone to be mad at you (at me).
Went back to the kitchen and rejoined the conversation. At one point I told a funny story about how I learned to drive (and the context was totally about dissing my driving). First time I drove at night I didn't know how to turn on the headlights - so I drove around with the inside car lights on - but no headlights. I could see people staring at me. In other words I looked really stupid.
A while later, L came back into the kitchen to join the group. He picked me up in a big exuberant half-embrace half-look how strong I am-gesture. Wow - I was forgiven.
I don't know if he heard my story and decided that the one about him hadn't been so bad OR if, more likely, he just forgave me. L is so able to let-go of anger. I'm so happy to see that trait in him and I was really really grateful to him at that moment.
I'm starting with that story to fill in the setting: all of us family sitting around a table - and L was a good topic of conversation for the new-comers. He unites everyone in this large blended family. We all love him like crazy, but it's not a simplistic "ain't he cute" sort of conversation - Even though we're also laughing a lot.
Anyway, at a certain moment we started telling the very very funny story of L's "thank-you" conversation with his aunt on Christmas - in which he had proceeded to insult the heck out of the present she sent (a movie) and then, when he realized his gaffe, tried to apologize indirectly. The story is so funny that I'll try to do it justice in a separate post.
Well, I'm guessing L. heard our entire conversation. He was playing video games in the living room and we were in the kitchen. At a certain point he couldn't take it any more.... I must have been guilty of emphasizing some egregious detail (because we were all telling the story to the two in our group who had missed the moment). Or maybe it was that I added another short story. I don't remember, but at a certain point L came into the kitchen and said something only to me about how I was making him sound like an idiot - and he shot me this look.
At that moment I felt really bad. I went to the living room in a few minutes and told him that I was sorry - but that he knows how I don't tell "show-offy" stories about my kids even though I think they are the greatest. That is actually something we have talked about (and we've talked about those insufferable people who only boast about their kids etc.)
Still, I did feel bad - I know it's not cool to feel like the butt of the joke for too long. L didn't really buy my apology and I decided not to try to convince him. Sometimes you have to allow someone to be mad at you (at me).
Went back to the kitchen and rejoined the conversation. At one point I told a funny story about how I learned to drive (and the context was totally about dissing my driving). First time I drove at night I didn't know how to turn on the headlights - so I drove around with the inside car lights on - but no headlights. I could see people staring at me. In other words I looked really stupid.
A while later, L came back into the kitchen to join the group. He picked me up in a big exuberant half-embrace half-look how strong I am-gesture. Wow - I was forgiven.
I don't know if he heard my story and decided that the one about him hadn't been so bad OR if, more likely, he just forgave me. L is so able to let-go of anger. I'm so happy to see that trait in him and I was really really grateful to him at that moment.
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