Gee, mail

Would you like a gmail account? Available here, if you say "pretty please." First come, first served.

I haven't actually decided if I like it yet, but I figure I'll never know if I don't try...

Le centre de blah blah blah

Daycare centre #2, which we'd considered to be Plan A all along, which plan seemed to have been cruelly thwarted last week by daycare centre Hip & Groovy across the park actually calling us and in turn threw its wrench into my commitment to Plan B, is an incredible place.

For starters, by comparison, it seems incredibly clean, which rather makes me worry about what kind of mother I am that I would've willingly sent my child to some place less clean than this.

I worry also that I'm the kind of mother who would've sent my daughter to the first centre that called, and now I'm gratefully relieved to be able to say I comparison shopped, even if accidentally.

The only thing daycare centre Hip & Groovy across the park had going for it was the park, as a regular playground excursion for Helena and as a thing for me to enjoy walking through daily as part of a forced routine.

But hey, we live here, so we still have the park.

Le centre de blah blah blah strikes me as being pretty institutional, but in a good way, like this is regulated put-your-baby-on-the-fast-track-to-communism stuff. In retrospect, Groovy centre seems a little too free-spirited (I didn't know that was possible).

J-F thinks the exact opposite.

But we both agree it's the right decision.

Helena reacted favourably.

Poor thing has diarrhea the likes of which I've never smelled before, and still I drag her downtown. Her appetite has slowed, but I can think of no anomalies that might've brought this on. Maybe something in the wading pool...

At the dollar store I bought her a child-size broom. Helena couldn't be happier, and our apartment could stand to be a tad cleaner.

Helena is currently enjoying the words towel, truck, and sometimes tractor.

A most august monkey

On Blork's command:

Tell us something weird about yourself that involves music. I don't just mean the normal weird things, like that you're a closet Barry Manilow fan or you lost your virginity at an Alice Cooper concert. Tell us the really bizarre stuff.

There's so much normal weird stuff. My first concert (at which I did not lose my virginity; nor was it misplaced at subsequent concerts) was Platinum Blonde, for whom Honeymoon Suite were opening. Age 12. Weird? No. Not even particularly embarrassing — simply a question of (relatively) small-town circumstance.

Oh wait, there was Beatlemania before that, when I was 11; my best friend invited me along — she was a huge Beatles fan (I didn't really see what the big deal was). My mother was somewhat shocked by the proposition, as it took place on Holy Thursday before Easter. The only weird thing is that my mother could feel such outrage, and then relent. The show was OK.

Fast forward 2 years. Anthem: "If only Beatlemania had bitten the dust..."

Coincidentally, J-F this weekend stumbled (?!) across some Asia fan sites. Embarassingly, that was the first album I ever bought. Weird? Not particularly, though J-F points out that it was really a guy album, that Heat of the Moment was the ultimate air guitar song.

Fast-forward to university. Psychic TV.

Psychic TV was to play in Ottawa, so I rushed out for a ticket. The show was cancelled for lack of sales. All 11 of us had our money refunded.

Was it a year later? Another show was announced. A friend of mine had just seen them in Kingston, and he followed them up to Ottawa to try to get an interview for his radio show.

Genesis P. Orridge agreed to an interview, if and only if we could find him some cheese sandwiches. Not at the bar downstairs. Not at the pub across the street. Not the bistro on the corner. Not the diner. So we went to the grocery store. A variety of breads, a selection of cheeses. And lettuce.

Genesis P. Orridge concurred that the lettuce was a really nice touch. Interview granted. We slapped together some sandwiches, Genesis lit up a joint, and I don't remember much past that.

Weird? Maybe a little out of the ordinary. Weird about myself? Questionably. Motive? The guy, the music, or simply caught up in the heat of the moment.

I see that the proprietor of The Shatnerian posts nothing weird, but does note that his favourite song is That's Entertainment, by The Jam. At which point I must confess I think I might have a little bit of a crush. (Actually, I think it's cuz when I was 13, I had a crush on a guy who liked The Jam.)

I wouldn't be so bold as to say it's my favourite song, but it's definitely some of my favourite lyrics. Among several choice couplets:

Two lovers kissing at the scream of midnight;
Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude.

