A Ball of String

I think I was a cat for Halloween one year. I have a pic­ture of me in a leo­tard and tights with a con­struc­tion paper ears and a tail and my face paint­ed white with black whiskers.  It’s not much of a tail and I remem­ber being a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed that I did­n’t have a cloth one with wire in it so that I could make it twitch or at least curl it inter­est­ing­ly. I don’t remem­ber any­thing else about that Halloween, or that cos­tume. But I do have the picture.

I’m try­ing to work with the notion of fam­i­ly sto­ries in some essays that I am writ­ing. The need for those sto­ries and the vari­abil­i­ty of those sto­ries and how they orga­nize and glue togeth­er fam­i­lies. The prob­lem is that I need exam­ples and at any giv­en moment in time I can’t just call up sto­ries. My mem­o­ry is entire­ly asso­cia­tive. It’s as if my mem­o­ry is a very tan­gled ball of twine — the only way to find my mem­o­ries is to be offered an end of the string made up of some oth­er mem­o­ry or some remark from some­one. Or a picture.

I have a small album of pic­tures that my moth­er gave to me when I got mar­ried. In it are pic­tures of me as a child and a few of me and my sib­lings.  I love those pictures.

Some of those pic­tures of me are from before I mak­ing con­scious mem­o­ries. There are pic­tures of me being held by my grand­par­ents. One of me as a one year-old proud­ly wear­ing my father’s watch. And oh the hair, bright white and all over the place — fright-wig and looks like Einstein were fre­quent remarks.

Slowly as a I page through the pic­tures some things become clear­er. I remem­ber a house we lived in when I was  4 and my grand­par­en­t’s back yard. There’s the one of my in a tutu and those blue cat eye glass­es with my friend from kinder­garten — whose name was… oh yeah Linda! And how I want­ed to be a bal­le­ri­na — but I don’t think I ever took dance lessons. (If I’m wrong my mom will tell me.)

There are pic­tures of me and my sib­lings. One spe­cial one of the five of us just after my youngest broth­er was born. I don’t remem­ber the pic­ture being tak­en but I do remem­ber the warm September day that he was born. The neigh­bor was look­ing after us and told us in the mid­dle of the after­noon that we had a broth­er. And remem­ber­ing that after­noon reminds me of the fam­i­ly sto­ry that’s told about my broth­er’s birth. You see, it’s said that my dad and the doc­tor watched the first game of a Pirates double-header while wait­ing for my broth­er to be born. It con­tin­ues that after Joe’s birth with my dad, the doc­tor, and my new baby broth­er watch­ing the sec­ond game. True? Most like­ly not. But it’s been told over and over again and it does explain Joe’s grade-school obses­sion with baseball.

Once I start down that road — grab that bit of string of mem­o­ry I can find anoth­er sto­ry and anoth­er sto­ry and yet anoth­er. Stories about my broth­ers and their odd­ly bal­anced rela­tion­ship (5 years and a good­ly num­ber of pounds sep­a­rat­ed them but they put up a unit­ed front when­ev­er chal­lenged.) Stories about my sis­ters and their pas­sions, one for music, the oth­er for hors­es. All the things that make my fam­i­ly unique­ly my family.

But with­out the first pic­ture I get no where.

So I keep in my stu­dio a small brown, now quite beat­en up, pho­to album. With a hand­ful of pic­tures. That can send me back in time and unrav­el my mem­o­ry knots. Every time I open it I’m grate­ful that my mom made it for me.

I'm smiling!

 

 

The Books of April

Things I Read:



Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales — Kate Bernheimer, ed.
These essays about per­son­al rela­tion­ships to the genre of fairy tales might be okay as one-offs, but an entire col­lec­tion of rem­i­nisces about the role that fairy tale played in story-teller and aca­d­e­m­ic lives is cloy­ing and dead­en­ing. There’re only so many tales of moth­ers good and cru­el, and sex­u­al awak­en­ing, and preda­to­ry males that you can read before they all run togeth­er into one sad, homog­e­nized lump. Seek out the writ­ings of your favorite authors on all sorts of sto­ry telling and leave this col­lec­tion on the shelf.
* too many sim­i­lar essays *

