Confessions from my bed on a Saturday at noon thirty

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

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

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

Other confessions:

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

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

two down, three to go

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?

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

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.

memento mori

"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

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