What's going on

Me
I've been mildly flu-ish the last couple days — sniffly, achey, occasionally fevered, and confused. Not so sick that I can't do things — like feed and dress the kid, or myself, clean the cat litter, or hop over to the grocery store for milk. Not so sick that coffee tastes disgusting.

But sick enough that I can't really focus on anything much for too long at a stretch (like work), I don't feel guilty for whining to J-F to make me some tea, I'm sleeping a lot, and I feel generally shitty.

The kid
Since the daycare trip to Le Jardin botanique a couple weeks ago and the encounter with Esméralda, Helena has been looking forward to Halloween. The festive spirit of the season is not lost on her (as it was last year). For about 48 hours after meeting Esméralda, Helena wanted to dress up as a witch for Halloween. She has changed her mind.

I don't know if someone or something at daycare inspired her decision or whether she came up with it on her own. Certainly, it is not the sort of idea J-F or I would've casually suggested. Helena wants to be Mickey Mouse, and the idea persists.

The only Mickey Mouse exposure the girl has ever had, to my knowledge, is the occasional viewing of the Sorceror's Apprentice, in Fantasia. Whatever the origin of her fixation, we think it's weird.

I'm somewhat charmed by the idea's simplicity. All we need to do is find some ears and fashion a tail. The basics of the "costume" are already in her wardrobe. (Or will be, once we go shopping for winter clothes that fit.) Black turtleneck, leggings, red shorts — we're done, yes? Where can I get ears?

J-F thinks Helena's choice is "of another era" and would rather encourage some other costume that will have more recognition and approval from her peers (and their parents). I hesitate to point Helena in a specific disguise direction unless I am certain we can pull it off. I refuse to spend real money on a pre-packaged costume, but trust that the local dollar store will have everything we may need.

We are considering "astronaut." No, I have no idea how to do that.

Whatever we choose, I suspect Helena won't go for it. Either we wholeheartedly embrace the Mickey Mouse concept now, or we ensure the materials are at the ready as a backup when Helena starts to cry. Whatever we choose, you can bet that I'll put off getting organized about it till it's too late and it'll be half-assed.

The blog
This place is a mess. I need to get organized.

If you notice me spending an inordinate amount of time on your own blogs, I'm likely mining your link lists for inspiration and good reading, or I'm stalking you, or I've fallen asleep in front of the computer (Because I'm sick-ish, not because you're boring. You most decidedly are not.). Recommend me a blog, please.

I still intend to write about Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Something about doing so scares me. It took me years to ready myself for reading it; it may take me a while longer to develop some coherent thoughts out of the mist of emotion it left me in. But it's something I need to do. Someday.

The rest
We're still fine-tuning our home, repositioning pictures and shelves, and preparing for the acquisition of new furniture. I have a pile of work to do, which I'm actually making progress on. I'm still reading Don Quixote, which at this point I'm loving.

Mostly, this week, I just feel really, really bored.

CanLit awards

Having surveyed the past winners of the Governor General's Literary Awards and Giller Prize, Rachel Giese has determined
how to write a Canadian award-winner:
Be Alice Munro.

Oh, wretched misfortunes

Today sees the long-awaited (by me!) release of the last book before the last book in a series of unfortunate events, The Penultimate Peril: Book the Twelfth, in which the further travails of the Baudelaire orphans are documented by Lemony Snicket.

From Chapter One:

"La forza del destino" is an Italian phrase meaning "the force of destiny," and "destiny" is a word that tends to cause arguments among the people who use it. Some people think destiny is something you cannot escape, such as death, or a cheesecake that has curdled, both of which always turn up sooner or later. Other people think destiny is a time in one's life, such as the moment one becomes an adult, or the instant it becomes necessary to construct a hiding place out of sofa cushions. And still other people think that destiny is an invisible force, like gravity, or a fear of paper cuts, that guides everyone throughout their lives, whether they are embarking on a mysterious errand, doing a treacherous deed, or deciding that a book they have begun reading is too dreadful to finish. In the opera La Forza del Destino, various characters argue, fall in love, get married in secret, run away to monasteries, go to war, announce that they will get revenge, engage in duels, and drop a gun on the floor, where it goes off accidentally and kills someone in an incident eerily similar to one that happens in chapter nine of this very book, and all the while they are trying to figure out if any of these troubles are the result of destiny. They wonder and wonder at all the perils in their lives, and when the final curtain is brought down even the audience cannot be sure what all these unfortunate events may mean.

