[ b o o k l i n g s ]

Happy Birthday Emily Bronte

2010-07-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

"I cannot express it: but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. "

Emily Bronte

Happy Birthday, you troubled beauty.

Only 30 years of walking the earth were bestowed upon you.

But you look really good for 192.

Forever admiring your wild spirit and stubborn independence,

A literary journey by Penguin

2010-05-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

I know it's been like all things Penguin around these parts this week (see here, here, and here), but I have really just been so impressed with how they are reinventing classics through art and promoting the love of reading to a new generation. As I was pursuing Penguin's site, which I admit is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, I stumbled onto a reading journey that one of Penguin's employees embarked upon.

Apparently a few employees decided to do this several years ago, but Alan Walker, a senior executive, has extended his commitment by picking one author per letter of the alphabet and then writes about it. This is his second time through the alphabet; here is his first marathon.

I think this sounds kind of fun...no time limit on reading them, but going A-Z.

One question remains...which novels would I pick to read?

Graphic Penguin Classics

2010-05-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

Not only did Penguin recently decide to commission tattoo artists for a series of books, but they have recently released a 25-edition set of classics with covers designed by graphic artists. Here are a few of my favorites, but I want each and every one of these as well!!!

Penguin Ink Series

2010-05-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

Just saw in my May Bazaar that Penguin recently

commissioned several tattoo artists for an upcoming series.

Though I've only heard of two of these novels (can you guess which?), I still want to

collect them.

What a great idea!

Happy Birthday Nancy Drew

2010-04-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Nancy Drew is 80 years old today! I read a few growing up, but the real sleuth in the family was always my sister. She loves mystery and suspense...and once I realized that I wouldn't have bad dreams*** reading Nancy, I enjoyed them myself.

A gorgeous cover for her 80th bday.

This starter set containing the first six books is a perfect idea for a new reader.

Did you ever read Nancy Drew?

***I watched Cape Fear with Robert DeNiro when I was 14, and I had to sleep in my sister's room for two weeks.

2010-04-18T12:50:00.001-07:00

test for twitter

2010 Pulitzers

2010-04-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here they are folks!

2010 Pulitzer for Fiction:

Tinkers

by Paul Harding

A description from Powell's Bookstore:

An old man lies dying. Confined to bed in his living room, he sees the walls around him begin to collapse, the windows come loose from their sashes, and the ceiling plaster fall off in great chunks, showering him with a lifetime of debris: newspaper clippings, old photographs, wool jackets, rusty tools, and the mangled brass works of antique clocks. Soon, the clouds from the sky above plummet down on top of him, followed by the stars, till the black night covers him like a shroud. He is hallucinating, in death throes from cancer and kidney failure.

A methodical repairer of clocks, he is now finally released from the usual constraints of time and memory to rejoin his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler, whom he had lost 7 decades before. In his return to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in the backwoods of Maine, he recovers a natural world that is at once indifferent to man and inseparable from him, menacing and awe inspiring.

Tinkers is about the legacy of consciousness and the porousness of identity from one generation the next. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, it is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.

2010 Pulitzer for Poetry:

Versed

by Rae Armentrout

Per usual, I've never heard of either of these.

Have you read any of the works? Any of them interest you?

FYI:

Pulitzer for Nonfiction

Pulitzer for History

Pulitzer for Biography

An exhaustive list here.

Rivoting Reads

2010-03-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

Clara's personal favorite

Pretty much all I'm reading these days :)

book lust

2010-02-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

Oh dear lordy, I want these bookseees.

Such lust has never been known.

(This may or may not be an exaggeration)

"Letters Home" by Sylvia Plath

2010-02-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

On this the week before the anniversary of Plath's infamous end (47 years ago this Friday), I've found my own appropriate ending to one facet of what looks like a life-long study for me. With the steam of my second cup of coffee warming my hands, I wander from window to window in this bucolic life, musing upon my morning's completion of Plath's Letters Home.

I've been putting off finishing the last five pages for the last five weeks now...for whatever reason. I've not wanted to lose her, I suppose...hoping instead to linger just a bit longer in her life, but this morning it felt appropriate, good even, to lose her; as natural and inevitable as losing the cherry blossoms in early summer or losing the youthful elasticity in the skin around the eyes.

One of the major benefits to all of this Sylvia Plath research and exposure has been the destigmatization of the morbid darkness surrounding her public persona. One quite acutely sees this in Letters. She wrote her mother just about once a week from the time she left for Smith College up to one week before her death, and these notes are eerily optimistic and down-right cheerful. The most fascinating part of this lies in the comparison to her own journals (which I am also about 5 pages from finishing and have been for 6 months now). In one day, she will have written an assuring epistle to her mother whilst confessing to her own diary of her existential angst and deep-seeded fear of failure.

This does not, however, create in Plath a disingenuous voice; rather it is a stunning and accurate expose on the paradoxical nature of soul. OF COURSE I would tread lightly writing a letter to my mother (who incidentally had found me [Plath] under the stairs in a first suicide attempt at age 20) about my depression or loss of hope. One major factor in depression is the notion of being a terrible burden upon loved ones. If one survives a suicide attempt, how much greater is the penchant towards a codependent reassurance of joy, hope, and life?! I even think these jolly letters home were for Sylvia a promotion of health...if she spent time writing others of her being well, surely she would come to believe some of it herself.

Another impressive note is the post-script her mother wrote at the end of Letters Home. Simply put, it revealed that Aurelia Plath had understood it as a day that was harder than most.

"Her physical energies had been depleted by illness, anxiety and overwork, and although she had for so long managed to be gallant and equal to the life-experience, some darker day than usual had temporarily made it seem impossible to pursue" (500).

I find this approach refreshing and maternal somehow. It seems that perhaps Aurelia didn't spend her time looking for signs that she should not have missed as a mother (or at least not when publishing this book, some 12 years later) that would tell her that Sylvia was in real danger. Instead, she seems to have known that some days are harder than others and one day Sylvia simply couldn't manage. It's in some way freeing.

Life is perspective. As Plath wrote after a particularly despairing day, realizing she has been looking at things all wrong, "If I can write, I don't care what happens. I feel like an idiot who has been obediently digging up pieces of coal in an immense mine and has just realized that there is no need to do this, but that one can fly all day and night on great wings in clear blue air through brightly colored magic and weird worlds [emphasis mine]" (336). I don't think she meant that a simple change in attitude can make the difference, but that her talent for imagination held for her a new world in which to escape and rejuvenate her soul. Incidentally in her later days, she was so overwhelmed with her newly-found single parent duties that she sacrificed 5-8 hours of what used to be writing time in an effort to reestablish a home for her two babies in the wake of she and Ted's separation and eventual divorce. She says, "I would smother if I didn't write" (208), full well knowing she could not cope with this world without her soulful outlet.

{ image courtesy of the amazingly talented honeypie }

Which lends itself to us how? Perhaps those of us who live less loudly than she (in that we feel things deeply but are less inclined to take the physical destinies into our own hands), we can find a warning. If we continue to ignore our soul's calling, there is a kind of spiritual death that awaits us. We must honor the imagination in all aspects of life (this is obviously wrought with Thomas Moore), listen to our outlets, care for our desires, indulge in our whimsy, and be willing to sacrifice the status quo. That is, of course, unless we would rather be the walking dead upon this earth.

And so with that, I bid adieu to this rich piece of literary history. To SP, I say that your life and death was not in vain, that you were a brilliant and doting mother, that your mysteries will remain vast and inspiring and in your own words, that you "are a woman and glad of it, and [your] songs will be of fertility of the earth and the people in it through waste, sorrow and death" (256).

Life awaits,

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

2010-01-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

I began and finished Memories of my Melancholy Whores in the matter of a day. This absolutely never happens to me, as I tend to read books that make turning pages a virtue, and for the most part, I usually love the pace. However, as I ran out the door to catch a plane to Florida, I wanted something really short and really fast. Memories proved to be just this. I was not, however, expecting it to be so vastly important in literary merit and cultural history.

Reading this book is a bit like reading Lolita, only in Lolita, Lola isn't a prostitute and Nabakov's tale is vastly more disturbing. However, much like Lolita, the American puritanism is completely challenged and the author forces you to deal with an individual human, not a pedophile. I quickly realized that the book is not about a 90 year old man desiring a 14-year old prostitute, but about a man finding love at the most surprising age...that life ends only when you allow it to, not at any particular age or station in life. I think Marquez is simply telling a story wherein the circumstances are as normal to his culture (prostitution) as poverty is to others. Of course it is not a desirable way to live, but it is a way of life for most of the world. He (as Marquez is particularly gifted at doing) challenges our pioneering sensibilities and western causes ("let's change the world and make it so much better for everyone!") by making a touching sensitive plot take center stage in a story wrought with offense and squalor.

I hated it at first, but the more it made me grapple with sexuality, age, and love, the more I realized the importance of what Marquez, like Nabakov, does.

~MME.

A true guide

2010-01-04T17:16:00.000-08:00

I think I am nearing an end in some literary paths. I've embarked on an inquiry with Plath that has lasted for just over two years. I am pages away from finishing her journals (and have set the book aside for various obvious dreadful reasons to keep from these tragedies being real somehow), and am approaching two-thirds finished in her letters to her mother, entitled Letters Home.

I've often wondered what it is exactly that reminds me of me in her life. It is by no means an association with her talent, but more an associating with the drive behind her desire/need to write her life. It is almost a vicarious life that my soul could have very well enjoyed (drawing a line at the 30-year old suicide). How I would have loved to attend Smith, experience publishing success as a juvenile, lived in Cambridge on a Fulbright, met an English husband, lived all around the world in writing colonies and finally feel somewhat settled in London with a child.

But I think what I most lean upon Sylvia Plath for is her having done what it seems I'm attempting to do...namely, live upon the artistic compulsions of my soul. To learn to be at home, taking care of the home, the husband, the children (eventually), and STILL finding voice, time, and outlets for myself.

She recently said something that has resonated with me the past week. I am a very young artist...as my dear friend said, I am but a sophomore in my artistic education. In this education, I am doing more observing of other artists than making of my own, which I think may be rather natural. I have never been one to jump into something without feeling like I learned the ropes, or at least knew how to act. In a letter to her mother, Sylvia mentioned that she had recently fallen into a similar trap and how her greatest mentor, her husband Ted, encouraged her to go the very source of art...nature. They took 5 miles walks daily, through the English moors and London town...observing birds, leaves, flowers - all manner of flora and fauna. Ted observed that making art that was engendered through observed nature was the only way to ensure that you were producing something original...not by reading other poets or observing other paintings (though this is also necessary). I've been trying to imagine what that means for me as a young artist...and this is my conclusion.

I must write. I spend much time in absorption of others art, but not in the production of my own. Here is where Sylvia's type A, highly scheduled personality helps me out. She planned her days and meals according to her writing time. I, likewise, will spend at least 1 hour per day in the process of creation...and an important distinction here for me...creation outside of my computer. I will pick up a pen, put it to paper, and see what comes of those hours. In addition, I simply must get outside more.

And perhaps for me the tragedy is not so much an untimely death (after all, isn't all death rather untimely?), but that I have lost my guide...and even more so, that she failed at this life. Or maybe it failed her. Either way, I feel deeply sad to loose her voice spurring me on to make this home life work. I therefore assume that I shall never fully be finished with her life. I shall move from these two novels into Ted Hughes books and poems, into Sylvia's books and poems, and find more and more biographies. I daresay nothing shall replace her own words of her own life.

Perhaps I shall finish a life she never could...in my own small way.

~MME.

