Alwyn, Daniel, Ruby, and I went to get the Christmas tree today - in 90 degree weather! Then this evening, while Alwyn and Dan were at a wedding, Ruby and I decorated it. And Billy undecorated it.
Reading: I finished (I think since I last wrote about reading and books) an Elm Creek quilting book called
The Giving Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini. Cozy, nice talk about quilts and reminds me always of my two sessions of quilt camp while I was living in Murphys and a member of the Independent Hall Quilters. Then I read
Me Again, by Keith Cronin, a find from bookbub.com. It's a novel about a man waking up from a six-year coma. Oddly, it's quite near to the only sort-of novel I've attempted, through NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month), where the heroine becomes suddenly blilnd. Cronin's book is witty and poignant and completely enjoyable. Mine, as I recall, had very little humor, much less wittiness, and might put the reader into a coma. I've not had courage to read it again! The Cronin book finished, I chose another recent bookbub acquisition, only to find it a memoir of a woman who has a brain aneurysm.
Rebooting My Brain, by Maria Ross. I hope there's no presentiment in these two books coming to me in quick succession. Ross's book is also witty and poignant.
I hope I haven't missed any books that I inhaled and forgot! I read Odd Thomas, Odd Apocalypse, Dean Koontz and report that it was less Odd as a character than it was a sci fi adventure. Seems to me that what I've read of Koontz, the chills are generated by seemingly normal, but not really normal settings and happenings. It's all in the characters, but this one missed that. Except for cameos by Tesla and Hitchcock.
I started Me Again by Keith Cronin, about a man waking up six years after a stroke. I thought when I bought it (sort of bought it - it was free on bookbub.com) that it was a memoir, but it is a novel. Wonderful so far, but I remembered that I'd taken a book out of the library that I need to read first! My first book from the Burbank Library. It's The Fires Beneath the Sea, by Lydia Millet, and was recommended as a young adult fantasy book - the first in a trilogy - that focuses on the environment. Or maybe even on climate change; I can't quite remember where or what. I thought Ruby might like it, but I want to read it first. I'm going to take her to the library on Thursday to get her library card. Don't leave home without one, even if you have a Kindle and bookbub.com.
I can feel it - change is coming.
Part is the election. It's tensely exciting, and no matter what the outcome, it will change our country, I think.
Part is the weather. It's beginning to be fall here. Although the temperatures are veering into the 90's in the next few days, the nights are cool and the leaves are falling. Falling palm leaves are not exactly what I'm used to, but the willingness is there. I'm not in New England any more!
I've reached a point in my life here where I have traffic jams in my schedule and it's time to sit back a little and feel my way and direction. I'm on an amazing adventure. Life.
Energy always flows strongly in the fall. It's the blood thinning with the cooler weather; it's the final surge of energy to be ready for the long quiet time of winter.
Maybe it's just the excitement of getting an extra hour when the time changes!
Reading: I did finish the second short book of the Richard Castle Derrick Storm trilogy. Can't be a trilogy when each one isn't even a book, but no quibbling allowed. And I am about on the last pages of the third. Don't know what I'll read next. Got a Burbank public library card today. They don't yet have ebooks for Kindle, but promises are being made that they will soon. Glendale library - the next town - does have ebooks for Kindle, so I'll have to get a card there. Forgot the book I wanted to take out and the reference librarian, though kind, was not able to help me with that. And now I've forgotten what email it was that promoted the book. I guess I won't be reading it soon.
I woke up this morning to Los Angeles fog! Not really dense, but my first taste of it. And the weather turns chilly. But where the BSAC Players rehearse, in the theater, the air conditioning continues to chill the chill. During Zumba, I'm sure it feels good.
The BSAC Players' five short plays - skits, really - are not quite coming together yet. I recall the line from Another Open'n Another Show that says, "Five weeks, we rehearse and rehearse, four weeks, and it couldn't be worse." The title of the evening, as of now, is Varicose Variety. That might give you an idea. We're all more or less reading lines right now, but we actually got on stage tonight, where holding the scripts really holds us back. Not only do I have to learn my official part, that of a prosecutor in "Snobitude," but also Scarlett, in Gone with the Wind (revisited in 12 Aches Plantation, Home for the Incredibly Aged) which I've now read as often as the assigned actor.
