When Your Characters Outlive You

In an email correspondence with a fellow writer the other day the topic of fictional characters was discussed.  It intrigues me that though they are a product of our imagination they often take on a life of their own. 

Nowhere is this independent life of the character more evident than what seems to be happening lately with Lisbeth Salander, the popular female protagonist in Swedish author Stieg Larsson's popular Millennium trilogy, which has, as of last spring sold more than 27 million copies in 40 countries. The story has been made into three Swedish films and the American version (with Daniel "James Bond" Craig) will be out in December, with more to follow.  Lisbeth has her own page now, on Wikipedia.

I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first in the series, in two days.  Once I began, I simply could not put it down.  The second, The Girl Who Played with Fire, a few hundred pages longer, I read half of on a bus ride back from Boston, finishing it within the next two days.  I did not get The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (the third one), mainly because it was only available at the time in hardback and I prefer paperback.  But I did something my mate finds absolutely  incomprehensible and would never do himself, under any  circumstance--when I was in the bookstore in Vermont, I snuck a peak at the ending. So now I know how it ends. I  don't have to read it.

This is what happens sometimes when you read a trilogy, or quartet, or string of sequels with exactly the same character(s)--reader fatigue can set in.  It was not, however, with the character(s) this time.  It was with the writing.   Repetitions began occurring, particularly around certain phrases which, while amusing the first time, began to get  old after the fourth or fifth time), and the annoying (for lack of a better term) frequent product-placement-pattern.  I mean really, how many times do we have to know that Lisbeth ate Billy's Pan (frozen) pizza for dinner, or that the furniture in someone's flat comes from IKEA (mentioned several times) or the brand name, specifications and operational details of Lisbeth's camera or computer software?  Describing the entire contents of a character's refrigerator or closet or living space, item by item, made me think the author once must have worked in inventory and liked making lists of things.  (A Swedish native, also noting the frequent mention of Billy's Pan pizza in the novels, claims it actually tastes "like a month-old fish-in-chip wrapper, dusted with road salt".)

Mention a product in a novel and sure enough, the word will get around.  A blogger named Metalia uses the Billy pan pizza image to accompany a rap song she wrote about her own experience of reading the Millennium Trilogy, confessing that despite its extraordinary length and "extra crap that muddles the book," she liked it "as much as Lisbeth liked her Billy pan pizza."  (Though Larsson refers to everyone in his novel by their surname, to a score of readers Ms. Salander is simply "Lisbeth". )

The Girl Wth the Dragon Tattoo, the first book in the series, was initially titled "Men Who Hate Women", and indeed, Larsson's three books are full of men who not only hate but torture, rape, kidnap, sex-traffic and murder women, described in sometimes graphic detail, evoking disturbing images.  The reader's sense of fear is heightened  (as in a theatre, being on the edge of your seat watching something terrifying unfold on the screen), when you realize a character is about to become caught up in a hopeless situation.  The mystery aspect of the novel suddenly becomes overshadowed by its thriller enactments.  The reader feels what the character feels.  But Lisbeth Salander is not Everywoman.  She's tough as nails, vigilant, usually prepared, unwilling to submit to control of any kind, not by superiors, not even by those she loves.  Ever on the move, sly as a fox, her face a purposely impenetrable mask, she lets no one know who she really is or what she thinks.  This intrigues readers.  It also frightens certain other characters in the story.  She doesn't fit the mold.  One has to deal with her differently.  Does Stieg Larsson himself find her needing to be tamed a little?

Johannes Göransson of Exoskeleton blog makes an interesting observation about Lisbeth Salamander's character, that in her fictional life, trauma and love were both used "to control her violent motility, to give her inferiority", and that while trauma "might excuse her weirdness," in the end the author has her falling in love with Blomkvist, the other main character, "to sentamentalize her" (implying either an intentional or inadvertent attempt on the author's part to make her just like every other woman?).

Lisbeth Salander is a tiny, 90-lb. child-woman, a tattooed, multiply-pierced, quirky, violent, bisexual, expert computer hacker who has a photographic memory.  She's hard to figure out, even when you know her history.  And she has become the new cult figure of a horde of fascinated new readers.  A victim who refuses to wallow in victimhood, she fights back, carefully, methodically, sometimes viciously.  Justice or revenge--she operates by her own peculiar moral code.

Her image has cropped up EveryBloodyWhere.  Websites offering dragon-tattoo T-shirts and mousepads are of course available and in no time, as with the Harry Potter franchising megablast, it would not be surprising to see Lisbeth Salander action figures and wasp-like talking dolls in production by Christmas time.   In the back of my 724-page copy of The Girl Who Played with Fire (the second book in the series), is an ad inviting you to "Win a trip for two to explore Lisbeth Salander's Sweden!"--or, you could join hundreds of others flocking to take a walking tour of  the Swedish landmarks mentioned in the books (as was done with the sites in Paris, mentioned in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code).

Stieg Larsson, the author of the Millennium books, died in 2004, at the age of 50, of a heart attack, after climbing seven flights of stairs when an elevator had malfunctioned, and collapsing.  He was a heavy smoker, never exercised, and apparently "lived on hamburgers and carried his belongings around in a plastic bag." His last words, according to a colleague,  were: "I'm 50, for Christ's sake."[1]). He died before completing the fourth book in the series (there were originally supposed to be 10), and it is possible it could be finished by someone else--his longtime partner, Eva Gabridsson, perhaps.  Some have even suggested it was she, and not Larsson, who is the actual author of the trilogy, claiming that he was not actually that accomplished a writer.   At any rate, the hubbub has not died down, and six years after Stieg Larsson has left the earth, the books' popularity continues, unabated.

From a reader's perspective, the story definitely holds one's interest.  Even readers who complain of its length and sometimes obsessive detail, agree that it's "riveting" and are compelled to continue reading.  If you're going to write about corporate corruption or abuse of women or sex trafficking, using fiction to bring these issues to public attentiion, this author has certainly succeeded.  As a thriller, with mysteries to solve and motives to discover, it tickles the curiosity, and an unusual or deeply complex character can serve as a mental magnet to entice you to not just stop at the first book.  From a writer's perspective, however, the writing is sometimes a bit  pedestrian.  All the excitement, it seems to me, is for the story, the mystery, and readers' fascination with the main character: Lisbeth Salander, and the battle over who gets final control over Stieg Larsson's unfinished manuscripts. The books' potential for being morphed into a long-term cash cow, in films and walking tours and commercial products exites a different group of people.

So here's the thing.  Apropros the subject of one's fictional characters, say you're writing, or want to write, a novel, and you have in mind a certain character or characters and a particular story you want to tell in which those characters play a part--what is it exactly you want the reader to come away with?  The way you wrote, recognition, or that your words or images resonated--or all of the above?  What happens, for example, when you, as writer, become invisible as author, no one remembering anymore who penned your brilliant creation?  Would that upset you?

