Losing Strength, Not Style

I Love You ~ painting by Elena Desserich
Notes Left Behind
by Brooke and Keith Desserich
Brooke and Keith Desserich's personal journal entries -- about their six - year - old daughter Elena -- describe the last 256 days of Elena's life, starting with the tragic discovery of an inoperable tumor in her brain. Their loving anecdotes capture the despair and joy of each remaining day and preserve the precious personality of Elena, creating a memoir to be read in the future by little sister Gracie.
To learn more: The Cure Starts Now ( www.thecurestartsnow.org )

The Fault In Our Stars
by John Green
John Green's novel -- about the fictional seventeen - year - old Hazel Grace Lancaster, who has been living with thyroid cancer since the age of thirteen -- is based on his experience as a student chaplain in a children's hospital, helping children with life-threatening illnesses. Through Hazel and her friend Gus, Green opens our eyes to the tension of teen - age angst, compounded by the hope and uncertainty of living with cancer.
To learn more: This Star Won't Go Out ( www.tswgo.org )
Each of these sad sweet books is about an intelligent, creative, admirable girl engaged in a heartbreaking struggle against cancer. Though quite different in style and genre, the two stories explore similar themes: the sorrow of diagnosis at such a young age; the unfairness of interrupted youth; the reorganization of the family around new needs and priorities; the courage and energy of a bright young patient determined to seize the day no matter what the odds against her.

Both books brought to mind these sad lyrics from the musical Evita:

"Oh what I'd give for a hundred years
But the physical interferes
Every day more, O my Creator
What is the good of the strongest heart
In a body that's falling apart?
A serious flaw, I hope You know that . . .

Your little body's slowly breaking down
You're losing speed, you're losing strength, not style
That goes on flourishing forever
But your eyes, your smile
Do not have the sparkle of your fantastic past
If you climb one more mountain it could be your last

I'm not that ill, bad moments come but they go
Some days are fine, some a little bit harder
But that doesn't mean we should give up our dream
Have you ever seen me defeated?
Don't you forget what I've been through and yet
I'm still standing

Eva, you are dying

So what happens now?
Where am I going to?

Don't ask anymore . . . "
**************************
In Memoriam
Marilyn, 7 March 1957 - 27 November 1993
Celine, 27 August 1942 - 24 April 1997
Dagmar, 13 April 1959 - 9 March 2011

Transfixed

Yet I believe beyond believing
that life can spring from death,
that growth can flower from our grieving,
that we can catch our breath
and turn transfixed by faith.
~ William Gay ~


Sun Shining Through Lace Curtains Onto the Hardwood Floor
(photo taken 15 September 2011)
~ Some books I like to reread each year around Easter ~
Fifth Business
Robertson Davies

A wise aging priest discusses the need for a role model: "My own idea is that when [Christ] comes again it will be to continue his ministry as an old man. I am an old man and my life has been spent as a soldier of Christ, and I tell you that the older I grow the less Christ's teaching says to me. I am sometimes very conscious that I am following the path of a leader who died when He was less than half as old as I am now. I see and feel things He never saw or felt. I know things He seems never to have known. Everybody wants a Christ for himself and those who think like him. Very well, am I at fault for wanting a Christ who will show me how to be an old man?* All Christ's teaching is put forward with the dogmatism, the certainty, and the strength of youth: I need something that takes account of the accretion of experience, the sense of paradox and ambiguity that comes with years!" (164.)

* Or how to be a woman of any age!
The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
[Also mentioned in 2003]

So similar to what Davies says about the need for an old Christ: "I wish you could've seen the Daughters of Mary the first time they laid eyes on [the Black Madonna]. You know why? Because when they looked at her, it occurred to them for the first time in their lives that what's divine can come in dark skin. You see, everybody needs a God who looks like them" (141).

