The Inevitable Question

Dears,
I must ask because someone else recently asked me:

What in God's name are you reading right now?

I've launched a December challenge to finish The Brothers Karamazov and have figured out that I only have to read 20 pages to finish by the end of the month. Easy!  Also, don't get me wrong.  I love the book and have enjoyed it thoroughly, but sometimes compatibility with novels simply doesn't match up.  My life has not been conducive to reading lately, so I just kind of pick it up here and there.  That's okay, but I can't help but feel loss at the continutiy of the novel.  I mean, what author hopes that his reader will take one year to read his book?  I don't really think so.

So the question remains...I'm curious about what's on your "currently reading" and "to read" list?  I promise not to judge if it's stupid! :)

~MME.

{photo credit here}

Happy Birthday Mz. Plath

Today marks the would-be 77th birthday of my beloved muse, Sylvia Plath.  I knew her birthday was approaching, but today it caught me completely off guard.  That is, until I sat at my new writing desk overlooking my new country landscape and heard classical KING fm mention it.  I found it so strange and appropriate that just last night I rewatched Sylvia (which is by no means an accurate depiction of Syliva's poetry, life, or demenour, but is such a fabulously done film on all other accounts) and have felt her with me so acutely the last few months.

Many only know Plath because of her tragic and terrible suicide, and even more unjust, many surmise that her death is the cause of her post-humous fame and following.   I love Plath not only for her melancholy, or her haunting voice, or her fight for hope, or her literary ambition, or her love of shadows...but because in her, I have found a new genre for myself.  Her journals have changed the way I write and read my own work.  She wrote something of her life almost every single day in a prose that turns pages like no best-seller you have ever read.  To be interested in the minute details of another woman's life reminds me that there are many out there (either now or to come) who will be interested in bearing witness to my life as well...even if only for my unborn children, friends, or family.  To remind myself that I have lived by marking it with words and ink is one of the most soulful experiences of my 31 years.  To find common interest (she loved Russian literature and needed the ocean) and solidarity in struggle (the writing life, introversion) in a soul long passed is the perfect reminder and inspiration to keep writing just as I have done since my first journal in 6th grade.

I cannot do justice to how she has inspired me in the last year.  I cannot say how acutely I feel her untimely death and how I dream of sitting across a room from her with a cup of tea, admiring how this 77 year old woman has lived her life.

"The one requirement of life: an openness to what is lovely among all the rest that isn't."

Letters Home, 133

Happy Birthday, Sylvia.
Thank you for your life.

~MME.

Russian Room

This room is screaming at me....

found here

"READ DOSTOEVSKY HERE!!"

Can you hear it?
~MME.

Burning Books

I shall never-EVER condone the burning of books, I say.  However, putting books into an unusable fireplace???  Now that's just genius!

found here

~MME.

Confessions from my bed on a Saturday at noon thirty

You read correctly, I am in bed and it's Saturday at 12:41pm. I woke up rather late (having gone to bed rather late), and decided to make the most of this GORGEOUS Seattle rain by brewing a pot of Earl Gray and making myself eggs to eat in bed. I sit here surrounded by magazines, listening to Debussy, and petting the feline. Since my hardworking husband is working on our car at his parent's house, I am just soaking up the solitude.

I confess to this. I may have spent the last 2o minutes on this website. Confusingwords.com is so informative! What a great refresher course. Now, many people mentioned to me that certain knowledge one acquires in high school can become irrelevant to ones daily life. I suppose that is true, I mean how often do you have to explain the difference between the words affect and effect? Well, I am happy to say that perhaps one of the only reasons a person might want to brush up on these skills is simply to casually recite the rule at a party, martini in hand. You know, as if you've known it these last ten years and just recalled it like it was nothing.

Because the purpose of being educated is to lord it over people, clearly.

Other confessions:

• I've been spending way too much online trying to find good sheets. I was lying in my sheets the other day with more skin touching them than usual (AHEM) and thought, "Why the hell do I put up with these scratch, 7-year old sheets?!" I am buying new ones. Any recommendations?
  
  
• Oh dears, this is the hardest one. I am about 10 pages from finishing Plath's journals. This, like Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is one of those books that it absolutely pains you to finish. I know there is no rule forbidding me to start it over the second I finish it, but that first reading is so irreplaceable and I have been neglecting my read of The Brothers Karamozov for her. I keep putting those last pages off. She's been with me for about a year now.
  
  
• My plans today should include finding boxes and packing them. However, since it's my last official Saturday in the city, I feel as though I will eventually get out of bed, get dressed in tall socks, walk myself to lunch, write a letter, grab a drink, and take it all in.

Thank you, Seattle.
Thank you for the perfect cool grayness of my last official weekend day with you.

A poem upon a conversation with her broken, bounteous heart

A Fixed Idea

by Amy Lowell

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant; and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught

Remembers on unceasingly; unsought

The old delight is with us but to find

That all recurring joy is pain refined,

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.

You lie upon my heart as on a nest,

Folded in peace, for you can never know

How crushed I am with having you at rest

Heavy upon my life. I love you so

You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.

In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

A little write up on Plath...

Find me here...you'll have to scroll down a bit, but when you get to the entry about Plath's "The Bed Book," you'll see me and say "I KNOW HER."

Or just perhaps you'll buy Plath's book...which is even better.

p.s. I am working on regular blogs for Antler Magazine, so subscribe to see me.