I wrote a short story once in which the protagonist all but has a nervous breakdown because his fictional character will not agree to being killed off in the last installment of the author's decades-long detective series.  The writer has grown weary of writing this in genre and wants to move on to something else, but his character won't let him.  Also, the author has become jealous of his protagonist.  The character is much more self confident, he realizes, than he himself is; gets more women, has more Fun.  It turns into a battle.  His fictional alter-ego turns on him, refusing to mouth dialogue he feels is beneath his imagined elegance. This is what happens when one gets too involved IN the stories one writes, ha ha, is not just the pen penning them but when one hangs out with the characters too long, until the fine line separating the writer from the writing becomes hopelessly blurred.  My character can no longer see the difference.  The story ends with a surprising revelation, and because readers didn't see it coming, felt tricked.  They suggested taking it out, telling me you have to be careful with surprise endings; not everyone enjoys being fooled.

The problem with (some of) my stories is that many of the characters are not all that memorable.  Certainly nothing in the league of Lisbeth Salamander.  They are nobodies:  awkward, uncertain, sometimes foolish, more observers of life than participants, beings caught up in and unable to extract themselves from certain ridiculous situations; people at the end of life wondering what they could have done differently and deciding it didn't matter, ordinary people finding love in unexpected places or stumbling on an insight, dislodging a longheld belief; or saying what can't be said but felt.

My friend reminded me that our made-up characters are like our children--they do what they want. And like our children, we don't want them to get pounced on.  We downplay their flaws, don't send them out on their own until they're ready, or we feel they're ready.  And then, of course, there's nothing we can do, they either sink or stand on their own.  Will they make us proud, or be ridiculed, criticized, made to seem inferior, or praised by friends because that's what they think we want to hear?  Should it matter, what anyone thinks? Someday down the road we may ourselves realize we could have done a better job with this or that creation, and re-do it.  And it's back to work again.  Reshaping, readjusting, redefining, rewriting. 

Fictional characters are simply the vehicles to carry the story or mouth the words we want said, when you have something to say, or when you just want to experiment, see how it comes out.  You can always change the salad dressing.  The point is, it must, in the end, be at least palatable.   What one finds delectible, another might choke on.  It goes beyond mere taste, though, in writing.  Good writing, I think, is instantly recognizable.  Even if you don't think much of the venue, packaging, etc.--you know good writing when you see/hear it.

Churning out book after book, collecting accolades, doing book tours, making guest appearances, raking in the dough--how many writers fit that category today?  Even with wildly popular books, at some point it ends.  Then they wait for your next book, which will be judged better or worse than the one preceding it, and if it's not perceived as being equal or better, your limelight might fade a tad.  The problem with writing today is, you not only have to hawk your own books, you often turn out to be the sole publisher, at considerable expense, just to get them "out there."  Unless you luck out like the once obscure J. K. Rawlings, in 2003 dubbed the wealthiest woman in entertainment/show business, eleven times richer than the Queen of England.[2]  Notice it's not the richest "writer".  Her field is referred to as entertainment/show business. 

But back to Blomkvist and Salander, et al.  My assessment of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy: It definitely was a page turner.  Even readers who found it at times tedious and unbearably detailed admitted it was "compelling", and "riveting".  I concur. Had I read the second book without first having read Number One, parts of it would have been confusing.  But reading the second one so soon after the first, it just seemed like more of the same (Billy Pan pizza again!!!  And really, how many people do you know who eat sandwiches first thing in the morning for Breakfast?!  Sandwiches and coffee and pizza all the time, made me yearn for, oh I don't know, ANYTHING different, ha ha). There were different, equally interesting adventures in Book Number 2 but on the whole it was somewhat of a disappointment.  Others have told me this as well.  The 724 pages could have been whittled down a bit--to say, 500. 

Since I now know the ending to Book No. 3 (having peeked), (which by the way, cleverily leaves open the possibility for a Number 4--and by extention--5, 6, 7, ad infinitum), I can wait till it comes out in paperback--or if I think of it again, which may or may not be the case.  Despite mild curiosity about what new problems Salander and Blomkvist are going to encounter in Book No. 3,  I guess you could say I'm pretty much 'trilogied out' right now. I want to move on.

Speaking of saturation, once, in my other life, I read The Golden Bowl, based on a friend's enthuasiastic recommendation, and thereafter in the course of one summer in Toledo, Ohio decided to read every novel Henry James had ever written.  Making a list, I got them out of the local library and began.  After about the eighth or ninth book, however, I experienced a sudden bout of sentence overload.  I blame that summer Jamesian reading marathon for my seemingly ingrained tendency toward verbosity. I could not plow through a novel by Henry James now without groaning (sorry, Henry).  I loved his subtle weaving of words, the delicious way he skirted meanings and played out nuances, linking intricate threads of words in which the reader gets enmeshed and carried thickly along.  But in the end, it tried my patience. (I am not good at 1000-piece puzzles, either. I'd rather climb through a forest thicket shoeless than sit working on a puzzle for four hours.  (Finding hidden or purposely obscured information--now that's a different story; à chacun son goût.)  I think it was the what seemed to me pointless curcuitry of getting to the heart of a thing that did me in, regarding Henry's novels.  Some people circle around a thing; others plunge directly to it, disregarding the sign that says: "Go this way".  This is typical of Aquarians.  If told to go right, for example, they say, "Can I go left instead?" But that is neither here nor there.

And so it goes, as Vonnegut says.   Said.   He doesn't seem gone, somehow.  Every writer's dream:  Not to be out of the mind of readers. ( I wonder if he's still giving them hell, wherever the heck he is.)

Enough.

Little Inserts Bringing Smiles

Steven Fama's recent post about Greying Ghost Press in Salem, Mass., and the various items that were included with the book he ordered got me curious. I decided to check this publisher out and ended up ordering a booklet from them--one of the few in the catalogue that hasn't yet sold out--titled "Walden Book" by Allen Bramhall.  It cost a mere $3 (including shipping to Canada) and arrived promptly.

Yes, it's true, just as Steven Fama says, "You buy a book, any book, and you get the book and what amounts to a goofy treasure-stack of flotsam and jetsam (plus free pamphlets) that brings back the fun of (warning: boy and young kid allusions dead-ahead) opening a pack of baseball cards and seeing which players you got, plus the silly fun of the prize in the CrackerJack box."

I'm a sucker for the CrackerJack box experience. Who can resist the invitation to ... have fun?!   Here's what I pulled out from the envelope sent from Greying Ghost Press when it arrived last Friday:

"Walden Book", by Allan Bramhall on unnumbered pages, 'printed and bound in an edition of 75 by Carl Annarummo in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. The covers are from an old coastal map found in a recycling bin.'  My copy is #10.

It's a booklet of 18 prose poems about Walden Pond in Concord, Mass.  I know this pond, have walked those woods, swum in those waters, felt both the nearness and absence of Thoreau there. Words, images, things touched on in the poems clearly resonated.

