Yesterday, had a dental cleaning; the usual, selling me the grinding guard, the electronic toothbrush. All of which I should buy. And, always, the only appointment was a 2 pm, which leaves me at a weird point in my workday.
I decided to take the rest of the day off and catch a matinee of 20th Century Women. It's about a mother and son, at its heart. But, in the beginning scenes, there are five people living in a large, ramshackle old house in Santa Barbara owned and perpetually renovated by Dorothea, played with intelligence and grace by the underappreciated Annette Benning. In the early scenes, you watch the people coming in and out and its clear they move about the house, inhabit it at some level together, but that they are not a traditional family. And, I liked that the film is not in a hurry to explain their relationship or the nature of the family these five folks constitute. Explaining always suggests something needs explaining, that its not quite what it seems.
The film really does revolve around the two members who are related, Dorothea and her son Jamie. Dorothea had Jamie in 1964 when she was forty. Jamie is now in the midst of teendom and increasingly a mystifying riddle to his mother. She worries he is not right, harmed by growing up without a real male presence in his life. There is her tenant and handyman living in the house, William, a hippy of sorts who is way deep into making rough, amorphous clay bowls. Jamie and William don't identify. So, Dorothea seeks the help of Jamie's best friend Julie, a malcontent teen in flight from her psychotherapist mother, and her tenant Abbie, a punk-feminist photographer recovering from cervical cancer. She asks them to help make her son a man, to share their lives with him so that he might have a better idea of his future and how to get to it.
They do their best. Abbie introduces him to late seventies feminism, sharing two books with him, Our Bodies Ourselves and Sisterhood Is Powerful. He learns of clitoral orgasm and decides he is a feminist and expresses his desire to satisfy women and treat them with respect. He discovers reality often conflicts with intent. Julie, his peer, is his best friend and escapes her house to be with him at every chance, even climbing scaffolding outside the house to reach his room and sleep platonically with him at night. When he gets frisky, she pushes him off, telling him she's too close to him have sex with him and sex would ruin their friendship. Both provide an education to him of sorts, as his mother asked.
However, much of what he learns seems to be in the service of better knowing his mother. This is a story of a parent and a child who love each other but are unable to fully express that love. Both seek to know the other but yet continually they miss each other. There is a wonderful scene in which Jamie reads a passage from Sisterhood Is Powerful to his mother which seems to pretty clearly identify her. The essay is about how society choses not to see older women, to recognize their wit, their beauty, their desire. Instead, society simply ignores older women till they fade away. He presents this essay to his mother as if he has found a key to understanding her. Dorothea is offended, and curtly tells her son she doesn't need to read books to understand herself and he wont find her there. And, there is something true to her response. Dorothea is a one-of-a-kind. But, as there is never any truly one-of-a-kind, she rebuffs him out of a pride. The picture he offers in the hopes of gaining understanding, in the hopes she will confirm it, does seem fairly accurate on a certain, basic level.
Dorothea is an amazing woman. She is bohemian but not lazy or hazy. She has a clear integrity, a sense of what she's about. She's a traditionalist. She strives to try and understand everything, to bring a rational, calm perception to all. Unafraid. I loved one scene especially. William suddenly kisses Dorothea on the lips, in a sudden burst of passion or affection or who knows what. SHe asks him why he kissed her and he tells her he doesn't really know. She responds, you should always know why you kiss a woman. She then asks him whether or not he is sleeping with Abbie and he admits he is, but just for fun, it doesn't mean anything. She responds, why would you do that? Dorothea is always questioning her actions and looking for more.
But, she's vulnerable and hiding it as best she can. She is unhappy. She's never achieved a love of her life and she believes in love. And, at one point, she admits, she's failed to have this experience, and her honesty in this regard moved me to tears. She basically admits she so wanted to be in love, to tast the real thing, she rushed into relationships that didn't have a chance of true love. Moving.