Though not in the least weird, it undoubdtedly speaks volumes about me.

A musical moment of which I am most proud: going out to see The Supreme Beings of Leisure just a week before my due date. Helena kicked a lot that night, but stayed put another couple weeks. She continues to exhibit an affinity for that kind of groove.

(But if you want to get Helena to sleep, forget lullabies — White Stripes' Seven Nation Army is magic, and it... centres me somehow, even though I haven't figured out what it means.)

The soundtrack to life.

Weird? Not really.

Except for that compulsion to dramatically announce "Such and Such: The Musical," (especially after having seen Bat Boy: The Musical in New York) and list the soundtrack possibilities. And even that's rather commonplace.

At rest

The ever-complex and contradictory Polish sentiment toward the similarly characterized Czeslaw Milosz gave rise to protests regarding his funeral.

Earlier this week, a handful of right-wingers demonstrated against plans to bury Milosz, who died on Aug. 14 aged 93, in the Crypt of Honour at a monastery in Krakow, saying he had betrayed Poland with his liberal views and a brief flirtation with communism.

The protests, supported by fringe nationalist media, had embarrassed Polish authorities and delayed the decision on where the poet would be buried.

The protests were muzzled hours before the ceremony, when newspapers published a letter from Polish-born Pope John Paul II saying he shared the same spiritual goals as the poet.

Elsewhere:

His opponents criticise him for having served as a diplomat for communist Poland between 1946 and 1950, for having described himself as Lithuanian — he was born in what is now Lithuania in 1911 — and for criticising some aspects of Polish Catholicism.

According to the newspaper Milosz had said that the Bible was a "cruel and depressing book".

Ceremonies were conducted without disruption.

Iconography

John Paul II handed over the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan to a Vatican delegation that returns it to Moscow today. He had hoped to return the icon himself.

The Pope composed a prayer to the Mother of God of Kazan, read in Russian, in which he implored the Virgin to "return in the midst of brothers and sisters of holy Russia as a messenger of communion and peace."

The icon returns amid tensions between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Like most icons, this one has an intriguing history imbuing it with miraculous powers.

The first time the miraculous icon displayed its power was in 1612 in the struggle with Poles who, taking advantage of the Time of Troubles, tried not only to seize Moscow but also to install Catholicism. In a word, the Kazan icon is not simply an icon but a great symbol of Russian history and the Russian state.

It was after the attempt by the Turk Ali Agca upon the life of John Paul II that the Kazan icon was transferred to Rome and, according to the pontiff, helped him recover from his wounds.

Maximovsk icon. 

Icons of the Mother of God.

Historical Accounts of Miracle-working Icons.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Orthodox Church and its icons — links aplenty regarding history, theology, and artistry.

Manifesto

By George Saunders. At Stephany Aulenback's suggestion, "Every post on every blog should contain at least one link to it today," here you go.

Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize, valuing the individual over the group, the actual over the conceptual, the inherent sweetness of the present moment over the theoretically peaceful future to be obtained via murder. Many of us have trouble sleeping and lie awake at night, worrying about something catastrophic befalling someone we love. We rise in the morning with no plans to convert anyone via beating, humiliation, or invasion. To tell the truth, we are tired. We work. We would just like some peace and quiet.

A very uncertain octopus

I should've known it this morning, when things were just slightly off — annoying, really.

When we lost the shovel at the playground (by which I mean some little toddler hoodlum absconded with it): I hate losing things; I always keep an eye on our stuff; I lapsed.

When Helena realized she could load up her pockets with handfuls of sand. Ah, joy.

Despite the signs, I was feeling all lighthearted and relieved, reveling in that sense that everything's going to work out just fine, when reality slapped me in the face and slipped me into extreme panic mode this afternoon.

Another phonecall. Another daycare. Only this time the call was placed to J-F, and he couldn't reach me, and he had to take a decision.

And I'm desperately afraid it might be the wrong decision.

In that very same moment of J-F's decision-making, yet another hoodlum toddler decided it would be funny if he poured a bucket of water in my lap.