~ "I cannot believe any catastrophe could be as damp as this pond" (from "Monstrous Walden")

~ "I drank of the water and it tasted of Mexico. Henry hated that war, the standard installations. Walden's formulation left me instilled with a gift.   if you live in the deep cold, and prance along wooded margin, the cautious countryside continues.   life force holds an ace up the certifiable sleeve. this is mere red wine of a saturday eve ....." (from "Political Pond Power")

~ "any day could hold something. the shapely articulation never fades.  splitting light spreads a dramatic      tone poem for all." (from "Walden Will Remain")

~ "the Conquistadors aren't done, envy is a perfect implosion. something is over there, across the way.   just another monster, perhaps, but highly intriguing. maybe we should have words." (from "Stress Test").

~ "this pond makes sense, said that person, laying by the water. I must regulate my functions within this framework, agreed another.   next to and listening.    now talk is cheap.   Walden Pond has this thing, it puts position on the map.   the map fills with specified colours, just for the nexis of that.  imagine!   I love your pond, Henry, someone murmurs.   we are heartened, came an agreeable noise from someone else.  everyone is someone, listen.   the earth seems something of a puddle right now.   it's a political thing, announced whoever, whenever.   the winds that swirl the pretty eddies has a thoughtful virtue.  the sensible pond cluthces time in all transformations.  choice articles clear the eyes, the view perfects.  someone smile and take my picture, pleads a tourist, visiting from a place.   taxonomy relaxes the boundaries, and everyone dies to learn more. these racing cars (Route 2) enforce the latest. mind where you roam, percipient one. endless delivery is a love of place. (from "Map This").

I find myself coming back to certain phrases, certain images. ("Thoreau's ghost makes a rare appearance everyday.   smile when you see that he has been laughing inwardly.   you can throw a rock on his memorial cairn, or screw it, invent a new tree. oh the passing train feels a sadness ..." etc.)  I've taken that sad train to Walden; it often carries relatives to visit inmates at the Northeastern Correctional Center.  Can sadness reside in the seats of a train?  In the track on which it rumbles forward? 

Here's what else was in the package from Greying Ghost:

A Triptych of Poems by Nate Pritt
Three Poems by Gregory Sherl

A playing or trading card. The back of the card says "Whitman".
He looks too neat to be a real cowboy--his shirt looks shiny
and ironed, not a smudge or scuff mark on his perfectly
creased leather pants, not a hair out of place. 

Three 50-word stories, as  part of the Stamp Stories Project
at  Mudluscious Press, by Teresse Svoboda, Zachary 
Schomburg, and Norman Lock.   (Click to enlarge)

Page from a fashion magazine.







 And on the reverse side:

Script beneath the photo:

"We asked Mr. Sahl why he always wears button-down-collar shirts and no tie. "I'm a button-down type," he replied.

"It's an anthropomorphic determination. And I sometimes wear a tie--say, if I'm taking a gal out to dinner. I don't believe in wars over minor issues." Mr. Sahl shown here in his deep-tone Mountain Grape and Piedmont Blue sweater with vertical Grape accents, a bulky knit wool pullover Italian import.

A postcard of Government House in Toronto.

A Sears Roebuck catalogue page of  pocket watches (90 cents
for one in a solid silver case); a glossy page titled "Subscribers",

with various coats of arms and symbols, flags and swords 

(crossed), including the seal of the city of Boston founded in 1630; 

and page 216 of a Tarzan novel. (Click to enlarge)

l

Mixed Pickles:  

~ ~ A postcard in Hebrew.  Inscribed on the back in blue ink:  "Happy New Year Barbara, from your mother, Jan 1, 1985"

~ ~ A page from a HULK comic book where a military figure warns Hulk that it's his last chance, "Those planes are carrying bombs with nuclear warheads! Give yourself up or we'll blast that cave off the face of the map!"

 ~ ~ An ad page from the back of a nameless magazine urging you, among other things, to "Go globe-trotting at home with a custom-built, all-wave Scott Fifteen short-wave radio console ("Hear, in the quiet comfort of your own home, Spanish tangos, German symphonies, Italian opera, London dance bands, or the wild laugh of the Australian Kookaburra ... direct from their homelands."); sail to Europe via Red Starlines (one way to Antwerp, $117.50); take a summer tour of Ceylon via India State Railways for $18 a day.

~ ~ A page from a comicbook in which an apparition named "Trevor", bearing a remarkable resemblance to  Clark Gable (except his mustache is twirly and pointed, while Clark's, if I remember correctly, was thinner and more tapered), appears to a young woman awakening from sleep.  "You know me, don't you, Lucille?" his voice bubble croons ominously.   "Yes," her voice bubble replies, "but ... you didn't die, DID you?"   In the next frame she asks herself, as he slobbers her with smooches,  "Why am I accepting his kisses... I hate him... and he TERRIFIES me!"   So--Hollywood, ha ha.  In the last frame, she marches zombie-like after him, declaring her obedience to his every command.  I do not know how this turns out, as Greying Ghost has included only this one page.  I seriously doubt the author of this little story was a woman.  (Lucille is blond and beautiful, almost voluptuous, in her form-revealing pink nightie. The cartoon man's dream girl.)

~ ~ A second, different cartoon page where a mysterious hooded figure warns:  "My Lords, I come to you with evil news.  The time of the prophecy of chaos is at hand" (in a kingdom called Crystalilim with no king, where twin princes are vying for the throne). 

What a little treasure trove of stories and poems that could be created from these curious cuttings!! And all of this -- for a mere $3.00.   Thank you, Greying Ghost.  I now know how to write Happy New Year in Hebrew;  I got introduced to three new poets and three writers of mini-stories limited to 50 words; and  I learned that Boston was founded in 1630.  (I knew that before, but forgot the last two digits.)

Things that got my attention in the clippings:

~  That when these magazine ads were published, zip codes did not exist, and you could take a Mediterranean cruise for TWO WHOLE MONTHS, hitting 22 ports of call for a little over $300.

~ That two of these randomly selected items used virtually identical language in sending a message intended to intimidate:  an ad trying to get you to buy a certain brand of dog biscuit featuring a growling  pit bull quoted as saying, "I mean BUSINESS!!", followed by the kinder approach:  "We dogs are easy to please... just give us the right food ..."  Implied, of course, is:  "and if you don't--well, you just better watch out.  Look at the picture.  Look at my growly face.  Look at my sharp teeth.  Look at my words.  'I mean BUSINESS.'"   And in the comic book, a military type shaking his fist, screams at his comrades:  "Show him we mean BUSINESS!!" (as a canon is pointed at Hulk's head).

Marketing messages intended to subconsciously bully customers into buying a product; uniformed gun-pointers proclaiming solidarity in the business of killing--in this case, a large, green person who has an uncontrollable anger management problem.  It just seemed odd, the repetition of that particular phrase, about "meaning business".  Nowadays we don't say that that much anymore; we shorten it and simply say:  "I MEAN it", emphasizing our resolve to turn nastier and carry the threat one step further if what's requested isn't done.  Less business, more meaning--a good thing, one would think.  But in context, things haven't evolved all that much, it seems to me:  it's simply continued being business-as-usual, conducted by meanies. 

