A Word I Learned Without A Dictionary (Reading, Of Course)

 

HIRSUTE

Distractions While Reading Outside

1.
The unexpected appearance of familiar companions.

2.
The mouth-watering smell of soup simmering, wafting through the kitchen door.

3.
The hummingbird that has taken up residence, reminding me of my deceased friend Betsy, who enjoyed them from this same summer vantage point.

4.

Missing Betsy.

A Trio of Annual Pleasures

1.
Mr. King's heirloom tomatoes (among them Cherokee Purple, Chocolate, Pink, Brandywine [not ready yet], White). Today's haul? Chocolate, Pink, and Cherokee Purple.

My father grew tomatoes in my childhood, snapped them off the vine, brushed them against his jumpsuit, bit into flesh, wiping the juice with a red bandanna, always stored in a back pocket. 

Then, I did not like tomatoes: they were bitter like lemons and oranges. Now, I love heirlooms, mostly the locally ones I can buy for just a few weeks. These are worth the wait.

2.
Cicadas leave their spent selves (shed skins called exuviae) hanging on trees, stems, gate and deck posts, after emerging into their adult selves, not unlike the odonates I stalk. This summer, I've seen their exuviae, and I've enjoyed cicada choruses. Today, I saw my season's first actual insect, clinging to my deck post, just as the storm blackened the forest beyond. Like emerald fire, his greenness burned.

3.
The predicted storm rode in on a few isolated plops, then staccato patters, and finally drum snaps, accompanied by wind, but none of it threatening, the kind of afternoon storm that reminds me of childhood naps at home or camp and invites a comfy chair, cats, and a beautiful novel. I gave up a Tim O'Brien reading for Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, a book so beautiful that I have saved the last chapter, to savor later, maybe even tomorrow.

4.
Tomatoes, rainstorms, literary enchantment converge in one perfect summer afternoon.

Full Circle

I
Down, in the book, I read this: 

"I was intrigued to learn of a novel Swedish solution to human burial. In a country where cemetery space is at such a premium that older bodies are dug up and reburied more deeply so that second- and third-story tenants can be installed in the same plot, the practical Swedes have now developed a system for composting human remains.

"They start by freezing the corpse in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Once solid, it is easily shattered into tiny frozen pieces, nugget-sized, by ultra-sound waves or, somewhat less palatably, a hammer mill, a process likened by one proponent to that of making chipped beef. The nuggets are then freeze-dried and placed, with a starter of bacteria, in a biodegradable box to be buried as fertilizer for whatever plant you place above your still-serviceable 'loved one.' In my view, this is as about as close as we're ever going to get to reincarnation: our very atoms coursing through the venous leaves of, for example, a long-lived oak." -- Hold Still by Sally Mann, page 419

II
Then up, I saw this.

One Aria to Sing

From a not very good book I finished today (others liked it, but not I so much), this rang true: "The past is so tenacious. . . . Everyone has one aria to sing over their life, . . ." (The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer).

So many times, I've taught students who've written about the same longing or sorrow or trauma or idea, revisiting and revising one thread from eighth through twelfth grades, sometimes well into college.

Tennessee Williams and Annie Dillard wrote their individual tales over and over again, in new form, picking at the same scab.

I, too, have done the same, never quite resolving or working out whatever the memory or feeling meant, might mean, could mean.

Tonight, as I ate summer fruit from a handmade bowl, whose family of North Carolina potters I first encountered at 17 -- the juices bursting, tingling, mixing tartness with syrupy sweetness, I thought of the place where I wish I were: at camp reunion with old friends, among my oldest, lying on the canoe dock, looking at stars, singing our mutual opera again.

Recipe for An Almost Perfect Sunday

Ingredients

• a dollop of stay-in weather
• interspersed bits of work
• wafts of laundry detergent mixed with cooking chicken
• a dependable recipe for a delicious supper
• one good book
• great heaps of kitten purring, tussling, lap sitting
• communication with old friends

Directions

Begin with a slow waking. A fresh pot of strong black tea, reading of the New York Times and Facebook, followed by two hours of compositions and laundry.

