On books

“Books well used are among the best things, abused among the worst.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love Emerson’s philosophies because they often center around the idea that we should do our own thinking.

This is an important philosophy when it comes to books, I think. Too often, we see a book held up as Truth (capital T intended) or at least the Truth of the moment (think DaVinci Code) that kind of sweeps us all along in the current of its thinking, until much later, we emerge, shake the water out of our ears and go, okay, maybe not.

Some books are regarded as having more worth than others because of when and by whom they were written. We treat with skepticism modern writers with their non-linear reflections and questioning rather than proclaiming style and hold up anything written by dead white guys from days of yore (aka, the classics). We see biography and history regarded as more valid than fiction, and lately, and even within the fiction genre, we find multiple sub-genres: romance, realism, magical realism, sci-fi, speculative fiction, chick lit, and you get the idea.

But with these simple categorizations, we miss, well, we miss a lot. My good friend, Christopher Barzak, has written two novels that defy these kinds of easy genre-based descriptions. The most recent, The Love We Share Without Knowing, is particularly difficult to pin down. This is its strength.

If you’re looking for a typical love story: boy meets girl, is confronted with a significant obstacle to her affections, overcomes obstacle, love wins in the end, then this is not the book for you (you want something by Nicholas Sparks). Instead Chris’s novel doesn’t provide us with easy or even any answers about love. We get questions in a world where the dead and living hold company together and where people drift between these two worlds in dreams and even in the guise of a fox. Love becomes dark and grasping, lonely and desperate, and it refuses to be silenced by death. And yet the darkness doesn’t exist just for darkness’s sake but rather to make room for the light because in the midst of the lonliness and death we come to realize what is at the heart of the novel’s overlapping stories. The ghosts are supernatural manifestations of a truth that is presented as a hunch…that we leave in others’ lives our traces, our love, in more ways than we will ever fully realize.

Chris, along with two others from the Oakland Center for the Arts, formed a book club based on the more democratic idea that written expression is valid. Period. Chris, Brooxie, and Ric began the book club (of which I am now the caretaker) with six book choices that were as diverse as the people choosing them. The idea was always that we weren’t going to be one of *those* book clubs that only read the classics or books that had otherwise been culturally stamped as worthy. We’ve taken this idea one step further and recently created a member-suggested reading list that includes a graphic novel, a collection of short stories, a feminist pulp novel set in 1930’s New York, and Japanese fiction.

That’s the abuse, I think, to which Emerson refers. The abuse occurs when certain books are deemed as having the answers and other books are cast aside as not worth our attention. No, he would say, that’s not how we use books well. We use books, fiction or non-fiction, as windows into the culture in which they were created. They are glimpses, nothing more. It is up to us to make Truth and then to redefine it when we need to.

Explaining

“Never explain–your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway. ” Elbert Hubbard

I was messing around on the internet the other night when I came across this quote. I like it. My friend who lives across the street once gave me similar advice when I asked, “do you think I over-reacted?” She said, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s don’t second-guess yourself.”

I’m a second-guesser, a middle child.

 But it’s true, the quote that is. Our friends don’t usually require that we explain ourselves.

Our enemies will only ever see us through a particular lens. No amount of explaining will change that.

So why do we explain? I guess it’s for the folks in between friend and enemy.

More likely, it’s because we’re somehow not quite confident that we’re fitting in. From an evolutionary psychology standpoint, it makes perfect sense.

Yeah, so I’m trying to explain less, but I still can’t quite get past the need to try and control how others perceive me.

That’s why I would never want anyone to judge me by my MP3 (white trash Ipod) list, my book collection, or the contents of my underwear drawer. Because you know, there might be a ”Four Minutes” (kiss my ass, it’s good song), a Twilight, or a thong granny panties in there somewhere.

The Visitor

A funny thing happens on this side of 40, as I’ve discovered. I am inspired by teen and twenty-somethings for their energy and their idealism, but I’m also ready to jump in front of traffic for them. I’m in this middle place between working alongside and protecting the [slightly] younger generation.

In “I am Becoming the Woman I’ve Wanted,”  Jayne Relaford Brown writes what has become the anthem to approaching middle age: “I find her becoming this woman I’ve wanted, …who knows where she’s going and travels with passion.” For me, Brown’s words don’t quite ring true.  I don’t see myself in them.

It’s been time for me to leave the identity of the cool teacher/mentor/older friend behind and to become something else. It’s hard for me to accept getting older when in my head, I’m still about twenty-two. There is a filiment of a line between staying proverbially young at heart and becoming ridiculous and also between welcoming the natural qualities of age and turning curmudgeonly.

Who this person will be I’m not exactly sure, but  in the meantime, Margaret Atwood’s cautionary poem, “The Moment,” seems a better fit:

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

“Watch it now…here he comes!”

“He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young.”

Today’s quote comes from The Killers’  “While You Were Young.” I couldn’t resist the Jesus reference. I’m not sorry.

Enjoy the day. Enjoy the return to idealism for a little while.