For years now, I've been saying that Jesus needed a twin sister; and Kidd has incorporated this own personal heresy of mine into her novel: "I could read her thought: If Jesus' mother is black, how come we only know about the white Mary? This would like women finding out Jesus had had a twin sister who'd gotten half God's genes but none of the glory" (53).

The Last Temptation of Christ
Nikos Kazantzakis
[See previous posts: 2007 & "Let Them All In"]

His somewhat unconventional Jesus insists that he is "son of man, I tell you, not son of God. . . I shall stand up and proclaim the truth!"

The Apostle Paul replies in anger: "True or false -- what do I care! It 's enough if the world is saved. . . . What is 'truth'? What is 'falsehood'? Whatever gives us wings, whatever produces great works and great souls and lifts us . . . above the earth -- that is true. Whatever clips off our wings -- that is false. . . . I create the truth, create it out of obstinacy and longing and faith." (477)

In an excellent closing note, P. A. Bien, writes that Kazantzakis "was not primarily interested in reinterpreting Christ or in disagreeing with, or reforming, the Church. He wanted rather, to lift Christ out of the Church altogether . . . The measure with which the reader of this book feels (perhaps for the first time) the full poignancy of the Passion will be the measure of the author's success" While I feel no doubt of this novel's success, it is actually another novel which, in my opinion, renders the Passion most poignantly, and that is . . .

The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
[See also "Illusion of Control"]

Bulgakov treats not only the Passion of Christ, but also

~ the Passion of the Master, whose novel about Pontius Pilate is rejected by the critics and lands him in the mental asylum but is later read by both Jesus and Pilate, himself;

~ and the Passion of Margarita, whose quest for happiness leads her to Satan's ball and the final realization that "the world is built on" forgiveness, complete forgiveness;

~ and the Passion of Pontius Pilate, who commands the prisoner Yeshua to "swear by your life since it is hanging by a thread."

Yeshua responds calmly: "You do not think, do you, Hegemon, that you hung it there? . . . If you do, you are very much mistaken."

Pilate: "I can cut that thread."

Yeshua: "You are mistaken about that too . . . Don't you agree that that thread can only be cut by the one who hung it?" (19).

Pilate then asks: " . . . the kingdom of truth will come?"

"It will, Hegemon," replied Yeshua with conviction.

"It will never come! Pilate shouted in such a terrible voice that Yeshua recoiled. (23).

Bulgakov's doubting Pilate is utterly conflicted, whereas his mephistophelean Woland is a devil of great confidence. Like Paul, above, in Last Temptation, Woland teaches by "obstinacy, longing, and faith." He whispers to the doubting poet Berlioz: "Keep in mind that Jesus did exist."

"You know, Professor . . . we respect your great knowledge, but we happen to have a different point of view regarding that issue."

Woland: "No points of view are necessary . . . He simply existed, and that's all there is to it."

Berlioz: "But surely some proof is required."

Woland: "No, no proof is required. . . . But as we part, I implore you, at least believe that the devil exists! I ask no more than that. Keep in mind that for this we have the seventh proof . . ." (12, 34).

***********************

" . . .there is nothing but mystery in the world,
how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days,
shining brightly, and we don't even know it"
~ The Secret Life of Bees (63) ~

Book Haven

Happy 131st Birthday to James Joyce
and Happy One Year Anniversary to The Book Haven

Book Haven ~ F Street ~ Salida, Colorado
I've never been to Salida, but should I ever visit, I know where I'm heading first -- straight to Lisa Marvel's Book Haven on F Street!