Drove to Glendale to the beautiful public health facility where I got a TB test, required for the mentoring project. Feeling slightly as if there's a cold in the back of my throat, so I stayed in instead of trick-or-treating with Ruby, Alwyn, Daniel. Hoping for pictures.
I did finish the Persecution of Mildred Dunlap and it was pretty good, enough so that I'm glad I didn't quit. Then I read a Richard Castle Derrick Storm short book - actually a third of a story - that's how they got me to pay $6 for the whole thing, by charging $2 for each third! Cheating, I call it. But it worked, and I bought the second third. Confession - I think I read the Brewing Storm before, but remembered only pieces as I came on them again. At this rate, I'll never have to get another book. I'll just read the old ones again and it'll be as if they're new!
Even here, one gets tired and I've spent a couple of days mostly sleeping. Except for the usual walks with Jenny Lind - who today got a compliment for her "fit condition." And for writing group today, where I am learning to be terse, with pleasure.
Of course Hurricane Sandy is whirling around in my mind, and I am concerned about my sister. Last I talked to her, her power had gone out, and she was ready for a battery lit early bedtime. I hope her phone is working in the morning. She's not exactly on the coast, and is not in probably danger from flooding, but this storm is so huge that results are unpredictable. I worry about her being alone and cold. She's on the Town of Essex's call list, and I trust in them right now.
We all know people in New York, and the most recent pictures of Manhattan are other-worldly. And how is my friend in Newton Corners? And my friend in South Portland? I hope I hear from them soon.
I have been reading. Of course. Finished the World War II London Blitz, by Ruby Alice Side. Perhaps I already mentioned that. Very good diary/memoir. Then started reading The Persecution of Mildred, Paulette Mahurin, but was interrupted by a Google loan of The Secret Piano, by Zhu Xiao-Mei. I read it in two sittings, and was almost entranced. Perhaps it was the Chinese emotional stoicism that kept it from being a real gripping tale rather than a good page-turner. The Persecution of Mildred is a very dark story of two lesbians in the early days of settling the west. I think it's going to get darker, and maybe I won't read much more.
Burbank Senior Artists Colony. Located at the corner of E. Verdugo and San Fernando. The bird of paradise in yesterday's blog was snapped at that corner, looking down San Fernando. Tonight, after BSAC Players, Jenny Lind and I walked the beautiful length of the village street - six blocks one way, or a half a mile. It is festive, with people smiling and shops glittering, and restaurants tempting. I could eat at a different place every night for at least a month, but I've only been to the Wild Carvery, since I can have Jenny Lind on the patio. And their food is very good. A little pricey, I think.
BSAC chorus today. I wish I could tape rehearsals. And then the rehearsal of the Players, which was hysterical as we read through a scene in a brothel where all the women play prostitutes, and our single male actor tonight faked an orgasm. Very well, too. It will bring down the house, I sure. It may bring us all down as well.
Today was a red letter day. I found the dumpster. There is a trash chute at the end of the hall, but I need to throw away some large items, like delivery boxes and an old cat box, which has been replaced by a Salle de Bain du Chat. Is that not elegant?
Last night I finished Elsie, and started World War II London Blitz Diary, another diary cum memoir. Reading other people's lives is fascinating, and I can only hope to emulate. This is another book from bookbub.com
Someday, far in the future, someone will stumble on the cloud, and there they will find a rich mine of blogged writings.
I have not written for three days, and in that time have gotten two writing assignments. The first was from poetry class, and that was "write everyday." The second was today in resident's writing group, where I am assigned to finish the story I started in the group. They want to know how it ends. So do I.
Imagine a life where you get to do exactly what you want to do.
Recourse to diary form, then. Might be boring to readers, but is, I hope, informative to me. I am reading now a book titled Elsie - Adventures of an Arizona Schoolteacher 1913 - 1916, by Barbara Anne Waite. The book is based on letters from Elsie to her family, on research and interviews by the author, and by short diary entries. It is impressive how just a few words limn a life. (Please forgive the alliteration - I seem to have a bad case of it.)