Toss ingredients for white bean chicken chili into the crockpot. Check the laundry and the cats.

Eat breakfast: two perfectly poached eggs on strong dry toast.

Read compositions for another two hours.

Cover the sofa with an Indian spread, cuddle with the kittens, and finish Ann Patchett's This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Remember stories of her as a Girl Scout under the tutelage of a dear older friend, re-visit Mills Bookstore in my mind, note with amusement the odd connections of neighborhoods, schools, and Sewanee.

Select another book from the Tennessee R.E.A.D.S. website (Poppy Z. Brite's Soul Kitchen).

Return to work with tea, supper, and kittens.

Look forward to another restful slumber.

What's Missing

A walk around the lake or in the woods, sunshine, saturated color. I shall await another day.

Reading and Writing

The Greats and I love books and their neighborhood library, where we went on an expedition. One returned four books, one five. One checked out three books, the other three.

The youngest settled onto a bench in the children's section and said, "I want to stay here and read."

The other said, "No, not today," so off we went.

One stayed home, and the other came with me for a treat at the local coffee shop. After chai tea and a milk frosty (from which I had to eat the whipped cream because the Great said, "It's gross"), she took me upstairs where I had not been.

At the top of the steps, she said, "Isn't it cool?" The man settled in an armchair looked up from his paper and smiled, but the two students cramming for exams did not.

"Shh," I said, "this is the quiet spot."

We agreed it would be a cool place to read.

On the way home, I asked, "What's the best part of third grade?"

"Cursive," she said, and she was serious.

When we got home, she proved it.

These are things we love: books (all three of us), reading (all three of us), writing (two of us), and the people who write the books we love (all three us).

Another Kindle Post

Almost a year in, and 40 books down, one underway and others lined up.

Mojo magic!

One thing I have come to love about this electronic book device is the ease with which I can browse the bookstore. Admittedly, it's only one bookstore -- Amazon -- but there's plenty to tantalize. If I read a review, or hear a friend mention a book, or see one pop up as a recommendation and I think I'm interested, I download the sample. Especially now that the college bookstore has become even less about books than before, I appreciate sampling.

On the screen today? A sample from The Story of Charlotte's Web, a story whose outlines I already know, but about the process of a writer whose work never grows tiresome.

Why knows? Maybe if I get some Christmas gift certificates at my Kindle store, I shall be reading the whole thing in just a few weeks. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Long Shadows

I read for pleasure and for a living. A lot. Every day. Seven days a week, 365 days a year. 

Sometimes, I can't shake the words and the responses I have to them.

Today, I read a woman's discussion of ethics in which she stated two startling and, to me, contradictory facts of her morality: she is a Christian and she doesn't understand "animal ethics." When others present a point of view embracing ethical concern for animals, for example, she does not understand that view. She doesn't hold with that opinion, as it were.

And yet . . . if life is precious for one, I think, isn't it precious for all? Does she have pets? Does she care for them? What would she feel if she saw an animal suffering in her own yard? Would she do anything? Feel anything?

The small group of two adult and two young does that makes its winter home my yard has been here for several days now. What they find to eat is a mystery to me, but they pull up small somethings from the grass, and they nestle and sleep under old vines and against big stumps. Behind me, in the ravine on the college's land, bow hunters wait. I think the deer know this, as I do not see them head that way till dark. 

I do not wish the deer harm. They have needs just as I do for shelter, warmth, food, and even each other. I do not wish the hunters harm. Their work helps to reduce the large herd that threatens itself with population growth and that threatens the forest. I do not wish the forest harm. I do not wish the woman who doesn't believe in "animal ethics" harm.

But I do wonder if the harm caused by views like hers cast long shadows on all of us and not just me.

What if money were no object?

"What would you do?" asks Alan Watts.

I would give my most prized and sentimental possessions to my family and most of the rest of my possessions to those who could use or want them.