My friend Laura wrote to me a year ago to tell me all about it: "We, and about sixty of Lisa's Salida friends, moved all of the books to the new location in about two hours in mid - January, then spent the next 10 days re - arranging, re - alphabetizing, and safely shelving them all. The Grand - Re - Opening on February 2nd was great fun. Lisa and I spent about eight hours preparing hors d'oeuvres for the even, and Joachim and I gave them fun names:

Cannery Row Wannabees (herring in wine sauce)
Grapes of Wrath (skewered fruit)
Pride and Prejudice (sweet and sour meatballs)
Pigs in Heaven (little smokies nestled in crescent rolls)
Call of the Wild (greens and veggies)
Tortilla Flat (chips & salsa)
Joy Luck Club (wraps / mini eggrolls)
Health Food for Heidi, etc.
"Following food and fellowship, thirty of us participate in a "Rapid Fire Salute to the Written Word" -- 30 one - minute readings. Kent Haruf convinced me to read the cose of Molly Bloom's Soliloquy, since it was James Joyce's birthday, so we ended with a big celebratory 'yes I said yes I will Yes!' "

favorite page from
The Family of Man
I am looking forward to hearing
Shellie K. Johnson sing
"The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs"

to be performed on 24 February 2013
by The Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society
text from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
music by John Cage

The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
"night by silentsailing night. . .
Isobel. . .
wildwoods' eyes and primarose hair,
quietly,
all the woods so wild, in mauves of
moss and daphnedews,
how all so still she lay neath of the
whitethorn, child of tree,
like some losthappy leaf,
like blowing flower stilled,
as fain would she anon,
for soon again 'twil be,
win me, woo me, wed me,
ah weary me!
deeply,
Now evencalm lay sleeping; night
Isobel
Sister Isobel
Saintette Isobel
madame Isa
Veuve La belle"

And a New One Just Begun

Thanks to my sister Peg for sending me
one of these cool readerly shirts from Wonder Book!

**************

~ Optimism ~ Delusion ~ Illusion ~
"I thought I might do some writing along the way, perhaps essays, surely notes, certainly letters, I took paper, carbon, typewriter, pencils, notebooks, and not only those but dictionaries, a compact encyclopedia, and a dozen other reference books, heavy ones. I suppose our capacity for self-delusions is boundless. I knew very well that I rarely make notes, and if I do I either lose them or can't read them. . . . And in spirit of this self-knowledge I [packed] enough writing material to take care of ten volumes. I also laid in a hundred and fifty pounds of those books one hasn't got around to reading -- and of course those are the books one isn't ever going to get around to reading. . . . I judge now that I carried about four times too much of everything" (emphasis added).

from Travels With Charley
by John Steinbeck

****************

And this from Michael Lipsey:

"The greatest illusion is not religion —
it’s waking up in the morning imagining
how much you’re going to get done today."

*****************

A little self - delusion?
Well, why not? Our minds depend upon it!
See also, "So Many Books, So Little Time"

P.S. My second favorite quote from Travels With Charley:

"Before I went to sleep I went over all the things I wished I had
said . . . and some of them were incredibly clever and cutting" (69).

[cf. L'esprit de l'escalier]

P.P.S. And this from Von's Books: “Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.” ~ David Quammen

Another Year Over

Time to winterize your croquet set!

Memorable Passages from Books Read in 2012
A Couple of Novels by Kate Atkinson

1. Human Croquet

109: Eliza picked Isobel up from the counter and started nibbling her ear. Why, Vinny wondered, was Eliza always trying to eat bits of her children? What a tasty little morsel, Eliza murmured in Isobel's ear while Vinny patted butter aggressively, imagining it was Eliza's head. If Eliza wasn't careful, Vinny thought, she'd look around one day and discover that she'd eaten them all up."

131: "The sadness of autumn is in the air, the smell of woodsmoke and earth and things long-forgotten. Over our heads the first skein of geese (the souls of the dead) scissor through the air, heading for their winter home, north of Boscrambe Woods, the creaking noise they make engenders a fit of melancholy in both of us. The Dog lifts its head, watching them make their black wingprints across the sky and gives a sad little whine. 'Here comes winter,' Audrey says."

135: "Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics -- such as: if there are less than five million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning. So that when you look at them and think, what a lazy, good - for - nothing animal, they are, in fact, working very, very hard."