Friday October 11, 2012
Writing from Life, with a wonderful teacher. The usual group was there. Then philosophy group, and the video sparked a good discussion on Can We Eliminate Evil? Ruby came to Happy Hour with me; long walk with Jenny Lind, then Scrabble, reading, until bedtime.
Saturday October 13, 2012
I believe I did nothing on Saturday! Except the usual Jenny Lind walks, reading, email.
Sunday October 14, 2012
Dan and Ruby came over and Dan put together my cat box cabinet. I hope XieXie is as pleased with it as I am. What a lovely piece of furniture in my bathroom, rather than a dusty plastic and obvious Litter Box. Tried to go to a meditation meeting at night, but it was in Los Feliz where parking is a challenge. A few turns around the surrounding blocks, and it was way to late to go to the meeting. I drove north on I-5 (known in Southern California as "the 5") to find out what exit I should tell my friends to take when they travel down to visit. Obscurely, it is called Verdugo. I live on Verdugo! I live only two blocks from the freeway, but hear nothing of it.
Monday October 15, 2012
Again I slept late. This is beginning to be worrisome. Resident's writers group in the afternoon, walks with Jenny Lind. What would I do without her?
Still reading. Although I don't have a bed yet, my futon is a perfectly comfortable reading in bed bed. I trust that my new bed, when it appears, will be as good.
I finished Frances Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake. The book was about 82% over, when it suddenly ended. The rest of it was footnotes. I'm afraid I missed a lot not reading the footnotes. I didn't know if they were merely citations, which can be skipped, or expansions on and explanations of the text, and they were the latter. It would be worth going back to read them. There was an afterward, which was very helpful, to bring me up to date about the country. Frances' knowledge of and writing about the country, politics, people, times is deep and broad and it was a privilege to read the book.
Then I read JK Rowling's new book, written, I gather, for grownups - not that the Harry Potter was beneath us. This book, Casual Vacancy, is very odd. There is not one character in it that I wanted to root for. There were a few that showed promise, but that was soon dashed by some dastardly deed or vicious verbal attack. As an exercise in writing or reading a book people exclusively with characters I hate, it was a rousing success. It still gripped me, but I wouldn't recommend it without a warning. I must read the reviews.
Now I am reading a 13th Century mystery in a monastary - or nastiness in a nunnery - Wine of Violence by Priscilla Royal. I can't help but compare it to the Brother Cadfael and the Sister Frevisse series. I liked them both, and think I'll like this too. Who would have guessed that the medieval era would be a rich mine for characters and plots. Well, come to think of it, there is Chaucer. This is a book I got free through bookbub.com. It is tempting to get many more than I can imagine reading, so I do let days go by without adding to my electronic hoard.
Out this evening to a Pacific Symphony concert - Strauss, Strauss, Brahms. The Brahms was his second piano concerto with Andre Watts. What a treat! Watts is a powerful pianist, and it was beautiful. Alwyn was playing in the concert, Dan, Ruby, and I had great comp seats. And to continue with musical notes (ahem), I'm pasting in here an email Alwyn got today:
"I heard Liebesleid on Sirius this morning, played by Itzhak Pearlman.Naturally I turned up the volume to compare it to yours. “AH! I get to compare Alwyn’s with one of the masters!” I thought.Naturally Pearlman played it with ease and total command. It was very beautiful, to say the least. (And – as you would expect.)But – If you don’t mind me saying so – I still liked yours better!His transitions from one note to the next were always smooth and predictable.Many of your transitions were smooth where appropriate but others provided a crisp captivating flare.Also – His accompaniment was clearly in the distant background. This was a “Pearlman showcase,” not a “Liebesleid masterpiece.”Your accompaniment showed a humble violinist who is not afraid to share limelight with the accompaniment.Great job!"
On another note, I have not mentioned reading in a while. Since I started to pack, way back in Murphys, I've been reading - minimally - Fire in the Lake. It's wonderful, and opens all kinds of thoughts about our country in the 60's, and of course most specifically about the Vietnam War. I guess I don't have a lot of reading energy, because I keep not getting very far with it. Tempting to put it aside and read one of the light books I've gotten from bookbub.com, but every night I return.