Enough of bully talk.  What drew an immediate smile was that "Slim" the perfect cowboy reminded me of my first remembered love.  As a child I once heard an old recording of  Gene Autry singing a Christmas song and told my mother I loved him and was going to marry him.  I must have been 7 or 8 at the time.  She reminded me of my age, suggesting that this was one dream that couldn't possibly come true for me.  I didn't like that answer and  told her:  "I'll wait."  By the time I next remembered my childish infatuation, Gene Autry was, of course, long deceased.  But it wasn't his cowboyness I loved, or even his face.  It was his voice.  Once, some years ago, someone somewhere, on TV or something, played that particular song during the holidays and the people around me laughed at how corny and old fashioned it sounded, but I got goosebumps hearing it. It was like an old love, visiting once again, and everything disappeared: the room, the people, the TV.  All that remained was Gene Autry and the child-me, together again, like I once dreamed.  My little secret.  I never let on, then or since, that I was once in love with, of all people, Gene Autry.

Random clippings, a cowboy card, inserted randomly, in a packet housing a book, a key to unlock past images, bringing back a time where waiting and hoping, for what couldn't ever ever be, was willingly embraced, because of love.  Associations.....

I like the idea of showcasing other poets' work by including them as little bonus gifts when one orders a book; of small press publishers working in concert to promote new poets and writers by including samples with book orders; and in Greying Ghost's case, injecting the fun of anticipation and surprise into discovering the funky, interesting and/or nostalgic clippings chosen for each package mailed out.  They increase knowledge, bring back memories, and (for me at least) provide a wealth of material for future stories and poems.

Thank you Steven Fama for the link.  And thank you Greying Ghost for a delightful mid-afternoon break from the monotony of database work, to go revisit, if only mentally, a beloved pond down Massachusetts way, meet some other poets, and see what little surprises came in the envelope from Salem.  In the end it's not the clippings, or the momentary fun, but the words that remain.  The words. 

Some words not only the writer but readers themselves might utter.  

"I love your pond, Henry."

"everyone is someone.  listen."

Poetry, Writ and Sung

I received an email this morning from a local discussion group that meets twice a month at a downtown bistro to talk about science, art and literature, in an effort to address what they term "the need for lively thought."   

Discussion at the next meeting will center around reflections on a single line in one of Louis Aragon's poems entitled ll n'y a pas d'amour heureux, a melancholic poem about the nature of love.  (trans. "There is no happy love.")

The line they'll be discussing is  "Le temps d'apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard" ("The time to learn to live is already too late"), focusing on Aragon's development of a reflection on the aims of human existence.

Not only philosophical discussions have resulted from the reading of this poem but it's been made into a song recorded by French singer Georges Brassens (1921-1981).

Brassens sang not just the verses of Aragon, but  lyrics based on poems of Lamartine, Richepin, Villon, Apollinaire, and Victor Hugo (the latter in which he "protests the indoctrination of vulnerable minds with Medieval religious terrors")

His songs have been translated into 20 languages, and 50 doctoral dissertations have been written about him.   He's made 200 recordings, singing about first love, unrequited love, middle-aged love; nostalgia for his childhood town, cheating death, dying for one's ideas, reasons not to propose marriage, the malignant effects of publicity, capital punishment, the intolerance of respectable people.

He wrote songs remembering his days in poverty and hiding, and of being a total outsider (with titles such as "The Bum You Are" and "Useless Weed That I Am"). Called an outcast and an anarchist, forced into hiding--then choosing to stay there--he wrote and sang his and others' poetry.

[This information thanks to David Barfield, who has devoted his blog entirely to the songs of Georges Brassens, including lyrics in both French and English, as well as videos of Brassens and others' performing them  (e.g., the naughty Carla Bruni, wife of French president Nicholas Sarkozy, despite being strongly advised not to do so, here singing one of Brassens' bawdy songs that was banned on French radio.]

Georges Brassens, singing "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux".

Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Rien n'est jamais acquis à l'homme Ni sa force

Ni sa faiblesse ni son coeur Et quand il croit

Ouvrir ses bras son ombre est celle d'une croix

Et quand il croit serrer son bonheur il le broie

Sa vie est un étrange et douloureux divorce

          Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Sa vie Elle ressemble à ces soldats sans armes

Qu'on avait habillés pour un autre destin

A quoi peut leur servir de se lever matin

Eux qu'on retrouve au soir désoeuvrés incertains

Dites ces mots Ma vie Et retenez vos larmes

          Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Mon bel amour mon cher amour ma déchirure

Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé

Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer

Répétant après moi les mots que j'ai tressés

Et qui pour tes grands yeux tout aussitôt moururent

          Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Le temps d'apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard

Que pleurent dans la nuit nos coeurs à l'unisson

Ce qu'il faut de malheur pour la moindre chanson

Ce qu'il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson

Ce qu'il faut de sanglots pour un air de guitare

          Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne soit à douleur

Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit meurtri

Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit flétri

Et pas plus que de toi l'amour de la patrie

Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne vive de pleurs

          Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

          Mais c'est notre amour à tous les deux

Louis Aragon (La Diane Francaise, Seghers 1946)

[Source:  Feelingsurfer's blog.]

There Is No Happy Love

Man never truly possesses anything

Neither his strength, nor his weakness, nor his heart

And when he opens his arms

His shadow is that of a cross

And when he tries to embrace happiness

He crushes it

His life is a strange and painful divorce

       There is no happy love

His life resembles those soulless soldiers

Who have been groomed for a different fate

Why should they rise in the morning

When nighttime finds them disarmed, uncertain

Say these words and hold back your tears

       There is no happy love

My beautiful love, my dear love, my torn heart

I carry you in me like a wounded bird

Those who unknowingly watch us walk by

Repeat after me my words and sigh

They have already died in your bright eyes

       There is no happy love

By the time we learn to live

It's already too late

Our hearts cry in unison at night

It takes many a misfortune for the simplest song

Many regrets to pay for a thrill

Many a tear for a guitar's melody

       There is no happy love

There is no love which is not pain

There is no love which does not bruise

There is no love which does not fade

And none that is greater than your love for your country

There is no love which does not live from tears

       There is no happy love

       But it is our own love

[Source: Verbal Collage]

Hotternhades

The past two days and nights have been exceedingly hot and humid. My tomatoes in the garden love it. All the sun people I know, love it. Last night there was no wind, not even an occasional, timid little puff of it. We have one fan, which sits downstairs during the day, and is dragged back upstairs at night. Even when it is blowing directly on you, it still feels like you're sleeping inside an oven. We didn't invest in an air conditioner because summer is short here and out of the whole summer, these sweltering, steamy days are relatively few.

What's most bothersome about continuing high heat and humidity is that it depletes every last ounce of one's energy. I turn into a complete vegetable. Or so it seems. Only in mid-October, when the first chilling winds arrive, does the mind come completely alive again. Summer is usually my least productive time; I'd just rather read or swim or watch movies. For most people here the arrival of Fall means Winter's coming soon, and they groan. I'm among the one percent who jump up and down shouting "Yay!!!" at the first hint of a snowflake.