Annette Benning is amazing. Greta Gerwig is worth the price of admissions. Watch her facial reactions. She has a vocabulary of faces that is unsurpassed. And, the soundtrack features some great punk/alt tracks from the time period, side-by-side with As Time Goes By and Louie Armstrong. Must see.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Monday, January 23, 2017
Section 38 of Song of Myself
Section 38 of Song of Myself
"I remember now,
I resume the overstaid fraction,
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.
I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average unending procession,
Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,
Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,
The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years."
Whitman continually throws up terms that challenge a good Google search. In the passage above, "overstaid fraction" has me stymied. The passage is in communication with the preceding one, 37, in which Whitman embodies and becomes one with various outlaws and sufferers: convicts, mutineers, larcenous youngsters facing the law, and a beggar. Section 38 begins with him exclaiming, "Enough! enough! enough!" and then shortly after he remembers, as quoted above. But, what does he remember? What is the overstaid fraction? I don't have time to pursue but jot this down in the way of planting these questions in my reading forward and backward henceforth.
Before passing, one can't help but note here, as in other passages, Whitman taking on a Christ like role. He does so in more sweeping and dramatic fashion in Section 40, a passage I found moving an trying at once. So full of promise but so impossible to trust:
"To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
Let the physician and the priest go home.
I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force,
Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.
Sleep—I and they keep guard all night,
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so."
"Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved,
With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,
Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,
(They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,)
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see."
M and I walked Timmerman, went to Café Strudel and Lowes. Bouyed me up. Saw La, La, Land by myself Saturday and it too blew me away and filled me with joy and hope. Alas, there was work today: another delay in opening and a useless meeting.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Yiyun Li and the eternal desire to establish contact
It's funny how stories can find you at just the right time.
Yiyun Li's story On the Street Where You Live (New Yorker, 1/9/2017) captures a mother's struggle to calibrate her expectations and ideas in light of her autistic son. Six year old Jude sees two specialists four times a week, crafted a sign for kindergarten, "'I'm Not talking because I DON't WaNt TO!'" and in general seems to prefer a SpongeBob pillow and himself. Parroting a banal children's book, Becky frets, "Oh, the places he'll not go, and the things he'll miss in life!"
Becky works against his wishes, his bent. She keeps a diary for him in which she tries to capture all the interesting people she encounters in her daily life with the aim of one day sharing it with him, to give him a glimpse of the richness of human life he's blinded to in the cocoon he wraps around himself. But, she realizes at one point, this book is for her. An exercise in defining normal, admirable.
She fears she's failing her son. That she lacks the imagination to truly appreciate him as he is, raising the question of whether any of us truly appreciate the other, the otherness of others.
At the ribbon cutting for an art museum her surgeon husband patronizes, she stands in front of a Jackson Pollock, alongside another spectator, who whispers conspiratorially, "'It makes me angry that I don't own the art work. I'd hate to share with others. They'd never see what I see." Becky is taken aback. The work itself, "a masterpiece staring back in silence," has challenged her. Fixed and unchanging itself, it seems to demand change from her, demand she can't offer-appreciation, understanding, comprehension.
Li has a surrealistic, wacky edge at times. As she continues to stare at the masterpiece, a Sherlock Holmes impersonator comes besides her and asks Becky if she likes the piece. Becky doesn't really say but wonders what "would happen if somebody would splash more colors onto the painting." Faux Sherlock,, with a cool, rational air and elevated vocabulary responds that this would be vandalism causing Becky to wonder if it would be such if one owned the painting. Sherlock asks Becky, Jude's mother, the telling questions: "'Might it be that you perceive imperfection in the painting and want to add your own touch? Or even destroy it?...was [she] an artist?"