I would buy a little plot of land near my family, in woods, near mountains and water. On it, I would build a tiny house with an adjoining tiny studio just like this one.

I would use a fast computer with all the right photography and publishing programs. I would use more flexible equipment, including different cameras for different purposes. I would share my tiny house with a cat or cats to keep me company. I would use my library card at a good library with Kindle books. I would live near a college campus where I could attend lectures and plays, concerts and classes. I would travel to places I already love and love the new ones I would visit. I would wear comfortable clothes all the time, and every night at home I would float in a big bathtub under stars.

I would read, and walk, and write, and complete my poetry MFA and take photography classes and workshops, and make pictures, and compose and construct handmade books.

I would spend time with people I love and with people who create things because they must.

I would drink tea and make scones.

I would wake without fear and fall asleep without anxiety.

And I would be happy.

Hello, Old Friend

About three years ago, I slowly lost reading as one of my most pleasurable pastimes. Not for lack of trying, but for lack of vision. Now two surgeries later and Kindle-equipped, I have rediscovered what I have long missed.

Ten days ago I began with Louise Erdrich's deeply affecting The Round House; moved on to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones which a friend rightly called "raw"; slipped into a bit of frippery with Julia Stuart's The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise; and then read the insightful and informative memoir Epitaph for a Peach by David Mas Masomoto. Waiting for me now on my re-charged reader is Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending.

Rain, a comfortable couch, shelves of art and books, my cat at my side, and literature: hello, old friend. How long you've been gone.

Obama's Dreams

On Friday, I finished reading Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father to my friend Trink. After we finished, I borrowed the book so I could re-read the last chapter and epilogue. When I read it to Trink, I found myself choking back tears. I was surprisingly moved by Obama's realization of the ways in which we're all connected to family, whether we know or them or not, and to each other -- race to race, class to class, gender to gender, religion to religion, nation to nation. Another friend of mine told me months ago that she had been planning to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary until she read this book. Now I see what she did: a hopeful, expansive vision of our common humanity.

In the epilogue, I found these passages (pages 437-9) especially compelling:

"The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power -- and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.

"But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident. With those words, I hear the spirit of Douglass and Delany, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln; the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring these words to life. I hear the voices of Japanese families interned behind barbed wire; young Russian Jews cutting patterns in Lower East Side sweatshops; dust-bowl farmers loading up their trucks with the remains of shattered lives. I hear the voices of the people in Altgeld Gardens, and the voices of those who stand outside this country's borders, the weary, hungry bands crossing the Rio Grande. I hear all of these voices clamoring for recognition, all of them asking the very same questions that have come to shape my life, the same questions that I sometimes, late at night, find myself asking the Old Man [Obama's father]. What is our community, and how might that community be reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations reach? How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love? The answers I find in law books don't always satisfy me -- for every Brown v. Board of Education I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to expedience or greed. And yet, in the conversation itself, in the joining of voices, I find myself moderately encouraged, believing that so long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might somehow, ultimately, prevail.

" . . . despite everything that has happened, those words put to paper over two hundred years ago must mean something after all. Black and white, they make their claim on this community we call America. They choose our better history."

Perhaps one day we will all choose our better history. Thank you, Mr. President for your candor and your hope.

Words, Words, Words

The truth is, I love them. Whether they're someone else's or my own, I love words, and today is set aside for them.
First, I want to read my classmates' critiques of the essay I workshopped in Creative Nonfiction (a Sewanee School of Letters class) yesterday. The oral comments were helpful, especially those given by the instructor, John Jeremiah Sullivan. Based on what I heard, I've already spent about two-and-a-half hours this morning revising "The Second Time." Now I need to read.

Second, I will read and respond to the essays by two classmates scheduled for workshop Thursday.

And third, I am desperate to return to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, a beautiful ("Time thickened like wet cement") novel I started Sunday. I am torn between slowing down to savor (I don't want to finish the 562-page book too quickly) and speeding up to drown in the story, characters, and language. This is a good problem to have -- the compulsion to read in the mind even when the words aren't visible.