Currently Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) By J. K. Rowling see related

grrrr...

Some asshole (excuse me) posted on a forum I frequent the following, in the topic title, in all caps: "_____ DIES ON PAGE ___ AND..." etc.

Perhaps it was naive of me to expect that I could, without totally cocooning myself, actually finish this book without seeing/hearing any significant spoilers, but this goes, as author Frank McCourt would say, "beyond the beyonds."  Sometimes I really hate people....

Currently Reading White Oleander (Oprah's Book Club) By Janet Fitch see related

I found the following to be a particularly well-written, thought-provoking article (for a mainstream service like MSN) on why people don't, but should, see "feel-bad" movies. If you hate knowing much about something before viewing it, it could be interpreted as containing a few spoilers; I'm one of those people, and I thought the article was worth it.

http://movies.msn.com/movies/feelbadmovies

The rewards of perseverance

I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, and I feel utterly humbled by the magnitude of this man's genius.

I started this book almost randomly. I had read an enthusiastic review of his newest, The Road, and while my library request for it is on queue, I thought I’d take a break from wizards and check this one out. (I did, by the way, “zip through” Night, but that’s a story for a different entry….) I am just a bit embarrassed to admit that I picked it because I knew it had been made into a movie, which I’ve not seen, but still, it was that snippet of tangential familiarity that led me to take this particular volume from the shelf.

The jacket blurbs are glowing, frankly reverential—“indisputably a masterpiece”! McCarthy joins the ranks of Melville and Faulkner!—so I entered into the reading experience eagerly and with high expectations. I truly cannot recall the last book I read and didn’t like, so I guess I’m not all that discerning LOL , but while I am momentarily entertained by almost mindlessly barreling through a won’t-remember-it-next-week page-turner—and genuinely don’t consider my time to have been wasted—I’d like to think that I have a deeper appreciation for truly great literature (said in the snooty-Brit, three-syllabled manner ).

But what defines great literature? Certainly, it requires an engaging plot, but there are plenty of hacks who can tell a good story. The main characters must be dynamic and fully realized and uniquely flawed. Those, too, abound. What sets the really memorable ones apart? I don’t have to identify with them, particularly. I certainly don’t have to like them. I don’t even have to understand them, not completely at least; an air of mystery can be appealing, but they shouldn’t be enigmatic to the point of ridiculousness, their motivations opaque and their behavior inexplicable. What strikes me as optimal in a protagonist, I guess, is that riveting quality some actors have (often only in certain roles) wherein when they’re on stage or on screen, I simply can’t take my eyes off of them. The magnetic pull of beautifully drawn characters is founded in their touching some deep, human chord in the reader (or viewer). Not sympathy. Not love or lust or fear or disgust or anger. Some indefinable swirl of primal emotion that grabs and won’t let go, knocking the breath out of us. We don't have to identify, but we do need to... connect.

So the characters must be intriguing and the story absorbing.  And… it must be expertly told. A great story can be ruined by poor writing, and yes, I mean grammar and sentence construction and all of the mechanical aspects, but also word choice and syntax and accessibility (James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake may indeed be a great novel, but I’ll never know because I can barely comprehend a single sentence of it). Yes, the writing, too, needs to grab the reader but not be so obtrusive that it gets in the way of the story. The language can surprise, unsettle, keep the reader off balance, but it shouldn’t annoy.  (While listening to Eldest, for example, I couldn’t help thinking, way too frequently, “He used a thesaurus here,” and I found myself, uncomfortably, actually feeling a bit disdainful.)

Wow—that’s much more of an analytical interlude than I intended!  (And maybe I’m more discerning that I originally thought. Those are some pretty high standards!)

