The Tiger's Wife

Recently, I finished a book, "The Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht, that absorbed me, really captivated me. I told a coworker the day after I finished that I read a great book about the Yugoslav Wars in the Balkans. Later I realized that's not really true. It's a story about a woman and her grandfather. Their lives just happen to be punctuated by the war--one I embarrassing admit I really didn't know anything about. It happened while I was growing up in the '90s, unaware. Very.

While reading "The Tiger's Wife" I couldn't help but thinking of a basket, seamless and beautiful in its simplicity. The story is so flawlessly woven. I read another book, "Evel Knievel Days," during which a ghost pops up and speaks grossly exaggerated Old Western. It was jarring--an annoying jolt of mixed genres. 

The name "The Tiger's Wife" alone implies something mythical, perhaps with a touch of fantasy. The main character, Natalia, travels to a town where a family is digging up a vineyard in search of a hastily buried cousin whose spirit, they believe, is making them all sick. Natalia's grandfather's life is punctuated by meetings with The Deathless Man. The tales in the book, especially that of the tiger and his wife, are so richly crafted I found myself believing them. They way I explained these examples is much too trite. You'll just have to read it.

I particularly loved a scene when the grandfather rouses Natalia in the middle of the night. He silently rushes her out of the house. He is walking with long strides down the streets, and she notices that there is no sign of life anywhere. She get the feeling they are alone in the world, such is the stillness, the absence of signs of others--eerie in a city. He doesn't tell her what they are going to see. And then she sees it, an elephant.

"My grandfather and I stopped at the bus station, and the elephant passed, slow, graceful, enchanted by the food in the young man's hand. The moon threw a tangle of light into the long, soft hairs sticking up out of his trunk and under his chin. The mouth was open, and the tongue lay in it like a wet arm.

'No one will ever believe this," I said.

My grandfather said: 'What?'

'None of my friends will ever believe it.'

My grandfather looked at me like he'd never seen me before, like he couldn't believe I was his. Even in our estrangement, he had never quite looked at me that way, and afterward he never did again.

'You must be joking,' he said. 'Look around think for a moment. It's the middle of the night, not a soul anywhere. In this city, at this time. Not a dog in the gutter. Empty. Except for this elephant--and  you're going to tell you idiot friends about it? Why? Do you think they'll understand it? Do you think it will matter to them?'"

Then he tells her that this is one of those moments. The moments you keep to yourself because it is special. You keep it to yourself because words can't convey it properly and trying to would take away some of its magic.

Sunset

I saw a beautiful sunset this evening. It wasn't your average beauty. I stared at it for a long time because it was so complex. The longer I looked, the more colors I saw. I felt like an artist. I actually saw green in the sunset. It was faded in nicely between light blue and rust. (I hoped the rust color was't pollution, smoldering in the last glow of the day's light.) 

There was a swath of clouds that looked sponge painted gravel. Another section was a blur of purple and pink, the colors mixing in swirls and wide strokes. Now I think of finger painting, but at the time my mind was more digital--thinking the blur tool in Photoshop couldn't have done a better job. 

Words can't recreate the sunset, but you know what? Neither could a camera. Or a painting for that matter. At first, I wished I had some way to capture it, to save it for another time. 

Instead, I just enjoyed the sunset as it was...before it was gone.

Hunger

Yesterday, I took a walk down to the reflecting pool on the National Mall. It's finally reopened after 2 years of renovation, now returned to its full site-of-the-Forrest-and-Jennie-reunion glory.

On the walk back home, I became almost frantically hungry, so I stopped for a quick bite at a place downtown dubbed the "Indian Chipotle." I sat down in front of my chickpea, lamb, and veggie bowl in a window alcove—the better to people-watch those on the sidewalk while listening to the radio on my iPod.

About halfway through my meal, someone from behind started speaking to me. I turned around to a young homeless man. He said something like, "Excuse me, I have to tell you something." I paused, then looked away. He asked if he could sit down. I turned back with what I know was an ugly,ugly expression on my face and said, "I'm just trying to eat my lunch." In other words, Leave me alone. I don't want to deal with this. It could be a scam. You might steal from me. And even: I'm a little afraid of you.

