Born in the 60's

 I turn 50 this year.  Lot's of things were born in 1969.  Sesame Street, Woodstock, the Stonewall Riots, men walking on the moon, Belikan Beer (Hey Belize!  I see your Go Slow selves out there!).  So many things turn 50 this year.  Including me.   Any time there is a season of momentous change and innovation, inevitably, the times preceding it are rife with unrest and disequilibrium.  I give you, 1968.

My friend Jennifer is a super-smart writer and she contributed to my current read: 1968: Today's Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change. 

It is an anthology of non-fiction stories revolving around the climate of rebellion and unrest and revolution and, ultimately, change that made up 1968.  I'm eager to read her work.  I'm eager to read all the work.  Am I eager to turn 50?  Well, I suppose that is yet to be seen.  I might be up for some rebellion, some revolution, and certainly some change.

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've just finished Daddy-Long Legs by Jean Webster, who, interestingly enough was the Great Niece of Mark Twain.  I guess it has always paid to know the right people in the world of publishing.  In any case, when I started reading this book, I was taken with how sweet and innocent it was.  The adorable story told in a series of letters, of a young orphaned girl sent to college by an anonymous benefactor.  Now that I'm done, honestly, I'm a little creeped out.  No spoilers here, but reading this through a modern lens gave me pause and reminded me how entrenched we are in predatory behavior masquerading as saviourism, especially on the part of wealthy, white men.  We've been conditioned to see it as romance, especially through this whole schoolgirl romance genre so popular in pre-WWI America, continuing well into the present day.  Pretty Woman anyone?  Hello, creepy predator played by Richard Gere. All we have to do is read the headline news see that not a whole lot has changed. 

Used Bookstores

I'm volunteering in a used bookstore once a week.  It's a small place with lots of stacks of unshelved books and my big ol' behind knocked over one of those stacks a while back while shopping.  Feeling horrible about adding to the mess, I felt like an appropriate penance was to come in once a week, unpaid, to shelve and organize books.  What I didn't know was that I would LOVE THIS SO MUCH!  Seriously, this might be the only job-type thing I have ever done that I have felt so good at.  Usually, when I have a job, I feel like a complete and utter loser.  I'm not very good at anything compensable, and, thus, felt like I was under the executioner's blade most every time I walked through the office door, no matter what office I was in.  

In the Bookery, however, all of those feelings have gone away.  It's the most confident I have ever felt in a work environment, even though it's not really my job and I am not getting paid and I really cannot get fired as I was never hired in the first place.  Nevertheless, it's awesome and I am extraordinarily happy to go every week.

As it is a small shop and people are Marie Kondo-ing the shit out of their bookshelves right now, we have more books than we have space.  Because of that, I am culling out books that are not being sought out by, well, anyone.  I take boxes of those books to a local community library to seed their collection and for their book sale.  They can get away with selling books for a quarter.  

As I was unloading a box one week, I decided that I was going to read some of those "unloved" books, hoping to find a hidden gem.  Kinds of Love by May Sarton is not that gem.  I am having such a very, very, VERY hard time getting into it and if you've read several posts back, giving up is not an option.  Sigh.  

One Way to Solve an Odd Little Problem

I have an unusual problem.  Once I start to read a book I feel compelled to finish it, no matter how dreadful or dull it might be.  I can count on one hand (plus maybe an extra finger or two) the number of books that I have abandoned.  It just doesn't happen.

Having that odd little problem means that I have had to develop several coping mechanisms in order to not get forever stuck in that one book that is JUST SO BORING or so poorly written (I'm looking at you Christian Romance novels.  Blunt, unblinking stare right at you).  My go-to solution is to pick up another book to get the juices flowing again, to distract me from how much the former book was killing my love of reading.

I have found myself in that very situation this week.  The book I am reading is not keeping my interest in the slightest, although I have hope it will pick up soon.  In the meantime, I have started Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.  A friend of mine handed this to me during trivia night at our local brewery and promised me that I would love it.  She's not wrong.

High Heels and Big Words

People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal but they love the idea of being superior.