One more thought for the night. I just read my last blog and it's full of bad typing! Sorry about that. I'll work on a little light proofreading.
I was having a goodbye dinner tonight with a friend who've I've known for about as long as I've been in Calaveras County. She had a wonderful small used bookstore and I worked for her once a week. The store was in what was the ice house of the long-gone general store in Arnold, and the walls were brick. We heated it with a dragon of a wood stove in the winter, and spent time shoveling ourselves out the front door. Jenni told me that today someone brought in 14 bags of books, and as Jenni was going through them, she kept having a very eerie feeling. About three quarters of the way through, she realized that they were my books! A neighbor had done me the great favor of packing up books that I'm not moving to Burbank and taking them to the Humane Society Thrift Store that Jenni is now the manager of. Sadly, I can't take all the book, nor, really, do I need them all. I do love to look at a wall of books, though. Jenni has a very special connection to people, and I'm sure that is how she recognized me through my books. Of course there were a lot that I'd bought from the bookstore when I worked there, and that was surely a clue.
So good-bye books, good-bye Jenni. Good-bye Debbie and Bill and Jenny and Nate who we ran into at the restaurant. Good-bye to Judy, my therapist, who I saw for the last time today. She saved my life two and a half years ago. A long good-bye to Murphys.
Look to the Mountain has been read, with great nostalgia for New Hampshire. It was completely unfamiliar to me, after all these years, and I enjoyed being in it this time, more than I did the story, as I recall I loved when I was much younger. Place names are always magical. Maybe because I have moved so many times, the names of streets, towns, landmarks are the unbreakable ties, threads that weave my life. In the book, the main character was given a piece of land to farm, and on the deed, it said "100 acres more or less." It was explained that once the community grew enough, the land would be surveyed, and if it were less than 100 acres, he would take enough adjacent land to make up the difference, and if it were more than 100 acres, he would give back in the same way and in both cases the parcel would be of his choosing. The land was chosen with this in mind - an adjacent good piece of land as a possible addition, or an easily lopped off hilly piece to give back.
My grandfather bought his summer farm from a family named Littlefield, and it had been in the Littlefield family since it was awarded as a Revolutionary War bonus. That's the story. The deed was supposed to say "100 acres more or less." Now I wonder if that phrase didn't come from the book, or was it an original deed with that wording on it, and coincidence that the wording is exactly the same. Thus is history made.
Grandaddy named the farm Hill Acres Farm and as a child I was sorry that he didn't name it Littlefields. In fact, it is comprised of many little fields, so the name would have been apt. Just over the bushes from the farm house is the Littlefields graveyard - a beautiful spot. Debby and I spent hours there (where the grownups wouldn't find us) reading the names on the graves, sharing our secrets.
Tonight I find myself not knowing what to read next. I started Dr. Rat, and it was too grim, written by a lab rat, who deftly describes all the horrors I've never wanted to imagine. Dogs are in it too. I took that one off my Kindle quickly. And started another bookbub.com book called Pam of Babylon. That starts off with adultery; shut that down quickly as well. I've got some books coming from the library - Open and The Tender Bar, both memoirs or autobiographies. (What is the difference between memoir and autobiography?). When they come in, maybe tomorrow, I'll have to read them first - I only have two and a half weeks here! I also have a book on order, Snatched from Oblivion, by Arthur Schlesinger's ex-wife.
So tonight, what do I read?
To make a correction right away, Mount Chocorua is not called Conway Mountain in the book - that was my tired eyes misreading. It is called Coruway Mountain. Perhaps the names were changed to protect the anonymity of the ghostly denizens of the New Hampshire ranges.
I did start reading the book last night and so far, absolutely nothing is familiar. The page I read as a very young child of course I wouldn't expect to recall, but I read the whole book one summer in my teenage years. One of the joys of being in New Hampshire in the summer was the luxury of being bored, and being bored always led to adventures, including a hike up Mount Chocorua with an uncle and some cousins. Debby and I took a solo hike once, when we were of driving age, on Moat Mountain. We set some sort of record of beating the estimated climbing time of maybe an hour and a half, and in fact climbed it up and down in six hours. That was only one of the times we came home late, to the wrath of our grandmother. We couldn't understand parental worry at that age - we were invincible, and we went to bed stifling our giggles.