Seconds later, Helena loses her pool footing for the first time ever, at the very deepest part of the wading pool, falling face first. I lift her blubbering and sputtering and coughing and trying to cry. My poor frightened, soggy baby.

The entire wading pool experience was tinged with my anger toward a woman prancing about in what was obviously her underwear. It provided a lot more coverage than many of the bikinis often sported, and the woman was hardly an eyesore, the opposite in fact. It's just the idea of it — underwear, in the wading pool — is incredibly repugnant to me.

So it's going to be the other daycare, the one beside J-F's office, which will always be his office, whereas our home is likely to shift locales (we're hoping soon). We have a meeting on Monday.

I admit, the very first time I walked past the Uncertain Octopus, I thought it weird. It has storefront windows, onto the kids' playrooms. Kind of creepy.

Then there's the name, something about the name niggling at me. What kind of institutional philosophy is behind the uncertainty. I imagine it's something about the state of the toddler being uncertain, being pure potential, but I was having trouble making it sit right.

But I quashed all that.

I'd already been imagining our morning strolls through the park, how it would provide a much-needed structure to my day. Being able to drop by the playground during one of their scheduled sessions. Pick her up early if I felt like it.

Of course, with the new arrangement, J-F gets to spend more one-on-one time with Helena, and this is fantabulous.

Somehow or other, my days will assume structure. Dammit, I can still go for walks in the park.

Today's words: "people," "I finit" (I'm finished), "a-to" (which, heard amid various cries, shrieks, and head-shaking, while trying to rinse away chlorine and other residue, I finally determined means "I'm tired.")

Some science with your fiction

It's the Guardian's science fiction issue!

"The best reason to read about science is not to check facts, but to revel in wonder."

Philip Pullman writes about science and fiction, and the relationship between the two (but don't mistake it for a discussion of science fiction):

Doing science is not the same as doing fiction. But science as a background to fiction is different. It has to do what all backgrounds do — stand firm and solid. It must not sway alarmingly when someone walks into it or sound hollow when struck, it must conform to the rules of perspective and be vivid enough to convince but not so hectic as to distract.

Is there a responsibility for science fiction to be scientifically accurate? The consensus is "No." For SF to work dramatically, it often confronts "controversial science" — where the scientific rights and wrongs (let alone the ethical) are hardly delineated.

Another blah, blah, blah article validates the blah, blah genre.

But science fiction is more than just pulp fiction; at its core is the desire to understand humanity's place in the universe.

Science fiction not only reflects science but is also an inspiration for it.

Fiction has certainly pushed the envelope for scientists. "It helps you to think the impossible and see if it is possible."

Blah, blah, blah.

A bunch of scientists compile a list of their favourite authors.

Nothing particularly striking about the choices, but this jumped out at me:

"Asimov was not a stylish writer in the way that say, Philip K Dick was, but he was very rigorous scientifically, and thoughtful about how he projects scientific ideas into the future," says Philip Ball, a writer of popular science books.

Imagine that. Philip K Dick, a stylish writer. Michel Basilières must really hate Asimov.

There's also an excerpt from Iain Banks' latest space opera, The Algebraist, but on first scan it doesn't appear to be quite my cup of tea.

We have lift-off

We got the phonecall!

Daycare!

Just when I'd lost all hope, losing sleep over everything and on the brink of losing my mind.

There's an opening! And it's close to home, just the other side of the park — Helena already interacts with this bunch of smock-labelled kids at the playground on a regular basis. And it's got a cool Latin name by which it will never be known, because it's just too easy to call it Uncertain Octopus.

It's what they call semi-private. That is, it is government subsidized, leaving us to pay $7 a day for standard care (I heart Quebec!), but we can pay extra for silly conveniences like diapers, extra meals, and stroller storage or for nifty special programming like music classes, zoo visits, and theatre excursions.

Once again, life is about to change drastically, and it's sure to spawn a new generation of motherhood-type crises, yet I feel somewhat relieved about sharing the matter of Helena's upbringing (or more accurately, the filling of her time with sensible toddler activities, about which I know nothing) with professionals.

Yay!