                                                                 James Baldwin
                                                                "Letter from a Region of My Mind" 

There was a person in my life who I had very hard feelings about.  Being around this person shot my anxiety through the top of my head and made me feel as though my heart and lungs were going to explode.  I felt nauseated at the mere thought of being around them and every minute I was, all I could think about was getting away.  Sadly, there was no way around seeing this person and trying to explain my feelings to anyone just felt, and sounded like, whiny complaining.  I was trapped and could not shake the physical reactions I was having every time I had to be in the same place as this person.  I was also deep in the throes of depression and grief and was years away from finding a therapist who would help me.  So I did what came naturally to someone like me.  I was petty.  Petty like a middle school girl, petty.  Find the weakest spot and dig right in there, petty.  Not kind, not attractive, not recommended behavior in the least.

This person was very short.  I am tall.  Every time I had the opportunity, I wore the highest heels that I possibly could and stood tall with my shoulders back and my head held high.  A demented power pose of sorts.   It did nothing and I am sure no one knew what I was doing, but in a sick way, it did make me feel superior and powerful and that I wasn't going to let them win.

An odd quirk of mine is that I have a larger vocabulary than most of the folks in my circles, with a few notable exceptions.  Even so, I tend to keep my daily usage relatively common.  Being teased for my big words for most of my life by people just as petty as I was certainly made an impression.  Also, my mouth moves a whole lot faster than my brain does, and more often than not, the words I know do not seem to make it all the way out.  Aging is a bitch.  All that aside, this person, while educated, spoke at the level of a high school student on social media.  Petty me, using the only weapons I could get ahold of at the time, used the biggest words I could get away with in conversations that this person was either a part of or even adjacent to.  I was so arrogant in my words.  When I was growing up my mother always said that my tongue was my sharpest sword.  She had no idea.  Again, I'm sure that no one knew what I was doing, but it was the only armor I had at the time to deflect the imaginary daggers I was sure this person was shooting at me.

I didn't want to be equal to this person.  I didn't want to make things right or build a relationship.  I was hurt and sad and in my own trifling mind, I only wanted to be superior.  Being equal would require humility and compromise on my part.  Being equal would ask me to give up some things that I held pretty closely for the sake of a relationship.  Being equal felt like too much work and that I would be getting the short end of the stick if I entered into the process.  So I went with superior. Superior meant keeping them small and reminding them, continually, of their smallness.

It made me feel better momentarily, but it didn't work.  I did not win.  No one even knew I was fighting the battle.  I only appeared as I was acting, petty and immature.

I still wear high heels and use big words, but not for the same reasons as before.  No longer superior, just fabulous.

 If you want to read the book 

Ponds, Rowboats and Staying Out of the Tule

"It was as if she righted herself continually against some current that never ceased to pull" -- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

My uncle and aunt have a lovely, minuscule pond in front of their home.  It just enough for a rowboat and that rowboat can make it across the entire pond in one or two really good pulls.  It is a quiet pond with a giant fish named Submarine Bob and a few ducks.  I remember sneaking away to the pond during a family event (I don't really do people all that well) with a book. Not only are books my favorite entertainment and hobby, but also, they are my connection to staying sane and my hiding place in times of anxiety.   I can say, both literally and figuratively, books have saved my life.  That said, it was in one of those times that I grabbed any book I could get my hands on, carefully lowered myself into the boat, and pushed myself out into the middle of the pond.

My plan was to get to the middle of the pond where I could pretend that I didn't hear anyone and get fully engrossed in reading and actively avoiding humans.  It's a still pond, it was a still day, I thought my plan was golden.  I rowed my one good row and got to the center of the pond.  I opened the book to page one and started reading.  By the end of page one, the tule reeds that line the shore were tickling my nose.  The boat had drifted to the edge of the pond in the time it took me to read one page and I am a fast reader.  I picked up the oars again, got myself back into position and started page two.  Tule reed.  Row. Read. Tule reed in my face.  Row, Read.  Tule reed in my nose.  I couldn't relax long enough to read more than one page at a time before having to stop, pick up the oars, and get back into the place I wanted to be.