Look to the Mountain was published in 1942, when I was two years old, and is the copy I am reading was reprinted in 1994. The earlier printings are surely still sitting on the shelves in summer houses, waiting for a bored teenager to pick them up. And to maybe pick them up again, 55 years later.
Drinking Closer to Home turned out to be a little gem, in spite of my usual embarrassment of the '70's. I couldn't get a solid grasp of the characters. They kept slipping through my fingers and I couldn't hold on to who was whom. It was my first free book from bookbub.com and I would call the site an unqualified success for us Kindle readers.
The other day, I mentioned a book, Look to the Mountain, an historical novel about the area in New Hampshire where I spent my summers. There are two things I need to clarify. First, I said that it was the first grownup book I ever read a whole page of. I got sidetracked, and didn't go on to say that I didn't understand any of what I read, but I recall reading every word - I suppose it would be called "sounding it out." The other thing is that I guessed that the mountain was Moat, because I couldn't remember the name of the mountain that I really think it is. I recalled that name today, as the book was delivered - it just popped into my head - Chocorua. From out farm, directly in view (when the view was "out") was the Presidential Range, running east and west, with Mt. Washington dead center. Facing Mt. Washington, with all the other presidents alongside, to the left is the Sandwich Range. I think of it as running north and south, but that's probably confused childhood directions.
I will take a minute here to open the envelope the book arrived in, and to find the White Mountain Guide that should tell me the directions of the ranges. Be right back~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~Okay, I'm back. I couldn't find the White Mountain Guide but maybe I will when I pack my books to move - some of my books. I'm taking very few this time but I will take that, and let you know what I find about the reality - or not - of my geographical memory. I did open the package containing Look to the Mountain, by LeGrand Cannon, Jr., and am foolishly pleased that I finally remember it right - the mountain was Chocorua, but named Conway Mountain in the book. I wonder why he changed the name. Now I need to choose between this book and my newest bookbub.com book, which is titled Dr. Rat and is about, yes, a rat who's a doctor.
It feels late, perhaps because I got up earlier than usual today - thank heavens. I've been sleeping much too much, and missing four hours of each day. Today I missed less, and filled the remaining hours fully.
I have a moving date! My son Mathew will be coming with a mover friend on the 14th of September, we will get rental truck and fill it with what I'm taking (a whole lot less than what I'm leaving, I vow), drive to Burbank on the 15th, unload and drive back on the 16th. Perhaps faster turn-around than I would like, but it's worth it to have Matt with me. Now I have just about one month to get organized. I will probably write this kind of blog more often, to memorialize my new life.
So many new faces, places, endeavors. At the Burbank Senior Artists Colony, I could have a class or activity three or four times a day, easily. There's gym, swimming (and aquatic zumba!), anti-aging exercise, chorus, drawing, watercolor, painting and writing classes, movies, lectures, meditation, drum circle and every night at 9 is something called Verva watchers club. That's a mystery. Sounds to me like camp! And I will write about it.
I'm reading one of my free Kindle books through bookbub.com. Rarely do I know anything about the book, just what's blurbed, so I choose randomly what strikes my fancy. The book I'm on now is called Drinking Closer to Home, by Jessica Anya-Blau. It's light and funny and a little embarrassing how much I identify.
Last night I stayed up late and read all of Joan Didion's Blue Nights and it was wonderfully sad and blue and beautiful. She mentioned The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby; I bought it right away and started it today and plan on staying up to finish it tonight. It's not long. I had the movie on my Netflix list for a long time, but it's not now on instant viewing. I have no recollection of why I thought it interesting, for I knew nothing about it.
It is the most eloquent memoir I can imagine. Bauby, who was editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, had a stroke in December of 1995, at the age of 42. After 20 weeks of coma he came to to find himself in locked-in syndrome, and was able to move only his left eye. With a method called partner-assisted scanning, he used an alphabetic system, with the alphabet reordered to have the most used letters first, whereby he could communicate by blinking when his partner reached the letter he wanted. Through this method, with with the assistance of Claude Mendibil, he was able to dictate the memoir of his illness, letter by letter. Bauby died three days after the publication of his book in March of 1997.