Regarding part the first, which both entertains and provides a moral education

Having now read the First Part of the tales of the Ingeniuous Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, I am eager to read further of this knight's adventures, in hopes that, while I have been thoroughly entertained by these romances, even if over the obstacles life has presented me for these 10 long months, I might glean some insight into the workings of the mind of the Knight of the Sorrowful Face and the nature of his enchantment, as well as a proper resolution to the dark machinations of the barber and the priest. I would be mildy disappointed to have to consider part I in its entirety apart from subsequent goings-on and outcomes. Thank God Cervantes wrote a sequel! (How could anyone call this book boring?!)

The canon agreed, and going on ahead with his servants, listened with attention to the account of the character, life, madness, and ways of Don Quixote, given him by the curate, who described to him briefly the beginning and origin of his craze, and told him the whole story of his adventures up to his being confined in the cage, together with the plan they had of taking him home to try if by any means they could discover a cure for his madness. The canon and his servants were surprised anew when they heard Don Quixote's strange story, and when it was finished he said,

"To tell the truth, senor curate, I for my part consider what they call books of chivalry to be mischievous to the State; and though, led by idle and false taste, I have read the beginnings of almost all that have been printed, I never could manage to read any one of them from beginning to end; for it seems to me they are all more or less the same thing; and one has nothing more in it than another; this no more than that. And in my opinion this sort of writing and composition is of the same species as the fables they call the Milesian, nonsensical tales that aim solely at giving amusement and not instruction, exactly the opposite of the apologue fables which amuse and instruct at the same time. And though it may be the chief object of such books to amuse, I do not know how they can succeed, when they are so full of such monstrous nonsense. For the enjoyment the mind feels must come from the beauty and harmony which it perceives or contemplates in the things that the eye or the imagination brings before it; and nothing that has any ugliness or disproportion about it can give any pleasure. What beauty, then, or what proportion of the parts to the whole, or of the whole to the parts, can there be in a book or fable where a lad of sixteen cuts down a giant as tall as a tower and makes two halves of him as if he was an almond cake? And when they want to give us a picture of a battle, after having told us that there are a million of combatants on the side of the enemy, let the hero of the book be opposed to them, and we have perforce to believe, whether we like it or not, that the said knight wins the victory by the single might of his strong arm. And then, what shall we say of the facility with which a born queen or empress will give herself over into the arms of some unknown wandering knight? What mind, that is not wholly barbarous and uncultured, can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower full of knights sails away across the sea like a ship with a fair wind, and will be to-night in Lombardy and to-morrow morning in the land of Prester John of the Indies, or some other that Ptolemy never described nor Marco Polo saw? And if, in answer to this, I am told that the authors of books of the kind write them as fiction, and therefore are not bound to regard niceties of truth, I would reply that fiction is all the better the more it looks like truth, and gives the more pleasure the more probability and possibility there is about it. Plots in fiction should be wedded to the understanding of the reader, and be constructed in such a way that, reconciling impossibilities, smoothing over difficulties, keeping the mind on the alert, they may surprise, interest, divert, and entertain, so that wonder and delight joined may keep pace one with the other; all which he will fail to effect who shuns verisimilitude and truth to nature, wherein lies the perfection of writing. I have never yet seen any book of chivalry that puts together a connected plot complete in all its numbers, so that the middle agrees with the beginning, and the end with the beginning and middle; on the contrary, they construct them with such a multitude of members that it seems as though they meant to produce a chimera or monster rather than a well-proportioned figure. And besides all this they are harsh in their style, incredible in their achievements, licentious in their amours, uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix in their battles, silly in their arguments, absurd in their travels, and, in short, wanting in everything like intelligent art; for which reason they deserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth as a worthless breed."