The Inevitable Question

2009-12-15T13:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

This room is screaming at me....

found here

"READ DOSTOEVSKY HERE!!"

Can you hear it?
~MME.

Burning Books

2009-10-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-19T12:41:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-08-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Dear Books,

2009-08-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

I love you forever.

Especially when you shack up with a wine case.

image courtesy of fric and frac

Best of the Best: The inevitable superiority of the classics

2009-07-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

I was perusing this article the other day, and I came across this paragraph.

"I just finished reading The Road by Cormac MacCarthy. It’s so good that it won the Pulitzer Prize. Afterwards I read the first few chapters of Lolita. I was shocked by Lolita’s superiority. Truly great books don’t come around every year. If you only read contemporary literature, you’re drawing from a diluted pool. Why not make the most of your reading time by finding the best of the best?"

Sorry, but I couldn't agree more. I think this is what I have been trying to say about contemporary literature for some time. There is some I seriously love, but honestly...if you look into history, it's probably been written better.

"If you’re a writer/blogger, ignoring the classics is a mistake."

What classics have you been wanting to read?

mme. bookling

Writing as Therapy?

2009-07-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

To those of you stuck, pissed, hurting, confused, afraid, insecure, and blocked...

"Fury jams the gullet and spreads poison, but as soon as I start to write, dissipates, flows out in to the figure of the letters: writing as therapy?" (413).

She was on to something here. I was talking to my lovely red last night (who is on a personal writing retreat as we speak) and I was agreeing with her how writing seems to de-stigma all the feelings we think shouldn't be present. Usually, if I'm upset about something and just WRITE IT DOWN, it tends to be less demonizing. I think we fear the written word, fear that they will give permanence to a situation we would much rather see retreating from us. But I do think it turns out to be the exact opposite.

crm

Just love the work...

2009-07-12T15:44:00.001-07:00

“I can’t get behind the ambition to be ‘discovered’ as much as I can get behind the ambition to write beautifully and honorably and steadfastly. Here’s what I believe about creativity. I believe that creativity is a living force that thrums wildly through this world and expresses itself through us. I believe that talent (the force by which ephemeral creativity gets manifested into the physical world through our hands) is a mighty and holy gift. I believe that, if you have a talent (or even if you think you do, or maybe even if you just hope you do), that you should treat that talent with the highest reverence and love.

“Don’t flip out, in other words, and murder your gift through narcissism, insecurity, addiction, competitiveness, ambition or mediocrity. Frankly – don’t be a jerk. Just get busy, get serious, get down to it and write something, for heaven’s sake. Try to get out of your own way. Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the PROCESS. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless. Just love the work.”

~Elizabeth Gilbert

Found via Swirly Girl

A lecture on Lolita: YouTube Ed

2009-06-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

I was leafing through an April 27th edition of Time Magazine, and I came upon an article featuring YouTube's newest launch, their educational video series. Turns out many Ivy League universities are agreeing to have lectures from their finest professors filmed and published entirely gratis for the general public. Want to listen to a physics lecture from a professor at MIT? How about a history brush up from a professor at Stanford University? Well, I was playing around with the website, and stumbled upon a lecture by Yale's Amy Hungerford. And wouldn't you know it? The one I listed to today was the first of a three part series on Nabokov's Lolita:

There are quite a few others I plan to watch:
Physics: Classical Mechanics

or Yale's channel:

Boys and girls, looks like it's another point for the internet and google,

Mme. Bookling

Question for the masses re: Hemingway and Fitzgerald

2009-06-01T00:03:00.000-07:00

I am calling all readers of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Though I have read much of this work, I regret to say that I cannot recall it (mainly Hemingway) and this is simply unacceptable to me. I therefore beseech you, which Hemingway and/or Fitzgerald* should one begin with? Here are my criteria:

Important in the grand scheme of literature BUT
Entertaining
Moving
Relatively short

As you can see, my standards are not too high, and since that rarely happens, I'm hoping you'll jump through this window of opportunity. Yes, that's right. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but..."Tell me what to read!"

cordially,

Mme. Bookling

*obviously, i've read, remember, and even taught The Great Gatsby. sheesh.

Plath makes me want to:

2009-05-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Drink scalding coffee
Perfect a lemon meringue pie
Have weekly dinner guests
Go to Smith
Teach at Amherst
Swim in the Mediterranean
Warm milk before I go to bed
Study Joyce
Re-read her novel
Write

mme. bookling

I was wrong about NPM. Shakespeare forgives me.

2009-05-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Since I was COMPLETELY mistaken about National Poetry Month being in May (it's actually April and I totally missed it), I feel a bit sheepish about my blunder. I have decided, however, that the whole mishap should not deter me from sharing my favorite poems of all time as I originally set out to do.

Today I want to share one of my three favorite (because I memorized them in HS and still know them) Shakespearean Sonnets.

Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to ever wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, though his height be taken.
Love's not times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within its bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ; nor no man ever loved.

to the very edge of doom indeed,
mme. bookling

do you have a favorite sonnet?

NPM: May 5th "She Walks In Beauty"

2009-05-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's national poetry month (hereafter known as NPM)!! I almost forgot until I sat down this morning and read the paper. In honor of such a jocund celebration, I will be periodically posting my favorite poems of all time. I would love to know your favorites as well...

Today's first entry is from the hunk of a poet that dominated the Victorian Era...

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 1788–1824

"She walks in beauty"

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light	5
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;	10
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,	15
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

I love Byron's soulful connection of darkness and beauty, his ornate and drippy descriptions, and his obvious gift at setting mood.

I have also been toying with the idea of memorizing a poem this month and then performing it via video. Now to choose which poem...

Write a poem, Read a poem, Be a poem,
mme. bookling

"A Homemade Life" Number Three Best Seller

2009-05-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

In the post-supper stupor commonly experienced at my mother-in-law's, I lazily sat to read Sunday paper with my glass of wine. I was enjoying the NW Arts & Life section when I stumbled upon the bestselling list for the local book scene.

I was JUST bemoaning the problems with bestseller lists to my family (Mary Higgens Clark, really?!) when I found my annoyance assuaged by Seattle once again.

Drum roll for Mrs. Molly Wizenberg of (one of my favorite blogs) Orangette who is number three on the best seller list with her memoir, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table.

Oh I want to gobble up this novel like I gobbled up the teacake I made from her recipes this week. It may be the first fiction I have purchased in a great many years that was published post 1980.

Congratulations Molly! Seattle is so proud.

mme. bookling

a persuasive snob

2009-04-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

i admit it. i come clean. i wash my hands of it. i committed a personal cardinal sin.

i let popular culture affect what i decide to read.
and rather than hiding it away in my dirty little closet of chic-flick secrets, i am CONFESSING that....

i watched this:

which made me pick up a re-read of this:

in a world of pinafores and wit,
mme. bookling

i am already regretting the confession.
because i am a snob. i like being a snob.
but if i feign a humble confession, then it becomes charming.

right?
don't answer that.

outdoor reading

2009-04-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

I left another writer a voice mail today, musing about the profound affect the written word can have upon a writer. Just as I assume painters are moved by other paintings, so am I moved when someone has found a way to speak in my language.

This morning I sat in the park with Rilke.

"This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled alone the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying--to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day--
is like his anxious letting himself fall

into the water, which receives him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draws back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide."

"The Swan" in The Selected Poetry of Rainier Maria Rilke

Oh the transition, the in between of my life. I am too scared to think that this happy time will not last, so I feel a bit unsettled...that this is a passing phase. Though I am enjoying it, the knowledge of its impermanence pervades my tranquility indeed. How I long to "fall into the water" of whatever will be.

I look up.
I watched a red-breasted robin.
I giggle at a man and his pomeranian.
I sip my coffee and move over to Plath.

She speaks of her ambition to write her novel, her unfocused intimidation at the prospect. She makes profession of her love for Virginia Woolfe and in eerie portent, describes her life connection to her. She wants a life of "books, babies, and beef stews." She exaults over Ted's book of poems being published, both proud and intimidated.

"Again, I feel the gulf between my desire & ambition and my naked abilities" (273).

I breath in her spirit...look to the call of the raven, release my shoe from my foot, and lie still in the sun.

I am reading much indeed! I just finished a re-read of 1984 and have begun Things Fall Apart which I was supposed to read in college but never did. I highly recommend both.

Please do let the change of seasons move you to reading. It really is the perfect outdoor pastime. When you think of reading on a sunny day, what kind of books come to mind? What do you like to read in the outdoors?

Sunnily Sunburnt,
mme bookling

Moore's "Soul Mates"

2009-03-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

For those of you who've been around for any length of time, you well know my devout adoration and affection for Thomas Moore. First introduced to him through The Care of the Soul: A Guide to Cultivating Sacredness in Everyday Life, I was intrigued and quickly amassed all Moore I could find at any used bookstore (is there any other kind?!)

Last year, he published A Life at Work and joel, jess, and i went to hear him read from the piece at Elliot Bay Books. It was such a delightful and well-timed experience as we were all, ARE all, in the time of life where we question our careers in an attempt to slow down and live more soulfully instead of monetarily.

Just last week, I picked up Soul Mates on tape (our freaking CD player is broken) and have greatly enjoyed being reemerged into Moore's ideologies. He never fails to offend and challenge my "churched" sensibilities and instead ushers me into the truly sacred.

Soul Mates is another amazing installment in Moore's lifelong quest towards advocating the mysterious and unfathomable depths of the human soul and how it can possible amalgamate to another equally enigmatic human soul. Moore confronts moralism in sexuality as well as pondering the needs of soul - in that it often wants detachment just as much as attachment, coldness as well as passion. Though I consider myself a lover of soul and proponent of the soul's journey, Moore never ceases to press further into the process and combats the arid analysis of relationships and the "lets fix it" mentality through practical means, and encourages relationships to delve into every aspect of the relationship - even the vices - in an effort to hear what the soul of your being has to say. Always challenging, never simple, forever entrenched in the mythology of Jungian and Grecian archetypes, I find Moore more and more (hah) offering me a truth older and safer than I know...

As a result, I have picked up another of his, The Soul of Sex.

Until nex time,
mme. bookling

Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

2009-03-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

I feel about Rilke as my husband once felt about jambalaya.

Let me explain.
Joel had never once in his then 25 years of life heard the word jambalaya. When this came up in conversation one afternoon, I was so incredulously shocked at his not knowing the dish much less the word, so I took the matter before a tribunal of friends. Even after their calm assurances that such a thing existed, he would have none of it. He has certainly come around, but the point is the disorientation we feel when our lives have never encountered something that others seem to know about. It's as if we were completely absent that day in school...

So I ask how an English major could graduate without even the mention of Rainer Maria Rilke. I have no idea and I blame Christian education. :)

Now that I know, I will never again look back. Rilke has moved me to my very core and couldn't have been encountered at a more perfect time (I know I say that often, but I feel that the divine must orchestrate the influence of literature for me as he would introduce people into another's).

In Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, I found words spoken with soul-wrenching truth and simplicity. He advises a young poet on matters of art, criticism, the existence of god, solitude, sadness, and poetry. Of course I would love it. I have so many passages marked that to include my favorites would certainly infringe on copyright laws. Let me narrow down a few:

He mentions that in judging your own art, one should never ask if it is good or bad, but if it was necessary. "A work of art is good if it has risen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it" (9).

I shared this passage in a letter to an artist, but it is so relevant:
"Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born; this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast" (24).