2. Behind the Scenes at the Museum: I actually read this one back in 2002 and again in 2006, and have been meaning to read Human Croquet ever since. Finally, mission accomplished!


A Couple of Titles by Ann - Marie MacDonald

1. Fall on Your Knees

86: " . . . the mysterious population of that far - off place called the Old Country. A place better than any on earth, but a place you are nonetheless lucky to have escaped."

106: "On Christmas Day 1914, the British and the Germans had laid down their arms, climbed out of their trenches, and walked into No Man's Land. They met halfway between the lines, and exchanged gifts. Not so strange, considering that never before had so many nice men with families and decent job volunteered to face each other under arms across distances as brief and static as twenty yards. Such chocolate. Such bully beef. The truce was completely spontaneous and not repeated in nay thing like those numbers again -- somehow people can still get into the Christmas spirit when they've only been mowing each other down with ordinary bullets, but the festivity goes right out of the season once they've gassed each other."

174: "She still has all her dolls from when she was little. . . . there is Maurice, the organ - grinder's monkey; there is Scarlet Fever, the girl baby with the porcelain head; there is Diphtheria Rose . . . there are the twin sailors, Typhoid and TB Ahoy, and the little boy doll, Small Pox. There used to be a lovely lady doll in a ball gown, Cholera La France, but she got lost somewhere. In the pride of place is the flamenco dancer with her crimson dress and castanets. Spanish Influenza."

216: "When you're about to die and the priest comes and gives you extreme unction, he takes a set of clean underwear out of your drawer and blesses them. Then he puts them on you. Or if it's an emergency and there's no priest, anyone can bless teh clean underwear. That's where Fruit of the Loom underwear comes from, it comes from the Hail Mary when you say, 'Blessed is the fruit of thy loom, Jesus.'"

239: "It's simple really: just don't move, and you won't do anything you'll regret later."

481: Actually, you smell like the sea. . . . it smell[s] . . . Like rocks. Like an empty house with all the windows blowing open. Like thinking, like tears. Like November."

2. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)

7: "In neither play do the supposedly fate - ordained deaths of the flawed heroes and heroines, seem quite inevitable. . . . In both plays, the tragic characters, particularly Romeo and Othello, have abundant opportunity to save themselves. The fact that they do not save themselves, tends to characterize them as the unwitting victims of a disastrous practical joke. Insofar as these plays may be said to be fatalistic at all, any grains of authentic tragedy must be seen to reside in the heroines, Desdemona and Juliet."

The main character, Constance, is a sad Shakespearean academic whose theory is that Othello & Romeo Juliet would be comedies instead of tragedies except that both plays lack the character of the Wise Fool, whose role is to provide the characters with the information they need to avert tragic consequences. Constance then magically falls into the action of each of the plays and becomes the Wise Fool. She meets Desdemona and Juliet, introduces them to each other, and saves them from death. Voila - comedy! Very clever!

Years ago, I wrote something similar (though certainly not as clever) about the tragic heroine Anne Frankford in "A Woman Killed With Kindness" by Thomas Heywood (contemporary to Shakespeare). My complaint was that Anne is merely a character -- not a woman -- killed with kindness because Heywood leaves her woefully undeveloped and motive-less, using her only to serve the contrary and misogynistic point of his play. Who am I to criticize the master? Well, I am heartened to see that MacDonald also feels less than satisfied with the time - honored heroines. I applaud and recommend her most delightful re-write!


A Couple of Heartfelt Memoirs

1. So Briefly An Eagle
by Don Carriker

A sad and beautiful tribute written by my Uncle Don (my dad's youngest brother) about their older brother Uncle Rudy who died in France in WW II.

2. Mourning and Dancing: A Memoir of Grief and Recovery
by Sally Downham Miller

Very sad. A local hero, gone too soon. This book was recommended to me in 2010 by a local friend who died unexpectedly in 2011. Strange. As if she knew.