Story of my life.  I want to be centered, in the middle of the pond, doing what I love and feeling safe. As soon as I get there, I get pulled to the edges, get stuck in the tall grasses and have to put down whatever I am doing in order to get back out to the center again.  Not only is it an imposition, but it takes so much damn effort.  The pushing, the rowing, the picking up and setting down of the oars, the steadying of the boat in the water.  Staying centered requires work.  Endless amounts of work.

Frozen

I'm still working my way through The Left Hand of Darkness.   Set in a frigid climate, the plot is moving as slowly as the main character's journey across the frozen terrain.  Seems appropriate that another big snowstorm is headed my way this weekend.

I've never lived in a place where it snows before.  Not going to lie, I'm slightly enchanted when I look out of my kitchen window and see the white, unmarked carpet of snow covering our property.  The frosty branches of the cedar trees outside of my bedroom window are damn magical.  I am fully aware that I am in the honeymoon phase of my winter domesticity, no denying that.  I haven't yet been snowed in.  I haven't had to shovel out my car in order to go grocery shopping.  I haven't slid off an icy road.  So far its been all freaking Elsa/Anna and I'm all in.

My first steps into the world of science fiction, however, are purely Han Solo frozen in Carbonite.  Slow moving.

Sci-Fi?

I’ve committed to expanding my genre horizons this year and I’m starting with some Science Fiction. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, specifically.  It’s not starting off well.  I’ll keep you posted.  I might need a glossary and more whiskey.

I've Always Wanted to Work in a Bookstore. And Live in the Appalachians. And Be a Quaker.

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book. This book, by Ethnographer and Used Bookstore Owner, Wendy Welch, is the book I wish I could have written. It is a love song to books, bookstores, and reading and makes me dream of, perhaps, becoming a Quaker and moving to The Appalachians. I loved every part of this book, from the epigraphs to the acknowledgements. Every single page. Every single word. What Wendy Welch writes of is the stuff of my dreams.

I am working on a book right now called Deaf Sentence by David Lodge. I'll have something to say about it when I'm finished. More important that WHAT I'm reading right now, is WHERE I'm reading.



I had some time before D's hockey game this Sunday in Escondido, CA. I wandered about and ended up at the California Center for the Arts. The museum didn't open until 1 o'clock so I had some time to crack open a book.



The sky was a perfect blue and the temperature 68 degrees. I found a great bench and did what I do best, I read.



Yet another reminder why one should ALWAYS have a book handy. You never know when you will find the perfect spot.

My book club friends are going to laugh, if not heartily at least under their collective breath, but the book I picked up at Emily’s Used Books in Nisswa, Minnesota was “Trans-Sister Radio” by Chris Bohjolian. Our group enjoyed Bohjolian’s “The Double Bind” so much that we chose to read “Midwives”, making our discussion back to back Bohjolian. Then I was at the library and checked out his latest book “Skeletons at the Feast” which I wasn’t super fond of and thought that, perhaps, I was just Bohjo-ed out. But then, in the far reaches of northern Minnesota, I found a Bohjo book that I hadn’t yet read. I did what any traveling obsessive reader would do, I pulled it off the shelf and took it on the road with me.

“Trans-Sister Radio” is the story of Allison and Dana. Allison is a divorced elementary school teacher living in a small Vermont town with her daughter Carly, who is getting ready for her first year of college. Dana is a professor at the local university. Allison is a student in his class on literature and film. Allison and Dana become friends and eventually begin a romantic relationship, both falling in love more deeply than either of them had ever fallen before. What Allison doesn’t know is that Dana is in the final stages of gender re-assignment, preparing for the surgery that will change him from a genetic male into a physiological woman. Allison has to decide what to do with this new relationship, whether to stay with the person she has fallen in love with or to end it and avoid the controversy that inevitably will come with it.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of either Allison, Dana, Carly or Will, Allison’s ex-husband, allowing the reader to see this supremely complex issue, if the soul or spirit of a person has a specific gender, from multiple perspectives. Thanks again for reading with me. Next time, we’re going old school, really old school