Prolongation

In anticipation of the mini heatwave forecast for this week, the wading pool has been reopened for a few days. Yay!

We spent a couple hours at the park this morning, and I was woefully underdressed, misled by the direct beams of sunlight and momentary stillness when I'd stepped out onto the balcony to check the weather before heading out. Don't worry — Helena was suitably jacketed (just in case), and we tried out her new covered shoes. But I'm all sniffly now, and I rather expect I'll fall deathly ill by week's end. I sure could use a couple more days of wallowing in self-pity.

Helena had a swell time doing all the usual playground stuff but most particularly, along with a handful of daycare toddlers also seated in the playhouse, in repeatedly piling sand onto the table and then vigorously brushing it off. Ah, the simple things...

Scribbling Woman has in one short post of interesting links managed to revive my work-at-home–mom crisis, putting an end to the comfortable denial I was just barely starting to settle into.

"Mothering in the Ivory Tower" (author's blog here) at Literary Mama:

I am at work on my computer, typing, typing, typing on an academic article that is due at the end of this month, but I am only partly here. I try to focus, to concentrate, to get this done so I can go back to my daughter. I keep being drawn back to her image, her smell, her touch, as I imagine she does with me.

I must do this work, but I have to call it as I see it in my own life. I won't pretend that Sarah is not suffering. I won't pretend that her pain doesn't matter. I won't try to justify it in terms of her well being, as in claiming that "she is learning to be more independent" or "a happy mother makes a happy home." I won't be pacified by the nanny's comment that "she stops crying the minute you are out of sight." Does my pain at a loss hurt any less because I can reconcile myself to it? No, of course not. Then, should I disregard her pain because she is learning to deal with it? Because it is short-lived? Is my child's pain less important than mine? Even though she won't consciously remember this later, if therapy has taught me anything, it's that the unconscious forgets nothing.

I won't deny the obvious truth: I am rebuilding my career on the back of her grief.

I used to think all those people who said they slept about 5 hours a night were weird, if admirable. I remember hearing coworkers talk about getting up at 5 in the morning. Of course, it was always women saying these things, but maybe men just don't like to talk about their sleep habits.

I imagined these creatures staying up till midnight, chatting with their lover over a bottle of wine, getting up before dawn in a zen-like frame of mind, to enjoy coffee, read the newspaper, breathe the air. They're crazy, I thought. Who could like that stuff better than 9 hours of glorious rejuvenating sleep? Lovers and lazy coffees are well and good, but at what price?

It never once crossed my mind that these women might sleep a mere 5 hours out of necessity — that they were up late finishing a report and doing laundry, that the baby demanded feeding in the morning and it was the only way to get older kids to school on time.

Five hours of sleep. They said it with a secret smile. Proud? Stoic. Why didn't they tell me?

Quirks

[Edited, kind of, cuz I posted the wrong draft.]

I asked Helena if she wanted some mango — we'd just returned from the park and some shops, and dinner was still an hour away. She stood still for a few seconds before replying "Mmm-mmmmmm-mmmm-mango!" in full smile, deciding that it was in fact a delightful idea.

Yesterday I left her at the kitchen table with her lunch and I went off to the bathroom. It had crossed my mind to warn J-F to keep his eyes and ears open for juice spills, now that Helena insists on drinking from a regular glass with a straw, ever since we lost the spillproof sippy cup (I don't understand the concept of the non-spillproof sippy cup — the spout is so conducive to pouring, dribble by deliberate dribble...), but I didn't. J-F hears her push her chair away from the table and watches her climb down and march determinedly to her room, emerging a moment later with one of her washcloths (stored conveniently at toddler height on the shelf of her change table). She returns to the kitchen and stands there. You can see the wheels turning. Helena heads to the cats' water bowls, dunks the washcloth, wrings it out, and turns back to kitchen table to wipe up the juice spill. Remarkable.