Lastly, I love his advise about sadness. When life brings us pain, he encourages humans to enter solitude as much as possible. "For the quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadness..."(85). I love this idea, and not to the exclusion of entering into the support of those you love, but in combating the way our western culture deals (by not dealing) with sadness. Sadness always has a message for our soul, and if we jump out of it as a potato out of boiling water, we will miss much of the secret rooms of our insides.

I am seriously crushing on Rilke,
mme. sadness

Stories of lovers: Keeping Sane without Work

2009-03-03T11:55:00.000-08:00

it's all books all the time here at le chateau bookling.

in this comfortable and slow solitude (i realize that sounds like a personal hell for some), i am rediscovering my voracious appetite for reading. in previous years, i could never start one book before i had finished another; but now, i find myself capable of such infidelity.

i am juggling 6 right now.
such scandal.

in each of these books, i am finding something to glean for each different little room of my soul. and these days, those needs are quite variegated.

So how does she juggle so many lovers, you ask?! Well, here's how it goes. I wake up and wander out to my spot on the couch. I pick up my Women Poets from Antiquity to Now and give myself a refresher lesson about whomever I am reading that day. Today, it was the gothic Mz. Emily Bronte. This is the book of sleepy, morning kisses for me; my coherence is subconscious at best and the sweet expository words linger even after I close the door.

I then wander over to Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain which I find reminiscent of Augustine's confessions; a happy correlation for me. I have found MUCH pleasure in autobiographical writing these days; perhaps this is because I hope to do the same and am finding all of these meaningful examples. This is the book of passion for me; my eyes hungrily finger each word in a blind, fast fit of the senses. I cannot get enough fast enough.

I then feel the call of Mz. Plath. She is a nostalgic, illusive distant lover in a smart tweed suit. She smells like cigarettes and tragedy. She is the acadamian, the professor I am too intimidated to address. Lately, I have had to dodge into the shrubs when I see her walking into her lecture. I long for what I cannot have.

So I divert myself to Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. This lover is the one that makes me giddy with pre-teen infatuation. Where has he been? Why hasn't he noticed me yet? So I will voyeuristicly read his letters intended for some other fledgling and unashamedly transfer his admonitions to myself. He speaks of solitude; he fails at marrying the need for human love with human solitude - but knows that all creative work is birthed from solitude. You had me at "solitude."

Thus ends my morning coupling.
I save the other two for nighttime...
When the imagination comes to life in my bedroom.

I tenderly open Watership Down. I look up at the clock, and I have been lost in the world of rabbits for the last 30 minutes. This lover is as a child loves her father-figure. She aches to be in his presence, but doesn't want him to know it. She admires him. She relys on him, takes his presence for granted. It doesn't feel too important, but only because she doesn't know a life without him.This will be a long read for me - I will nibble off a chapter or two and then mouth it, savoring its lingering aftertaste.

The last one falls into the category of my romance with educating myself. I am an information gatherer, analyzer, and implementer. We added a new addition to our lives last month, and I am determined to do as right by her as possible.

Ladies and gents, I give you the GEEEEEKIEST book ever: How to Think Like a Cat. This came as a recommendation from a friend, and it has been most helpful for this young cat owner (who has never owned a cat, much less any animal of her own).

~i told you. reading is sexy,
mme. bookling

two down, three to go

2009-02-16T13:48:00.001-08:00

On my recent vacation to Mexico, I was able to finish two books. You need to know about both.

My review as seen on goodreads:

Oh Annie.
Oh Annie.

I read this after a direct recommendation from a friend, which I rarely do because I rarely share people's taste in modern fiction, but I do love this friend and his poetic soul.

I find it interesting that in almost all of my reviews of Dillard's works, they begin with "this was not what i was expecting, but once I adjusted to the reality of the book, was able to find it very moving." And in Dillard's ever-changing talent and poetic pace, I find intrigue and admiration. I will pick up anything she writes from now on.

That being said, The Maytrees wasn't what I was expecting. I think once I adjusted to Dillard's poetic randomness, I found beauty in the speed bumps she throws in the path of word choice and plot disjointedness. The plot, which is really the first thing I cling to upon the initial read of a book, was a bit hazy and unclear (think Marquez), but once it emerged, the thematic treatment of human connection, age, art, and nature was true to every corner of Dillard's talent I have come to love and explore.

I still enjoyed Pilgrim at Tinker Creek better, but The Maytrees was a quick, moving, important, and gorgeous read.

________________

My review as seen on goodreads:

I seriously want to buy this book for every single introvert I know. After that, I want to buy this book for every single extrovert I know.

Truth is, this book has treated a topic that is seriously underrated and has been the source of my anxiety for many, many years.

There are so many interesting facts/statistics that Dr. Laney throws into this book. For instance:

Introverts are outnumbered 3:1 in this world.
Introverts live longer than Extroverts.
Introversion has been directly linked to intelligence.
Introverts loose their words more easily, dislike eye-contact, and shirk when required to engage in "small talk."
Introverts require environments where they can control their stimulation levels (noise, color, people) and can become irritable and moody when overstimulated.
Introverts are not usually shy and do not lack social skills.
Introversion is not a pathology to overcome (Freud), but instead a personality trait (Jung), and is the reason Freud/Jung went their separate ways.
Introverts can only recharge by decreasing their stimulation and through tranquil, nonsocial solitude.
Introverts often live under immense anxiety because they and their world expect them to act like extroverts (spontaneous, outgoing, gregarious), and when they can't, they shame themselves and create immense internal angst.
Introverts "chew" on things longer than extroverts, so what seems like obsession to an extrovert is actually the natural internal dialogue of an introvert.
Introverts need to express themselves more than they do; repression is their natural bent and a dangerous one.
Introverts are almost incapable of spontaneity.
There are two kinds of introverts; left-brained and right-brained. The right-brained introvert can often mistake himself for an extrovert.
Introverts have less children.
Introverts have higher metabolisms because their life takes much more energy and therefore are prone to hypoglycemia and need to eat every few hours.
In order to decrease stimulation, Introverts need to be in control of social situations - often needing to arrive in their own transportation, leaving early, coming later, not hosting, etc. What can appear controlling to Extroverts is actually an Introvert taking care of his/herself.

...just to name a few...

In realizing that many of my problems with anxiety and depression have come from my shamefaced introvert trying to act as if she were an extrovert, I have found much release and understanding of myself.

There are a few chapters that are very self-help focused to the introvert (how to meet people, dating, etc), but in her more soulful, philosophical chapters, there are so many gems of advise and understanding. As I read these, I saw the knot in my belly finally begin to unwind after 15 years of clenching. The chapter "Nurture your Nature," was particularly helpful.

I borrowed this book from my local library, but will be buying it as soon as I find a cheap, used copy (and this is where I plug used books...down with corporate booksellers!).

The book also has tests for introversion if you are unaware of your specific bent, and if you have any suspicion or hunch that you, your spouse, your friend, or your child is introverted, this book will seriously enlighten those relationships.

________________

So I have finished two books.
I have three open on my nightstand:

Transitions: William Bridges*
Syliva's Journals (I am just now ready to pick it up again).
Watership Down: Richard Adams

So do tell,
What books have you finished and to which are you headed next?
mme. bookling

*Interesting side note here. Bridges recommends noticing how you have dealt/do deal with the transitions in your life thus far. Without know it before, today I realized that in almost any major change, I want to change my hair and I want to scour the house in random cleaning (aka, ignoring the dishes, but meticulously cleaning my makeup bag and brushes or taking the vacuum to the ignored places in/behind the couch). What are some of your patterns when you are going through transitions?

a {book}room of one's own

2009-01-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

i have a dream.
i dream of a space all for me.
this space will include, but not be limited to the following:

books.
windows with pastoral, bucolic, boreal, or oceanic scapes.
light {of the natural kind}.
18th-century desk like this one.

as seen on domino

typewriter.
computer.
quill, parchment, and ink.
fainting couch.
fireplace.
a bosom-enhancing dress with coquettish lace collar.
an eclectic selection of music ranging from Ulrich Snaush to Frédéric Chopin.
an enviable collection of port, brandy, and scotch.
a replenished [by my butler, of course] tray of cheeses, crackers, jams, fruits, petie fours, and chocolates.
bright blooms of peony and bells of ireland - or an abundance of whatever is in bloom.
a camera/photography station.

oh how i dream.
in fact, every night as i sit on the side of my bed lotioning my winter skin, i see a collection of pictures from many who also foster this dream for me. a smartly-dressed female on a ladder amidst stacks of books, an owl sitting on an open book, a card that tells me of my dreams...and i sigh, close my eyes, and wish.

and even if it never comes to fruition, at least i have been with my wish every night - and no economy or disappointment can ever take that away.

while we're on the subject,
i also dream of rooms and rooms of books. i think people used to call them librarys and i want one in my home. in my internet wanderings, i have stumbled upon some really dreamy pictures of what i like to call bookrooms.

above and below courtesy of David Tsay Photography as seen on SFGirl

see some of my flickr favorites for desks that would suffice in my dream...

1. 2007-09-13 - Paris - Louvre - Writing Desk, 2. Writing Desk, 3. Jules Verne's writing desk, 4. I want this writing desk

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

1. My Writing Desk, 2. me and my writing desk, 3. sunny nook 4. writing desk

le sigh trios.
perchances....
mme.

The end. On Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

2009-01-29T16:05:00.000-08:00

It is finished.

Dillard has been the surprise of my year.

I was once introduced to her by a bartender I worked with but because I think he was more interested in having a threesome than talking about spirituality, I cast him into the fires of hell - right along with Dillard. Now that I am a bit more, ahem, mature I realize my heinous and capricious act. When Dillard made her gracious way back into my life via a very dear friend whom i respect quite a bit, Mrs. Jillian, I decided to pay attention.

Dillard has brought me into a world that I would never have known, not being the woodwose or dryad many around me are. Into this world I have entered and left with thanks for hosting such a great party. She gave me chills, she gave me comfort, she gave me fodder for thought, she gave me answers I needed.

The last paragraphs are lingering in my mouth like a buttery worthers...I twist and turn my tongue all around to catch every last morsel. To have read this specific book just as I was stumbling upon the inevitability of my own death was nothing short of a godsend.

She approaches life, death, fecundity, nature just as they are and i find this matter-of-fact point of view refreshing. She never over spiritualizes or stands to be didactic, instead she opts for observation. She takes the reader in her pocket and they get to observe with her. They observe trees, bees, muskrats, creeks, mountains, air...and find within all a deep and lasting comfort in their instinct and stability and learn lessons of mortality, perseverance, and fecundity.

Some excerpts I love:

In chapter 10: Fecundity: "What I have been after all along is not an explanation but a picture. My rage and shock at the pain and death of individuals of my kind is the old, old mystery, as old as man, but forever fresh and completely unanswerable. My reservations about the fecundity and waste of life among other creatures is, however, mere squeamishness. It is true that many of the creatures live and die abominably, but I am not called upon to pass judgment. Nor am I called upon to live in that same way, those creatures who are mercifully unconscious" (179).

In chapter 12: The Horns of the Altar: "I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down" (242).

And last, in chapter 13: The Waters of Separation: "You see creatures die, and you know you will die. And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life. Obviously. And then you're gone. I think that dying pray at the last not "please," but "thank you," as a guest thanks his host at the door...Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns or warms him, but with which he will not part" (270).

The imagery of saying thank you when I leave has given me unspeakable comfort.