Becky defines herself as something other than an artist. She believes she fails her son, fails to appreciate his oddity because she is too normal. She adopts as her own the line of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, "Who knows better'n I do what normal is?" She doesn't know what to do or make of her boy. The exchange with Sherlock suggest there is an art to mothering, to relating to the people around one. That art does not lie in trying to change what we encounter. In Li's vision, people present a discrete spectrum of difference and the act of imagination is not in trying to erase, ignore and rewrite that difference in acts of vandalism. But, to simply see it and work toward giving it a safe place in the world.
Born in China and a native Chinese speaker, Li writes movingly in the January 2nd edition of the New Yorker (To Speak Is To Blunder) of her decision to write, think, dream and speak almost exclusively in English. She claims that the decision was crucial. According to her, we all require a private language in distinction to the public language we all use. The private language allows us to express our own private thoughts, to capture the nuance, the unspeakable, the vague aspects of our life that would otherwise go unsaid, unnamed. She can only capture memories if she imagines them in English. She can only begin to write of her past if she is writing of it in stories, in English. She can recall memories from her past because "I have given these moments-what's possible to be put into English-to my characters." Writing in English allows her to "feel invisible but not estranged. It is the position I believe I always want in life. But with every pursuit there is the danger of crossing a line, from invisibility to erasure."
The essay gets confusing. Li writes of being confined to a mental hospital twice after suicide attempts. There she finds consolation of a kind in the writing of Katherine Mansfield; she "devoured Mansfield''s words like thirst-quenching poison." Some of the words: "'There is something profound & terrible in this eternal desire to establish contact."
I wonder if Li writes to establish contact with others or with herself. In the story, Jude claims his greatest fear is monophobia, a fear of being alone. Li never clearly articulates the dynamic underlying this autistic boys monophobia. Does he shun others to avoid confirming that he truly is alone? Does he fear being alone despite the fact he equally fears others. I would guess Li feels a deep kinship to the boy. As do I.
Yiyun Li's story On the Street Where You Live (New Yorker, 1/9/2017) captures a mother's struggle to calibrate her expectations and ideas in light of her autistic son. Six year old Jude sees two specialists four times a week, crafted a sign for kindergarten, "'I'm Not talking because I DON't WaNt TO!'" and in general seems to prefer a SpongeBob pillow and himself. Parroting a banal children's book, Becky frets, "Oh, the places he'll not go, and the things he'll miss in life!"
Becky works against his wishes, his bent. She keeps a diary for him in which she tries to capture all the interesting people she encounters in her daily life with the aim of one day sharing it with him, to give him a glimpse of the richness of human life he's blinded to in the cocoon he wraps around himself. But, she realizes at one point, this book is for her. An exercise in defining normal, admirable.
She fears she's failing her son. That she lacks the imagination to truly appreciate him as he is, raising the question of whether any of us truly appreciate the other, the otherness of others.
At the ribbon cutting for an art museum her surgeon husband patronizes, she stands in front of a Jackson Pollock, alongside another spectator, who whispers conspiratorially, "'It makes me angry that I don't own the art work. I'd hate to share with others. They'd never see what I see." Becky is taken aback. The work itself, "a masterpiece staring back in silence," has challenged her. Fixed and unchanging itself, it seems to demand change from her, demand she can't offer-appreciation, understanding, comprehension.
Li has a surrealistic, wacky edge at times. As she continues to stare at the masterpiece, a Sherlock Holmes impersonator comes besides her and asks Becky if she likes the piece. Becky doesn't really say but wonders what "would happen if somebody would splash more colors onto the painting." Faux Sherlock,, with a cool, rational air and elevated vocabulary responds that this would be vandalism causing Becky to wonder if it would be such if one owned the painting. Sherlock asks Becky, Jude's mother, the telling questions: "'Might it be that you perceive imperfection in the painting and want to add your own touch? Or even destroy it?...was [she] an artist?"