But that's not for some time yet. The heat wave's debilitation's rendered the mind complete mush today, and to prove it, here's a little poem I just wrote on this particular season (somewhat biased; were it 10 degrees cooler, it would no longer be relevant), (with apologies to Wallace Stevens):

One must have a mind of summer
To withstand the heat and the burn
Of the sun's brutal spread

And have loved warmth a long time
To regard the asphalt steaming and
The ice’s instant melt in the bag

In the August sun, and not to think
Of any misery in the lack of wind
Or sweat-soaked hair

Which is the blast of Sun’s fire
Burning the brain
to complete inertia.

For the sunbather, who bakes in the sand,
asleep to himself, yet sensing
Everything that is there and the Otherness that

isn’t.

My Lucky Number

It's weird about numbers, how we relate to certain numbers, have favorites, etc.

I'm a 4.  I have always thought of myself as a 4.  Perhaps because I was born on the fourth day of the month.  I thought of my mother as a 2, though she was born on the 24th day of the first month of the year.  The then love of my life, for many years, was a 7.  The combination of him and me (4 + 7) in my mind came up, not as 11, but 47. 

That this was indeed my lucky number was first confirmed--or so I convinced myself--years ago when I agreed to go one afternoon with a friend to the dog races.  To me, this friend was just a casual acquaintance.  But I think at the time he thought of our little excursion as a date. 

On the way to the ticket booth, he explained the basics on how to place a bet.  I was more interested in looking at the thin, sleek, graceful greyhounds, wondering what kind of life they led when they were not training or racing.  He asked me which dogs I wanted to bet on.  I don't remember the names of any of the dogs and because he was in a hurry, I gave him $2 and said to bet on numbers 4 to win and 7 to place.  (4 + 7 = 47) He made his bets based on a thorough examination of each dog's racing history and current predicted favorites.  Dogs Number 4 and 7 weren't among them.

Imagine his (and my) surprise when 4 won and 7 came in second.  He was dumbfounded and scowled and muttered something like "Beginner's luck!"    I don't remember the exact amount of the winnings but it was around $50 (a considerable amount at the time, for two poverty-stricken students), which he insisted we had to split because it was he who went to the booth and placed the bet for me.  He seemed miffed that none of his picks had turned out, and that I, a race-gambling newbie, who wasn't even paying attention when he explained how to bet, ended up winning.  But that seemed to me at the time, a message from the universe.  Yes, your lucky number is indeed 47.

Fast forward to today and I'm web surfing for some info on an entirely unrelated matter and come across a poem written about the number 47, by Bulgarian poet Ivan Kulekov.  Here it is:

It may not be the greatest number in the world, but it's still my lucky number, to this day.  I've won lottery tickets (nothing substantial, usually only in the $10 range, but once for $40) when that number was specifically chosen, and twice on a "quick pick" where the store machine picked the number for me.  Not that I do this often--I mean what are the odds of winning even a hundred dollars buying a lottery ticket--and it's probably only coincidence, but the myth lives on, ha ha, that this number, 47,  is still significant, despite the connotation on which it was originally based.  

Silly humans and their strange beliefs: That 1 is more important than 2, that 13 is unlucky, that 66 is evil, that saying "Be back in 2 minutes" sounds better somehow than "Be back in 3 minutes".

But hey, how many people can say their personal lucky number has a whole poem written about it? I'm thrilled.

Digging Time

This is at the corner of our street, looking left.

and this is looking right, up toward the bus stop.

Our street is blocked and the bus must now take a detour,

like the rest of us.

They are replacing old, eroded water pipes.

Cap-de-la-Madeleine sector is said to have the 

best-tasting water in the area.

Am not sure, but I think those long, thin blue pipes over there
will be the new ones.

Of course they have to fill in all the huge holes and
  repave the road when they're finished.  A neighbor
told me last night that it'll take several more weeks.

It's not so bad, except there's this one truck that makes this annoying peeping sound, CONSTANTLY, all day long, from 8 a.m. till after 5:00 p.m. when they stop work.  Try trying to concentrate on anything when you're at your desk in the middle of something--it's like having a bird on your shoulder peep-peep-PEEPing in your ear, nonstop.

I envy people who can block such things out:  construction noise, a TV blaring, someone yakking in the background, heavy-metal "music", a child screeching.  I knew a five-year-old Chinese girl once who was able to do that.  She was amazing.  She had the ability to concentrate on the task at hand in the midst of total, mind-scattering chaos, when all the children around her were jumping up and down and the teachers themselves distracted and frazzled.  This was years ago. The family moved back to Berlin and I lost track of them but heard later that she'd gone to Berkeley, majoring in math, I think.  I wish I knew her secret.  Is that something you're born with--or can it be learned?

The work guys, having lunch on the hillside.

Glug Glug

Gunk from the Gulf

DRINKING OIL

Gushing with rage
Gaia screams out oily plumes
that bleed into life waters

Feed the car. It’s very important to
keep feeding the car.

When the fishes are gone,
the blackened waters coating all,
a well-fed car can take you away …

assuming you could leave,
which of course, you can’t.

Pray for Mother Earth
and don’t forget …
to feed the car.

I received word yesterday that this reactive poem I hastily wrote back in June re: the Gulf Oil "spill" is being published at Poets for Living Waters in their Open Mic section.  (PLW is a site for "poetry action in response to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico." The Featured Poet section on the main page is currently full, but poems are apparently continuing to be published in the Open Mic section linked at the top of the page.)

This was, on my part, a reactive poem--that is, one written entirely in reaction to something that deeply affected me, though I don't live anywhere near the Gulf.   Poems written as a "response" to something ... "in the moment", so to speak, are not often one's best work, and its rapid dispersement doesn't excuse what may only be a clumsy attempt to express muted outrage. I was actually surprised anyone would want to publish it.

And then a friend saw it on-line and emailed me, saying it reminded him of something Ilya Ehrenburg said, in 1929, about cars, and how prophetic that seemed at the time. He urged me to go read Ehrenburg's book, The Life of the Automobile, which of course is not available in translation here. But I did find a sample excerpt:

The automobile works honestly. Long before its birth, when it is still just layers of metal and piles of drawings, it diligently murders Malayan coolies and Mexican laborers. It is born in agony! It shreds flesh, blinds eyes, eats lungs, destroys minds. At last, it rolls out of the gates into the world which, before its existence, was known as “bright.” Instantly, it deprives its supposed owner of his old-fashioned peace of mind. Lilac withers, chickens and dreamers dash away in terror. The automobile laconically runs down pedestrians. It gnaws into the side of a barn or else, grinning, it flies down a slope. It can’t be blamed for anything. Its conscience is as clear as Monsieur Citroen’s conscience. It only fulfills its destiny: It is destined to wipe out the world.

"... chickens and dreamers dash away in terror ...it is destined to wipe out the world."  

"Now, you have joined Ehrenburg in writing about the horrors of the automobile!" my friend added. [Neither my friend nor I own an automobile.] 

Stephen King's novel "Christine" came to mind.  I haven't read the book but my mate's seen the film of the same name, based on the novel.  It's a horror film about an cocky, arrogant, killer car with a deadly past that maliciously destroys  anyone daring to want to own it.  "But it's a classic", my mate laughed when I declined to watch it.  Monster killer cars aside, should we be blaming the automobile, that little box of metal, glass and rubber that we ride around inside of every day?  James Howard Kunstler, in his 1996 book Home from Nowhere says it's not the car's fault; it's ours: "The regime of mass car use is an offshoot of our historical aversion to civility itself."