I am in awe of Annie.
~mme.

post script: i just noticed that the google ads on the side of my blog are all about death and life insurance. it's official. i talk about death too much.

the independence of solitude: on emerson's "self reliance"

2009-01-22T16:55:00.001-08:00

as you may well know,
i find great comfort in reading.

it is no small thing that the pieces of literature that fall into my willing hands always seem to be serendipitously orchestrated to echo and forte in my mind about the ideas already ruminating inside.

today has been very existentially frustrating; i continue to butt my naive head against the societal wall of wealth and financial security and despite rigorous planning today, tomorrow i will fall into weakness and at the end of the year, there will never be enough. there is never enough. before i start the humble realization that i must redefine 'enough,' i chose instead today to beat myself up for poor planning and the Indian food i bought when we should have eaten at home.

and then the car dies so i cannot get to the grocery store and run my errands. this tiny addition to my physical limitations sent me into a sadness...a familiar, pitying sadness.

but what if it's not pity?
what if something is really seriously wrong with our society to value such things i cannot seem to grasp? (in the words of Alice in Revolutionary Road, "Who made these rules, anyway?!")
or is the something seriously wrong found in my subconscious adherence to such values without taking into account the individuality of my own life.

But then I started my prep work for a tutoring session tomorrow. The reading sent me into the Transcendentalist Americans, and the first two readings I get through make my heart quicken with new hope in the old understanding that we must not succumb to anything in life other than that which is our OWN.

Emerson: Self-Reliance

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

I see these words through blurs and blinks of resonation and my hungry soul continues its feast:

"The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It looses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, vote with a great party either for the government or against it...under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do you our work, and you shall reinforce yourself."

We cannot be known, fully known to ourselves or others when we hide in society and consistency.

I have many fears. Up on the top ten of those are that I am afraid of being misunderstood. Second to that is the fear of contradicting myself.

And yet again, Emerson breaks through my sadness with words I am relieved to know what other humans ancient have known.

"With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you say today. Ah, so you shall be misunderstood...Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood..."

All of the thoughts burning upon my keyboard via my fingers reminds me simply that I have great comfort in Emerson, in Transcendental thought, in study, in self-reliance, in divinity, and in hope.

Today, in this chilly living room listening to Frederic Chopin, hope means:

I can be satisfied with a life where I never own a house or have a child - if that is my destiny.
I can survive in a less financially predictable or even stable situation if the trade off is a life work of my personal passions.
Anything can change.
My meaning is not derived from my financial acumen.
I make mistakes. I recover.forces of enchantment: from couragemylove
i have long since attached myself to this photo. i need to buy it.

Ah friends, I am in an internal frenzy. I return to my stacks of Emerson & Thoreau, but must have you know that I forgot the cardinal maxim of writing...to which I admonish all. When I cannot write, I haven't really read.

When I read,
I can, nay- MUST, write.

"Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times,"
mme. bookling.

memento mori

2009-01-06T23:05:00.000-08:00

"I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives. Every glistening egg is a memento mori" (160).

Timing.
Coincidence.
Destiny.

I am met with these three thoughts as I encountered this passage in Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

For the month of December, my reading has been sporadic at best. As I readied myself for work this morning, rushes of things I could do at home flooded my brain; this angered me because I have been stuck at home, snowed in for almost 2 weeks this month. One would think I could finish all my books and crocheting projects and other such things...but no. The best way for me to get things done at home is to leave home...

But back to my story.
I didn't read much in December.

I always feel a bit disoriented and guilty when I neglect books for longer periods of time than my routine is accustomed to...and yet, had I read more of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I would have never encountered this passage last night at precisely the moment in which I was meant to.

You see I have been rather pensive lately about the inevitability of death and grotesqueness of life and growth (birth!). Here I am thinking these thoughts and then I open up to chapter 10 : fecundity...and after I looked up the meaning of the word, found myself bound and open-eyed upon the discovery of all Ms. Dillard's musings.

We are born. We seek to integrate all the disparate issues inside of us in an effort to become healthy and whole. We die.

Of course there is a lot of amazing stuff in between, I am not pondering morbidly or being maudlin for effect...but the simple equation of life is grotesque, bountiful, careless, beautiful, and a bit mind blowing.

Well, if nothing else - the new chapter gave me the fever again.
The bookish kind.
And it feels good to be home.

dust to dust,
mme bookling

teachable trees

2008-12-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

i have been much too silent about my most recent read, especially in light of my confession on a couch, "this book will probably change my life."

i realize that i may say that about every book i read.

but i really, really, really mean it this time.

hmmm. muse with me here about this:
i am (and my parents [and husband] will concur) a rather unteachable little sprite. i am cynical and analytical and these too combinations make for one impenetrable mind. if i have let my guard down and learned from you, i hope you know this is rare. i am also the poster girl for the little sister syndrome i like to call the "i know!" disorder. this combination makes for a problematic juxtaposition (aren't all humans problematic?) inside me.

what strikes me as odd and wonderful is the ultimate and unguarded release of this unteachable spirit upon opening a book. it seems that i trust the creak of the spine, the smell of age, and the words of history more than anything else in my life (except for experience...). i cannot delineate i trust the book because of its history (i am a rather rigid traditionalist - academically speaking) or if i trust it because of its confident silence. to write is to have a faith and certainty in a reader. modern hermeneutics takes into account every human's different interpretation of the written word, despite the persuasion, rhetoric, and explanation of the author. when an author releases his/her words, he/she lets go of whatever possible interpretation (ideally) and trust that it will be meaningful, in any way, to a reader.

it seems my hard exterior melts in this trust.
and this book, this written word, scales my wall of unteachablity and knocks it down,
stone by literary stone.

this new book will change my life.

and i really, really, really mean it.

i have wandered through life unenchanted with nature and bored when outdoors (i fault this to a concrete, suburban upbringing on roller-skates and television). two years ago, i felt my spirit emerging, a spirit of imagination towards nature which gave me a new-found appreciation for all the goings-on around me that i never before saw; i began to search out and entertain curiosities of things like ant hills and bird watching. in the past, i would have scoffed at this nonsense and buried my nose back into a book, since that is the only place i could find any imagination.

but, back to my current read.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has infused what i discovered about nature two years ago with new insight and inspiration for continual growth in this area. In this nonfiction piece, Dillard records her thoughts as she spends a year wandering through Virginia's Blue Ridge valley at Tinker Creek. She muses about the lessons nature reveals to her, most of which she learns just by sitting and watching.

i do not sit and watch enough.

in chapter three, entitled "The Present," Dillard expounds on finding the current moment. I relate quite well to her tone: compassionate to the unrealized-self, hopeful of growth, aware of death, and never didactic. Perhaps this is why i can learn from her...because she never intended to teach.

a passage from last night that was particularly apt because of a conversation some of my friends had here (nothing is ever as coincidental as we imagine) about trees and finding a piece of identity in nature:

"I am sitting under a sycamore tree. I am soft-shell and peeled to the least puff of wind or smack of grit. The present of our life looks different under trees. Trees have dominion. I never killed that backyard sycamore; even its frailest inner bark was a shield. Trees do not accumulate life, but deadwood, like a thickening coat of mail. Their odds actually improve as they age...Some trees sink taproots to rock; some spread wide mats of roots clutching at acres. They will not be blown. We run around under these obelisk-creatures, teetering on our soft, small feet. We are out on a jaunt, picnicking, fattening like puppies for our deaths. Shall I carve a name on this trunk? What if I fell in a forest: Would a tree hear?" (92).

I feel my creative eye opening.
I feel a greater need than ever for imagination.

I must learn to be patient, sit under a tree, and let it teach...

~here's to hoping,
mme. bookling

reading is dead sexy

2008-11-20T10:08:00.000-08:00

men who read are really sexy.

i was riding the bus this morning to work [shameful, i live only 1 mile from my building!] and spotted one of my favorite seattle sights:

a man reading.

i started to analyze - is this boy in front of me really sexy, or is it his book? i examined his face with my critical eye and decided he was not unattractive, but what really grabbed my attention was the pocket size Flannery O'Connor short stories [by a very notable publisher, i might add] in which he was engrossed...and the way he held and absorbed such a lovely piece of fiction. i stopped lusting after this 22 yr old and then sought to disprove my theory with more data...thereby imagining the men i know, dressing them up with a book (and a pipe, and crossed legs, and a watch-fobbed three-piece suit - okay i am thinking of val as doc holiday) and immediately thought of them as entirely sexy. (this was mildly disturbing).

there is something aloof and challenging in a man that is not distracted by my perfume or clicking heels...something beautiful about how the book grabs him from my womanly wiles. i am engrossed in him because he cares little about me.

is that fucked up?
(alas, i digress)

when i was a teenager fantasizing about how popular and sexy i was, i always imagined myself in a library, smartly dressed - showing a tantalizing but still subtle amount of leg, long hair in bun, glasses precariously teetering on my nose, and completely entertained by the big dusty book in front of me. everyone would be entraptured with how smart i was [because you can tell this by watching someone read] and i would own the universe of sexy.

i have grown out of this fantasy (somewhat. okay...fine, i admit to dreaming about the outfits i will wear as a bookstore owner), but my definition of sexy still remains:

smart

aloof

elegant

untouchable

disclaimer:
what you read in public makes/breaks this theory for me. if the youngling had been reading anything, well...let's just say..not of my taste, i would have foregone his sexiness and gone right back to working on mine...by opening my book.

my advise boys?
choose your books carefully. read in public. use it to pick up women.
after all, books are the new babies.

~mme. bookling

Count Lev Nikolayevich "Deathwatcher" Tolstoy

2008-11-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

I finished The Death of Ivan Ilych yesterday.

(I was in front of a fire...in front of a forest).

It's still ringing in my ears...tempting my thought inward and upward.

This is such a bare bones, eerily matter-of-fact, and somber (though never morbid) read. I love the dramatic irony, the telling of death before the telling of a life, which reminds me of our own inevitability of death. I think we often watch our lives like one would watch a movie or read a book - watching things (sometimes mindlessly) unfold right before our eyes, and despite knowing that we will die (and what to do with this knowledge?!), how we go along hoping for a different end somehow. How can we see life with meaning when we know it will end? Honestly, the only answer I have come to lately is art. I think art is the answer. I think leaving behind something that will mark the world with your thumbprint - the original soul work that only you have produced, your words, your paintings, your music, your thoughts, the work of your hands, and even your children. Without these things, I can honestly say that my life would have no meaning.

Ivan Ilych's main struggle is not his eventual demise to death, but the preposterous spiritual and philosophical nagging that tortures him on his deathbed. His internal quandaries eventually lead him to ask the inevitable question, "Have I wasted my life?" Throughout his struggle, he cannot stomach this question, much less the answer, "I have done everything society expects of me. I have worked hard, provided for my family, remained virtuous..." and because of these answers, the question of waste continues to nag him. He is entirely sure that he could not have lived his life any differently.

Until the very end. He finally ultimately sees that his life was wasted, unexamined, unfruitful.

In the edition I read, Ronald Blythe writes an especially enlightening introduction that examines this existential dilemma. Where Ivan Illych is surprised and offended at his physical death and spiritual nagging, Blythe tells the reader of this contradiction with the writer himself. He calls Tolstoy a "deathwatcher." Tolstoy never wanted to be surprised by death and even worse, never wanted to be nagged by spiritual questions at the end. He wanted to live his life - every moment - to the fullest.

In this foil of Ivan Ilych to Leo Tolstoy I find immense challenge.

Taken from Wikipedia

Tolstoy obviously thought little of men who lived with no intentionality towards a spiritual life, yet the opposite of this is Tolstoy's obsessive observations of death and decay. I see flaw in too much of either ideology, but I certainly can identify to Tolstoy's death watching.

Sometimes, it all seems so absurd.

This life.