Anyway, I open All the Pretty Horses looking for a great book. The second paragraph begins with this sentence: “It was dark outside and cold and no wind.” OK, why “no wind”? Why not “still” or “windless” or—thesaurus alert!—“quiescent”? Or “[comma] with no wind” instead of “and”? Why go with non-parallel structure? It isn’t an error. It has to have been a deliberate choice. I start noticing the general absence of commas. “Inside the house [comma!] there was no sound save the ticking of the mantel clock in the front room.” “He walked out on the prairie and stood holding his hat like some supplicant to the darkness over them all [seriously, a comma should go here!] and he stood there for a long time.” “As he turned to go [OK, this getting ridiculous—where’s the freakin’ comma?!? ] he heard the train.” And I’m starting to get annoyed. Missing out on the beauty of the “supplicant to the darkness” simile because I’m consumed by my focus on punctuation!  And then there’s an untranslated conversation (with no quotation marks!) in Spanish. Grrr.  I can kind of figure it out; I’m not invested enough to look it up. There are long monstrosities of unpunctuated sentences, series of images unbroken by the conventions, and I actually think, in exactly these words, “That’s not art! That’s affectation.” And I know that I truly hate this book, that it may be a “masterpiece,” but there’s no way I’ll be able to wade through it. I don’t mind working at reading. I rather enjoy it. But this is… pointlessly (meaning I don’t get the point ) unpolished and abstruse.

I’m well aware of the “rule” promulgated by the nameless, prescriptive “they” who say you need to give a book 50 pages before abandoning it. I know I hate this book by page 5.  I’m sure of it at page 17. Many more comma-less sentences and unpunctuated, untranslated conversations later, I’m gritting my teeth at page 31, repeatedly checking the corner of the page—“Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”—for the magic number that signifies deliverance from this ordeal. And then, I can’t say exactly where (in the upper 30s or low 40s, I think) or how, I become acclimated to the style, and it stops mattering. I relax. I skim over the Spanish, gleaning what I can from context and my 35-year-old French. The story finally claims me, and the brilliance of the plot, the tragic three-dimensionality of the characters, and the sheer luminosity of the prose far overshadow the quirky mechanics.

I ended it wanting more. (Thankfully, it’s the first of a trilogy! As the library is closed now, I’m tempted to run to Barnes and Noble and buy the next one—hell, both of them!—and read on through the night. But I’ll wait. I actually want to let this one percolate a bit before I continue the saga.) And now, as I go back and reread those first few infuriating pages, it all simply flows. It may be affectation, but it is also, most assuredly, art. This one is going to stay with me for a very long time.

I’m seeing this “perseverance” thing I’m fostering as an unexpectedly positive development in my summer plan. I’m sticking with things, pushing through, when I’m tempted to give up, to give in to laziness or indifference or avoidance of whatever nature, and I’m being amply rewarded for my efforts. Not enough yet that the temptation to quit simply doesn’t emerge, but it’s getting easier and easier to overcome as I have more of an experience base to build on. Who’d’ve thunk it, at 55?!? Reinventing myself, indeed….

My "independence day"

Yes, “independence day” is deliberately in lower case. I’m not talking about the 4^th of July as a blockbuster national holiday but as my own, a commemoration—in a very real sense—of a level of self-sufficiency that, seven (only 7?) years ago, I… I can’t say that I didn’t think it possible because at that point, I wasn’t thinking about it at all. I was “benumbed” (a quaint word Pete, Rae, and I saw in an old newspaper headline at the Air Force Museum), still reeling from a drastically life-altering choice made that very day, the decision (mutually, though agonizingly, arrived at) to end a 25-year relationship, a marriage, a family, a way of life that we had thought would go on forever….