My friend unknowingly echoed this sentiment.  He ended his email lamenting: "We no longer meditate in our journeys to our friends, our lovers--and even the ride to the morgue and the cemetery is one dismal ride in an automobile!"

The poem had two focuses: specifically: what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico; and more generally, our unbreakable addiction to oil.

In the rush to get at the oil to feed our cars, accidents happen.  While blame is being passed around, it is we who end up having to stomach the result and drink the oil--our wildlife and fishes first--and because we consume the fish in those oil-infested waters, we also get to ingest the chemical poisons that have been used to push it to the bottom, also known as dispersing.  THIS is what causes people to react.

They get angry, they cry out, they shake their fists, they hurl words.  They dress them as poems and send them off, to join hundreds of others, in an impassioned response full of anguish, satire, outrage, pulling out the words that first come tumbling out of the mental arsenal.    The feelings that engender the poem are heartfelt.  I'm not sure, though, despite the fact that it's been accepted for publication, that my hurried effort constitutes merit AS a good-enough poem.  I didn't take much time with it, and perhaps that shows. 

That said, I still wanted my voice added to the others, the community of writers responding, with their words, to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, to the continual raping of the earth, and to our insatiable greed for the very element that may in the end, as Ehrenburg cautioned,eventually "wipe us out."

This is not about what you think

Kudos to Scottish writer/poet Jim Murdoch for the most creative (and hilarious) example of how to tell readers about one's newly published book.

A dialogue that is not about what you think, to promote a book entitled This Is Not About What You Think, a collection spanning 31 years, of self-described "plain-speaker" Jim Murdoch's poetry.  (You can read samples of some of the poems here).

I especially liked this one:

Unbrokenness

There exists within physical things

the potential to be broken.

It is only a matter of time

and of unforeseen circumstances.

These things can be repaired, replaced

or buried and forgotten about.

Nothing can ever be unbroken.

His poem "Marks", hinges on the fact that the word "mark" has a double meaning: it is a synonym for 'scar', and it also indicates a grade.  The poem, Murdoch says, "leans heavily on the fact that meanings are not rigid.  There can be resonances."

For everything you ever wanted to know about the writing of this book, click here, where the poet interviews himself.  A poet with a sense of humor, writing about Life, in all its simplicity, complexity, and invitingly observable ... thereness.  [Ouch, what awkward wording. I only meant to say the invitation to observe may not be so subtle--like life itself, sometimes it confronts, and sometimes it obscures--or as one of Murdoch's poems cautions, sometimes it disappoints. Anyway ...]

The book seems definitely worth checking out, and I will. Am just passing the word along, for anyone interested.

The newest little grandbub

Introducing little Gabriel Calix, born a little after 1 A.M. yesterday, weighing 7 lbs. 9 oz. and 19 inches long, whom I will get to meet for the first time this autumn.

We have been celebrating ever since. A hearty welcome, little one. I can't wait to see you, hold you, learn absolutely everything about you. 

~ ~ Your grammy in Canada, counting the days!!!

Received in the mail

Cid Corman: Word for Word: Essays on the Arts of Language, Vol. 1. Printed January 1977 in Santa Barbara and Ann Arbor for the Black Sparrow Press by MacIntosh and Young & Edwards Brothers Inc. Design by Barbara Martin. This edition is published in paper wrappers; there are 500 hardcover trade copies; 200 hardcover copies are numbered & signed by the author; & 500 numbered copies have been handbound in boards by Earle Gray, each containing an original holograph poem by Cid Corman. Photo of Cid Corman at back, by John Levy. 169 pages.

My copy is paper bound with the pencilled notation: "LC -- 5/98 -- 14.00" on the page before the title, listing Cid's published works. I found the book on Ebay, for $3.00. It arrived shrink-wrapped, and in perfect condition.

PABLO NERUDA: Selected Poems. A Bilingual edition, in Spanish and English. Edited and with a foreword by Nathanial Tarn. Introduction by Alastair Reid. Translated by Anthony Kerrigan, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid and Nathanial Tarn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, (1990), 508 pages. Bought on Ebay, for 99 cents.

Farm Visit by Bob Arnold. A poem in 28 pages, with illustrations. Guilford, Vermont: Longhouse Publishers, 2010. A gift from Bob and Susan Arnold, beautifully executed and artfully assembled, by hand. Merci une mille fois for this lovely little gift.

Although in the poem Bob's referring to cows taking a "skinny path to the pasture", the line following that one describes what I intend to do mentally, i.e., "Late in the day I will walk that path with them back home". Vermont is still home, though I only lived there briefly. The words of this poem bring that all back to me--"a place of coolness", an "aisle of light" (quoting the second and last lines in the poem).

A summer with poets, arriving to visit, one packaged group of words at a time; joining others on the shelves, to become permanent guests. How great is that!!!

In the early morning write

Gordon Lightfoot has a song that begins "In the early morning rain ..."    Was up by 6:00 A.M. as usual.  No rain this morning, only clouds, and a bit of sun pushing through.  I stopped by some fellow bloggers' blogs and saw that a few more "morning people" had already posted the day's words.

Check out this haunting Armenian melody played on the duduk by Djivan Gasparyan over at Bob Arnold's July 31st Longhouse Birdhouse  (posted at 6:22 A.M.).   (Mornin', Bob!   :)

and Tom (The Middlewesterner)  Montag's latest "Three from the Old Poet",  posted at 4:37 A.M.   (An excerpt:

As if I've
worked my whole life
becoming someone

I can admire.

Or poet/writer/blogger Linh Dinh, whose political essays, astute comments and ongoing State of the Union photo documentation of America in decline; the homeless, disenfranchised, tent cities, urban blight, etc. telling you far more than you'll ever get from CNN. (He posted today at 1:57 A.M.     I'm guessing that's not when he got up and that he's really more a "night" person.)

Another morning person, up by 5 A.M. with a new poem, is William Michaelian, reminding me that thought-out poems that don't get writ remain just that: words in transit, not yet extracted, much less parked.

Today we have the annual family picnic, again this year out in St. Louis-de-France.  Last year, about 40 people came, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins, in-laws, significant others, and friends, and it lasted from early afternoon until nearly midnight, the evening spent on the patio to the sounds of guitar and keyboard, everyone singing along to old, familiar tunes.  It poured rain pretty much the entire day but nobody left, and when the downpour subsided, the mosquitoes came out. 

This year the weather promises to behave and allow a more pleasant time of it, the barbeque taking place outdoors (instead of in the garage) and dips in the pool.  Last time people brought about 8 different salads, and of course a big pot of Michel's famous baked beans and the usual grilled delights (even salmon burgers  for the semi-vegetarians).  (Our local supermarket last week carried imported frozen fish-kebobs from China--something I'd not seen there before.  Why this particular local market offers only imported Chinese garlic and not the fresher, more readily available and less-expensive-to-transport garlic from neighboring farms, is a mystery.)