When I turned away again, he wandered over to the food counter. I looked down at my half-eaten dish. I was actually full already, seems like all restaurants give glutton portions these days. I thought about catching him on the way out and offering the rest of my food; I really hadn't touched that part. I resolved to do it, but then he walked out the door. And the opportunity slipped by. Or I let it.

I looked down at my food.

I ate it all. My stomach hurt for the rest of the day.

Not Enough Time

I just got home a little while ago from a book club meeting at the D.C. public library. I love talking about books. I feel most at ease talking in font of a group when I'm talking about a book. For this meeting, I read The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. 

The story is about two women: Cora and Louise. Cora is a 36-year-old woman bound by social constraints as much as her restrictive, welt-producing corset. She married at 17 and has been living a secretive, passionless life. She jumps at the chance to chaperone the 15-year-old Louise for a summer dance program in NYC because she grew up as an orphan there until she was sent to Kansas on an orphan train. Louise is strikingly beautiful, worldly and womanly—worrisomely so for her age, in fact. Louise is try to break all the social rules while Cora tries to reign her and look for her birth parents. Of course, she finds someone who kindles the passion in her. 

I found the settings and time period (the 1920's) as interesting as the characters. I love imagining New York as it was then. It's funny that 100 years ago tourists did many of the same things, like going to the top of a skyscraper (then just 60 stories high), taking a tour of Central Park, and seeing a Broadway show. It made me miss NY, a bit.

I like this snippet from the book. To give some context, Cora is speaking with a man who she just told her life story to. He suggests that she get a divorce.

"What would I tell people? What would I tell my sons?"

"That you want to be happy."

"That’s not enough."

"No?" He leaned closer, just a little. She drew back, looking away. The Italian woman had gone out in front of the store to sweep.

"What a waste," he said.

She looked up. They stared at each other unblinking, with just the sound of the fan and the distant scuffing of the Italian woman’s broom. 

Later in the book Cora realizes that she "lived too much of her life so stupidly, following nonsensical rules, as if she and her, as if anyone, had all the time in the world." Don't most of us do this? I remember looking up after I read this line and thinking, "There's no time, no time at all to live an unfulfilled life.

Gratitude

I'm reading a book for an HR book club at work. I love book clubs. I now belong to two, soon to be three. The perk of this particular club is that I got the book (hardcover!) for free. It's called "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard" by Chip and Dan Heath. It's a business self-help sorta book. Not one I probably would've chosen to read on my own. Anyway, between snappy case studies and an analogy comparing the emotional and rational sides of a person to an elephant and its rider, there was a line that captured my attention. 

"Imagine a world in which you experience a rush of gratitude every single time you 

flipped a light switch and the room lit up."

For a second I imagined this literally. And, truthfully, it seems like a bit much. It made me think of the crazy blend of awe and wonder Amy Adams captured so well as Giselle in Enchanted. (I really don't know why I'm thinking in terms of Disney movies lately. Gosh, there have surely been doctoral dissertations on Disney indoctrination in American children's psyches. Back to the quote though...) It makes me wonder about the lack of gratitude in my daily life. I imagine feeling thankful would have a snowball effect of positive emotions.

I think I saw an example of this in grad school. There was a woman in my education cohort named Kim. I met her on the first day of math class when she sat down next to me and promptly introduced herself with a big smile. I thought she was about 30. I found out months later she was around 50. Wow, what a shocker. Her sheer joy was youthful in so many ways. Even later I found out she had had breast cancer. She was always smiling, always sort of in awe of how great everything is. I wonder if people can achieve that without facing a life-threatening condition...

While I can't imagine truly feeling grateful every time electricity works its wonders, I would love to find the peace that comes with gratitude. My Great-uncle Ralph is 90. He and I exchange emails. I love what the wrote one day: At my age, the talk of death is something  one faces every time you go to bed at night.  But then you wake up the next morning and Hey!!  Another beautiful day!!

It is another beautiful day.

Belle and Books

I had a great weekend. There's nothing like having a friend visit to make you explore the city you live in. Oh, and seeing the friend is good too.


The weekend was H.O.T. As my dad would say, "Hotter than a fox in a forest fire." Yup, that's accurate. That didn't keep us inside, nor poolside. On Saturday we walked to Eastern Market. We meandered among the vendors, nabbing samples of fruit and looking over the doodahs. I went a little crazy buying five zany headbands. Of course I was ridiculously indecisive about which to buy, but I think I got some good ones--nice and zany and girly.