While I’ve grown immeasurably since that fateful “independence day,” I feel like I’ve taken an additional giant leap this summer. Just coming off of my first year (well, school year anyway) as an empty nester, I have the very real sense that I’m reinventing myself as a single person. Yes, I’ve been single for seven years now (after having been continuously coupled, with one person or another, for 30 years prior to that), and I’ve necessarily made many adjustments, but the journey I’ve undertaken this summer is special, much more than merely a way to organize my time and make sure I don’t “waste” my break. There are many, many activities that I enjoy—being a tourist (even in my adopted home town), eating out, going to movies—and did frequently as a married person but have pursued seldom on my own. I don’t have a partner, and I’m not seeking a relationship.  If I want to do these things—and I do—I’m going to have to become comfortable doing them alone. I have a few friends, but they’re younger (teachers I work with—the ones my age are retiring!) and involved in their own lives, relatively newly married or with little kids, but the bottom line is that I’m introverted and just don’t seek out company. If they invite me, I’m happy to go, but I don’t initiate contact, for the most part, and I’m fine with that. Through my summer “plan,” though, I’m confirming that I can not only go it alone, but I can damn well enjoy it! On Monday, I fulfilled my first once-a-month pledge by getting dressed up and taking myself out to a movie (1408, which was seriously creepy—why I took on a suspense movie solo is beyond me! ) and a nice dinner. The latter was clearly more of a challenge. Sitting in a restaurant alone, surrounded by families and couples and pairs/groups of friends, is… interesting. It was hard not to feel out of place, like an interloper almost. I had as much right to be there as anybody, of course, but I was an outlier. I didn’t belong. At least that’s the sense (almost certainly all in my own head) that I had to overcome. Once I relaxed a bit, though, I had a lovely meal (seared scallops on asparagus ravioli)  and actually enjoyed the freedom to observe my surroundings and fellow guests without that pesky distraction, socializing!   One “issue” I’m not exactly sure how to conquer: From start to finish, including a glass of wine, salad, and entrée (too full, unfortunately for dessert), my meal took just 40 minutes, and that’s from walking in to walking out. I had never realized how much conversation slows eating! I’ll have to figure out an artificial way to extend my dining time…. In any case, it was a big step. I’ve done it before, but never quite so deliberately. The next time will be easier. And the next, easier still. It’s all a process. I’m determined to live my life to the fullest… I was about to write “despite being alone,” but it’s really not that. Doing something on my own actually adds a totally new dimension to the experience, as I’m free to take my time and absorb everything fully and reflect deeply without having to worry about neglecting or impeding anybody else. (That’s not to say that having a companion along doesn’t add a valuable dimension as well. Having the opportunity to share commentary with Pete and Rae, for example, deepened my enjoyment of and insight into what we saw at the AF Museum.) All in all, though, I’m finding that being alone just isn’t a “despite” kind of thing. It’s simply different, satisfying in a unique and significantly meaningful way.

And so, on this auspicious day, this anniversary for our country collectively and for myself personally, I raise my glass to independence--of spirit, of thought, of lifestyle--and the strength that both nourishes and is enhanced by it.

Maybe I should’ve capitalized it after all….

Currently Reading All the Pretty Horses By Cormac Mccarthy see related

The "path" as metaphor (and more)

On June 20, I turned 55. I am now eligible for the senior menu at Bob Evans. On most surveys I see, I’ve rolled over into the next category, 55-64, and upon googling “age 55,” I get results like these:

·         Driving after age 55? Did you know that the facilities necessary for safe driving such as vision, reflexes, flexibility, and hearing begin to deteriorate around the age of 55…

·        Life stages of the mature market - consumers age 55 or older…

·        Researchers at Johns Hopkins have determined that in people age 55 to 75, a moderate program of physical exercise can significantly offset…

·        The age 55 and older population has been relatively reluctant to adopt new consumer electronics….

·        The Age 55+ Employment Resource Center helps older workers find jobs….

·        Nestled on a secluded hillside overlooking the quaint city of Montrose, Colorado, is the peaceful and unique Age 55+ community of Bluff Harbor…

·        Aged to perfection: at age 55, marketing executive Rick Dinihanian is Playgirls latest openly gay cover man—proving that sex appeal comes at all ages….

(Um, hard to top that last one, right? Age ain’t all bad, apparently! LOL)

The point being, of course, that 55 is a significant milestone. (Somehow, to me, it sounds waaay older than 54!) I, however, don’t feel old. I don’t act old. I refuse to consider myself old except in a joking way, usually with my kids at school. Still, 55.... Wow.