Becky defines herself as something other than an artist. She believes she fails her son, fails to appreciate his oddity because she is too normal. She adopts as her own the line of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, "Who knows better'n I do what normal is?" She doesn't know what to do or make of her boy. The exchange with Sherlock suggest there is an art to mothering, to relating to the people around one. That art does not lie in trying to change what we encounter. In Li's vision, people present a discrete spectrum of difference and the act of imagination is not in trying to erase, ignore and rewrite that difference in acts of vandalism. But, to simply see it and work toward giving it a safe place in the world.
Born in China and a native Chinese speaker, Li writes movingly in the January 2nd edition of the New Yorker (To Speak Is To Blunder) of her decision to write, think, dream and speak almost exclusively in English. She claims that the decision was crucial. According to her, we all require a private language in distinction to the public language we all use. The private language allows us to express our own private thoughts, to capture the nuance, the unspeakable, the vague aspects of our life that would otherwise go unsaid, unnamed. She can only capture memories if she imagines them in English. She can only begin to write of her past if she is writing of it in stories, in English. She can recall memories from her past because "I have given these moments-what's possible to be put into English-to my characters." Writing in English allows her to "feel invisible but not estranged. It is the position I believe I always want in life. But with every pursuit there is the danger of crossing a line, from invisibility to erasure."
The essay gets confusing. Li writes of being confined to a mental hospital twice after suicide attempts. There she finds consolation of a kind in the writing of Katherine Mansfield; she "devoured Mansfield''s words like thirst-quenching poison." Some of the words: "'There is something profound & terrible in this eternal desire to establish contact."
I wonder if Li writes to establish contact with others or with herself. In the story, Jude claims his greatest fear is monophobia, a fear of being alone. Li never clearly articulates the dynamic underlying this autistic boys monophobia. Does he shun others to avoid confirming that he truly is alone? Does he fear being alone despite the fact he equally fears others. I would guess Li feels a deep kinship to the boy. As do I.
Monday, January 16, 2017
Comfortable
Maybe....for now, I'm most comfortable by my self. Moved a bunch of things back to Ashton. No need to trouble folks, make them feel uncomfortable by asking for a base line level of order and cleanliness. Not a neat freak; but dirty dishes piling in rooms, unflushed toilets, blood and feces on toilet seats, candy wrappers all over a table next to the tv couch in a bonus room.. At least let me be upset, mumble under my breath if more open requests are not going to garner a response.
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Cataloochee
I had wanted to go into Cataloochee Valley where there is an elk herd. Alas, the road into was closed. Last five miles into this area is a crazy dirt road. Park had shut it down due to damage from ice storms which ran through earlier this week. I'm going back to see those elk.
So, since yesterday I couldnt get into valley, hiked Cataloochee Divide trail from Cove Creek to Swag House, all along eastern boundary of Smokies. All along the trail, there is an old, or the remnants of an old, CCC fence put up in 30s. I suspect some parts have been redone by zealous landowners.
Hiked with Maggie the dog, who found me about a mile from Swag House and hiked with me for three hours, right to trail head and my car. Dog is a long story but not my dog. I ended up having to go into Asheville to the humane. Good news, Maggie has been reunited with her owner.
Leaves, section 20 of Song of Myself:
"All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,/ Else it were time lost listening to me." That is a charge.
So, since yesterday I couldnt get into valley, hiked Cataloochee Divide trail from Cove Creek to Swag House, all along eastern boundary of Smokies. All along the trail, there is an old, or the remnants of an old, CCC fence put up in 30s. I suspect some parts have been redone by zealous landowners.
Hiked with Maggie the dog, who found me about a mile from Swag House and hiked with me for three hours, right to trail head and my car. Dog is a long story but not my dog. I ended up having to go into Asheville to the humane. Good news, Maggie has been reunited with her owner.
Leaves, section 20 of Song of Myself:
"All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,/ Else it were time lost listening to me." That is a charge.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Friday 13; no truckling, please
Jen got dehydrated and it got close.
Going to Catalahoochee hoping to see elk.
Leaves:
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids,/
Conformity goes to the fourth-removed/
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.