The curate listened to him attentively and felt that he was a man of sound understanding, and that there was good reason in what he said; so he told him that, being of the same opinion himself, and bearing a grudge to books of chivalry, he had burned all Don Quixote's, which were many; and gave him an account of the scrutiny he had made of them, and of those he had condemned to the flames and those he had spared, with which the canon was not a little amused, adding that though he had said so much in condemnation of these books, still he found one good thing in them, and that was the opportunity they afforded to a gifted intellect for displaying itself; for they presented a wide and spacious field over which the pen might range freely, describing shipwrecks, tempests, combats, battles, portraying a valiant captain with all the qualifications requisite to make one, showing him sagacious in foreseeing the wiles of the enemy, eloquent in speech to encourage or restrain his soldiers, ripe in counsel, rapid in resolve, as bold in biding his time as in pressing the attack; now picturing some sad tragic incident, now some joyful and unexpected event; here a beauteous lady, virtuous, wise, and modest; there a Christian knight, brave and gentle; here a lawless, barbarous braggart; there a courteous prince, gallant and gracious; setting forth the devotion and loyalty of vassals, the greatness and generosity of nobles. "Or again," said he, "the author may show himself to be an astronomer, or a skilled cosmographer, or musician, or one versed in affairs of state, and sometimes he will have a chance of coming forward as a magician if he likes. He can set forth the craftiness of Ulysses, the piety of AEneas, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, the treachery of Sinon, the friendship of Euryalus, the generosity of Alexander, the boldness of Caesar, the clemency and truth of Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the wisdom of Cato, and in short all the faculties that serve to make an illustrious man perfect, now uniting them in one individual, again distributing them among many; and if this be done with charm of style and ingenious invention, aiming at the truth as much as possible, he will assuredly weave a web of bright and varied threads that, when finished, will display such perfection and beauty that it will attain the worthiest object any writing can seek, which, as I said before, is to give instruction and pleasure combined; for the unrestricted range of these books enables the author to show his powers, epic, lyric, tragic, or comic, and all the moods the sweet and winning arts of poesy and oratory are capable of; for the epic may be written in prose just as well as in verse."

(The above is from the translation by John Ormsby. Edith Grossman's working is smoother, more natural, to the modern ear — and the one that I'm reading — but not available online.)

5 cents a ride

When we visited my hometown this summer, we had occasion to ride the Looff Carousel at Lakeside Park, "one of the oldest hand crafted wooden merry-go-rounds in North America."

This past weekend was its final run of the season. Both the summer and our carousel ride were commmemorated in a small way this week by Helena digging out her souvenir T-shirt. It's too big for normal wear, but I struck a deal with her — if she dressed in sensible clothes for daycare, she could wear the carousel shirt to sleep in.

In the evening and again in the morning she recounted her memories of that day at the park. She'd wanted to sit on the lion, but once we climbed aboard the platform, she was scared. Then she chose a horse, but even that was daunting. Finally, Helena and I settled into a bench in one of the "chariots" while my sister perched on a nearby giraffe. Babcia was there too, watching. Dizzying at first, but then smiles and giggles.

This historic masterpiece was hand-carved by the Charles I.D. Looff Company between 1898 and 1905. The carousel came to St. Catharines in 1921 when it was purchased to become a part of the Port Dalhousie amusement park. It is a Coney Island–style carousel with 68 carved animals in 4 rows (making it relatively large), 4 chariots, and a functioning band organ. Each animal has been hand-carved, and most still sport real horse-hair tails.

According to the U.S. National Carousel Association, between 3,000 and 4,000 wooden carousels were carved across North America between the years 1885 and 1930. Today, less than 150 of these original carousels are left, and only 9 historic carousels reside in Canada.

The carousel has a new lion, Paws, hand-carved and painted by the Friends of the Carousel. Paws is allegedly a replacement for a lion that went missing some 30 years ago, though some sources maintain only Leo, carved by Looff himself, was on the original roster.



History of the carousel's ownership.

In 1974, the carousel suffered a storage fire and 20 animals were damaged. It was restored and reopened 1981.

This tidbit explains to me why memories of the carousel are absent from my own childhood. It was as adolescents that we flocked to the park and thought it was cool to spend our days and our nickels there. I should note that much of the popularity of Lakeside Park, our teenage "nostalgia" for it, was owing to the fact that it had been immortalized by Rush, which one had to admit was kind of cool even if one didn't much like their music.