On Thurs., 6/21, my first full day as a 55-year-old, I didn’t wake up feeling like I had anything to prove. It was a lovely morning, still cool-ish (though heading later to the mid-to-upper 80s) and sunny, and I’d already made two museum visits, so I decided to head out to John Bryan State Park and take a little jaunt in the woods. My planned 1.2 miles in (and then, of course, 1.2 miles back out) on the North Rim trail, though, turned into over 7 as I reached Clifton Gorge and thought, “Well, I’m already here, so I might as well…” and then, at the end of the gorge, there was an extension of the trail with a promised view of the falls and another, “Well, I’m already here, so…,” and then at the end of that, there I was on the edge of the village of Clifton, a mere 3 or so blocks from Clifton Mill, and by that time, I was getting hungry (and foot-weary), so… you guessed it: “Well, I’m already here…,” and I hoofed it on into town and ate lunch. Refreshed,  re-energized, and perhaps a bit overly ambitious, I set out to return via a different, slightly longer trail that, to my surprise—those darn maps simply show multiple little intersecting lines of dots, not readily distinguishable from each other —emerged in a different part of John Bryan from where I had parked my car, so I then had to hike along the road a ways to the proper lot. By this time (about four hours after I started), it was pushing 90 degrees, and I gratefully collapsed into the driver’s seat, hoping I had enough leg strength left to depress the clutch! (OK, I’m exaggerating, but I was tired.) I’m not a total couch potato, but I’m not particularly fit either—it’s not something I work at—and I felt pretty damn proud of myself that I—at fifty-freakin’-five!—had hiked 7+ miles in the heat over some reasonably rugged trails.

Which brings me—in a fittingly long and meandering way! —to my title and what I learned about myself on that hike. A few weeks back, I had taken a casual walk at the Narrows Reserve, where there’s a nicely maintained trail that follows the river back through the woods to a “prairie.” I’ve walked there before, and it’s pleasant. It’s… easy.

The walk through John Bryan and especially Clifton Gorge wasn’t easy, not because of the length that I kept extending, but because of the terrain and the nature and condition of the trails. There had been a slight rain a day or two earlier (after weeks of drought), and there were places where the path was slick and even muddy. There were fairly steep grades (both up and down, obviously), and stretches that were peppered with rock (not gravel—I mean significantly sized pieces of stone naturally embedded in the soil) or crisscrossed with gnarled tree roots.

What I found was that I enjoyed this path much more than the flat, impediment-free one at the Narrows. I liked having to pick my way through, choosing where to carefully place each foot. I had to think, to plan, rather than merely gliding through effortlessly, mindlessly, my attention elsewhere, heedless of my route. It was a small thing—not a monumentally difficult task, certainly—but I relished the demands of it. I found that I wanted something that was passable but sufficiently taxing, both physically and mentally, that I felt a sense of accomplishment as I traversed it. At the Narrows, there were places where I literally could have been blindfolded, and I wouldn’t have stumbled. I discovered—and this surprised me because I can be pretty lazy and am not usually averse to taking shortcuts—that I crave a path that challenges me, and I would be bored and unfulfilled without intriguing obstacles that are possible, but take work, to circumvent and overcome. And yet, even at 55, with many years of introspection behind me, this surprised me. On some random magazine self-test, I would’ve readily said that I prefer the smooth, easy route. I left feeling… enlightened.

One other significant insight and two wild”life” encounters, and I’ll finish. (Since I’m essentially writing this for myself, I’m free to be as longwinded as I like! LOL)

The woods there are beautiful, deep and majestic.

There are cliffs and a river, alternately rushing and nearly stagnant, and tall, old trees, all pervaded by a sense of peace and of… of memory of times and visitors past, of humans and animals and even glaciers that were there before me. As I entered the forest, I was in awe of it and entranced by the total immersion in my surroundings. And then I lost it. I lost the gestalt (sorry, old psych term—lapsing into jargon…), and I tuned in, exclusively, to details. The visual texture of moss on a tree. A cascade of ferns on the rocks. The dancing pattern of light and shadow. The tree root that emerged like a sea serpent from the trail.  The stone in the path that looked like a face.