Going to Catalahoochee hoping to see elk.
Leaves:
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids,/
Conformity goes to the fourth-removed/
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Filtering from the self
It's hard to type on a cell phone with Antonio bumping his boy-cat head against your hands.
Leaking in roof at Ashton has spread, into the back room of the original house. Frustrated.
Yesterday was lazy day. Cold, rainy in morning. Went to Ashton and read Turner House and Leaves of Grass. Then, washed kitchen floor quick. Went to see Met simulcast of Nabucco which was wonderful. Verdi is so tuneful and the tunes are always so lovely, lilting, singable (is this what is meant by lyrical?). Tuneful, often sweet sounding, regardless of the content of the song.
The Hebrew slave chorus in Act 3 was just sublime, it appeared the chorus's performance brought James Levine to tears? They encored it, which I think is a fairly rare occurrence.
The singer Liudmyla Monastyrska played Abigaille ando from her entrance her presence and vitality was unmistakable. Big voice but she can also sing soft, wring every last ounce out of an aria. Her voice, her performance focuses ones ear. You can't help but listen. Her dying aria ("su me morente")at the very end was magic.
Now usually playing baritone roles (he's sang 17 Verdi roles and performed thousands of times at Met. WOW), Placido Domingo played Nabucco and was the afternoons draw for many. New Yorker complained his singing lacked bite. I'm not sophisticated enough a listener to know when I'm not getting bit.
Sunday was lazy. Read at Ashton. Wanted to hike at Harbison but apparently the wet conditions necessitate the closing of the trails in their entirety. Went to Peachtree Rock preserve in Pelion and hiked there about four miles. It was nice. Had forgotten to bring a hat. So, on way to Harbison, stopped at Sportsmans Authority on Piney Grove and bought a green hat branded "Turtle Fur."
Came back. Worked on Turner House and book group. Exploring possible hike for Saturday in Eastern Smokie Mountain Park.
Leaves of Grass with its big promise:
From Section 2 of Song of Myself
"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems/
You shall possess the good of the earth and the sun, (There are millions of suns left,)/
You shall no longer take things second or third hand , nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,/
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."
From Section 3:
"There was never any more inception than there is now,/
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,/
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,/
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now."
Leaking in roof at Ashton has spread, into the back room of the original house. Frustrated.
Yesterday was lazy day. Cold, rainy in morning. Went to Ashton and read Turner House and Leaves of Grass. Then, washed kitchen floor quick. Went to see Met simulcast of Nabucco which was wonderful. Verdi is so tuneful and the tunes are always so lovely, lilting, singable (is this what is meant by lyrical?). Tuneful, often sweet sounding, regardless of the content of the song.
The Hebrew slave chorus in Act 3 was just sublime, it appeared the chorus's performance brought James Levine to tears? They encored it, which I think is a fairly rare occurrence.
The singer Liudmyla Monastyrska played Abigaille ando from her entrance her presence and vitality was unmistakable. Big voice but she can also sing soft, wring every last ounce out of an aria. Her voice, her performance focuses ones ear. You can't help but listen. Her dying aria ("su me morente")at the very end was magic.
Now usually playing baritone roles (he's sang 17 Verdi roles and performed thousands of times at Met. WOW), Placido Domingo played Nabucco and was the afternoons draw for many. New Yorker complained his singing lacked bite. I'm not sophisticated enough a listener to know when I'm not getting bit.
Sunday was lazy. Read at Ashton. Wanted to hike at Harbison but apparently the wet conditions necessitate the closing of the trails in their entirety. Went to Peachtree Rock preserve in Pelion and hiked there about four miles. It was nice. Had forgotten to bring a hat. So, on way to Harbison, stopped at Sportsmans Authority on Piney Grove and bought a green hat branded "Turtle Fur."
Came back. Worked on Turner House and book group. Exploring possible hike for Saturday in Eastern Smokie Mountain Park.