Back to the writing thing again. This, of course, is no excuse--activities in general, social obligations, daily tasks, etc.--for not writing. It's perhaps cyclical, or so it seems at times--more time spent this summer on reading than writing, more hours internally absorbing, mentally archiving, "saving up", almost, for when the time is right, which for me is Fall and Winter. But this is absurd, the writer self argues. Sounds more like an excuse, chimes the neglected pen.

They may be right, and it's not a question of season, or intervening activities, or habitual proscrastinaton but something more baldly basic: simple discipline. I envy poets who can come up with a new poem every single day and offer it, in finished form. And then there're those naggy fictional characters nagging, nagging, nagging at you to finish their story, the one you've been working on for months--YEARS--and have put aside, like unfinished paintings waiting for the most conducive lighting, the right color mix, the optimal circumstance, the perfect conditions. This has got to change, scoldy self says to lazy self. I mean, really. Why are you blogging, instead of writing?!!!

My fingers have no answer. It's like being stuck in ... the Waiting Box--waiting. But for what?

Second Languages

A fellow immigrant here, unable to find employment in his field (engineering) locally, has asked me to teach him English so that he can expand his search elsewhere, in some of the English-speaking provinces. It has been some time since I've done language exchanges (English conversation for practice in French). Usually the respective level of competence in the "other" language was pretty much equal: somewhere in the middle-Intermediate range. This time, however, my student knows very little English and does what I do sometimes when I get stuck and can't find the appropriate word or remember the correct verb ending: i.e., revert to using the former known, familiar language.

This is detrimental to progress in the new language, and a very difficult habit to break. At the university here, when you take a French immersion course, you are not permitted to not-speak French. (I'm told for every non-French word you utter, you must fork over 25 cents. At least that is what a former student told me several years ago. Whether or not that's still true, I don't know, but it seems a compelling reason to try harder. (It could also be a good self-imposed incentive, not just for self control but to increase one's savings! Ten unguarded relapses could net you enough for a coffee and a croissant, au moins. :)

My student is a French-speaking Berber from Algeria. French is his second language and his French is vastly superior to mine. The accent and some words are different from the French spoken here (Quebeçois). (I find it easier, in general, to understand French speakers from Belgium, Paris, the Sudan or even Haiti than French-Canadians. Even after some years here, my own spoken French comes out sounding more "international" than local, with a slight accent not always immediately identifiable as Anglo-based. Strange.)

Accent acquisition is a curious phenomenon. For example, in Boston they swallow the "r" in some words and add an extra "r" on the end in others ("square" becomes "squay-uh", "yard becomes "yahd", "Barb" becomes "Bob" and "pizza" becomes "pizzer", etc.). Odd though that neither I, nor my children--who were born and raised there--ever acquired the accent.

Here's how native Bay-staters pronounce the names of certain of their towns and cities (in case you ever go there):

Peabody ("PEE-Bitty")
Medford ("MEHfid")
Gloucester ("GLOSS-tah")
Woburn ("WOO-bin")
Worcester ("WOOSE-tah")

Soft drinks are not called sodas in Boston; they're "tonics". What is a "hoagie" (submarine sandwich) in Pennsylvania is called a "grinder" in Boston. A "regular" coffee in one state might refer to plain black coffee; in another, it means with milk and sugar. Go figure. I add this last point because a former Pennsylvania colleague came back from a trip to Boston once complaining that "they don't know what a regular coffee means "out there"!! ("Out there", as in "Not-here" land, i.e.) Another friend's annoyingly repetitious but relevant saying immediately came to mind: "Never assume anything."

Sometimes how a person pronounces a single word can tell you where they're from. (For Boston, the word "third" usually nails it for me, ha ha; for Pittsburgh, it's the words "no" and "down". For Philly and Central Pennsylvania, a nasal tone; for Vermont, indescribable but immediately recognizable. I used to be able to differentiate between a Ukrainian speaking English from a Moscow native speaking English though I cannot myself speak either Russian or Ukrainian.

Sound threads weaving past that grab the attention, unconsciously, to later surface as recognition... or something like that. One could do that with observations of physical gestures as well, how one expresses (or doesn't express) a thing ... fascinating. What we absorb and unconsciously imitate in our respective cultures, what we alter or suppress or enhance to become what we already are, but more (or less) so. How we are all different, and yet the same...

Suppose you want to learn another language and don't have access to or cannot afford language classes or a private tutor. This is a good little starting point, for an interactive, sound-integrated introduction to English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi or Vienamese, with titles in Polish, Greek, Turkish and Indonesian, etc. It might be interesting to at least learn numbers and colors and salutations in these respective tongues. You never know, it might come in handy some day. This is the easy part, it seems to me. It's the darn grammar that takes working on. And the idioms! And of course, practice.

I have a book somewhere in my library upstairs (in need of reorganization after some shuffling and switching of bookcases) that gives words in 26 languages. It's fascinating to see the similarities and differences among linguistic families. I sometimes read the dictionary as one might begin to read a novel. The words have stories, the descriptions conjure up imaginary others. One doesn't normally admit to this because, well, you get that Look. I once saw a video of the actor Richard Burton reading a telephone book; he made it "sound like Shakespeare."

Anyway, my student has invited me to learn how to make Algerian cuisine (his wife will show me) and in the meantime has sent me some recipes, in Arabic. Which I can't read, of course, but can follow the pictures.

Ah, language. Visual, spoken, unuttered. You would need two lifetimes to explore even the surface of them! Dabblers and masters, and how to graduate from the former to the latter: the apprentice's dream.

Different Journeys, Same Quest

                                                       hurrying along the road

                                                       I can't look back

 

~ ~  Taneda Santōka (1882-1940)

~ ~

 For all his walking

 no green mountains await -

 only fate

Three Downtowns

A side street down near the port.

Centre ville, Trois-Rivières.

Outside metro Atwater, Montréal.

Boston Financial District

Am back from a 10-day trip to the States. 

The top photo was taken one evening before my departure; the middle one, while waiting to connect with the rideshare to Boston; the bottom one, on the way to South Station for the bus back to Canada.

Three different cities, all close to my heart. From the familiar old wooden three-deckers in Massachusetts to the equally familiar brick facades with the winding metal staircases of T-R and Montréal, memories and nowness collide.

My daughter's computer crashed and died mid-week so the blog took a little hiatus. We did get to Mystic Lake one hot and humid afternoon (along with about 200 other people on the little sandy beach and surrounding woods). The water was brown, the bottom muddy and an occasional weed would wrap around your leg if you swam into certain areas. I remember it being cleaner, clearer and far more swimmable in the past. This, and other local beaches there are sometimes closed during especially hot days now because of a too-high bacteria count.  We lucked out, though, that this particular day was not one of them.