What’s Next? An Ode to January in Ohio

Anyone who watched the West Wing during its tenure knows that fictional Pres. Jed Bartlett (Martin Sheen) would mark the end of a discussion with the firmly stated question “What’s next?”

I was thinking about “what’s next” yesterday morning. In Northeast Ohio, we’re in the middle of what meterologists are calling a “deep freeze.” January is a tough month for us Ohioans anyway. We’ve got the post holiday let down, and two months of snow and gray skies ahead. It’s hard to find that thing that we’re looking forward to to anchor us.

Even the school kids are feeling it. When fall moves into winter and brings with it the cold, we don’t notice as much because we’re marking time with a series of celebrations: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

Not so in January. In January, we’re measuring our lives in Eliot’s coffee spoons, getting from one small moment to the next.

Yesterday morning, I went to wake my girls. Mira (9) asked her usual January morning question: “Did you check the tv? Do we have a snow day?” Then she launched into a teary rant about how hard third grade is and there’s too much homework and we’re never going to get a school day. I sat on the side of her bed and told her that January is like this, and that we just have to get up and get going, and that little by little we’ll feel better, that it’s really about forward motion.

I also pointed out that next week was going to be a good week, that we were getting a new president and the LOST was coming back. “Mommy,” she said, “Those are adult things. I’m a kid. I want a snow day.”

Gwennie (5) tried another tac: “Mommy, you have to check my fever I think I’m sick. I have a tummy ache.” Then she got to the heart of it: “Mommy, I want to stay home with you.”

Corita Kent wrote “Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.” That about sums up January in Ohio for all of us, the little ones and the big ones.

Ms. America: Musings on the President Elect, Human Relationships, and Snack Food

Today, my fabulous and talented daughter, Mira, participated in the third grade Veterans’ day pageant. She said several lines, one of which was “We are proud to say ‘America is my country.’” Aside from the weird pronoun shift, which even five-year-old Gwennie picked up (oddly enough because Gwennie persists in using the third person objective pronoun “her” instead of the subjective “she”), it made me think. What exactly makes me proud to say that America is my country? My next thought, that that question was very Miss America, and such as…

Thus, the format for this, my much-needed blog update, was born, Ms. America style.

Likes: The black vote. I keep hearing about the black vote. I’m happy that more African-American voters showed up. I for one am sick of the white people. I’m sick of their magnetic high school mascot decorations afixed to their sub-SUVs; I’m sick of their educational toys; I’m sick of their cheesy potatoes. My president elect plays basketball and listens to Ludacris…hell, yeah!

Authenticity. I hate pretension, especially in writing. Here is the best sentiment I’ve read lately: ”Realizing how little you actually know: that’s the key to growing up. Humility comes last, and never easily, and sometimes not at all.” (David Giffels, All the Way Home).

Mini Snickers. The mini Snickers is by far the most perfect candy ever created. It’s got all of the fabulous sweet, salty, crunchy, chewy pleasure of the full-sized snickers in a delightful little package. And then you can eat like four of them a day and imagine that you’re eating four candy bars a day, and oh it is chocolate goodness. I look forward to Halloween every year for one reason…yeah, yeah, my adorable children…no, the mini Snickers.

Dislikes: Missing the “unity” in community.  A friend and fellow doer says, “the world runs on volunteers,” and it’s true. That said, I also believe in treating the volunteers right. It can go terribly wrong. For me, I have a 70% rule. Anything that takes me away from my children must be rewarding 70% of the time (note, this is a drop from my previously held 80% joyful standard).  Sometimes we lose track of shared goal and instead work to preserve ego-centric senses of territory and righteousness. One time, I was speaking with someone who had held onto a particular volunteer chairship for too long. I made a suggestion and was met with the response “we’ve been doing it this way for 25 years.” I thought how unfortunate it must be to not change at all in 25 years.

Whining. Whining drives me crazy. Whining falls under that talking instead of acting umbrella that also drives me nuts. If something is wrong, take action to right it. If you are unhappy, speak up. If something needs done, do it. Whining is lazy and counterproductive. Whiners don’t want to do anything, but boy do they talk about it!

Chocolate covered raisins. First of all, let’s be clear about this, raisins, I don’t believe, were ever meant for actual human consumption. Bingo markers, yes, food no. Then, to bastardize perfectly good chocolate by melting it on raisins is a borderline unforgiveable offense. To market chocolate covered raisins as a treat is an insult to real treats. Raisinets? No way. Give me the Sno Caps! 

Oh, and I want to make a better place for the children and work for world peace.

Book Tag

Jaci just tagged me!
Here’s how it works:

- Grab the nearest book.
- Open to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the next two to five sentences in your blog with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one – pick the CLOSEST.
- Tag five other people to do the same.

Okay, now here is my dilemma. I’m sitting on my bed, and there are a nine books piled on my bedside table. Behind me, on the armoire, there are another five or six. So, do I close my eyes and grab, which in my case will likely result in destruction because, let’s just say, I’m on the clumsy side. Or do I select which of the books I think will have the most interesting fifth sentence on page 56?