At lunch we sat down at a table with a group of ladies from Tennessee. Love that accent. Moving down south-ish, I've met people from a bunch of new states, like Arkansas and South Dakota. People even say "Yes, ma'am" to me. Happened twice today. Huh.


We went to the Library of Congress. Amazing place. The inside reminds me of Europe. I love the quotes on the wall and the paintings. What really got me, though, was the view of the main reading room from above. I know my eyes widened. The place is a reader's dream, this reader's dream anyway. When I saw the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, one word popped into my head: home. 

The lowest set of arches is where the bookshelves are. They even had those rolley ladders. You know the type that Belle slides across in Beauty in the Beast. I never realized until the other day how much I've always wanted to do that.

Thought Wrangling

“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; 

for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”

-Marcus Aurelius

Katie and I in Morocco just after riding a camel on the beach. Yes, that's right.
 I wish I saw, daily, a big smiley face with a message in French and Arabic to remind me to stay cheery.

One day a couple months ago (unlike the day in the picture) I was having a bad day. No actually that deserves some arbitrary capitalization. It was a Bad Day. The type of day when everything and everyone else is  annoying, ridiculous, and incomprehensible. Will explained the following idea to me. I wrote it down. Well, really I typed it on a virtual sticky note and there it's stayed on my laptop's desktop since. I re-read it pretty often and felt like, hey, today is as good a day as any to share it.
  
"Your thoughts are reality. Don't let the world affect you. You affect the world. YOU determine who you are. Thoughts are powerful because when you think too critically, you will judge AND THAT will drive you crazy. If you think it is bad, it is always going to be bad to you because you think that way. We have to be careful with our thoughts."


Yes, but how do we manage our thoughts? Can we wrangle them into always being positive ones. Probably not, I guess. I think living a passionate life will get me on the path to a mental chain reaction of happiness. And the quest continues.

Flowers

When I was in grad school my math professor played a song for the class. It stuck with me for the past couple years.


"Flowers are Red" by Harry Chapin


The little boy went to the first day of school.
He got some crayons and started to draw.
He put colors all over the paper,
for colors was what he saw.
And the teacher said, " What you doin', young man?"
"I'm painting flowers," he said.
She said, "It's not the time for art, young man.
And anyway flowers are green and red."


"There's a time for ev'rything, young man,
A way it should be done.
You've got to show concern for ev'ryone else
for your not the only one." And she said,


"Flowers are red, young man, and green leaves are green.
There's no need to see flowers any other way
than the way they've always been seen."
But the little boy said, "There are so many colors in the rainbow,
so many colors in the morning sun,
so many colors in a flower and I see ev'ry one."


The teacher said, You're sassy.
There's ways that things should be.
And you'll paint flowers the way they are.


The teacher put him in a corner.
She said, "It's for your own good.
And you won't come out till you get it right,
and responding like you should"
Well finally he got lonely,
frightened thoughts filled his head.
And he went up to the teacher
and this is what he said,
"Flowers are red and green leaves are green.
There no need to see flowers any other way
than the way they've always been seen."


Time went by like it always does,
And they moved to another town.
And the little boy went to another school,
and this is what he found:
The teacher there was smiling.
She said, "Painting should be fun.
And there are so many colors in a flower,
so let's use every one."


But the little boy painted flowers 
in neat rows of green and red.


But there still must be a way to have our children sing,
There are so many color in the rainbow,
so many colors in the morning sun,
so many colors in a flower, and I see ev'ry one."




In reading this again, I realize how sad it is. I think too much creativity is squashed in the name of conformity. I read book, "Shipping News," in which one of the characters remarked that all kids have a bit of weirdness in them until they learn to hide it and be like everyone else. The truly amazing people are the ones who never loose that bit of unabashed uniqueness.

Dances With Wolves

I'm adding to my "A Sunday Night Read" series. It's about time. This past week I spent a lot of time on the metro going into DC to look at apartments. Thankfully, I can read on the train, so I did just that. Before one of my trips in, I checked out my aunt's bookcase, fingers gliding along the books' spines. I pulled out "Dances With Wolves." I remember watching the movie years ago on Grandma's couch.