She hates getting sand in her sandals. Some days she insists on being carried from slide to swing so as to avoid walking across the sand herself. I admit it's not a pleasant sensation, but Helena's tolerance for it has reached breaking point. She sits at the entrance to the playground, instead of areas more conducive to sand play, filling her pail while blocking traffic. At times, the grit is unbearable, and everything must come to a stop while we remove her shoes to shake them out and brush off her feet now, whether we're sitting at the top of the slide, a line forming behind us, or walking across the middle of sand with no where to sit but in the sand.

My daughter is a tree hugger. Literally. But she hugs metal lampposts too.

Today she discovered the joy of puddles. That is, she's stumbled across them in the past and thought the splash factor amusing, but after this morning's rain there's puddles aplenty — in mid-splash she's already scoping the next site and plotting a path of puddle destruction.

This evening we were listening to some Nick Cave, and Helena enjoyed it immensely, doing her little boppy dance. Maybe it has something to do with the concert I attended when I was 3 months' pregnant with her.

Helena is home with me all week this week, because her grandmother's gone to the cottage; but I still have work to do. I'm sleeping little. As difficult as our arrangement is, I was quick in coming to rely on it.

Which literature classic are you?

Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a
mystery novel dealing with theology, especially
with catholic vs liberal issues. You search
wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that
learning is essential in life.

Which literature classic are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Via Catalogue Blog.

Park stuff

I've been meaning to take Helena to the library. Somehow we never make it through the park.

Yesterday, the library came to us, in the park.

Helena was filling her pail with sand as a young woman came by to explain the library's initiative, pointing out the blanket off to the side. The blanket was piled with books and a handful of toddlers, with one dutiful library employee reading to them animatedly. Mommies looked on, corralling the odd youngster trying to make a break for it.

Nobody needs to convince me kids ought to be exposed to books from an early age. Leaving Miss Recruiter Lady in mid sentence, I was already redirecting Helena's attention to the now book-laden corner of the playground.

Helena stood on the fringes, as is her wont, and watched. She was not enthralled, but stood somehow approving that these young wild things should be held quiet. A Caillou book made its way to her hands. Now Helena loves to watch Caillou at 5:30 in the morning — heck, maybe she even forces herself to get up at that ungodly hour at least once a week just so she can watch it. But she tossed the book aside, sat a few feet apart from the crowd, at the edge of the sand, and proceeded to fill her pail.

And that was that. It's a nice program the library has, full of good intentions, and I'm sure for some kids this exposure to books will have an impact.

But Helena lives surrounded by books. We play with them all day. We even read them sometimes. We come to the playground to run around, and fill our pail with sand.

(I have nothing against her growing up to come to the park wearing her pretty peasant blouse to sit under a tree and read her poetry. I am constantly amazed, and comforted, to see people sitting on benches reading. It makes me smile to see the odd kid — and they usually are rather odd — stretched out on a towel by the wading pool and reading. For the time being, Helena and I come to the park to play. And feed the ducks.)

Yesterday, cool as it was, only one of the wading pools was filled. Two lifeguards in attendance, three kids floundering about. Today, the "main" building is locked up, the sign posting the wading regulations removed. Today, by this measure of our life, summer is over. (And an effing cold, bloody useless summer it's been.)

Helena and I have a game. Mostly it's a lunchtime game, but it can be other times that we're sitting at the kitchen table. It's private — J-F can't play. Helena, usually between mouthfuls, will suddenly look all serious, often stern, pinching her mouth and furrowing her brow. I try to suppress my laughter, and return the look, cocking an eyebrow. And we do this, each trying to make the other crack up while maintaining a "straight" face, and always ending up laughing hysterically. She's a very funny little girl.

Yesterday for the first time, she transported this game away from the kitchen table, first to the park as a matter of fact — the swing and the top of the slide — and suddenly it's everywhere, when we're just hanging out. Our little in-joke.

This public expression feels like an affirmation — beyond merely tolerating my chaperoning presence, Helena may actually believe I'm cool to hang out with.

Cows and baths

"Cow." Cow, cow, cow, all through breakfast, all through lunch. For days. No beef on the menu.

Finally, I draw the line from Helena's haphazard pointing finger to the case of Moosehead at the side of the kitchen. I guess the moose kind of looks like a cow, in the same metaphysical way a horse kind of looks like a cow when you're not yet 2 years old.