The Fairy Tale Review — Ochre issue (2016)
A new to me annu­al pub­li­ca­tion that focus­es on new fairy tales, retelling of old fairy tales and fairy tale schol­ar­ship. This issue con­tains sev­er­al fab­u­lous pieces. The prize-winning Courtney Bird’s The Diamond Girl, a retelling of the clas­sic Diamonds and Toads tale, sings with orig­i­nal­i­ty and class. Also fairy tale poet­ry does­n’t have to suck.
* enter­tain­ing enough to order back issues *

Mr and Mrs Dog — Donald McCaig
McCain tells the  sto­ry of attempt­ing to get to the World Sheepdog Trials in Wales with his two dogs June and Luke. McCaig knows his dogs well and his descrip­tions of them work­ing are lyri­cal.  Stories about tri­als, and train­ing, and dogs he has known, alter­nate with some inter­est­ing insights into the var­i­ous dog train­ing “camps” (I say inter­est­ing because I do not always agree with him but he argues well.) He’s a lit­tle too fond of Kohler and too dis­mis­sive of the more recent pos­i­tive meth­ods. Though he, like I, find that the best train­ing method depends on the dog, the train­er, and the task. I just come down a lit­tle fur­ther away from the old­er Kohler school than he does.
The tales of sheep­dogs and sheep and the small world of sheep dog tri­al­ing are fun to read and his thoughts on dog train­ing will chal­lenge you no mat­ter what your philosophy
* if you like dogs or James Herriot *

A Plague of Doves — Louise Erdrich
Another tale of those who live on and near the reser­va­tions in North Dakota. Once again she uses mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tors — all them relat­ed in some way by either blood, mar­riage, or sto­ry. Each brings a par­tic­u­lar per­spec­tive on the cru­cial start­ing point of the sto­ry: the mur­der of a set­tler fam­i­ly and the sub­se­quent ret­ri­bu­tion hang­ing of the wrong Indian men many years ago. Which sounds ghast­ly when laid out so bare and bald but the sto­ries area typ­i­cal Erdrich, full of per­son­al­i­ty and ele­gant language.
* some of the most effec­tive braid­ed nar­ra­tive you will ever read *

Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Non-Fiction — Dinty W. Moore ed.
Third of a tril­o­gy of books of craft essays address­ing very short forms of writ­ing. (Flash Fiction, Prose Poetry, and Flash Non-Fiction) Flash non-fiction is more actu­al­ly what we should call the very short essay. Things that man­age to express them­selves in less than 750 words. (Or so — oth­er venues con­sid­er the short essay to be any­thing less than 2000 words.) I found the dis­cus­sions of tech­ni­cal aspects — POV, tense, you vs I, fram­ing — to be the most use­ful. It’s a good resource. It will also point you to Brevity mag­a­zine and it’s many excel­lent blog posts. The exer­cis­es are occa­sion­al­ly useful.
* bet­ter writ­ing man­u­al than most *

Things I listened to:

Zero History — William Gibson
Last of the most recent tril­o­gy often referred to as the Blue Ant tril­o­gy — once again about brand­ing and mer­chan­diz­ing and secret mar­kets. Not my favorite of the three but always a good sto­ry from Gibson.
* more than you ever want­ed to know about secret mar­ket denim *

 

Hat Full of Sky — Terry Pratchett
In the sec­ond book of Pratchett’s series for younger read­ers, Tiffany, now age 11, is grow­ing into her role as the witch of the chalk. She leaves home to appren­tice with anoth­er witch and is men­aced by a being called a hive. Once again the Nac Mac Feegles help and hin­der in equal amounts. The sto­ry is sim­ple and a lit­tle didac­tic but many of us will rec­og­nize the world of pre­teen girls and enjoy the com­pa­ny of many of Pratchett’s reg­u­lar cast of witch­es includ­ing Granny Weatherwax.
* who does­n’t occa­sion­al­ly feel beset by the Nac Mac Feegles? *

Harry Potter Book and the Sorcerer’s Stone

 

 

 

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — JK Rowling.
I’ve actu­al­ly only read the first Harry Potter. But I’ve seen all the movies. These great big (and get­ting big­ger books) pro­vide light enter­tain­ment to lis­ten to while I’m doing house work, etc. They are sim­ple enough that you can miss a few sen­tences when your atten­tion is drawn to some­thing else (How did the soy sauce get in the fridge?) with­out los­ing the plot.
I have to say that I now under­stand some of the crit­i­cisms of the movies — par­tic­u­lar­ly the flat­ten­ing of the char­ac­ters of Ron and Hermione.  So yes, this is pri­mar­i­ly enter­tain­ment but you can also learn a lot about how vast sprawl­ing fan­ta­sy sto­ries work by listening.
* yeah, it’s a lit­tle late for me to be get­ting around to these. *