I realized that I don't really like book reviews that re-hash the plot. I'd rather read about how a book moved a reader or why it is so gripping or interesting, so that's what I'm going to do here after just a sentence or two of summarizing.


"Dances With Wolves" is about a man posted at a deserted US Army fort on the frontier in 1863. Moreover, it's about the man's transformation while living among his Comanche neighbors.


Probably the movie trailer can give a better synopsis than I can if you want to check it out...

While reading, I realized that I envy Lieutenant Dunbar. He experienced a different culture, a different world even. He was accepted by the people. He experience both the simple beauty (dances and tipi villiage life) and harsh reality (scalping a wagon-full of whites that killed buffalo for their fur and left the rest to rot) of Comanche life. 

It's the newess, the ultimate foreignness that gets me about Native American stories. I love learning about different perspectives. I'm also nostalgic for simpler times and the beauty of nature. It makes me sad to think about what was lost here in our country, but then doesn't it most people? I'm grappling to explain my feelings. I guess basically I'm in awe of something so radically different from what I know.

"Dances With Wolves" isn't preachy about the plight of the Indians. No, I didn't like the book for any feelings of remorse or melancholy it stirred about that. In fact, there were many lines in the book that I loved just for what they say about life. By the end of the book I had dog-eared 10 or so pages. In one passage the author, Micheal Blake, explains how Lieutenant Dunbar releases himself from the grip of the clock. I think this was his first step in freeing himself from the conventions of white society. 

Letting go of time is amazing. I know because when I go to my family's cabin in Canada measured minutes and hours cease to exist for me. Remembering this feeling inspired me to post a poem I wrote about a day on Green Lake.

"He woke with the sensuous afterglow of having surrendered completely, in this case to a nap...Shadows were creeping across the hut's doorway, and curious about how long he had slept, Dunbar pulled out the simple, old pocket watch that had been his father's. When he brought it to his face, he saw that it had stopped. For a moment he considered trying to set an approximate time, but instead he...hung the heirloom on a convenient hook a couple feet above the bed. He stared at the numbers on the watch's face, thinking how much more efficient it would be to work when a person felt like it, to eat when a person was hungry, to sleep when a person was sleepy. How it will be to live without time for a while, he thought."

What slaves we are to clocks. Throughout the course of my day I must be more concerned with the time than any other one thing. How nice to let it go, once in a while, especially when reading a a good book.

Lac Vert

A Green Lake morning

when the lake is still and hushed,

like a child in wonder.

All is silent except the wind

in the trees,

and I wonder if I am alone in the world.

But ah, the loon gives her crazy call and I know I am joined

by at least one.

Solitude does not last long – or does it? –

for from my spot

on the porch

I soon hear the cabin rustling to life.

Sister creaking down the stairs from our shared bedroom in the loft.

Dogs nails clicking on the wooden floors.

Door thrown open

as someone treks to the john.

Murmured good mornings.

Stretching.

The lake awakens with the cabin.

An errant breeze ripples the silky surface.

A seagull lands

jauntily

on our floating dock.

A boat motors across the lake,

out for an early morning fish.

I pause

from my reading

and look up to see the sun breaking

through the clouds

over Alligear’s Bay.

This Green Lake morning is slipping into a Green Lake day.

A Green Lake day is not confined

by the constraints of time.

Oh, time passes, sure,

but here it’s not measured

in hours or minutes.

We’ve no clock, see.

The day ambles on,

and it’s quite freeing – though at first perhaps unsettling –

to not know

that now it’s noon and so we must eat lunch.

canoe to the island

swim off the cliffs

rig up a worm and fish from shore

Go ahead.

Do what you like.

The day is yours, after all, and not the clock’s.

It doesn’t matter when you eat

or for how long you nap

or if you read all day in a paint-peeled rocker on the porch.

One thing is certain, though.

Boats launch at sunset.

I always sit in the point of the Alumacraft

my dad, the captain, at the helm.

We might troll Dead Head Alley,

pretending to be a school of hook-laced minnows,

or maybe we try casting jitterbugs at the inlet.

As our hands get cold on the reels

and our feet slosh in water at the bottom of the boat,

we point her toward a faint light across the bay

and are cabin bound.