I've explained the difference, but still she persists. Only now it's because she thinks instead of saying "moose," I'm saying "moo."

Do I have to explain everything around here?

Actually, no, I don't. The kid's a whiz at puzzles — fitting shapes into their moulds (animals, geometric figures) as well as interlocking pieces (decidedly abstract in shape when seen as parts apart from their whole).

I'm going to have to step up the challenge — the challenge for me being to find something that inspires without bringing on tantrums of frustration. I think a trip to the dollar store is in order.

I love that place: cleaning supplies, my favourite biscuits (Italian!), and more toys than Helena should be able to hope for. I derive immense satisfaction after having formed that initial impulse — that my baby deserves a new toy today — from pulling some coins out of the sofa and trekking down to the dollar store, being able to bestow on her the gift that is plywood puzzle made in China, or generic brand plastic slinky.

This week's new word: "foufounes."

Helena is so extraordinarily happy and cuddly and giggly on coming home form her grandmother's place. Except she seems to want more baths. At least that's what I gather from the excited squeals of "bat, bat" every time I remove an article of her clothing or change her diaper, and from her walking in on me in the bathroom while she struggles to remove her own clothing, pointing "bat, bat." I guess that's a good thing. We're just too lazy to comply.

I miss baths. I had a bubble bath recently, my first since the two awkward ones I'd had in late pregnancy, and found it terribly unsatisfying. When I was single, I indulged about once a week. Now, it's a question of time — not in preparing the tub or even taking half an hour out to clean oneself. It's a mindset problem. It takes substantially more than half an hour to be able to let go of the day to be able to truly enjoy the bath. And I really don't like our bathroom.

Olympic games, herculean boredom

I've been so busy with work, I didn't have time until today to realize just how boring these Games of the XXVIIIth Olympiad are.

I've had the television on in the background for the last few days and not once was I distracted.

Is it me? Seems I'm not alone in this feeling. Is it the commentators? Is it cuz we're not winning anything? But the ennui seems to cross national borders. There's no enthusiasm. Is it the oppressive Greek heat that's sapping the energy of our people on the scene and seeping through our television screens?

It wasn't always this way.

Via So Many Books, The Literary Olympics:

With the Olympics kicking off in Athens, the connection to the ancient Greeks has made every Bud-swilling couch potato feel somehow related to the Apollonian ideal. But we pallid, bespectacled book lovers shouldn't miss out on all the nostalgia. The world has forgotten that literary "happenings" were once an essential ingredient of all ancient athletic festivals; for those well-rounded Greek crowds, the 90-pound-weakling writers could be as compelling an attraction as the beefcake that paraded stark naked around the stadium. In fact, we should thank the first Olympics for several crucial breakthroughs in the Western literary tradition — including the pioneering act of self-promotion by a celebrity-hungry author.

Debuting at the Olympics, it turned out, was antiquity's equivalent of appearing on Oprah.

More links via The Literary Saloon:

Artists and the Olympic Games:

For the ancient Greeks, there was no separation between the idea of culture and the Olympic Games. The Games were the manifestation of a full civilization, and all aspects of culture were honored. Fine arts were elements of the ideal of the ‘all around man’ as citizen, soldier, and athlete. This concept of the ‘ideal’ was celebrated in various ways, including sculptural representations of winning athletes, often with idealization of the proportions of their physical form.

Art competitions at the Olympic Games.

From 1912 to 1948, rules of the art competition have varied, but the core of the rules remained the same. All of the entered works had to be inspired by sport, and had to be original (that is, not be published before the competition).

Art competitions have been held in the five areas of architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. At one time or another, there were suggestions to also include dancing, film, photography or theatre, but neither of these art forms was ever included in the Olympic Games as a medal event.

Olympic medallists in art competitions. In the modern games. Really.

Scrabble anyone?

What do you see?

Bill Martin Jr, author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, one of Helena's favourites, died August 11.

He loved language, as a thing in itself, and had a great ear for its rhythm.

A blessed thing happened to me as a child. I had a teacher who read to me. Of course, she was reading to all other children in the classroom, but I believed she was reading just to me because I was a nonreader.