Leaves of Grass with its big promise:
From Section 2 of Song of Myself
"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems/
You shall possess the good of the earth and the sun, (There are millions of suns left,)/
You shall no longer take things second or third hand , nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,/
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."
From Section 3:
"There was never any more inception than there is now,/
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,/
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,/
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now."
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
January 4, moving eve
Word came down and we're set to start packing and moving our collection tomorrow.
Having lunch in the Extension, facing a field and a band of trees. Originally, when I started lunching in my car here, after a long while lunching at noisy, dirty, chaotic Moe's, Extension seemed away, natural. A place of repose. And, these are quieter lunches. But, lately, I notice much more the traffic noise from Clemson. You learn real quiet when you hike in back country areas.
Continued to read Turner House at lunch. It's a family novel, with thirteen siblings and their children and Grands. But, the novel resolves down to the story of two of the siblings, eldest Cha Cha and youngest Lelah, who are struggling in their lives and in need of some kind of salvation. I'm sixty pages or so from finish and both Cha Cha and Lelah are only going into a deeper bottom.
There is a back story. The story of Francis', the Turner patriarch's first months in Detroit are woven through the story of the Turner children in the present day. Francis Turner leaves Arkansas and his new wife Viola for what he imagines will be a preaching opportunity.
Everything falls through and his early days in Detroit are rough, rife with loneliness and setbacks. He drinks too much. He takes up with the woman who runs the boarding house he stays. He fails to send word back to Viola about his well being and doings. He confesses, " It took courage to let a woman in on one's disappointment, one's fear"(278). He labels the time distant from Viola, his wife, as his "heathen period"(278).
Having lunch in the Extension, facing a field and a band of trees. Originally, when I started lunching in my car here, after a long while lunching at noisy, dirty, chaotic Moe's, Extension seemed away, natural. A place of repose. And, these are quieter lunches. But, lately, I notice much more the traffic noise from Clemson. You learn real quiet when you hike in back country areas.
Continued to read Turner House at lunch. It's a family novel, with thirteen siblings and their children and Grands. But, the novel resolves down to the story of two of the siblings, eldest Cha Cha and youngest Lelah, who are struggling in their lives and in need of some kind of salvation. I'm sixty pages or so from finish and both Cha Cha and Lelah are only going into a deeper bottom.
There is a back story. The story of Francis', the Turner patriarch's first months in Detroit are woven through the story of the Turner children in the present day. Francis Turner leaves Arkansas and his new wife Viola for what he imagines will be a preaching opportunity.
Everything falls through and his early days in Detroit are rough, rife with loneliness and setbacks. He drinks too much. He takes up with the woman who runs the boarding house he stays. He fails to send word back to Viola about his well being and doings. He confesses, " It took courage to let a woman in on one's disappointment, one's fear"(278). He labels the time distant from Viola, his wife, as his "heathen period"(278).
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
January 3: Turner House, delayed move
From the Turner House by Angela Flournoy: "other siblings feared Marlene...she was too quick to get angry and too long to forgive, but Leah knew that Marlene simply loved hard"(212, pb). I am hoping this will be defined.
Sometimes, Flournoy spells it out when she need not and other times she assumes an understanding. Such as when younger son Troy visits his aging mom and complains, "Viola could complain about Cha Cha all day if you allowed her, just as she could Francis Turner, never mind that he was dead"(177). And, we know from this that Troy is feeling a bit unloved by his mum. But, just in case you're obtuse, or reading this while watching the ball game, Flournoy adds (in Troy's thoughts or via the narrators voice?), "The constant complaining suggested she cared for them most"(177).
Then, there's nice: "Cha Cha thought, if only she was as understanding as she was nurturimg"(218).
Moving delayed. Spent the afternoon reassigning staff.
