After almost no sleep ...
I got up at 8:30 or so ... fell asleep at about 4:30 ... and begged off snow shoeing.
Then I made a chicken pot pie ... cooked chicken, chicken gravy, freshly cooked potatoes, carrots and onions under a tea biscuit crust. It looks lovely but I am not overjoyed with the flavour. I may pop Peter's portion in as an extra with the instructions to re-heat in the oven and apply spices liberally ... and eat as soon as he receives it. Or I may play it safe and not damage my reputation by giving him any even as a gift!
I finished my first reading of The Elegance of the Hedgehog ... and now want to read it again soon ... savouring it. But first I want to finish reading Eat, Pray, Love which I started last night.
Hedgehog is a story about two protagonists caught in the world where materialism reigns. One has given up on love; the other on life. They hide their real identities and pretend to be dullards, but they are found out by a Japanese man with exquisite taste and no pretensions. The book is about more than that simple plot line. It is about life, beauty and transience and how they are linked.
I think I wrote in an earlier post that this book is really philosophy masquerading as fiction, and so what remains after this first reading is the ideas and insights which, like the spirits of the newly dead, hover around the body for a while after the light goes out..
Here are some of the quotes that stayed with me and made me think ...
"I was in the back room, euphoric, my eyes filling with tears, in the miraculous presence of Art."
"Why do two short, unexplained scenes, not driven by anything in the plot, arouse in us such a powerful emotion, containing the entire film between their ineffable parentheses?"
"True novelty is that which does not grow old. despite the passage of time."
"The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life."
"If you forget the future, you lose the present."
"When movement has been banished from a nature that seeks its continuity, when it becomes renegade and remarkable by virtue of its very discontinuity, it attains the level of esthetic creation. Because art is life, playing to other rhythms."
"... pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language."
"Perhaps the Japanese have learned that you can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral and unique; armed with this knowledge, they are yet able to weave their lives."
"Birch trees/ teach me that I am nothing/And that I am deserving of life"
"I suddenly felt my spirit expand, for I was capable of grasping the utter beauty of the trees."
"For art is an emotion without desire."
"Eternity: for all its invisibility, we gaze at it."
"... beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. it is the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death .... does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe that is what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying."
The last few words of the novel: "Don't worry, Renee. I won't commit suicide and I won't burn a thing. Because from now on, for you, I'll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty in this world."
It is a book that made me want to escape the demands of the world, seek out the spare tranquility of a Zen garden, and meditate.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Friday, 11 February 2011
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Some Thoughts on Death
No ... this is not going to be a morbid post.
But death has been something I have been thinking about lately for a number of reasons ... but thinking about it peacefully ... with equanimity rather than fear.
Our family is going to celebrate what would have been my father's 100th birthday in June. He died in 1995, and we will celebrate his life in the small village where he lived much of his life, and where he is buried.
I am dealing with estate questions just now, so the practicalities of my dying are on my mind.
And Anne-Marie's party tonight has been another trigger.
But the other things that have got me thinking are a couple of books about death for people who are not expecting to have an everlasting life. The religious have the comfort of their belief that they will continue into the hereafter; the rest of us cannot take comfort in a life after death.
One of the books begins with the words: "I don't believe in God, but I miss him", and the other describes what comes after death in a very comforting way despite the fact there he expects nothingness after death, as I do. Both books are about not being afraid of death despite living in a culture that fears the very idea. Especially frightening for most people is the concept that we lead brief flickering lives that die out to disappear forever.
In the mid-seventies at university I had a professor I adored ... oh not in any romantic way ... but he was my hero and I worshipped his ideas. He talked about the difference among British, American and Canadian writers, and a large part of the difference had to do with the idea of the importance of the individual. Because Canadian writers have been influenced by both of the other traditions, it is not surprising that we hold beliefs that are an amalgam of the two. As in most other things, we seem to reach a compromise position; in this case between believing the individual has no importance or that he is all important.