A Couple of Funny Family Tales

1. Bossypants
by Tina Fey

The early coming - of - age chapters were the most fun, all about growing up right outside of Philadelphia in neighborhoods that I recognized from my West Philly years. The show - biz chapters, less fun. Maybe you had to be there. By the end, I wasn't calling my friends to say "buy and read!" the way I had been at the beginning!

2. Happy Birthday or Whatever:
Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters
by Annie Choi

I enjoyed the adventures -- food, fashion, travel, education -- of this odd but smart, lovable family and am looking forward to reading her upcoming Shut Up, You're Welcome: Thoughts on Life, Death, and Other Inconveniences


A Couple of History Books

1. Unfamiliar Fishes
by Sarah Vowell

Before starting in on Hawaii, Vowell reminisces about majoring in French: "Affection for the French Enlightenment kind of comes with the diploma, along with a map of the Paris subway and a foolproof recipe for Proust's madeleines. One of my first homework assignments at college was to read Voltaire's Candide. I loved the book, but I especially loved discussing the book in class. I had spent my high school years trying to hide just how pretentious I was. So imagine my teenage glee at sitting in a fluorescent - lit room arguing about what Voltaire meant by 'we must cultivate our garden.' It occurs to me now that the novel is actually about an optimistic young person's disillusionment, but that irony was lost on me."

After reading, you'll wish that all of your history classes had been taught by Sarah Vowell . . . or Bill Bryson . . .

2. At Home: A Short History of Private Life
by Bill Bryson


A Couple of Conspiracy Theories -- or Not

1. Diana: Death of a Goddess
by David Cohen

Well, what can I say. Every now and then, I just have to read a Diana book. Talk about gone too soon. I passed this one on to my British father - in - law.

2. Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot
by Bill O'Reilly

Very level - headed. No in - your - face agenda. One of my Christmas presents from Sam, which I read in conjunction with our visit to Dallas and New Year's Eve tour of the Book Depository and the Grassy Knoll. Next, I'll have to read O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln . . . but will be better than Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation?

Holiday Thoughts from Powell, Rilke and Maso

Wooden Toys from Dresden
at the Chicago Christkindlmarket, 29 November 2012

The last couple of entries on this blog featured favorite
lines from Padgett Powell, Rainer Maria Rilke and Carole Maso.
[click links above or scroll down]
With the holidays upon us, here are a few more of their thoughts
on various and assorted impending festivities,
along with a few more photos from the Chicago Christkindlmarket.
~~ from Powell ~~
p 33 . . . When you are in charge of satisfying children at Christmas, how serious are you about stuffing the stockings?

p 104 . . . For New Year's Eve, do you prefer a big loud drunk party at which say someone pogos nude across the room, or would you like to stand beside a tree alone and see if there is any wind in it?

***********
The Star Store

~~ from Maso ~~

You have to love a novel whose very
first line is a celebration of celebrations!
p 3 . . . Each holiday celebrated with real extravagance. Birthdays. Independence days. Saints' days. Even when we were poor. With verve.

p 53 . . . It was Christmas Eve Day. I wore bells.

p 66 . . . Mardi Gras. The farewell to flesh. I dressed in feathers. Pointed beak and glitter. How we danced, through lights and confetti. The good-bye to the body.

Not forever, but for now.


p 84 . . . We were racing toward death, Francesco. We knew it even then.

How we celebrated each holiday, each saint's day. With verve.

Touch then this moment. Caress it with your mind.


p 108 . . . How we celebrated each Epiphany, each Bastille Day.

p 199 . . . It is the week before Christmas. In the apartment across the way, a man works on a dollhouse. So what if we are doomed? He will die rubbing a small chair smooth.

p 231, 241 . . . At the top of the stairs. A far - off green light in the night.

At the lip of the sea on Christmas night . . .