The Thing about Hallmark

Why is every­body so down on Hallmark? Aren’t we inar­tic­u­late enough with­out deny­ing us the chance to have some­one help us to speak? Haven’t we all had that moment when we don’t have any words of our own. When the words have been blast­ed right out of us? When all we are left with is a heav­ing heav­i­ness in our guts? No more than an emp­ty space — black, boil­ing in on itself — that can­not sig­ni­fy some accept­able mean­ing?  When there is an absolute require­ment — the need to speak, but no words.

That time when all you have to say is: This thing that has hap­pened — it has torn a hole in my heart and tak­en the words right out of me. I want to show you the blood rush­ing out to pool at my feet. To speak in the red sticky cop­pery taste of sor­row, to give you the torn out piece of my heart and say “eat this — it is my heart’s ache for you.” But no one wants to see the gun-shot hole in your chest. You can­not point to a pool of blood and say “this is for you.” But, you can always send a Hallmark with its care­ful­ly deco­rous words that say “I have a hole in my heart for you.” with­out mak­ing an unseem­ly dis­play of arte­r­i­al blood.

The thing about Hallmark is that the reply, the acknowl­edg­ment of the oth­er’s sym­pa­thy, of the wound that they have tak­en in response to your own heart-ache, can be as care­ful­ly rit­u­al­ized as the expres­sion. With Hallmark you do not have to say “I see the hole in your heart but I can not answer it — the hole in my heart is too big and bleed­ing to quick­ly and it threat­ens to over­come me. And I can­not be held account­able for your sym­pa­thy.” You can sim­ply let Hallmark say “Thank you for think­ing of me.”

Hallmark. Because some­times the best you can do is to let some­one else help you say “I have some feel­ings about this. I thought you should know.”

The Books of March

Read:

The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden — C Valente
This is a reread. These are among the first of her books that I read and among the first that she pub­lished. The prose is not as mature as lat­er prose but the onion struc­ture of the book, with its lay­ers and lay­ers of tales each being told to the lis­ten­er whose own tale we are read­ing is fas­ci­nat­ing. The inter­wo­ven mytholo­gies of the steppes and the sea and the star­ry ori­gins of the world make me smile. I like it bet­ter than some of her more recent work, even if I do occa­sion­al­ly get sick of there being a sim­i­le for every noun.

* sooth­ing mythopet­ic tales *

The Gifts of Imperfection - Brene Brown
Not all that. In part because I’m a devout athe­ist and Ms. Brown relies on God. A researcher into var­i­ous human emo­tions, she is best known for her work on Shame. She’s well know and wide­ly respect­ed and I can’t under­stand why giv­en that there is noth­ing new in here. I think that this might not be her best book. Or at least not the best place to have start­ed look­ing at her work.
* no more inter­est­ing than most self-development books *

Culture Clash — Jean Donaldson
One of the bet­ter books on canine eti­ol­o­gy. It’s been a while since I read it and I was prompt­ed to go back to it by the reports of some recent research into the effec­tive­ness of neg­a­tive mark­ers in oper­ant con­di­tion­ing. I want­ed to look back at some of the broad­er work on canine behav­ior and train­ing meth­ods. If you think of your dog as a fur­ry lit­tle child sub­sti­tute you’re not going to like much of what’s said here. But if you’re curi­ous about how it is that we try (most­ly on the suf­fer­ance of our dogs) to cohab­it with a species that has entire­ly dif­fer­ent rules for going along and get­ting along, this is for you.

* clas­sic in the field, rec­om­mend­ed for every curi­ous dog lover *

Listened to:

Angela’s Ashes — Frank McCourt
Read by Frank McCourt. In a rever­sal of the usu­al Irish fam­i­ly moves to America and makes good. Brooklyn-born McCourt’s fam­i­ly left the USA and returned to Ireland  where they lived in the sort of oppres­sive pover­ty that most Irish were leav­ing the coun­try to escape. Opinions are firm­ly divid­ed on the mer­its of the book. Some claim­ing that it trades in mawk­ish clichés and oth­ers that it is tran­scen­dent. (Though why any­one would think that it is either of those two extremes I don’t under­stand.) I think it’s actu­al­ly a mid­dle of the road sort of book and that I prob­a­bly would have stopped about a third of the way through if I had been read­ing it. But I was­n’t read­ing it I was lis­ten­ing to Frank McCourt read it. And much like his Frank lis­ten­ing to his father’s sto­ries of Cuchiulainn I could­n’t stop.
* Rather like lis­ten­ing to a rel­a­tive who’s lived and “inter­est­ing” life talk about the old days. 