We all struggle and fight and love and die.

I know I will find magic in all of those nooks...

But today,

it all seems like a big funny joke.

There is plenty of hope in the afterlife.

But hope for this life is a struggle for me.

Some call it enlightened.

Some call it cynical.

But my faith never has been and never will be simple.

All I know about faith and hope is that we all

die

trying.

And damn it,

I will suck every fucking ounce of meaning out of this life.

Even if it kills me.

Which it will.

morosely yours,
madame bookling

the winner

2008-11-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

i was debating what to read next.
i have agonized.
i have listed list after list after [joyous] list.

i watched the new BBC version of Sense and Sensibility last night, and afterward, wandered over in my stockinged feet, tear-stained face, and disheveled hair to my bookshelves.

i sat in front of them.
i touched and smelled them [a veritable fondling].
i organized, arranged...listened.

and the winner reveled its Russian self,
and my e.s.p. was right again, as i had a hunch i would pick this one.
but then i couldn't find it last night; it got lost among the other opuses.

until i did.
i found it.

ladies and gents,
i give you.

my next book choice...

From the winner

go bury your nose in a book.
like the geeky bookworms you are.
every one's doing it.

~le madame bookling

Steinbeck, Winter Lists, and Hobros

2008-11-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

I finished Cannery Row last night in the bathtub.
I didn't intend to finish it there, but I only had 20 pages to go, and couldn't bring myself to put it down.
The water was getting chilly too...

I have to say, this little book was the suprise of my reading year. I picked it up because I needed a smaller work to ofset my non-fiction mammoth, SP's Journals. I also picked it up at the recommendation of my hobro, Brian. (Turns out that kid isn't all hobo, but ACTUALLY SMART).

My goodreads review:
From the beginning, Cannery Row was akin to sitting on the porch with your grandpa while he smokes his pipe and tells the tales of a disjointed but delightful community, full of reality, beauty, touching kindnesses, the frailty of human isolation, and the melancholic nostalgia of lost love.
I wasn't expected to be touched by this work or even think of it as important in terms of Steinbeck's career, but I believe this little gem to be tantamount in importance to Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden - and even more nuanced and subtle than those works. But three Steinbecks in three years makes it official; it's a life goal to read them all.

I am continually impressed and intrigued with how Steinbeck writes his characters - so terribly touching, really heartbreakingly sad, and surprisingly courageous, witty, and strong. He is unabashed in who he wants us to love and who he wants us to be challenged by...I appreciate the clarity of voice and direction he gives his reader while still allowing the reader to think/conclude for himself.

WINTER READING LIST

- something russian, still have to narrow it down, but thinking The Death of Ivan Ilych - Tolstoy OR perhaps The Brothers Karamazov (if I am feeling especially ambitious!)

- Watership Down

- Another Steinbeck, must research

- Finish A Wrinkle In Time series - L'Engle

- Till We Have Faces -Lewis

- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Dillard

What about you?!

~mme. bookling

"no less than the trees and stars"

2008-10-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

In a letter that Aurelia Plath wrote to her daughter while Sylvia was studying in England, she wrote, "Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here"(215).

Plath speaks of the immense peace this brought her in a time of serious loneliness, wavering transition, and a desperation for a life she was not able to make for herself. She was desperate to be married, to have children, AND to write.

"I would like a life of conflict, of balancing children, sonnets, love and dirty dishes; and banging banging an affirmation of life out on pianos and ski slopes and in bed in bed in bed" (225).

sylvia bath

I go through phases with Plath's journals, and I see no end to it anytime soon. Since the book is almost 1000 pages, I am anticipating this piece accompanying me into 2009 in an on-again, off-again relational nature. I am in an on-again phase, and find her journals her BEST writing - above all the poetry, above all the fiction. This is just achingly ironic; as we see her struggling at best with her writing career, here she is unknowingly writing her best work. This gives me hope in the craft and in life in general - what we leave behind is so often not the fabrication of who we think we should be, but rather the actualization of who we were.

May I bore you terribly with the fascinating tidbits of my recent readings? I am much obliged.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Plath's personality is the constant dual nature of her introversion; and like a true introvert, desperately needed to recharge and rethink her life in isolation. Unfortunately, also like a true introvert, she didn't understand why she still needed people, constantly talking herself out of needing and accepting social interaction but always feeling much elated after encounters with people.

"I want to be alone, and yet there are times when the liquid eye and the cognizant grin of a small monkey would send me into a crying fit of brotherly love" (184). She reiterates this sentiment again later..."always teetering on the edge of wanting complete solitude for work and reading, and, so much, so much, the gestures of hands and words of other human beings" (210). I can SO relate to this catch and release - this "leave me alone," and "don't forget about me" duality.

She was taking a long walk one night, and desperately wanted to feel nature in her usual poetic way. Here she describes what her pain has done to her,"I felt shut in, imprisoned, aware that it was fine and shudderingly beautiful, but too gone with pain and aching to respond and become part of it" (208). I felt this so acutely about fall and feel a rather significant loss that during the most colorful part of my year, I am incapable of enjoying it as I usually can. Though I still look, I find I must reach deeply into myself, soul and spirit, to find the eyes to truly see and take in the beauty around me.

Later, however...she talks about the other side of decay - the life..."But in the midst of this terrible sorrow, this sickness, this weariness, this fear, I spin still: there is still the blessing of the natural world and those simply loved ones and all to read and see" (227). I can also relate to this - despite the fatigue of sadness, the weariness of transition, I feel the blessings of those I hold most dear - and despite the forcing my naturally cynical self to see it as such, I still delight in small pleasures (the scalding hot bath water, a beautiful mug, cream-cheese frosting, the smell of fall leaves in my wine, the sound of joel breathing in slumber next to me as i read). I feel it is SO necessary to list our pleasures, blessings, the bright delights of the day; and despite this exercise, I think it's just so evil and cute of myself to always have a list of shadows a mile long and a list of blessings 5 points long.

"I have such a damned puritanical conscience that it flays me like brains when I feel I've done wrong or haven't demanded enough of myself" (215). Haven't demanded enough of myself. I have always been a very busy person - much too busy. I have taken serious measures to correct this in my lifestyle, and now I am left with sheer mind-numbing boredom. I think, in the end, once I can extract this productivity demon from my being...which I must do because it's how I measure my worth (what an unjust way to measure a life!), it will be better for me to learn to live within a simple, quiet life (even if that means boredom) than to be harried, stressed, overly-tasked, and not skilled at any one thing because i multi-tasked my way through EVERYTHING. All of this to say, though I am deliberately attempting to NOT "demand too much of myself," I am not naturally inclined this way and am terribly out of practice at it.

Other quotes of sharp beauty and poignant resonance:

"There, there, mad sister" (192).

"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing" (193).

"It is Saturday night, turning as I write into Sunday morning. The dark world balances and tips and already I can feel the dawn coming up under me" (194).

sylvia gets around

And, per usual, I have a list of words to define:

tacit: understood without being openly expressed; implied
effete: lacking in wholesome vigor; degenerate; decadent
gyre: a ring or circle
aspersions: the act of defaming, disparaging, slandering
progeny: a descendant or offspring
presage: something that portends or foreshadows a future event; an omen, prognostic, or warning indication
aslant: slanting
tautological: needless repetition of an idea
jettison:to throw off (something) as an obstacle or burden; discard
scudding: to run or move quickly or hurriedly
lares and penates: the spirits who, if propitiated, watched over the house or community to which they belonged.
intransigent: refusing to agree or compromise; uncompromising; inflexible

I hope to spend some time thinking of blessings today - even if I have to force it.
I hope today holds the perfect balance of shadow and light for you...and that you can spend it aware and appreciative of both.
I for one, can't wait to read more.

~mme. bookling

that's how i roll.

2008-10-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

SNORT.
this webpage is funny.

"How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl!"~Plath

2008-10-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

i finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter yesterday.
i can be funny about finishing a book.
i know the end is coming, so i will often script the enviornment - the perfect setting - by which to experience the ending.

endings are of paramount importance to me - the treatment thereof being often my guage or attachment to the author/work.

i had five pages to finish and didn't want to experience them at 1:30am barely awake. i saved it for my bus ride. if you read the book, you would know that the bus ride is a perfect place to experience then end of such a work.

since it's so starkly isolated and simultaneously communal.

hold on, i need another cup of coffee.
okay, i am back.

so i was saying, the bus was the perfect farewell to such a great little novel. and it was...great. you should read it.

so last night, for my fiction, i started Cannery Row. So far, it's been interesting to read something he wrote BEFORE East of Eden (the novel around which my world resolves).

so i had forgotten, for a couple of weeks about my SP Journals. I picked them up again last night and devoured a couple of entries, circled a bunch of words of which i wanted clarification, and re-emerged into her life as an escape from the complexities of mine.

here are the most recent tidbits of sheer beauty per Syl,

"Oh, I bite, I bite on life like a sharp apple. Playing it like a fish, I am happy. And what is happy? It is going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more - to learning. Always" (141).

She is 21 years of age writing this - sensing her destiny, of the school of transcendence, no doubt - but this constant analyzation and portent of her potential is forever haunting her. Forever haunting me.

She is often journaling of her options in life, the various roads she could take. It's so interesting to know how it turns out - and be reading all the questions life posed before her. It's so terribly dramatically ironic.

"And there is the fallacy of existence: the idea that one would be happy forever and aye with a given situation or series of accomplishments...if I only knew! If I only knew how high I should set my goals, my requirements for my life! I am in the position of a blind girl playing with a slide-ruler of values. I am now at the nadir* of my calculating powers" (151).

In later entries, she speaks often of her frustrations with dating and trying to pick a marriage partner. She is trying to teach herself to be patient and let life come to her instead of grabbing it. But if she doesn't grab it, will it become all it is destined to become?

"There is a time for everything; and you must beware your predilection for green apples. They may be sweet and tart and new and early, it's about time you learned to wait for the season of harvest. Take it slow, please. He is to be no engine for your ecstasy" (163).

"I am gone quite mad with the knowledge of accepting the overwhelming number of things I can never know, places I can never go, and people I can never be" (169).

"Getting to know anybody is hideous complex job" (169).

The hideous complexities of trying to know someone is rather fascinating to me. Relationships, though of immense value in my life, have been the cause for so much internal angst. I seem to process things intensely, grabbing up everything on my porcupine quills and ingest it maschocistiacally into my soul. What was never intended for poison ends up as such because of the way my emotional digestion infuses everything with arsenic. But I either run away to avoid the bile or they run away to avoid the trauma of my aloofness.

Either way, I am out of grasp.

Though I am used to it,
I love that Plath reminds me that I am not the first,
Nor the last,
to feel poisoned so by this existence.

Poisoned by myself.

And in her world, I find a voice...a peace of my own.

_________________

rapacious: inordinately greedy
fetid: having an offensive odor
*nadir: the point on the celestial sphere directly beneath a given position or observer and diametrically opposite the zenith; the lowest point of despair
inane: lacking significance; silly
scintillant: sparkling
dastardly: cowardly; meanly base; sneaking
incipient: beginning to exist or appear; in an initial stage
inured: to accustom to hardship, difficulty, pain
enuch: here misspelled, i think she meant eunuch: a castrated man.

in ElleDecor, i found the perfectly decorated writing space for me.

i dream of that space now.

writing widly, with great and ferocious abandon,

caring little for anything but the words.

if only i could be so free.

Tree Lore

2008-09-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

My husband googled "tree lore" the other day and sent me this beautiful poem.