It's his nonreader mindset that enabled him to tap into a language that children respond to.

Thanks, Bill, for helping me draw Helena into the world of books.

Difficult loves

Italo Calvino. Love letters. Copyright ownership? Publication injunction.

Illicit affair. Movie star. The disappearance of a cuckold.

The literary sensation of the year in Italy has turned the spotlight on a relationship paid scant attention by Calvino's biographers, and revealed a new side of an author otherwise renowned for his measured literary style.

Why was it paid scant attention? The torridness too cool to qualify as scandal among Italians? The preservation of their left-wing revolutionary idol?

No surprise. Beautiful stories. Romantic soul. Labyrinthine passions, precise and measured.

The naming of things

I've been nibbling away at Jhumpa Lahiris's The Namesake over the last week, finally finishing it up a couple nights ago.

Coincidentally, I stumbled across this recent commentary on the novel at Cup of Chicha, echoing some of my own sentiments.

From the first page, her use of the present tense bugged me. . . I get that she might have been trying to make some interesting comment on how the past stays with us by writing a lengthy family saga over a long period of years in the present tense, but while that’s an interesting intellectual exercise, it didn’t work for me as a reader.

Lahiri's style, though without flourish, I found to be almost graceless, droningly repetitive.

The story was nice enough, but there were no eureka moments.

I have not read the much-acclaimed Interpreter of Maladies, and I'm in no hurry to. I'm mildly curious as to what else Lahiri is capable of, but I won't be rushing out to buy her next book.

Why are all the reviews of The Namesake so glowing?

This review points out some of the differences between the advance reading copy and the published novel as evidence of the fine-tuning Lahiri engages in for just the right effect (even if it was lost on me).

See also the review in The New York Times.

The Washington Post review in writing generally about Lahiri, her success, and her real-life immigrant experience starts to get to the nitty-gritty of things.

"Naming is everything, a way to claim identity, to pass on notions of love, tradition and hope."

What's in a name? A hell of a lot. I agonized over naming Helena. Naming is an responsibility not to be taken lightly. Much as Adam named God's creatures. It's in the naming that we give something life, set it on its course. Impart meaning.

Like the novel's hero, I also grew up in an immigrant family, against whose culture and tradition I did my best to rebel. Most of that rebellion took place in my head, so it wasn't very successful, and that's all probably for the best.

I also had a "family" name, or pet name, that marked me as different. It caused confusion and grief in having to explain myself as a kid at school. That name was my childhood and is not much used outside my family anymore. But I'm oddly satisfied and reassured in knowing that my life can be distinguished into phases according to the name by which people knew me.

Although the story Lahiri tells isn't particularly insightful, I did feel connected to it through the coincidence of my own experience.

These words near the book's beginning delve into states of being that are states of mind, and are the most striking of the entire novel:

For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy — a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

The Namesake doesn't live up to its promise. But it's made me rediscover the obligation of living up to one's name.

More on Miłosz

The tributes and remembrances are piling up. No one has anything but nice things to say. That's part of the ritual.

I wondered if the Polish press might be a little more critical in their special editions. Not really.

Among some of the insights:

Jerzy Jarzębski, professor of literature, Jagillonian University, defines him as the antithesis of Gombrowicz:

Dla mnie był antytezą Gombrowicza, najważniejszą w polskiej literaturze. O ile Gombrowiczowi zależało na obronie indywidualności, to Miłosz, który był człowiekiem o silnym "ja", bardziej niż Gombrowicz miał poczucie misji i powinności, która czasami prowadziła do sytuacji niewygodnych, zmuszających do dramatycznych posunięć — takich jak wyjazd z Polski w 1951 r. i zmierzenie się z polską nieprzychylną emigracją. Miłosza stosunek do wartości był inny: był czymś, co wymaga nieustannej ochrony, dyskutowania na nowo, bo poeta, pisarz to ktoś, kto nieustannie musi się nad tymi wartościami zastanawiać. Przede wszystkim Miłosz był kimś, kto próbował nawiązywać dialog między kulturami, budować kulturę uniwersalną, która łączy wyznania i narody, co dla Gombrowicza walczącego o indywiduum było mniej ważne. Trudno zajmować się Gombrowiczem nie pamiętając o Miłoszu, a Miłoszem — o Gombrowiczu; to dwa filary, na których stoi kultura polska.