Robin Mathews believed that a novel like Who Has Seen the Wind showed the extremes in the reprobate, the Old Ben, and in the rigidly upright townsfolk who were his antithesis, but that Digby, the school teacher, represented the Canadian viewpoint. Digby was a good tough man ... good and tough. He stood up for himself and others. He lived a morally upright life. He was neither anarchic nor rigidly bound by tradition, and he lived his life for the good of himself and other people. He tried to make his small world a better place.
This thread weaves itself throughout Canadian literature. The most important thing that people leave behind them when they die is not wealth or prestige or plaques on buildings, but ripples that continue forever.
The writer of the second book on death, is Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who often quotes a philosopher, Epicurus. Yalom says, "Rippling refers to the fact that each us creates — often without conscious intent or knowledge —concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations."
So Digby left his influence on Brian, on the Young Ben, on generations of students, and even on the Old Ben and the Mrs. Abercrombies of the town.
Everyone who is a parent will surely touch her children and their children, but all of us leave those ripples whether we are genetically close to people or not.
We all conduct our personal, business and community lives in ways that affect others.
Most of us are just little frogs in little ponds and we make small ripples throughout our lives. Most of us will die without having invented penicillin or caused a genocide, but all of us have done good and bad things that have affected and influenced others in smaller ways.
As I get closer to the end of my life I try to remember the good ripples and hope there were more of them that the bad ones, not just because I want to be remembered as a good woman, but, more importantly, because I hope I have made this world a better place than I found it. It doesn't matter whether anyone can remember which of us had what influence. What really matters is whether things got a little better because we were here.
And that is remarkably comforting.
I wish my father had been more comfortable with the idea of dying than he was. He did a lot of things wrong as a parent, but I see his good ripples all the time in myself, my children and my grandchildren, and I wish he had gone to his death comforted by that knowledge.
But death has been something I have been thinking about lately for a number of reasons ... but thinking about it peacefully ... with equanimity rather than fear.
Our family is going to celebrate what would have been my father's 100th birthday in June. He died in 1995, and we will celebrate his life in the small village where he lived much of his life, and where he is buried.
I am dealing with estate questions just now, so the practicalities of my dying are on my mind.
And Anne-Marie's party tonight has been another trigger.
But the other things that have got me thinking are a couple of books about death for people who are not expecting to have an everlasting life. The religious have the comfort of their belief that they will continue into the hereafter; the rest of us cannot take comfort in a life after death.
One of the books begins with the words: "I don't believe in God, but I miss him", and the other describes what comes after death in a very comforting way despite the fact there he expects nothingness after death, as I do. Both books are about not being afraid of death despite living in a culture that fears the very idea. Especially frightening for most people is the concept that we lead brief flickering lives that die out to disappear forever.
In the mid-seventies at university I had a professor I adored ... oh not in any romantic way ... but he was my hero and I worshipped his ideas. He talked about the difference among British, American and Canadian writers, and a large part of the difference had to do with the idea of the importance of the individual. Because Canadian writers have been influenced by both of the other traditions, it is not surprising that we hold beliefs that are an amalgam of the two. As in most other things, we seem to reach a compromise position; in this case between believing the individual has no importance or that he is all important.
Robin Mathews believed that a novel like Who Has Seen the Wind showed the extremes in the reprobate, the Old Ben, and in the rigidly upright townsfolk who were his antithesis, but that Digby, the school teacher, represented the Canadian viewpoint. Digby was a good tough man ... good and tough. He stood up for himself and others. He lived a morally upright life. He was neither anarchic nor rigidly bound by tradition, and he lived his life for the good of himself and other people. He tried to make his small world a better place.
This thread weaves itself throughout Canadian literature. The most important thing that people leave behind them when they die is not wealth or prestige or plaques on buildings, but ripples that continue forever.
The writer of the second book on death, is Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who often quotes a philosopher, Epicurus. Yalom says, "Rippling refers to the fact that each us creates — often without conscious intent or knowledge —concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations."
So Digby left his influence on Brian, on the Young Ben, on generations of students, and even on the Old Ben and the Mrs. Abercrombies of the town.
Everyone who is a parent will surely touch her children and their children, but all of us leave those ripples whether we are genetically close to people or not.
We all conduct our personal, business and community lives in ways that affect others.