The highlight of the trip was, of course, being with the l'il bubs again--and, a stop at Trader Joe's. This is a discount grocery store where you can find the most amazing food products at extremely low prices. (I noted that the maple syrup imported from Quebec was half the price we pay for it here where it's actually produced.)   I came back with blue agave, Mesquite honey, Mexican vanilla, ghee and Dr. Bronner's Hemp Tea-Tree Pure Castile soap; and from the little Tibetan shop: prayer flags for outside the house and meditation incense. Oh and three books, the perfect traveling companions, reading 210 pages of one of them en route through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

One afternoon we went, all six of us, to see the animated "Despicable Me" in 3D.  There's a scene in the movie where the characters ride down a roller coaster.  It was so realistic I had to put my head down, because I suddenly got dizzy. The kids loved the film. Worth seeing, with or without the 3D.

Anyway, it's good to be back. The compelling pull of one's accustomed routine ... or something like that.  The cherry tomatoes and chard have tripled in my absence, bugs have attacked and eaten into the kale, the basil thinks it's a tree, the lettuce are screaming to be picked and the raspberries have finally arrived. Several items in the fridge have escaped my mate's notice and quietly expired or turned moldy, and Lida the window plant was gasping for water.  But all's well. When I left, we were in the throes of a heat wave. Now the mornings and evenings are chilly, almost like Fall.  Refreshing ...

Heat Wave Relief

Some favorite music plus some appropriate images for cooling off.

Am off to the States again tomorrow in the Philippemobile out of Montreal. I am told there will be six of us and we're requested not to bring too much luggage. Five and a half hours with two stops at a third of the cost of going by bus--can't beat that. So looking forward to plunging into Mystic Lake again and seeing the l'il bubs, who are probably an inch taller, at least. V. just turned 3, and the newest one, Calix, will arrive "any day now", or so my son tells me, though I won't get to meet him probably until the Fall, that trip being a tad farther and a whole lot longer.

I don't like traveling in summer but the Philippemobile is air conditioned, fully stocked with music of all kinds, with large, comfortable (heated in winter) seats, and always engaging conversations with interesting people from all over the world. Thank goodness I made reservations last week--there's already a waiting list.

I hope they don't make us open our suitcases at the border. There is no way I will be able to close mine again! And still haven't found a place to put the chocolate egg/toys so they won't melt en route.

Adieu T-R, salut Boston!

Another mission

As of the first of July,  46 U.S. warships capable of carrying 200 helicopters and warplanes, plus 7,000 U.S. Marines ("who may circulate the country in uniform without any restrictions"), as well as submarines, are heading to the Costa Rican coast for "anti-narcotics operations and humanitarian missions'  until 31st December 2010.

They are going there to fight the "war on drugs." 

read more ...

Some Costa Ricans question the official reason given for the sudden encampment of troops and warships, feeling there is something more to it than that.  (A glance at a map might offer a clue to what they feel is a much more likely motive.)

There are other rumbles on the Internet suggesting that this has to do with something big about to go down in the Gulf of Mexico connected with the BP oil catastrophe, necessitating the possible massive evacuation of ships and people.  (BP drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.  According to some environmentalist experts, what's pouring into the land, sea and air from the seabed breach,  is "a chemical cocktail of poisons," threatening to make the Gulf a complete dead zone with chemically polluted air and poisonous rainfalls. This oil "spill" has everyone spooked.

But forty-six warships for a place the size of Rhode Island or Vermont ...? They haven't succeeded in stopping the drug flow coming into the US across the border from Mexico; maybe they can do something from the Costa Rica coastal side. Costa Rica is a small, neutral country with no army, no match for the sophisticated, well-funded and well-armed drug cartels. It's apparently been unable to secure its own coasts or stop the violence and flow of drugs, hence their calling in the U.S. Marines. 

The warships have been invited to stay in Costa Rica untill December. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what transpires in the next several months, how many drug lords they actually manage to put out of business. Let's hope another war or horrendous catastrophe doesn't erupt somewhere else in the meantime.  The US military is already stretched way thin, what with two other wars currently going on, in Iraq (7 years) and Afghanistan  (nearly 9 years). Weapons of mass destruction? (They didn't find any.)  Bin Laden? (Couldn't find him.  No one mentions him anymore.  He probably died years ago.  Hard to get dialysis treatment hiding out in a cave in the mountains.)  The enemy now:  Terrorism, and the drug cartels. 

As for the Gulf--there just are no words anymore, and fear seems to be replacing hope.   Meanwhile the anchortainment industry rumbles on:  "Which team do YOU think LeBron James will decide to sign up with?", CNN breathlessly asked of its viewers; Mel Gibson had another violent emotional meltdown;  the Clintons are buying an $11 million house in Westchester;  and, according to a chuckling newscaster, Americans spend $57 billion dollars a year on lottery tickets.   

Meanwhile;  they're planning to stone to death a 43-year old woman in Iran (99 lashes and imprisonment weren't enough) for alleged moral misconduct; an old friend has stopped talking and eating and won't come out of his bedroom, steeped in depression; another, whose insurance runs out in a few weeks, is battling her second cancer (different type this time), and yesterday,  while returning from grocery shopping, we passed members and friends of a local family standing out on the highway in the hot sun holding out tin cans soliciting donations for their child, whose treatment injections will cost over $40,000 a year.  The world turning, burning, churning, in a not-so-merry-go-round of dizzying disrupt, enough to suck the air out of you, if you let it.

On a lighter note:  they're auctioning off Roy Rogers's horse "Trigger"'s "remains" this week. Trigger died of old age and Roy had him taxidermied decades ago-- for posterity.[2]. Am trying to imagine why anyone would fork over up to $200,000, for a ... dead horse. "I thought his name was Silver," my mate said, when I told him about the horse. "Hi ho Silver a-WAYYYYYYYYYYYY" we both said at once, then cracked up laughing. Silver was the Lone Ranger's horse.   I forget Tonto's horse's name.

Gorgeous blue-sky day the other day. The heat wave passed, a cool breeze in the morning. Priceless.

Then it all came back. Leguminitis sets in again. Bring out the fan.

patterns

here we go
again

it's getting old.

really.

Journeys of the Mind

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Ives's trumpet hauntingly echoes such cosmic query, only to be answered by ... silence.


Knowing as the endpoint.

Not all profound inquiries lead to understanding. Few actually get there, the seeker becoming mired down in the process--enamored of it, even--succumbing to distraction, settling for peace of mind instead.  It never occurs to some to consider setting out at all, on what might be a most perilous undertaking, the already-known being entirely sufficient.

Maybe the journey is the purpose; whether you eventually understand or not not the point.

Maybe there is no plan, no "end".  Just constant change ‘mid patterned sameness. And circular trails that take you right back to where you started.

Live and love ... if you can.
To that journey, stay or go, it's all the same, no one's judging.
Doing, having, trumped by being

Always the same yearning ... to Know.
What if at the end of life, you'd not yet figured it out?
And suddenly realized it no longer
mattered?


(There’s more to this that you’re not telling me

isn’t
there.)


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*Painting given to me by a friend for helping her move on the 1st of July.  It was painted some 30 years ago on a village farm by a then neighbor, "Claire", a self-taught artist. A man pausing in the act of chopping wood, to look out at the sun, the land, the horizon of familiarity, and untapped possibility.

Visitors

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*Photo by awyn, taken out back near the tool shed.