He bundled up the sea - soaked steps, carrying oysters, clams, sea urchins, crayfish, mussels, lobster. The fruits of the sea, he said in English. The jewels of the sea, and laid them at my feet. Twelve fish. It was Christmas Eve Day. That night we ate twelve fish. The green light of the lighthouse, snow on the beach. He knelt at my feet. One wave after the next over me. The sound of the foghorn. The smell of the sea. And sex. Will you marry me? Will you marry me? Will you marry me?

I will.
***********
The Candle & Lantern Store

~~ from Rilke ~~
Two of Rilke's ten Letters to a Young Poet (click to read online) are Christmas letters. In Letter #6, written on December 23, 1903, Rilke writes:

"My dear Mr. Kappus,
I don't want you to be without a greeting from me when Christmas comes and when you, in the midst of the holiday, are bearing your solitude more heavily than usual. But when you notice that is is vast, you should be happy; for what (you should ask yourself) would a solitude be that was not vast . . . ."
Rilke urges Kappus not to exchange "a child's wise not - understanding . . . for defensiveness and scorn," not to be deceived by the pseudo - dignity of "grownups."

" . . . if you suspect Christ was deluded by his yearning . . .
Why don't you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity, the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? . . . living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy? . . . Dear Mr. Kappus, celebrate Christmas in this devout feeling that perhaps He needs this very anguish of yours in order to begin . . . ."
(pp 53 - 63)
Five years later, Rilke writes Letter #10 from Paris, the day after Christmas 1908:

"You must know, dear Mr. Kappus,
how glad I was to have the lovely letter from you. The news . . . was very good news indeed. That is really what I wanted to write you for Christmas Eve; but I have been variously and uninterruptedly living in my work this winter, and the ancient holiday arrived so quickly that I hardly had enough time to do the most necessary errands, much less to write."
(pp 1-5 - 09)
I must confess to taking some comfort in the realization that I'm no different from Rilke when it comes to completing after Christmas many of the tasks that I hoped to complete before!

***********

Magi at the Market

Fresh Insights & Bursts of Clueness

"Just how fresh are these insights?"
Favorite New Yorker Cartoon from the 1980s

Uh . . . good question!
For this month, here are
some of my favorite insights
-- all in question form, of course! --
from
The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?
by Padgett Powell

One thing for sure -- this book is FULL of fresh insights!
I greatly enjoyed reading Powell's questions and formulating answers silently in my head, as well as reading various questions aloud to anyone who would listen. Near the end of the so - called novel (?), the author asks the reader to consider a few things:

Does is change things a bit for you to perceive
that these questions want you bad?
And that they are perhaps independent of me, to some degree?
That they are somewhat akin to, say, zombies of the interrogative mood?" (113)

If you're ready to face the interrogative zombies, please, read on . . .
80: “Is all of life clueless, or is most of it clueless with momentary bursts of clueness, or is it a spectrum of cluelessness to clueness on which people reside at various points, and are the points at which people reside on the spectrum of cluelessness fixed or variable? . . . what I meant was can you slide up and down the spectrum of cluelessnes to clueness like a trombone or do you toot your one more or less dumb note all the livelong day?"

81 - 82: "Is there in your opinion life after death? Is there death then before life? Wouldn't it be possible to get life and death mixed up and not be exactly clear what is what and when when?"

32 - 33, 120: "Do you have trouble throwing things away? If so, do you ever retrieve them after a period of anxiety over the throwing away? Is it then easier or more difficult than the first time to throw the thing away a second time? Do you have a limit for this kind of behavior? . . . Do you have any impulse to wish that everything you own could somehow without overmuch trauma be made to disappear?

109 - 110: "How many people per hundred would you say are asses? Should non - asses have to put up with asses? Should asses have to put up with non - asses? Who deserves less having to endure the other? Does it seem that by definition an ass is not so bothered by things as a non - ass? Is it fair to say, in fact, that asses are the unbothered and non - asses are the bothered? Do you think the bothered were really meant to inherit the earth?

127: "Are you preintellectual, anti - intellectual, intellectual, or postintellectual?