The Books of February

Read:

The Japanese Lover — Isabel Allende

The sto­ry of a Polish refugee girl and her uncle’s Japanese gar­den­er’s son who fall in love, are sep­a­rat­ed, then  meet and sep­a­rate repeat­ed­ly over the course of  life time. We learn the sto­ry of their romance as the girl, now in her old age, slow­ly reveals the romance to her young immi­grant care­giv­er and her patient but per­sis­tent grand­son. It’s a vast sto­ry with all of the ter­rors of the mod­ern world in it. Nazis, the Japanese intern­ment, the chaos in mod­ern Balkans, child abuse, and on and on, but it’s all so good-natured that you don’t real­ly feel any of the hor­ror you ought to. As much as you’ll like that char­ac­ters you won’t feel any deep emo­tion­al tie to them. The sto­ry is epic in scope but it nev­er quite grabs you by the scruff of your neck like so many of Allende’s sto­ries do.

*Likeable char­ac­ters, no great dra­ma in spite of the settings.*

The Girl in the Spider’s Web — David Lagercrantz

I decid­ed to read this in spite of all the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing it’s writ­ing. (There were estate issues fol­low­ing the death of Stieg Larsson. The right to pub­lish new books in the series has been the sub­ject of ugly lawsuits.)

I prob­a­bly should­n’t have both­ered. It’s flat. All of the dan­ger to our favorite pro­tag­o­nists (and I love both Blomquist and Salander) is nar­rat­ed rather than shown. And the twin sis­ter’s sur­prise appear­ance at the end? What the fuck?

It’s orig­i­nal­ly is Swedish of course. So I can’t tell how much of the awk­ward writ­ing is in the orig­i­nal and how much is in the trans­la­tion. But there are so many missed oppor­tu­ni­ties for depth. The rela­tion­ship between Lisbeth and the savant boy in particular.
I fin­ished it quick­ly. But I prob­a­bly won’t pick up anoth­er book in the series. And for what it’s worth I think the Swedish movies/TV series does the best job of por­tray­ing the characters.

* The book is not near­ly as inter­est­ing as con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing it’s publication. *

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim — David Sedaris

Classic Sedaris. Not his fun­ni­est but hey, dys­func­tion­al fam­i­lies are only par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny if you come from one. Even then the sto­ries don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly stick with you. I can’t pick out a favorite because — well I don’t remem­ber any of them.

* Why did noth­ing stick with me? *

Radiance — Cathrynne Valente

So glad that I gave this book two chances. (I lis­tened to it last month.) The sec­ond time through I was final­ly able to fol­low the many char­ac­ters and con­vo­lut­ed time line. Can I just say right here that if I need the lit­tle dates that you put at the head of the chap­ter to fol­low the shift­ing time peri­ods in your book you’ve got a writ­ing prob­lem. I should be able to tell from the first three sen­tences in a chap­ter who’s talk­ing and at what point in the story.

That said, Valente’s deep dive into the world of cin­e­ma or rather what it would look like in her wild­ly improb­a­ble but appeal­ing alter­nate uni­verse is a lot of fun and filled with love­ly prose touch­es. Just take it slow­ly and don’t feel stu­pid if you have to look back to the begin­ning of the chap­ter to fig­ure out where in the sto­ry you are.

* Valente returns to lyric but read­able prose *

Loitering — Charles D’Ambrosio

I do not want my essays about lit­er­a­ture quite so com­min­gled with the tragedies of the writer. In fact it bores me. Yes, if your broth­er com­mit­ted sui­cide you will have a dif­fer­ent take on a lot of Salinger than if you had­n’t had the expe­ri­ence. And yes, there is prob­a­bly see sort of essay in that but not one so plain­ly try­ing to dis­guise itself as aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly accept­able lit­er­ary criticism.

DAmbrosio is high­ly praised but I found myself skim­ming and then out­right skip­ping. Salinger is for teenagers — sorry.