Most of us are just little frogs in little ponds and we make small ripples throughout our lives. Most of us will die without having invented penicillin or caused a genocide, but all of us have done good and bad things that have affected and influenced others in smaller ways.
As I get closer to the end of my life I try to remember the good ripples and hope there were more of them that the bad ones, not just because I want to be remembered as a good woman, but, more importantly, because I hope I have made this world a better place than I found it. It doesn't matter whether anyone can remember which of us had what influence. What really matters is whether things got a little better because we were here.
And that is remarkably comforting.
I wish my father had been more comfortable with the idea of dying than he was. He did a lot of things wrong as a parent, but I see his good ripples all the time in myself, my children and my grandchildren, and I wish he had gone to his death comforted by that knowledge.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Anne of Green Gables
I love this story still after all these years. This is a film based on one of the books I read and re-read throughout my childhood. The others were The Secret Garden, Heidi, and Little Women.
They were all about girls who were lonely and strong ... girls who had to be independent. Most of the strong women I know grew up hoping to be Anne Shirleys or Jo Marches ... and understood and empathised with Heidi and Mary, the unhappy but ultimately strong little wretch in The Secret Garden.
I will be bringing Anne to Wolfville with me this summer so that Arrow can have one more tool to help her become part of that company of strong young women.
They were all about girls who were lonely and strong ... girls who had to be independent. Most of the strong women I know grew up hoping to be Anne Shirleys or Jo Marches ... and understood and empathised with Heidi and Mary, the unhappy but ultimately strong little wretch in The Secret Garden.
I will be bringing Anne to Wolfville with me this summer so that Arrow can have one more tool to help her become part of that company of strong young women.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Poets who write prose ...
Poets who write prose ...
They used to say writing was either poetic or prosaic, prose being the rough-edged, uncouth cousin of elegant poetry. Today, more and more poets are writing prose, and the lines between prose and poetry have blurred.
You can gulp down prosaic writing in lumps of undigested words, but this kind of prose makes you want to savour it rather than skimming it. Poets like Helen Humphreys (Wild Dogs) are writing fiction, but even more poets have turned to travel writing and other forms of literary non- fiction.
The first piece I read which fit into this category was Touch the Dragon by Karen Connelly. She experienced Thailand as a seventeen year old on a one year exchange, and kept a journal. The travel memoir based on these first raw impresssions of a very young girl, her senses unblunted by experience, was not written till a few years later when she was a published poet. Read it. You won't be sorry. I have to go looking for a copy; I lent mine to a Thai student I was tutoring.
Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Storace is another account by a poet of a year spent abroad.. It begins with the line "I lived in Athens, at the intersection of a prostitute and a saint." I doubt if I will finish this book quickly; I expect I shall relish every word.
That means I won't get to read The Gargoyle's Left Ear by Susan McMaster very soon. A bookstore in Ottawa has it on order for me. McMaster read from her book on CBC the other day and I knew immediately that I must get hold of a copy. She too is a poet. She founded Branching Out, a feminist magazine all of us lefties read in the seventies. She was twenty-two, and it was a wonderful magazine, filled with thoughtful writing about politics and elegant prose and poetry written by intelligent Canadian women. The Gargoyle's Left Ear is a writer's memoir set in Ottawa.
This is the kind of book I cannot borrow from a friend or the library. I must have my own copy. I want to return to these books over and over again at will. I want to high;ight passages and scribble in their margins. They are the books that nourish me as I consume them and which become part of who I am.
They used to say writing was either poetic or prosaic, prose being the rough-edged, uncouth cousin of elegant poetry. Today, more and more poets are writing prose, and the lines between prose and poetry have blurred.
You can gulp down prosaic writing in lumps of undigested words, but this kind of prose makes you want to savour it rather than skimming it. Poets like Helen Humphreys (Wild Dogs) are writing fiction, but even more poets have turned to travel writing and other forms of literary non- fiction.
The first piece I read which fit into this category was Touch the Dragon by Karen Connelly. She experienced Thailand as a seventeen year old on a one year exchange, and kept a journal. The travel memoir based on these first raw impresssions of a very young girl, her senses unblunted by experience, was not written till a few years later when she was a published poet. Read it. You won't be sorry. I have to go looking for a copy; I lent mine to a Thai student I was tutoring.
Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Storace is another account by a poet of a year spent abroad.. It begins with the line "I lived in Athens, at the intersection of a prostitute and a saint." I doubt if I will finish this book quickly; I expect I shall relish every word.
That means I won't get to read The Gargoyle's Left Ear by Susan McMaster very soon. A bookstore in Ottawa has it on order for me. McMaster read from her book on CBC the other day and I knew immediately that I must get hold of a copy. She too is a poet. She founded Branching Out, a feminist magazine all of us lefties read in the seventies. She was twenty-two, and it was a wonderful magazine, filled with thoughtful writing about politics and elegant prose and poetry written by intelligent Canadian women. The Gargoyle's Left Ear is a writer's memoir set in Ottawa.
This is the kind of book I cannot borrow from a friend or the library. I must have my own copy. I want to return to these books over and over again at will. I want to high;ight passages and scribble in their margins. They are the books that nourish me as I consume them and which become part of who I am.
Sunday, 17 February 2008
All That Matters
I just finished reading Wayson Choy's novel, All That Matters.
I bought it in 2005, shortly after it was published, but only got around to reading it now. Until I had a home I was unable to read ... unable to focus long enough, I think. But also there never was a place that was "right" for reading. There was never a chair that was comfortable and well lit. There was never a sofa that welcomed me into its embrace. The beds I slept on ranged from ones that had no reading lamps to mattresses on the floor that I shared with Kenya. I suspect that it also helps that it is winter so I am often snowbound, and that I am a hermit living with dogs. Whatever the reason, I am delighting in my lost ability to lose myself in a book.
When I was a child in the 40's and 50's, books were my escape from my life: from sadness and loneliness, mainly, but also from the more common miseries of childhood: piano practice sessions, homework, chores. I don't feel a need to escape from anything now, but I do enjoy these sojourns in the lives of other people.
All That Matters is one of those great titles that can be interpreted more than one way depending on which words you stress, and all the interpretations work to encompass the themes of the novel.
One of the Canadian literary genres is the immigrant novel, and this fits into that genre. Choy allows us into the little known world of the Chinese family living in Vancouver's Chinatown in the thirties and forties. The story is told by Kiam, who immigrated with his father and grandmother as a young child. His younger siblings are born in Canada. Kian is the fulcrum between the old world and the new, raised as a Chinese first son, but attending school in English as well as Chinese. We see the tensions between the generations and the different ways of thinking, but even more importantly we see the harmonies that occur when people are loved and truly valued.
It was a novel worth waiting for.
I bought it in 2005, shortly after it was published, but only got around to reading it now. Until I had a home I was unable to read ... unable to focus long enough, I think. But also there never was a place that was "right" for reading. There was never a chair that was comfortable and well lit. There was never a sofa that welcomed me into its embrace. The beds I slept on ranged from ones that had no reading lamps to mattresses on the floor that I shared with Kenya. I suspect that it also helps that it is winter so I am often snowbound, and that I am a hermit living with dogs. Whatever the reason, I am delighting in my lost ability to lose myself in a book.
When I was a child in the 40's and 50's, books were my escape from my life: from sadness and loneliness, mainly, but also from the more common miseries of childhood: piano practice sessions, homework, chores. I don't feel a need to escape from anything now, but I do enjoy these sojourns in the lives of other people.
All That Matters is one of those great titles that can be interpreted more than one way depending on which words you stress, and all the interpretations work to encompass the themes of the novel.
One of the Canadian literary genres is the immigrant novel, and this fits into that genre. Choy allows us into the little known world of the Chinese family living in Vancouver's Chinatown in the thirties and forties. The story is told by Kiam, who immigrated with his father and grandmother as a young child. His younger siblings are born in Canada. Kian is the fulcrum between the old world and the new, raised as a Chinese first son, but attending school in English as well as Chinese. We see the tensions between the generations and the different ways of thinking, but even more importantly we see the harmonies that occur when people are loved and truly valued.
It was a novel worth waiting for.
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