Summer means reading, always. In New Hampshire, there were stacks and stacks and shelves of books everywhere you looked. And the Conway Library was a cool haven - it was a Carnegie library, and felt exactly the same as the one in Baltimore, in San Rafael, in San Anselmo. Going to town always meant a trip to the library. As well as ice cream at Stone the Druggist. Marble library, marble soda fountain, marble museum; marble cooled my childhood summers.
In the living room in New Hampshire, couples were curled up on couches, the rest of the grownups relaxed in chairs, and they all were reading. The four cousins were in the kitchen washing dishes; one to wash, one to rinse, one to dry, one to put away. Inevitably, when we were just finished, the grownups would come in with the tray of coffee cups. There was always a puzzle going in the living room, too, and a windup record player for old 78's. Jonah and the Whale, Mairsy Doats and Dosey Doats, Nebuchadnezzer, and the children in the firey furnace. The first grownup book I read a page of was in that living room - it was Look to the Mountain, and was about the settling of the area in the 1700's. The mountain might have been Moat Mountain. Okay, I've just bought a copy of it from Amazon, so I'll be able to tell you what mountain it was. Back to my early reading: I picked up the book, and turned at random to a page, and sat down and read it. I had no idea what it was about (I wasn't much beyond Fun with Dick and Jane), but I read a whole page, and felt a wondrous accomplishment.
So I'll catch up here with my 2012 summer reading. I finished the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, and loved it. I did catch on to the atheist allusions, but as with many athiest writings, I came away with a sense of awe for something that is even more mysterious than I thought before. Then I read Prince of Tides, which was powerful and dark and brutal and lovely. That one came to me as an example of writing memoir as fiction. It's a fascinating concept. I just got Joan Didion's Blue Nights from the Murphys Library and started reading it earlier this evening. Another memoir book, of course. I hope I haven't already forgotten any books that I've read in the past month.
A book find for Kindle readers: bookbub.com An email a day brings me many free or nearly free books. It's an embarrassment of wealth.
What books will I take with me? What will the Burbank Library be like?
ps I mailed in my signed lease and check for the first month's rent plus small deposit and I bought moving boxes and tape and paper.
I am so excited about moving, that I can't seem to get enough detachment to write about anything else. Today I watched furniture walk out of my house (on friends' feet). I am dispersing almost everything. Almost sold my bed, but changed my mind. And today, I filled out and mailed the lease application - fear but doing it anyway, with trust. Coincidentally (I think not) in my mail today, from my attorney, was my copy of our proposed answer to whatshisname's proposed divorce settlement. I don't like that word. It's scissory, sharp, cold. Let's use the formal, dissolution of marriage. Dissolve it did, but not gently, turbulently. Like 10 Alka-Seltzers in a glass of water. It's still awful, but still the vistas open in front of me.
Anyone want to buy a white grand piano? I'll make you such a deal.
Reading: Your Life as Story, the second book of His Dark Materials, Prince of Tides. The latter will have to take a break while I finish the Dark Materials and work with Your Life as Story, which is part text book, part workbook, part literature.
Send chocolate.
I am excited about this book and after only one and a half chapters, I want to write about it. It's about writing, about seeing what happens when you write. It's about seeing the arch of your life, the shape of it, finally, so far. This blog is by way of being (what does that phrase "by way of being" mean, anyway?) writing practice, as I read and read, preparatory to jumping into a book. It all stems from the 50th reunion and what it meant to me, what it still means to me. For the first time, when I was in Cambridge in May, I was able to look back across 30-year period of my life that had become a black hole. I was able to recognize the person I was then, although not yet clearly, and that lends me a certainty that I will have a self in the next 30 years and that that self will be and is worthwhile. It's all about observing the present, past, future, and seeing my story.