Midway hawkers calling
'Try your luck with me'
Merry-go-round wheezing
The same old melody
A thousand ten cent wonders
Who could ask for more
A pocketful of silver
The key to heaven's door

Since the reopening in 1981, a carousel ride costs 5 cents, same as it did in 1921. (I don't know if it ever cost more than that.)

Niagara Woodcarvers are helping the Friends of the Carousel (a not-for-profit organization) with the ongoing restoration project. There's also a gift shop now, with all proceeds helping to fund the work. In addition to the T-shirt, we bought a sticker book for Helena.

I was always in awe of these prancing beasts, but the organ is also a wonder.

Sources show it currently has a Frati band organ which plays Wurlitzer 150 rolls, and that this organ was refurbished in 1985. The Artizan organ resides in The St. Catharines Historical Museum, having been moved there in 1976.

In one of his books, Neil Peart writes:

Another important setting in my childhood and early teens was Lakeside Park, in Port Dalhousie...When I was fourteen and fifteen, I worked summers at Lakeside Park as a barker ('Catch a bubble, prize every time,' all day and night)... And there was music: some of the kids brought transistor radios to work, and the music of that summer of 1966 played up and down the midway... At night, when the midway closed, we gathered around a fire on the beach, singing... Lakeside Park resonated in my life in so many deep ways, especially those fundamental exposures to music that would be forever important... It's all gone now. All that's left, apart from memories, is the old merry-go-round...

There are current plans to relocate the carousel within the park and house it in a glass-walled structure.

He makes a fine laureate

Harold Pinter, in his own words:

Some journalists have behaved appallingly. They've been ringing on the door insisting on entrance. They don't like it if you don't respond like a chimpanzee. But I'm not a chimpanzee and I don't intend ever to be a fucking chimpanzee. Not that I've anything against chimpanzees.

A Nobel choice

The Swedish Academy:
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2005 is awarded to the English writer Harold Pinter "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms".

I have only a passing familiarity with Pinter. In high-school drama club we performed some pieces they called Pinteresque: "in which sense of menace emerges from a second or third layer of unspoken meaning." I wondered about the references to him in the lyrics of Anne Clark. I've seen a number of films for which Pinter wrote the screenplay.

Harold Pinter's website:

In 1958 I wrote the following:

"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false."

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

CBC:

Considered Britain's greatest living playwright for plays like The Birthday Party, The Caretaker and The Homecoming, "Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles," the academy said.

Though a human rights activist since the early 1970s, Pinter has recently become more outspoken about politics, specifically criticizing U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the war in Iraq.

Pinter's name was not among those bandied about in recent weeks as a potential prize winner.

The choice undeniably has political overtones.

Earlier this year Pinter announced he was turning his focus to politics and poetry.

. . . all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

News coverage (at this still early hour, other than what's on the wires):
The Guardian.

Blogstipation, in 9 parts, more or less

Harken, thou discourager of the brethren, for you will see your pomegranates wither!

A.
In recent weeks we've taken to keeping a box of Smarties on standby for Helena. Smarties (note: the Canadian link is even more boring than this one) were a childhood fetish of mine. (Remember when the boxes were real boxes, not glued and perforated? When empty, they made excellent kazoos. Remember when they introduced blue? It seemed so unnatural.) Helena and I were at the grocery store and she was itching for a treat, and deserving one, and thus a new generation of Smarties fetish was born. It's a reasonably smart treat too, as far as sugar-and-chemical-based treats go, because you don't have to eat the whole thing and it's made for sharing. And colour-sorting, and counting. I made the mistake once of singing the jingle — it's now a frequent request.

Last night, for I don't know what reason, I sniffed out Helena's stash and ate them all. I feel a little guilty. (Not for gobbling down Smarties, but because they were hers. Silly guilt, really. It's not like her name was actually on them.)

B.
Thanksgiving came and went. J-F and his family have no tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving — just another long weekend. As my own family has dispersed and the logistics for gathering have become more complicated, and Thanksgiving being a "lesser" holiday, this weekend for me has also become just like any other. Sometimes that makes me a bit sad.

No turkey. No festive meals. But I still give thanks.

C.
Helena had a pretty bad cold over the weekend, with a pretty rough cough and a pretty high fever. It seemed like a good weekend to curl up and watch movies.