On his return to Poland for the first time in more than 30 years in the 1980s after having received the Nobel Prize, he was heralded as a national symbol. Wojtyła, Wałęsa, and Miłosz — the trinity that would inspire Poland to restore itself.

There are many interesting personal remembrances. For those of you who don't read Polish, this photo essay retrospective is worth looking at. Another photo series shows Miłosz, man about his adopted town Kraków.

The New York Times:
Mr. Milosz chose throughout his life to compose his poetry in the complex but rich Polish language, even after he mastered French and English. Poetry can be true, he said, only if created in one's mother tongue.
When he consulted on his plan to break with Communism, it was with no less a figure than Albert Einstein, who advised him during a talk at Princeton University that he should go home to Poland, not defect to the West to join the sad fate of exiles.

Los Angeles Times:
Fame interfered with his work and threatened to turn him into a pompous fool, he said, but it also set off a burst of productivity.
"Loving me, Janka would have preferred me to be the most ordinary of men; a baker, for example," he wrote. "The Nobel Prize, when it came, was, for her, a tragedy."

It's the piece in The Guardian that comes closest to really examining the contradiction that was the "petulant" Czesław Miłosz, "the luckiest Polish writer of the last century":

He provoked vilification from the Polish authorities and Polish intellectuals, as well as from the Stalin-infatuated French left.

Throughout those years Milosz remained bitter and unrelenting, convinced that his life was riddled with misfortunes brought about by the malice of his countrymen. He could never understand that by choosing a life of high exposure and ideological manoeuvring, he was bound to provoke hostile reactions, as well as fierce loyalties.

Lithuania, united with Poland in 1386, is viewed by Poles with affection as an enigmatic, romantic borderland which produced Mickiewicz and Pilsudski; it therefore obviously suited Milosz to stress his ties with that region to the point of denying any links with Poland.

Neither then nor subsequently did Milosz attempt to push his poetry beyond 18th-century decorum. He cherished a profound distaste for what he termed the 20th-century avant-garde, and his poetry therefore lacks flexibility and adaptability. On the other hand, his refusal ever to abandon his lonely tower enabled him in later years to create magisterial poetic meditations out of a rich and varied mixture of philosophical, quasi philosophical and religious material, and from sharply focused descriptions of historical events and the natural world.

Now that's the stuff that makes me think Milosz is worth reading.

Swing

Today Helena refused to let me remove her pyjamas.

She was a little dopey this morning, though clued in to the preparations we were making to leave the house. An easy-going, ya-whatever mood. Except for the pyjamas.

So off we went to the park in sleepwear and sandals.

I felt a little silly, mildly embarassed about it. There were all the neighbourhood girls in their summer dresses, much nicer today than their usual grubby shorts and T-shirts. Helena didn't mind one bit.

Of course, there are days I wish I could stay in my pyjamas, and there are the times when I have worn them to the corner store, ducking out for a litre of milk, always in winter, when I can throw a long coat over top, and I feel a thrill.

Ah, to be a toddler, free of the social conventions of appropriate clothing. I, as her mother, on the other hand, expect raised eyebrows and stern looks, directed at me on her behalf. Mothers should know better.

On arrival at the playground, Helena looks at me and says, "Pail." It takes me a minute to understand that she's saying "pail." "Pail. Pail. Pail." I forgot the pail, the shovel and sieve. She closely examines the basket beneath the seat of the stroller, just in case. How could I forget the pail?

Fortunately, Helena had, unbeknownst to me, tucked a plastic cup into my bag earlier in the morning. That'll do.

Today's word of the day: swing. And we swinged and we swinged and we swinged and we swinged. Swang. Until Helena fell asleep.

(Yesterday's word: pickle. Which is a very funny word. Particularly if you say it repeatedly for any length of time. Is that how it's going to be — a new word every day? How big should my vocabulary be by now?)