I returned to The Paper Garden last night, and finished it this afternoon. It was a bit of a chore, because the structure of the book didn't feel sound. Molly Peacock seems to have done a credible job of distilling a great deal of material into a clear biography of an extraordinary woman, but she injected too much of herself into it, in two ways: first, she chronicled her own journey in the process of the book in a way that was jarring; and second, she made far too many jumps of interpretation of Mrs. Delany's flowers. I think Mrs. D would be shocked at what her work is assumed to mean. Also injected was quite a bit of biography of others, notably Ruth Hayden, a relative of Mrs. D's, who wrote her own biography, Mrs. Delany, Her Life and Her Flowers, published in 1980. Other famous figures take their place in The Paper Garden, to the point of intrusion.
That said, there is hope in the tale. Mrs. D came to her work (perhaps not at 72, but 73) after a four-year recovery from the death of her husband. I'm not even finished three years and barely getting a hold on anything and besides he didn't die, which makes it harder. But to think that there is still time for me, that there will be vitality, energy to create even if in a small way, is hopeful.
For a book I really didn't like much, I marked quite a few passages - all of them relating to my own experience, hopes and dreams and not so much to Mrs. D's.
"It is a privilege to have, somewhere within you, a capacity for making something speak from your own seared experience."
"You might not be able to draw a conclusion from what overwhelms you, but if you describe it, you will come to know it. And when you come to know it, you are less afraid of it. And when you are no longer afraid, you have balance. And when you have balance, you have the poise that is control." (I'm not sure about the control part, but the poise is longed-for.)
"Without the communication of a real friend, sorrow would sink one to the lowest ebb... the compassion a friend affords one... is like opiate to one in racking pain." (In writing, I assume any reader to be a real friend.)
Peacock's quotation from Gerry O'Flaherty, a Joycean in Dublin, "Don't take another picture of people! Photograph the dishes on this table. It's pictures of people's everyday lives we need!" (And in writing, if we can capture the everyday-ness of our own lives, or of the lives of the people we write about, then we can have that "communication of a real friend.")
"One of the antidotes to depression is actually doing something, provided you can manage the energy to put one foot in front of the other." (This last in speaking of Ruth Hayden.),
I've put the Hayden book on my wish list.
ps
As to my brief discussion of Northern Lights, I read (in Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt) that this series is of an anti-Christian nature and is in opposition to C.S. Lewis, Tolkein, and Rowling, according to Christopher Hitchens. I must say that in none of these books do I recognize most of the allegory. My failing, I'm sure.
What to read next? Your Life as Story, Tristine Rainer, recommended by Judith Nies who wrote The Girl I Left Behind.
It's been a while since I've written about what I'm reading. I stopped in the middle of Paper Garden to read The Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin, and then read an early Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and then went on to Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass, as it's titled in the US). The Lattin and the Didion are both related to my new interest in my old life, that of the 50's & 60's. Paper Garden is related in my interest in being 72, that is, now and onward. Northern Lights is pure escape into other worlds. I read and then forget, so I will include book comments in this writing. I can't recall right now if I've written about The Psychedelic Club, but I think so, so I'll say no more than it comes out of Harvard at the same time as I came out of Radcliffe, and takes a road that mine road paralleled for some time. If I need to say more, I will after I've checked back in my blog work.
What a wonderful title is Slouching Towards Bethlehem! This collection of essays writes about times and places that I lived in, and is an almost embarrassing look at myself living on the side of of the psychedelic era, which includes Viet Nam, Roe v Wade, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, free love, and of course psychedelics. I say living on the side, because I see much of my past living on the side of wherever and whenever I was. Awakening from this half-dream life is my work now.
Philip Pullman was mentioned to me by Roxane, whom I also have to thank for (and return to!) The Psychedelic Club. I don't remember the conversation about Pullman, although I recall it was in the motel room in Alameda; the name stuck in my mind and I bought a Kindle version of this first of a trilogy called His Dark Materials. It's listed as young adult fiction, and falls into a category that now includes Harry Potter, written for a young adult reader and read by adults. I've got the other two on hold at the library.
I love reading on my Kindle, but prefer to get books from the library when I can. Sometimes I forget to go there first. I read somewhere today (maybe on Brain Pickings Weekly) that there are more libraries in the US than McDonald's. Hooray for us!
Back to Paper Garden.
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