I had to share:

The earth gripped both her ankles as she prayed.
Roots forced from beneath her toenails, they burrowed
Among deep stones to the bedrock. She swayed.

Living statuary on a tree's foundations.
In that moment, her bones became grained wood,
Their marrow pith,

Her blood sap, her arms boughs, her fingers twigs,
Her skin rough bark. And already
The gnarling crust has coffined her swollen womb.

It swarms over her breasts. It wraps upwards
Reaching for her eyes as she bows
Eagerly into it, hurrying the burial

Of her face and her hair under thick-webbed bark.
Now all her feeling has gone into wood, wit her body.
Yet she weeps.

The warm drops ooze from her rind.
These tears are still treasured.
To this day they are know by her name - Myrrh.

- Ovid, Metamorphoses: Venus and Adonis, 10 B.C.Translated by Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997

"the odd uneven time"

2008-09-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

the above is a quote mz. plath used to describe the transitions in life, namely her transition from summer and school and back again, and the transitions in season.

so apt for right now - "August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time" (124).

c'est magnifique, non? And it's exactly how I have been feeling lately. Nothing is wrong, but just now things are starting to even out - or I am in an upswing out of the chemical depression. Who even knows? But I do know that it has been odd and it has been uneven.

"The responsibility, the awful responsibility of managing (profitably) 12 hours a day for 10 weeks is rather overwhelming when there is nothing, no one, to insert an exact routine into the large unfenced acres of time - which it is so easy to let drift by in soporific idling and luxurious relaxing. It is like lifting a bell jar off a securely clockwork-like functioning community, and seeing all the little busy people stop, gasp, blow up and float in the inrush, (or rather outrush), of the rarefied scheduled atmosphere - poor little frightened people, flailing impotent arms in the aimless air. That's what it feels like: getting shed of routine. Even though one has rebelled terribly against it, even then, one feels uncomfortable when jounced out of the repetitive rut. And so with me. What to do? Where to turn? What ties, what roots? as I hang suspended in the strange thin air of back-home?" (118).

Know what else:

purblind: nearly or partially blind
paltry: insultingly small or utterly worthless
pluvial: pertaining to the rain; rainy
corollary: a natural consequence or result
tacit: understood without being openly expressed; implied
unremunerative: not yielding profit

(perhaps she was studying the "p"s in le dictionary?)
(p.s. sometimes i dislike sharing the words i don't know, like people are going to be shocked that i was stupid for a second. don't be shocked. it happens de temps en temps).
(p.s.s. i know i have been reading this book for quite some time, but lest you think i am not attending to it because i am only on page 118 - not so! not so. it's meaty and so much to take in...so i treat it like the 2000 Bordeaux it is - sipping it finely in small portions so as to really palate the flavor.)

hope you feel alive today somehow,
mme. bookling

"Not all who wander are lost."

2008-09-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

I saw that phrase on a bumper sticker yesterday (on a car who also boasted a different sticker saying, "The only Bush I trust is my own," ah, but I digress) and since I am neck-deep in yet another existential vocational crisis, this phrase stuck with me.

I have had a direction since I was 15. I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would be an English teacher. I pursued this unwaveringly for 10 years, stepping into my first classroom at 24, full of hope and direction (well, as much as a cynical melancholic can be). I left that classroom three years later resembling very little semblance of a human, much less of myself.

While I have spent the last two years recovering quite well from the experience, I still have not quite bounced back from the lack of direction. When I quit teaching, I divorced a journey to which I was blindingly committed. For this loss, I was not prepared.

Hence the constant dilemma.

So then I decided to work on opening a bookstore - great idea and still in the works BUT for the following:

This economy
Personal debt

So I have to wait at LEAST 2 years before I can really pursue anything there - and I doubt I can stay in this shit-sack of a job. (And that's the thing, the job sucks, but the paycheck DOES NOT).

So if I am deeply honest, all I want to do now is go back to school for literature. NOT AT ALL to teach or do anything responsible with the $25k it will cost me to get through the program, but just because I really love it. It will make me a better bookstore owner, yes, but I would be lying if I said that was the motivation.

I am just hungry for knowing.

I have school envy this September. I want new pencils and book bags. I want to wander in the bookstore with a syllabus and find the delicious text books that I simply HAVE to buy for class...I want to go to class in the morning and write, write, write...you know, that coffee-infused time from 9-11 when you forget you exist because your concentration on subject is so keen.

So I am dreaming today of this life - looking at websites and thinking of moving to any school who can accept me and my sad GRE scores. And then, for now, for today - I am content reading Wikipedia's entries on Sylvia Plath and Carson McCullers. After which, I will begin reading T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land and find a commentary on it as well. I LOVE daily assignments.

So in the next 10 years -

MA in Literature
Birth a child or two
Open a bookstore
Write a novella

See, I am not lost just because I wander.

And yet, there is something sad about solving a philosophical crisis within me with a plan - with a direction. Maybe it's not what I need - though it certainly feels like it. Maybe I need to find a place inside where I am okay standing still with a few years of my life.

But I fear I am entirely incapable of this.

~mme. bookling

Journaling the journal

2008-08-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

I am feeling a bit lost as of 3:42pm yesterday when I FINALLY finished the first book in The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan.

Although it took me 4 months to read only 890 pages, I felt like that book accompanied me through my life - and am now therefore attached to it. I read it when I was bored, euphoric, depressed, outside, enigmatic, doubtful, and fulfilled.

I finished the last 75 pages yesterday while home with a migraine and really enjoyed the last bit (even though I have no idea what I read - sometimes fantasy can be a bit confusing) and closed it with a small shutter of nostalgia...

Dare I pick up the next one? I think not for a bit - though Joel has already set it out on the coffee table to tantalize me.

But usually I feel so lost after a book - I get rather connected to those pages...the wine stains, the watermarks, the tears in the cover, well-worn with use.

I am keeping myself perked up by Sylvia Plath's Unabridged Journals and I tell you, I didn't think I could adore a woman more, but I do...by golly, I DO! I was having a conversation this week in which I confessed to having very little role models as a woman - It takes a lot for women to impress me so much that I actually want to emulate them - and I find that I look up to very few indeed (save my grandmother). What I realized and vocalized in that conversation was how I really do cling to authors of the past as my role models.

I always adored Miz Plath for her poetry, prose, and dominating, progressive presence, but reading her journals have enlightened me to oh-my-god-we-are-so-similar thoughts, and a deep understanding of her introversion, depression, and plight as a writer. It's really creepy how much I relate and while that sounds self-aggrandizing, know that I certainly am nowhere NEAR as talented as she (even at age 18, her journals sound like something I would be LUCKY to write as a seasoned older femme), I find my eyes eating up every.single.word of her journals. I am underlying like a frenzied scientist who just discovered electricity and wish to god I could share all of it with you dears...

In last night's 1am reading, she captured a date she had - and I wish I could speak so accurately, so surprisingly, so plainly. She PERFECTLY described the sexual tensions, the game playing, the enthusiastic conversation, the hamburgs (i love that she calls them that) and coffee...and I am just entirely, enthusiastically TRANSPORTED!

Shall I include a quote from said passage?

"I dressed slowly, smoothing, perfuming, powdering. I sat upstairs in the moist gray twilight, with the rain trickling down outside, while the family talked and laughed with company down on the porch. This is I, I thought, the American virgin, dressed to seduce. I know I'm in for an evening of sexual pleasure. We go on dates, we play around, and if we're nice girls, we demure at a certain point. And so it goes" (14).

In short, I don't remember enjoying a book so much...not like this.

It's as if I am voyeuristically looking at my own life...only it's hers. And the best part is the writing that pours out of me due to her.

In BOOKSTORE news,

I am officially turning in an application at Half Price Books,

which is 0.2 miles from my sweet little doorstep.

I have NO idea how I will work two jobs for a bit,

but I think the experience will be invaluable

even if I have to work nights and weekends...

but let me tell you,

it's the easiest application this book lover has ever filled out.

I will,

for sure,

keep you posted.

I leave you with this:

"Perhaps someday I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow" (23).

~mme. bookling

Visiting Stores

2008-08-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

So one of the next steps to this bookstore is visiting all the bookstores in the Seattle area to get a feel for the industry. This will probably take close to a year, but what I am trying to solidify before I get to the visitations is the criteria/questions by which I review the bookstores.

I need your help here.

What are some questions you would have? Here is what I have come up with so far:

Description of building/how do the bones of the building contribute to the atmosphere of the store?
Services offered? (Coffee, etc)
What is being sold besides books?
Furniture?
Parking?
Location?

Any other thoughts? I could really use your suggestions.

Most Interesting Bookstores

2008-07-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

Guten Morgen to you book lovers out there.

I received an email from jason this morning directing me to this link - and I decided I simply MUST share with you.

If you love books, you probably love bookstores. Below are some pictures of some of the world's most interesting stores.

Do enjoy!

click on any of the pictures to check out the descriptions and more amazing bookstores.

"We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden"

2008-07-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

at last night's Bastille Day celebration, two references were made to "candace's bookstore" that reminded me that -

hello, i am wanting to open a bookstore.

i get so caught up in the zillions of lives happening around me, and of course and especially my own. i have an apartment to finish decorating, money to make, work that has been increasingly needy, an overworked husband, an active social life, vacations, writing, and reading to attend to.

so working on my business plan has taken a back burner indeed .

but these two delicious comments seeped in and watered the burgeoning seed of my dream.

BOOKLING! i pray to god i see your fruition.

oh, right. what were the comments, you ask.

in response to "what are you doing with your life.." ben said, i am going to work at candace's book store. this proceeded to help us dream about when it's slow and he gets to sit on the end of the bar with a pipe and his typewriter.
we walked by the cutest little tea shop with a metal tea pot hanging from the sign, and brad admired it aloud. i said we must do as much for Bookling.
Julie talked about opening a coffee shop in/around the store and being the in-house gardener.

Just these little reminders - the hints that my friends are not forgetting my dream - and are also dreaming about it themselves - this engenders passion in this book lover's soul.

Also, today I was interested in the GRE vocabulary list that I studied when I took that beastly test. I found a link to one and have been studying it for some of the morning. Take a looksy and use a new word today!

Mine is fledgling - a baby bird; an inexperienced person.

~mme. bookling

p.s. last week's quote was from Mark Twain.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life

2008-07-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

You all know that moment.

It's a sadness unto itself, felt far too seldom, and yet entirely delectable to the soul.

It's 12:30am, and you should have been asleep an hour ago - you have to get up for work! All is quiet in the street outside your window, the oaks waving the midnight breeze into your cracked window. The world is hushed, happily blanketed in moonlight, and where normally your reading makes your eyes heavy - this time, this sweet instance of time when you must be the only person in the world still awake, you are abrim with your own secret world because OH HOLY GOLLY IT'S GETTING SOO GOOD!

and then, oh dispiriting state, you come to the end of a chapter and make yourself peer at the red-numbered alarm clock over your husband's heavy breathing...12:45am, eek. you battle internally - one side fighting for the right to your childhood - to the flashlight under the blankets magic that only a good story can provide - and the other side, oh the other side. the adult knows the child needs rest - for the day forthcoming holds much indeed.

you know the moment.

the sadness, the disappointment, the realization that you simply must not continue your reading adventure with Heathcliff & Catherine, Pip & Estella, Perrin & Ewgene...alas, they must be closed - their journey's paused for your beauty sleep. and it's just so deliciously sad...

you pray (if you still do that childish sort of thing : ) ) that perhaps your dreams, maybe tonight - your dreams will be as exciting, magical, and soulful as your book.

you know the one, the book sitting on your nightstand crying out to you.

wait, wait, little bookling-
your words shall not go unconsumed
like scattered crumbs from my table- non!
you will be savored, every morsel... keep pining for me,
i will hear your plea and return to you yet again.

in case you missed the point, my book is oh so summery and salaciously good. turns out Perrin can talk to wolves. Who knew!?

p.s. last entry was Ray Bradbury. Who knows the author of today's title?

you know i adore thee, yes?
mme. bookling

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get people to stop reading them"

2008-07-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

I am going to take some time here and really boast about goodreads.com.