   (Why, I wonder, the need to impose external frames of reference? Why does it have to look like something else?!? I went back this morning—for a shorter walk!—and I passed a small group in which a woman was trying to point out to her companions how a particular formation resembled “a profile, like of a Neanderthal.” Why was it not sufficient simply to see it as a fascinatingly shaped rock? It seems like a very common human need, to make the connections, to lend additional meaning, to relate in a familiar way with that which is unfamiliar and/or inanimate. We do it all the time, without even thinking about it. Why?) I found that I almost literally couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and I kept trying deliberately to reorient myself, to refocus on the whole, not to the exclusion of its parts, but in addition to them. I lay down on a fallen log and gazed up at the canopy above me, and I felt the vastness of it, and then, insidiously, I started to notice instead the changing patches of sky as the wind blew, the shapes and colors of the different varieties of the trees, the individual leaves against the sky, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t keep the whole in focus. The parts kept intruding. When I went back this morning, I really worked on this, and it was better, but it takes a tremendous effort. Even if I were on the lip of the Grand Canyon, I think, I’d be seeing the individual striations of rock, the scrub pine clinging to the canyon wall, the lone hawk circling in search of prey, and missing the enormity of it as a single entity.

And now, to finish up, I had two unique experiences with other creatures. This one actually happened second, but it’s easier to describe, so I’ll take it on first. LOL After lunch, I re-entered the woods from a parking lot on the edge, as I said, of town—a reasonably active area—and as I rounded the initial corner, I came face to face with a lovely doe, who looked at me, paused, and then casually loped away. I was probably 12 feet from her before she moved. I had never been that close (outside of a petting zoo!) to a deer before. It was startling and literally breathtaking. The other is stranger still. I almost hesitate to mention it because it seems so trivial, yet it was oddly profound at the time. I was moving at a relaxing pace on a smoother part of the trail when my detail-oriented eye caught sight of what I thought was a falling leaf, lit by the sun. Not an unusual occurrence in the woods, especially with the dry conditions we’d been experiencing, but I was intrigued as I watched it waft slowly, seemingly backlit, luminous almost, to the forest floor. As I approached, though, I noticed that it wasn’t a leaf at all but a small white moth, and it was dead.  Perfect, from all outward appearances, and yet lifeless. It simply fell to the ground, its existence snuffed out by some unknown force. It evidently just dropped (literally) dead in midair and floated peacefully to the ground. Very strange.

This ^ ^ ^ monstrosity of an entry is why I avoid writing! It’s also why I’m glad when I overcome my avoidance. It both records my experience and crystallizes it, simply memorializing some parts and clarifying others, embedding it all deeper in my consciousness. Always, I understand myself better after I write, even as I recount reflections that seemed quite sufficiently revealing at the time….

P.S. As I sifted through my photos, I recalled (gotta love pictures!) two other small points. One, an ironic statement, I thought. Apparently, we can "help save our Planet" by using a staple gun to affix signs to trees in an otherwise largely unspoiled forest….

And the second was a posting at the entrance to Clifton Gorge, a state preserve as opposed to park, which is evidently more vulnerable and/or distinctive and, thus, more regulated. I thought this was beautifully put, quite literary, even, for a placard on a state hiking trail. (In fact, one of the reasons that I went back this morning, quite specifically, was because I had failed to take a picture of it the first time.) In case you can't read it (it's behind weathered plexiglass, so there's a glare, and it's a little blurry), it says:

"Welcome to Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve. This special place is one of over 120 state nature preserves in Ohio. It has been set aside to protect one of our finest remaining natural areas. It is not a place for active recreation, but rather for contemplation, nature study and renewal. More importantly, it is a place where natural processes can occur with little influence from humans. Walk softly here, and speak quietly. Watch and listen and learn. Treat it gently, for should we lose it, there will not be another like it in our lifetimes. Let it not be said that this was a beautiful, peaceful place until you came."

"Let it not be said that this was a beautiful, peaceful place until you came." Weighty words.... While there's often something to be said for shaking things up, this gentle but emphatic statement applies far beyond the reaches of the "preserve."