Sometimes, Flournoy spells it out when she need not and other times she assumes an understanding. Such as when younger son Troy visits his aging mom and complains, "Viola could complain about Cha Cha all day if you allowed her, just as she could Francis Turner, never mind that he was dead"(177). And, we know from this that Troy is feeling a bit unloved by his mum. But, just in case you're obtuse, or reading this while watching the ball game, Flournoy adds (in Troy's thoughts or via the narrators voice?), "The constant complaining suggested she cared for them most"(177).
Then, there's nice: "Cha Cha thought, if only she was as understanding as she was nurturimg"(218).
Moving delayed. Spent the afternoon reassigning staff.
Monday, January 2, 2017
Identity from Swing Time by Zadie Smith
If Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat, said Gene Kelly, and by this logic Bill "Bojangles" Robinson should have really been my dancer, because Bojangles danced for the Harlem dandy, for the ghetto kid, for the sharecropper-for all the descendants of slaves"(24).
Love and entrapment: from Swing Time by Zadie Smith
"She believed my father wanted more children in order to entrap her, and she was basically right about that, although entrapment in this case was only another word for love"(19).
Sunday, January 1, 2017
New Year's Day
Perhaps a new start.
Perhaps the first entry in a reader's diary. A life diary.
Drove in a chill rain to Ashton to finish grouting countertop. Began by re-reading parts of Swing Time by Zadie Smith. I finished it yesterday.
Was struck by her description of the main character's mother's speeches intending to instill pride in the downtrodden citizens of her neighborhood as "effortful light"(240).
Read about an hour. Then went to work. I regrouted a couple years back, so I suppose what I did today was re-regrouting. Don't remember it being so messy. I also don't remember using my finger so much, to make sure difficult joints got filled. I also don't remember really worrying last time about getting the lines "right," making sure they appeared solid, white and wide. Was never satisfied with the last job. Hope I got it right this time.
Went to Moe's to read a bit. Read a good New Yorker (10/17/2016) profile of the writer Henry Green by Leo Robson. The perpetually neglected Henry Green who is once again being noticed and championed. But, this work seems to have been continually picked up and dropped throughout my reading life. Perhaps Green is the perpetually noted as neglected Henry Green.
Writer Terry Southern was a champion of Greens and hoped to launch him to notice with a 1958 interview in the Paris Review. It is an odd interview. Southern goes out of his way to pitch Green as eccentric, the odd, genius artist. It wasn't an actual interview. The questions and answers were completed via mail but Southern made it appear as if the interview took place in real time, at a real place. He makes it appear as if Green had trouble hearing him and often Green comes across as mishearing questions (mistaking the word "subtle" for "suttee"). In a phrase which pleased me, Robson refers to this interview by Southern as "strenuousy oddball."
Visiting V who claims not to be feeling well and is parked on the couch in the bonus room watching Criminal Minds. Horrible. While sitting with her for about half an hour I watched one guy hack off a strapped down woman's arm with a machete and another guy kill his victim, strapped down in a bathtub, with a hammer to the head. I don't get it.
Re-certified my ICR plan. Made more sense than watching Criminal Minds, even if I had to jump through some hoops to get it done.
Darkness has descended and it stays cold and wet. Isis just asked V to take him out. V came down stairs wrapped in her blanket, bitching at the dog. Happy New Year!
And...sitting down at 6:46 to read the next book for the library's book groups, Angela Flournoy's The Turner House, an old-fashioned family novel featuring a very large black family who calls the east side of Detroit home.
I was just going to read and then decided it would be wise to start on the notes I compile for book group. I'm two thirds of the way through and haven't written down a thing. Writing down notes, compiling a version of the story, helps to find questions and establish the patterns and themes in a book.