This morning, I found myself bleary eyed at 8am, even with coffee and fruit for breakfast as well as a good 7 hours of sleep. When I sat down, I thought absolutely nothing could really get my wheels turning but there was an email update from goodreads.com.

While there are some frustrations I have with the useability of this website, I find that I appreciate that it fosters my favorite conversational topic, "What are you reading right now and why." I love to see people through the books they are interested in - and when people update and write reviews about what they read - even as a voyeuristic means of understanding another human soul - I can see with even more clarity pockets of their soul long hidden.

I love what makes us who we are - individually.

I was thinking about this yesterday on my way home, hearing some bumpin music from another car as I turned up my classical music - and for the FIRST time really appreciated being in a "free" country. We have ultimate freedom to decide who we are by means of cultural influence (to an extent). I can make myself into any form of person with my unique mix of music, books, interests, hobbies, people, and tastes. This self-made person is so unique to western culture, and I found myself really appreciating how I love what I love and how others love what they love and am fascinated with the process of how this came to be.

Anyway, so I get an email update from goodreads and then it takes me to their website where i read two reviews of friends. Afterwards I realized that it 1) woke me up 2) killed an hour and 3) inspired me to write.

I love how reading does this. I often told my students this - if you cannot find words, read the words of others and soon enough you will find yourself brimming over with something you simply MUST jot down. I really wish people would get more into goodreads.com so I can gather more and more information about what is out there.

but what I guess I am more trying to convey is how books and conversations about books inspire me. i appreciate that this website offers this...

so go log on and start rating some books and tell me dears, "what are you reading right now?"

~mme. bookling.

p.s. any guesses as to the author of today's blog title quote? hint: see below.

"We gloriously forget ourselves..." E.B. Browning

2008-06-26T09:06:00.001-07:00

this morning brings in its dawn a rekindled passion and voracity and motivating energy towards books, reading, and words.

perhaps it is my daily goodreads updates that bring me news of my loved one's reads. devon had a great post on Eat, Pray, Love that sparked memories of italian strolls.

perhaps it's kelly and brad coming home from camping, each having finished a book i love (Geek Love and Pride & Prejudice) and this sparked my memory of circus freaks and luscious decolletage.

perhaps it was my 40 hour entire reading of A Wrinkle In Time this past week that started the itch for more words and for fantastical stories.

perhaps it was the no TV night last night - where instead I sat on the bed at dusky 8pm, with sunbeams and moonlight tickling my skin as i devoured The Eye of the World (at 300 pages in, its getting very very good). It has given me an itch for fantasy. This itch went so far as to acquiesce to playing Heroes with Joel last night for two hours. It was rather fun - and quite addicting.

Perhaps it was this morning's stumblings into some beautiful poems by Elizabeth Barret Browning - who happens to be one of the most admirable women in the literary field. Or was.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name;

Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon,

I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first.

And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark.

An hour before the sun would let me read!

My books!~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits, -- so much help
By so much reading. it is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth -- '
Tis then we get the right good from a book." (1857) ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

(bold emphasis mine)"

I love being lost in books, one of the few times where i can loose and find myself all at once...looking forward to my various camping trips where I mix alcohol, nature, charcoaled food, and endless hours of supine reading.

I bequeath this itch to you, my companions through words.

~xxooooooo
Mme. Bookling.

"There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

2008-06-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

I am pondering some things about books lately.

...ponderings birthed from a re-definition of self that I have undergone in the last two years. I used to place such tight limitations on things i would allow to represent me- truly adhering to them as my own identity. I could only wear serious outfits, watch serious movies, say serious things, and definitely only read serious books.

All this stoicism made for a rather hard outer shell - and was rather intimating. Perhaps I meant for this to be so, but if I did - it remained rather subconcsious for quite some time. While growing up, people have always told me that I was intimidating (i am speaking mainly of women here, which JUST occurred to me, how interesting), and I just figured it was because I was pretty much a supermodel or something.

Turns out i am not a supermodel.

Well, that hardness has slowly been melting away and I find that more and more people are sheepishly confessing to me the books they read that i wouldn't have approved of in later years- you know, the guilty pleasure but feel embarrassed to tell anyone type of things - and i am picking up on their hints that they wouldn't have felt comfortable telling me these things a couple of years ago. I took myself (still really do in a lot of ways) so seriously - perhaps too seriously to even TRY to read Harry Potter. But in this debate, I felt like I was standing for something, making a statement about loving that which is well-written, not only that which is best-selling. (I realize that everyone says HP encompasses both worlds, but how do I turn my back on all the unread booklings of history to embrace this new impostor! I am working on a theory called Harry Potter and Titanic: A symposium of mainstream poo.)

I may/may not have to talk to my therapist about Harry Potter.

But in general, who am I to judge people who want to read best sellers all the time? maybe they had poor English teachers who just totally turned them off to serious literature, you never know. or maybe, just maybe - the best seller is good. (confession: the only best seller i have read is the kite runner and all of David Sedaris' books).

but like Flannery O'Connor's words, isn't there something to be said for a standard in writing? i do believe literature should be enjoyable, but i also fear that most people do not push themselves out of their reading boxes for fear, for intimidation that they will not understand.

one thing is for sure. everyone should be proud of themselves when they read, at least they are not watching tv.

welcome to my constant vacillation between tolerance and snobbery.

and keep reading those weird novels i have never heard of - you know, the ones written post1980 - and tell me if they are worth selling at bookling.

i will have to hire a best seller guru to instruct me.

not it.

"Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it"

2008-06-16T11:36:00.001-07:00

I don't trust people who drop quotes in conversations.

Unless you are a professor or a writer, there is no need, my friends. If you are talking to me, I already think you are smart.

Saturday night, on the walk into downtonw, joelio and I ran into this girl from college who just threw out this Descartes quote in the middle of the conversation, and ever since then, I have had an irritable itch under my skin about the encounter. I realize this is completely critical and unfair (and probably more to do with my being intimated at her knowledge), but in general, I really distrust people who must use the words of others to express themselves in conversation. It speaks to me of the ultimate bravado of intelligentsia.

It's like people spouting out bible verses. EWWWW.

Confession: I am HORRIBLE at small talk. I despise it, I cannot manage to make myself care about the mundane facts of the lives of people with whom I am not actually intimate. So when I run into someone I knew in a past life (exception: this girl was joel's friend, not mine - we never actually spoke), I almost never know what to say. This is why I am also bad at church.

Example: I speak to my sister but once every few months, and even then - when you need a couple of "what did you do today?", or "what's your dog been chewing of yours?" questions, I jump right to the jugular of important conversation - like last night. We were speaking about father's day and after 10 minutes of precursory conversation, I used a phrase that may/may not have referenced my inner child dieing the day dad left. I laughed at how quickly into the conversation I said this - without any real warm up, but that's candace for you. This trait needs no explaination to my sister, she knows me quite well. We do not dance around with people.

Despite the tone of moral superiority enclosed, I realize that small talk is a skill, an art that I really MUST perfect if I am to be a small business owner. But there is also something to be said for wanting to extract the bull shit and either spend the time getting to know a person or just not talking to them and letting them go on their merry way.

Both are probably necessary.

But hence my problem with this girl I haven't seen in over 8 years throwing out a Descartes quote about knowledge...like she didn't seem present enough in herself to just use her own words. It felt like an affront.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE ME SOME QUOTES. But make no mistake, I will never use them in a casual conversation with you. And if you insist on using them, I will scoff and sniker.

satirically yours,
mme. bookling.

p.s. the above quote may or may not be from descartes.

it's gettin gooood!

2008-06-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

Just in case you were wondering, reading (or blogging about reading, or blogging about a bookstore, or talking to adam about the business plan for the bookstore) can't really happen when one is marrying off a close member of the family.

Somewhere in between the penis toss game, the “Bachelorette” cocktail, the shopping for safety pins & tide sticks, eating only appetizers, going through fourty outfits for various events, and driving all the way to Egypt and back – there wasn’t a lot of time for my book, booklings, or the business plan.

I WAS able to SQUEEZE in the first essay in Sedaris' new book When You Are Engulfed in Flames while riding myself of the dancing sweat caked on my skin in the bath, but mainly I just stared at my wet feet in exhaustion while trying to comb out the hairspray mess atop my head.

I did manage to smell a couple books here and there (namely, my great uncle aubrey's old bible, oh what a scent of bliss), so I didn't completely abuse them.

But during last night’s bath, my eyes missed my dear bookling.

It may also have had something to do with joelio’s most profound statement of yester eve. “I feel like getting lost in a book.”

And so it began. I picked up The Eye of the World. And wouldn't you know it? 72 pages into the book and it get exciting! I ended up taking a 30 min bath just to read (and the water was getting rather frigid!), but now I just want to leave my cubicle and sneak upstairs to the lounge - where i would eat, sleep, and read the day away.

wanna join me? (but you can't talk!)

happy reading, loves. as always.
mme. bookling.

book envy

2008-06-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

When did reading in public become so damn popular?

Every single time I see this, (and it happens a lot here in Seattle, the nation’s highest “use of public libraries” city), I feel the following:

Deep prides in this city
Quickening impulses to teleport myself into their mind so I too can be involved in some heroine’s journey through her dysfunctional family
Uncontrollable urges to rip the bookling from the reader and sniff its strange and magical pages (envision Mary Katherine Gallagher)
Voyeuristic obsessions to find out which book is so damn engrossing, and then immediately judge a person by what they choose to read in public (i am a snobby elitist)
Deep-seeded book envy which creates an inner dialogue reading something like this, “I want to be reading! I want to read standing at the bus stop, I want to read on the bus ride, I want to read while I drive, run, eat, sleep, and breath.!” (envision Veruca Salt)

And I want to read while I drink. This desire is what birthed BOOKLING.

I saw this girl at my bus stop today – in the rain, barely covered by an awning, enthralled in her 75% finished book. I felt my heart pang. My breath quickened, my stomach turned in knots and I felt the green monster emerging. “Damn it, I totally forgot my book.”

Then again, while on the bus, I saw this guy in great shoes pouring over his own pages. Damn it… the whole fracking city is reading.*

Except me.

I must recommit myself.

Dear Booklings Mine,
I am dreadfully remiss in my attendance to your ever-present needs. You require not much effort – only time. How my eyes long to skim your alphas and drink in your font. I fear that when I get my life back, I will again find you waiting for me in your patient and accepting manner, pages humbled with years.

It’s a lifelong love-affair, dear patrons.
"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." — C.S. Lewis
~Mme. Bookling.