Honesty wins out (it better, considering my last post). I’ve got Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, which is on the top of the bedside pile because of its size (this is just how I am, don’t ask questions, you really don’t want to know how deeply rooted my weird neatness tendencies run). And readers, you should know that I’m foregoing David Sedaris’s When You Are Engulfed In Flames, which I’m 100% certain would have a better sentence.

Here is goes, Stardust, page 56, sentence five. Crap, page 56 of Stardust is a half page, and there are only three sentences. The next book down is not Sedaris, but a kid’s book So You Want to be a Wizard, by Diane Duane. Okay, page 56, sentence five:

“Nita knew that tone of voice–it was the one in which she usually answered Joanne, while trying to hide her own fear of what was sure to happen next.”

Not bad at all for a kids’ book about wizards (even if it’s not Harry Potter).

I tag Gretty, Blue Girl, Bonnie, Crse (despite her personal no tagging policy), and Chris B.

Mystery of the Dead Car: aka A Glimpse into My Happily Ever After

Our car, the good car, the car I like to think of as “my car” hasn’t been starting properly for a few months. Today, it died completely. It won’t start. The lights come on, the radio works, it makes some noises, but it won’t actually start.

The car saga began a little over two months ago, just before I drove to New York in June.

Immediately, Reg said, “battery.”

Now, let me just say that Reg knows NOTHING about cars. Nothing. I, on the other hand, was raised by a mechanic, and when I drove cheap-ass cars through my late teens and early 20’s, I could often be found fixing my car with my dad in my dad’s driveway.

Reg has never even, to my knowledge, changed a tire. Reg does, however, have a male way of asserting his authority whether or not he actually knows anything about a subject (read Deborah Tannen’s “Lecturing and Listening” for more insight into this male/female conversational dynamic).

So back in June, I said, “I don’t think it’s the battery.” However, because we all know that gender, not actual practice and background, equals car knowledge, I was ignored.

Reg took the car to Sears and told the Sears guy, “I think it’s the battery.” Even the Sears guy agreed with me, “I don’t think it’s the battery. It might be the starter.”

Next, Reg took the car to a Ford dealership and said, “I think it’s the battery.” At first, the dealership guys said, “It’s not the battery,” but then the guy said something about a bad cell in the middle of the battery, which sounded like crap to me.

But I can be mistrustful about the car service industry, and I know this about myself (I resent the you-don’t-have-a-penis-so-what-do-you-know? treatment ). So I took the word of the Ford dealership guy, against my instincts. They replaced the battery.

So here we are two months later, in the midst of back to school hell, and the car, which has been weird still for two months finally died in the driveway.

Clearly, Reg can no longer say “It’s the battery” so he switched to the only other car part he can name that may affect the starting function…”I think it’s the alternator.”

“Reg,” I say, “I don’t think it’s the alternator because the lights and everything are working. I think it’s fuel related or the timing belt.”

Reg calls the dealership and says, “I think it’s the alternator.”

I don’t think Reg even knows what an alternator does.

The tow truck guy comes and picks up the car, and Reg tells him “I think it’s the alternator” to which the tow truck driver responds, “it could be the alternator.” Then Reg comes in the house and says, “the two truck guy thinks it’s the alternator.”

He believes that I didn’t actually overhear the exchange with the tow truck driver, despite the conversation happening right outside of the open window of the room I was in.

“Uh hmmm,” I say. What I think is “it’s not the f**king alternator.”

So I turn to my favorite car expert…Dad. “Dad,” I say, “the Taurus won’t start.”

“How many miles does it have on it?” Dad asks.

“49,000.”

“What does it do?”

I describe the noises to Dad, and he ponders for a minute and then says, “Sounds like the starter, but I’d have to hear it.” Now, I know beyond any doubt that if my Dad had actually heard the car, he could have immediately diagnosed the problem, but because he didn’t, we now have a mystery.

Do we vote for Reg’s relatively unsophisticated choice of alternator?

My guess that the problem is fuel/timing related?

Or Dad’s qualified belief that the problem may be the starter?

Cast your votes friends, and I’ll get back to you with the results.

A moment of self-indulgence…

I just received this photo of Gwennie and me, taken at the Boston wedding by fabulous photographer, Laurie McDonagh. Isn’t Gwennie adorable? Doesn’t my hair look great?

And here’s beautiful Mira, taken by me (I think, or it might have been Gwennie). Feel free to comment on her gorgeousness.

Songs of Summer

I grabbed this meme from Canada.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Some are not new, but they are in frequent rotation:

1. The Killers – “When You Were Young”

2. Steve Miller Band – “Space Cowboy”

3. U2 – “Beautiful Day”

4. Sting – “Fields of Gold”

5. Madonna and Justin Timberlake – “Four Minutes” (I know, I know, mock away)

6. Van Morrison – “Brown-Eyed Girl” (always a summer favorite)

7. Lenny Kravitz- “Fly Away”

And for a bonus, here is a song that I would be more than happy never to hear again:
1. Bubbly – Colbie Caillat (this answer is stolen directly from Canada, but I couldn’t agree more)

I don’t like to tag (too aggressive for me), but feel free to steal!