* Not sure what all the fuss is about. But then again I did­n’t real­ly get DFW either. *

The Partly Cloudy Patriot — Sarah Vowell

The title riffs on a Thomas Paine quote refer­ring sum­mer sol­diers and sun­shine patri­ots. Vowell takes on the inci­dences and char­ac­ters of American History with insight and offers a rea­soned (if prop­er­ly biased — more on that lat­er) view of the present polit­i­cal and social cli­mate. I say prop­er­ly biased because any­one who does not have an opin­ion on what his­to­ry is try­ing to tell us as we look back on it isn’t read­ing hon­est­ly. History isn’t dry facts and the unan­a­lyzed rota­tion of heads of state. Nor is it the sim­plis­ti­cal­ly glossed patri­ot­ic ver­sion that we are giv­en like so much pab­u­lum in grade school. SV is no sun­shine patri­ot. Nor is she so slav­ish­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the nation that she can­not see the dark­ness of the clouds that some­times cov­er our sun. She sees into both the good and bad that arise from each episode that she examines.

I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked her pieces about the above Paine quote and the very short and point­ed Rosa Parks C’est Moi (no you ain’t.) Also State of the Union which reads like a list poem.

* A charm­ing guide to American idiosyncrasies. *

Nothing in Reserve — Jack Lewis

I know Jack, he’s my writ­ing part­ner on what is a major project at the moment. As is com­mon with writ­ers who work togeth­er we know too much about each oth­er. Here are many things that I have sensed rum­blings of but nev­er had put into words for me. Sometimes it’s a fright­en­ing place, the inside of Jack’s head, but it’s also a place filled with life and hope.

* A war nar­ra­tive that isn’t real­ly about war. *

I Was Promised There Would be Cake — Sloane Crosley

I have a soft spot for these com­ing of age — the age being 25 or so — essays. They take place dur­ing the sec­ond great rein­ven­tion of the self. (The first being some­where in high school when you real­ize that your par­ents don’t get the final word on who you are.)
The essays are pret­ty pre­dictable. At least if you are a mid­dle class, col­lege edu­cat­ed straight woman. No, I’ve nev­er been the unin­ten­tion­al maid-of-honor at a long-lost high school friend’s wed­ding. Though there was that one grade school friend who includ­ed me in her wed­ding because we had recent­ly recon­nect­ed by acci­dent and were still explor­ing a nos­tal­gic con­nec­tion. It all came to noth­ing in the end. We were both still geeks but the focus of our geek­ing had diverged to the point where we had lit­tle to say to each oth­er, and a friend­ship can­not sur­vive on nos­tal­gia alone.

There are moments of pure light here. The descrip­tion of the Christian sum­mer camp that her Jewish par­ents inad­ver­tent­ly sent her to as a clus­ter­fuck of rit­u­al send me slam­ming back in time to when I sat in a din­ing hall with all of my friends singing both hymns and the gross­ly mor­bid “The Great Ship Titanic”

In oth­er essays she locks her­self out of two apart­ments in a sin­gle day (the haz­ards of mov­ing), vol­un­teers at the Butterfly exhib­it in the Museum of Natural History (brief and unsuc­cess­ful) and deals, not well, with a pas­sive aggres­sive mon­ster of a first boss.
She is both what I was and what I want­ed to be when I was 25. Though would­n’t it be nice to see essays from  some­one who isn’t col­lege edu­cat­ed and work­ing publishing?

* an all day nos­tal­gia suck­er for mid­dle class women of a cer­tain age *

Pulphead — John Jeremiah Sullivan

Lots of music here. Also some his­to­ry and crit­i­cism. The star­ring piece is the first piece. A tale of rock and roll, fun­da­men­tal­ism and a big RV, as Sullivan vis­its the largest Christian music fes­ti­val in the USA, nay the whole world — Creation Festival. A mega-church ver­sion of a rock fes­ti­val with Christian Rock bands and tens of thou­sands of young Christ-loving fans. Sullivan’s take on the whole thing — while start­ing with an assump­tion of glib irrel­e­vance to the world at large becomes nuanced and empa­thet­ic as he meets var­i­ous con­cert goers and band members.

* Particularly good if you like mod­ern music and obscure cor­ners of literature. *

I haven’t got any­thing writ­ten yet about the one book I lis­tened to in February, but con­sid­er­ing it’s the 3rd of April. Perhaps I’d bet­ter just get this out…