But, I seem driven to write today. Perhaps, I'm driven by a half-conscious resolution to write this year. More? Better? I'm feeling self-conscious about my ability to write lately, perhaps in part to criticisms from my supervisor at work. Just in general, feeling not up to the many challenges ahead. These worries about abilities have caused me to dream quite a bit of late, after many years in which I can't recall dreams. Three dreams in the past two weeks stand out-one, I'm working through a swampy area infested with alligators and snakes. Just when you think you've gotten through the worse of it, a whole new host comes out of the mud and murk. In another dream, I'm on stage in front of a large audience who is waiting for me to make them laugh with a stand-up routine. I'm supposed to go for an hour and can't get started. The third dream, I just remember a part. Joseph Biden is raking me over the coals for my lack of writing skills. I'm lacking the basic requirements in this area according to our Vice President. An interesting messenger.
Perhaps the first entry in a reader's diary. A life diary.
Drove in a chill rain to Ashton to finish grouting countertop. Began by re-reading parts of Swing Time by Zadie Smith. I finished it yesterday.
Was struck by her description of the main character's mother's speeches intending to instill pride in the downtrodden citizens of her neighborhood as "effortful light"(240).
Read about an hour. Then went to work. I regrouted a couple years back, so I suppose what I did today was re-regrouting. Don't remember it being so messy. I also don't remember using my finger so much, to make sure difficult joints got filled. I also don't remember really worrying last time about getting the lines "right," making sure they appeared solid, white and wide. Was never satisfied with the last job. Hope I got it right this time.
Went to Moe's to read a bit. Read a good New Yorker (10/17/2016) profile of the writer Henry Green by Leo Robson. The perpetually neglected Henry Green who is once again being noticed and championed. But, this work seems to have been continually picked up and dropped throughout my reading life. Perhaps Green is the perpetually noted as neglected Henry Green.
Writer Terry Southern was a champion of Greens and hoped to launch him to notice with a 1958 interview in the Paris Review. It is an odd interview. Southern goes out of his way to pitch Green as eccentric, the odd, genius artist. It wasn't an actual interview. The questions and answers were completed via mail but Southern made it appear as if the interview took place in real time, at a real place. He makes it appear as if Green had trouble hearing him and often Green comes across as mishearing questions (mistaking the word "subtle" for "suttee"). In a phrase which pleased me, Robson refers to this interview by Southern as "strenuousy oddball."
Visiting V who claims not to be feeling well and is parked on the couch in the bonus room watching Criminal Minds. Horrible. While sitting with her for about half an hour I watched one guy hack off a strapped down woman's arm with a machete and another guy kill his victim, strapped down in a bathtub, with a hammer to the head. I don't get it.
Re-certified my ICR plan. Made more sense than watching Criminal Minds, even if I had to jump through some hoops to get it done.
Darkness has descended and it stays cold and wet. Isis just asked V to take him out. V came down stairs wrapped in her blanket, bitching at the dog. Happy New Year!
And...sitting down at 6:46 to read the next book for the library's book groups, Angela Flournoy's The Turner House, an old-fashioned family novel featuring a very large black family who calls the east side of Detroit home.
I was just going to read and then decided it would be wise to start on the notes I compile for book group. I'm two thirds of the way through and haven't written down a thing. Writing down notes, compiling a version of the story, helps to find questions and establish the patterns and themes in a book.
But, I seem driven to write today. Perhaps, I'm driven by a half-conscious resolution to write this year. More? Better? I'm feeling self-conscious about my ability to write lately, perhaps in part to criticisms from my supervisor at work. Just in general, feeling not up to the many challenges ahead. These worries about abilities have caused me to dream quite a bit of late, after many years in which I can't recall dreams. Three dreams in the past two weeks stand out-one, I'm working through a swampy area infested with alligators and snakes. Just when you think you've gotten through the worse of it, a whole new host comes out of the mud and murk. In another dream, I'm on stage in front of a large audience who is waiting for me to make them laugh with a stand-up routine. I'm supposed to go for an hour and can't get started. The third dream, I just remember a part. Joseph Biden is raking me over the coals for my lack of writing skills. I'm lacking the basic requirements in this area according to our Vice President. An interesting messenger.
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