*In BOTH cases, see my uncouth (and unsuccessful) bodily contortions to discover what manner of booklings were these, but it didn’t really look promising – you know, just some NY Times Best Seller bull shiet. Freaking Clive Cussler. “"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. " — Flannery O'Connor

"we read to know we are not alone"

2008-06-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

why do i feel so inspired to read when i can't possibly read, and never inspired to read when it's available to me?

yes, yes, i am still struggling with finding reading time since the commute was stolen from me. (i am very bitter. nope.)

last night i thought "this is it!"

let me set the scene:

10pm. the house blanketed in peace. joel fast asleep...new lamps on either side of our couch. all other lights off - all sights and sounds feel very library-esque. my book beckons (remember i am still really trying to get into this book i promised joel i would read (see left) ), only my computer is right on the way to my book. i can't go to bed because i have clothes drying in the communal laundry room. i have to stay up...so yeah, the computer is the most logical choice.

i am not a tv watcher, really. i mean, i don't just sit and peruse through tv, we don't even have it. but i can watch certain series IF i have them. since i don't have any i am watching, i am not even tempted by the tv. instead, my bane is the computer. it sucks my time like no one else, i will shop, chat, read, research, shop, chat, and shop.

all this shopping steals my reading.

and now, as i sit at my quiet cubicle at this souless mortgage banking company, i realize that i want for nothing other than a comfortable chair, a big cinnamon roll and coffee, and my book. even if it is Robert Jordan.

and i have to finish it because i think i decided that my next bookling is A Wrinkle In Time. Yes, i have never read it! (and i just realized that i don't own it! gasp.)

in other bookling news, today David Sedaris' new book, When you are engulfed in flames is released. Third Place Books in Seattle is hosting a reading by Sedaris, and you get two free tickets (tickets required) when you purchase a copy of the book. i have done this! yay, i love book readings and i happen to really laugh with Sedaris.

if i can't read today, i wish it for you, sweet sweet soul.
happy reading,
~Mme. Bookling.

"i wonder that you will still be talking, signior benedict: nobody marks you."

2008-06-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

After a rather rousing good time at the Sex in the City movie this weekend, Mme. Bookling and five of her dear friends sat around her apartment, lips dripping with wine, brownies, and happy wordlings.

One question was posed to the group…the answers of which relates to literature, so the Madame must share.

“Name one movie plot, hero/heroine, or book that you most relate to as a woman.”

EKKKKEEE. I freaked out for a second when I realized that literature was also included – this is just much too vast a question. When Niki realized my distress, she excluded literature and I relaxed.

My answer was still literature BUT it was also a fabulous cinematic movement, so HAH.

Answers - only given after the many qualifications women are known for…

“I know this is really cliché, but…”
(on a side note…DUDE, I say fuck cliché. I am so tired of it being a discredit to something we can/can’t wear, do/don’t do, say/don’t say, drink/don’t drink, feel/don’t feel. Cliché only takes into account the masses of women that we imagine are judging us – cliché is only cliché if we let it be, so embrace your likes/dislikes - they are what makes you YOU).

Now to the answers:

Jo from Little Women
Juno
Joel and Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Allie from The Notebook
Amelie
Beatrice from Much Ado about Nothing

Pretty great answers. How about you? Movie hero/heroine you most relate to.

Too bad the weekend is over, dear readerlings!
~Mme. Bookling

"grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentlemen, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour"

2008-05-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

i had the most remarkable time brainstorming yesterday with various people about

B.O.O.K.L.I.N.G

yes, i have decided to drop the "s" for the store, mainly because it just sounds better singularly - but also because that one bookling can represent ME...

i spent the later part of a randomly spontaneous lunch with jess and kelly brainstorming about my business plan. then i talked with joel about it quite a bit later, and then at dinner with jenn and brian - we excited ourselves for an while on the prospects.

so here are some further developments:

if i have to stick to my guns about one concept, the real initial concept is a bookstore bar. this will be a bookstore in the front (to attract street traffic) and a bar in the back (to encourage families to still enter).
if required to separate the two - bookstore first! bar a VERY close second.
silk screen every piece of stemware and bar glass with the catholicbeer symbol (promoting joel's master brewing skills, of course).
brian will help the master bar tender (ben has requested this position, but he must be trained by either kelly or brad! :) ) and will also come in for daily readings for the children...in which he can promote his new book (man-eating vegetables).
all i know will spend inordinate amounts of money at this place.
we will host a major brainstorming session for the menu pairings and writing.
would be ideal to buy a house and use the street entrance for bookstore, and live above it for a while...eventually renting it out (we still need boundaries from the business!)

So yeah, I am pretty jazzed. I am seriously loving how energetic everyone has been about this, and how much recourse I have at my fingertips through the people I love.

Happy Reading,
~~ Mme. Bookling.

[women] "should be woo'd and were not made to woo"

2008-05-29T11:33:00.001-07:00

dear loving readers:
please do not forget your assignment. please read title of blog and make an educated guess based on your astute educations and elite cultural exposure as to the origin of said quote.
thank you.
mme. bookling.

well happy thursday, hopeful bookstore patrons. i find myself thinking less about the bookstore these days and more about my little sister's wedding. i suppose that is to be expected - that this dream will interweave with my life and like a good wine, grab up it's influences and aromas to enrich itself.

june 8th is the big day.

Mme. Bookling (c'est moi) will be looking fabulous in her new 20lbs lighter body.

feels

good.

this wedding will also bring me adam and erin from savannah, georgia. adam will sit with me after the wedding and we will discuss booklings with vehemence and dreams (all well-mixed with reality and temperance, bien sur).

so you see the connection - this wedding will have a great part in booklings.

i suppose i should get started on the business plan (see questions on first blog), but ordering parasols, making massage appointments, and meticulizing (i know) over the itinerary is just so much MORE FUN. (shhhh, booklings can't hear).

maybe today's lunch with friends will help me answer some questions.
(that is, if i can get them to NOT talk about the wedding, and since they are the caterer and the artistic designer, this will be a feat).

but all of this to say - life happens in the midst of dreams. dreams happen in the midst of life.

(what's in the clouds for you?)

love's not time's fool

2008-05-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

i sometimes laugh at myself. i just feel like i change my mind so easily about so many things.

i mean it.

like two months ago, i was all psychology all the time. i still really love it, and wouldn't mind still pursuing it, but i have moved on to new interests.

and SNAP. i am all of a sudden interested in being an entrepreneur. this just makes me laugh at myself.

and laughing is necessary for us all.

i think for far too long i have discredited the fact that i waver. (and boy do i waver). when i start a new interest, i almost immediately steal the energy from behind it because i know i am going to eventually loose interest. then, i never pursue the thing in the first place.

so through this whole opening a bookstore thing, i am really focusing on not discrediting that i waver. now matter how hard i wish for powers to morf myself into a certain mathematical, even-keeled, immensely logical theologian who never seems to freak out about anything, i am realizing more and more that this existence doesn't give me a choice. i have to be candace.

e
m
o
t
i
o
n
and all.

i haven't left you booklings.

p.s what are you reading today? may your memorial day bring even 15 min with a very good book.

"imagine your pain as a white ball of healing light"**

2008-05-23T08:17:00.000-07:00

it's official, i can't sleep. in my defense, i went to bed two hours earlier than usual, but i have been so exhausted lately that i figured it would be good for me. nope. instead, i tossed and turned until midnight - with visions of a new painting, a book, worries and anxieties about the bookstore, julie's wedding, weekend plans, my house, the bookstore, having babies, doubting the existence of god, hurting for friends, missing jackie, wondering about my sisters, the bookstore, joel's twitching, i am going to die and my life is a big waste...oh you know, just the minor stuff.

nor can i even focus enough to write, but i must trust this process - so here goes.

deflated, energized.
overwhelmed, on-top-of-the-world.
nauseated, driven.
oh-my-gawd-you-can't-fucking-do-this, holy-crap-you-know-you-can-do-this!

can i just thank god over and over again for joelio? he is able to take all of my crazy thoughts and encourage me to not loose it.

lemme splain.

i got this amazing email from my cousin, who is this amazing business guy. (who basically needs to be the CFO of booklings - but who can afford him?!!). nothing to his discredit at all, because everything he said is really jazzing me today, but last night, when i got this huge email about everything that needs to be done even now, even just in the INCEPTION phase of booklings, even when she is just an unfertilized egg in my uterus...and boom.

i am
sinking
back
to the
time
where my mother told me'
that i couldn't be an ice-capades dancer because i was too old
and should
have
started
soooonnnneeeerrrr..........

which is really freaking true, but kids - this little girl had ENOUGH of the truth as a child. she needed a little imagination.

correction. needs.

why did adam's email have this affect on me? as i sat on the couch, staring into space...i realized that somewhere tucked in the details of that email was this voice. you know the voice.

what-are-you-thinking?-you-can't-you-won't. what-will-everyone-think.

but then joel said something that broke through this mind-numbing doubt.

it went something like this. "candi, this can still just be something you do for the next ten years. this isn't your life endeavor...this isn't what defines you. if it fails, it's just a bookstore. so we get up, we try again. the point is to have a passion for your soul work, and if your soul is leading you to this - we must trust it." he didn't say those words exactly or even really at all - but it's what i heard.

so now, looking today at the list of things adam wants me to do, i feel better. i feel like a steady comination of this is going to be really hard and you are actually going to be your own boss.

but bear with me, friends. i will be lucky to get a five year plan launched in the next couple of months, and through that, i am sure my process with be soo entirely full of the "catch and release" (thanks kc for the apt phrase) just like candace always was.

when the cynicism kicks in, i am realizing that it's not always bad. it's just not okay for it to be in charge. after all, as my lovely counselor pointed out, my cynicism has served me well. it kept me from evangelical fundamentalism, it kept me from settling in my marriage, it keeps me thriving towards soul work. but when it starts out-shadowing the imagination and positive thoughts, when it's in the driver's seat 24/7, (which is how i have up to now lived my life), then the sinking sick loss of hope freezes me. so the cynicism towards booklings is okay, but not when it strips my soul and tells me that i can't when i know very well that i can.

if details bore you, you may want to stop reading here.

in a practical way,
i am realizing that i need to start really simply. to begin, it will have to be JUST books/alcohol/gifts/venue for art. after that, we will add the other endeavors.

wanna see the questions candace will be working on today?

What type of customer am I trying to attract?
Who is my competition?
What will differentiate my business from my competition?
What product line(s) will I carry?
How will I market my business?
How will I train my employees?
How many employees will I need?
How much will I pay my employees?
Will I offer my employees benefits?
If so, how much will this cost?
Where will the business be located?
What will my costs be? Rent? Electricity? Food costs? Insurance? Labor?
What will my pricing strategy be?
Approximately how much money will it take to start the business?
What do I want the interior of my business to look like?
What sort of atmosphere am I trying to create?
What sort of signage will I have on my storefront?
Where will I get my bread?
Do I want to outsource my bread making to a known Seattle bakery or bake it fresh daily
Do I want to make the dough myself or buy dough frozen?
How do I get a liquor license?
If I serve alcohol do I eliminate an important "under 21" demographic?
Where can I get books at wholesale?

**a new game. each of the new bookling post titles will be an excerpt from a book. see if you can guess which book and author from which the quote is taken.

when booklings was just a twinkle in my eye

2008-05-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

So I am actually really jazzed about this whole opening a bookstore thing

(which is probably an understatement. I mean, I am really pursuing it).

(I used to dream about this in college. Though, admitedly it inluded me in a slinky red cocktail dress, singing on a piano)

Would you like to see my initial business plans? Well, okay. In list form, of course.

email Adam (my super business-savvy cousin) about start up business (check)
get domain name (check – www.thebookling.com – if it doesn’t work now, give it 24 hours)
start bookstore blog (check – www.thebooklings.blogspot.com)
read books about starting up business (check – researched and added to my to read on goodreads )
visit every independent bookseller in seattle proper to gather research
perhaps volunteer at a bookstore for a couple of hours on the weekends – for one year

And that, my lovelings, is a great place to start, no?

happy reading!

love, madame bookling.