Time for a Green Lake night.

A Green Lake night means

laughter

on the porch

as stories are traded,

retold,

exaggerated.

The clink of bottles

Maybe we’ll have a fire.

We tend to the insatiable flames and

alternately look skyward.

We see the stars as we see them only up here.

The sky looks like silver paint splattered

on a blue-black canvas.

The number of stars is staggering, really,

with no man-made lights to rival their twinkling.

Sometimes, instead, we play cards

at the table

by the rosy glow from an ancient oil lamp.

We pound the table when someone scoops

a trick with Big Ben.

And we laugh.

And eat crackers and cheese

And the brave ones try ‘dines.

After good nights are said,

I slip into my bed

under the crazy quilts Grandma made

years ago.

Flashlights click off

as the cabin settles.

I close my eyes

and then open them

but it makes no difference,

the darkness is absolute.

My eyes close

not to open again until it’s time for

another Green Lake Morning

Blind-Boy, Writer-Girl

There was a boy. His mother died. In childbirth. With him. He lived, then, with his father and grandparents. He had never seen any of them, though. He was blind. Complications from childbirth took his mother and his sight both.

There was a girl – a precocious little girl with big brown eyes. She lived with her mother, father and younger sister in a huge yellow house in the country. She was healthy and happy.  

The boy’s family was poor, of course. They eked out a living on Ireland’s western-most coast. Their lives and hearts were dull and gray. Except for the boy’s. He lived in a world of his own. As a toddler, he was delighted by each new discovery he made in the cottage. Stray buttons and broken crocks to put them in were his joys. His disposition could not be dampened by the blight of material things nor by the faces around him, etched in worry, because he did not know any other life then what he felt with his hands and heard with his ears. His blindness shielded him. And he was likely happier for it.

The girl loved reading more than anything. Her parents read “Little Women” and “Stuart Little” with her. She read countless books by herself, delighted with each new discovery she made in their pages. Long ago times and far-away lands were her joys. Yes, she loved reading more than anything. Until she discovered writing, and then they were about the same.

Slowly, subtly, the boy’s sheer joyousness at, well, everything impacted the other members of the family. It’s hard to stay down when there a bright child in the house. His father noticed his cleverness. He noticed the way the boy had a mental map of the cottage and never tripped over the same piece of furniture twice. He heard his son’s astute questions. The father began to hope. Hope for his son, the son’s future. This hope became more concrete – a desire and then a yearning to send his son to a school for the blind in the city. But how? How to afford the tuition?

The little girl went to a school that seemed big to her but was really quite small. In fourth grade, she loved her teacher, who wore a smile always, it seemed. The girl loved that they sang sometimes in class, even when it wasn’t time for music. The teacher told the girl she was so proud of her for reading a sixth-grade book. The girl smiled and never forgot that.

Between his son’s giggles and occasional tantrums, the father made a decision. He would go to America for a year, two at most. There, he’d heard, he could earn money – and lots of it – in the coal mines. His mother begged him not to go, fearing that a trip across the Atlantic was not one he would make back. The grandfather, however, remained silent. He understood a father’s longing for something better for his son. He didn’t fully dare to ask himself if he had failed his son. Perhaps not, though, if he had the courage to sail away, lonely but resolute.

In fourth grade, there was a writing contest.  The girl had the courage to give it a go. The goal was to write a story that went along with a painting of a man and a boy. Looking out at the ocean. Her parents helped her type the story on their new computer.

The boy didn’t understand his father leaving for a faraway place. His concept of place and space was limited, very. So the four-year-old boy hugged his father good-bye and then immediately re-immersed himself in his make-believe world.

                

The girl wrote the story, won the contest, and then promptly returned to her book world.

A year to the day of the father leaving, the boy and his slope-shouldered grandfather began their daily trek to the top of the hill. The looked out at the sea, west toward America, looking for the passenger ship that might bring the father home. Most often, all the grandfather saw was waves. But he and the boy stood there hand-in-hand every day, waiting, for twenty minutes or so. The grandfather seeing the driving waves. The boy seeing nothing. But imagining so much more.

The little girl is grown now. She still loves to read and write. And sometimes she dictates stories to her dreams. Or is it her dreams that dictate stories to her?