Helena has a current fixation with The Secret Garden — it'd been sitting in a drawer for a very long time, till one day not so long ago she thought it looked interesting. I'm curious to reread the book now, tho' I never loved it the way I loved A Little Princess. I'll have to dig it out of my mother's basement when next I visit.

Last week when renting a movie not worth mentioning, Helena expressed interest in Shrek. She's smitten by the creature — at least the appearance of him. So Sunday, in search of Shrek we went. For some reason, it seemed like a good idea for all of us to bundle up and go, but of course it wasn't, cuz Helena threw up.

We did find a copy of Shrek 2. And I'd previously seen most of Shrek (1) on TV. I just don't see what the big deal is about it being clever and working on so many levels. Kind of cute, but leaves me cold.

D.
Bath night. I always remind Helena in the morning, to warm her up to the idea. She protests, I insist, she asks whether we have to wash her hair, she makes me promise not to get water in her eyes, we get on with our day, periodically reminding each other of our evening bath commitment. Monday, she decides she wants a shower. While during the summer we would on occasion hose her down in the shower stall (by no means a thorough cleansing) and she's been rinsed off under the nozzles at the wading pool (more like running through a sprinkler), she's never had a shower per se. But Monday morning she got the idea in her head to take a shower and reminded me about it all day. OK.

We won't be doing that again any time soon.

E.
I had to take the métro yesterday. I momentarily toyed with the idea of lugging Don Quixote with me for 7 minutes of quality reading time, but the prospect of having to carry both it and a toddler was too real and daunting, so I slipped a slim paperback in my bag instead and started reading it on my commute, and it's very good, and it'd almost be a shame not to continue reading it now. I've never been good at reading more than one book at a time.

Don Quixote is in fact a very entertaining and readable book. Gripping, even. I'm amazed more people don't rave about it. But I just can't get physically comfortable with this edition. At this point, my resolve and interest outweigh(!) the drawbacks, but I fear for all the lesser people who started the Grossman translation on the recommendation of pretty much everybody only to feel literally bogged down. Paperbacks! Cheap stock! Multiple-volume box sets! Do you hear me publishers?!

F.
Last night was the annual general meeting of the daycare. Mostly very boring. And also French. And very poorly attended. But I feel involved. I almost want to join a committee. Except for that the feeling that I am constantly being scrutinized by other parents as well as staff holds me back a little, as if my parenting abilities, let alone any committee contributions, are only as competent as my French.

The highlight came in the report from the health and safety committee, regarding fire drills and evacuations — now completed in under 2 minutes! I know adults less competent than this. The report was punctuated with amusing anecdotes of children reacting to alarms during snacktime, and failing to react during naptime.

G.
Helena and I were playing in her room, with the dollhouse I think. She asks me if I want to play naptime, something we do often, plotting out our spots on the floor, finding pillows, blankets, and teddybears for ourselves and whichever dolls are playing with us, tucking each other in, fake snoring. I say OK. She very seriously tells me I have to tidy up first. This stops me like a slap. Is this playing, or manipulating? We strike a deal to clean up together. The scamp isn't keeping up her end and has the audacity to order me to finish the job. (At which point I managed to turn the tables.)

H.
FlyLady is starting to piss me off. While her tagline speaks to me — "You are not behind! I don't want you to try to catch up; I just want you to jump in where we are." — I could also use some serious catching up.

On the whole, the FlyLady concept is empowering (for me, for now, for maybe a little while longer), but then there are email messages I shake my head at:

Dirty dishes are a blessing, because when they are put away I am blessing my family. Laundry is the same way. I am no longer chained to a chore but I have been given a chance to show my sweet darling that I care for him. After all, nothing says I love you, like clean underwear. So when we have a change in our attitude from feeling martyred to finding joy in blessing our family, we will have time to do just a little.

For a sink-cleaning assignment: "use an OLD toothbrush not your husband's!"

What the fuck century is this?

I.
Need a slogan?
(Thanks to Scribbling Woman for reminding me of all the linky goodness in the world.)

Moving at the Speed of Magnificent Octopus.
The Magnificent Octopus Is Mightier Than The Sword.
I Wish They All Could Be Magnificent Octopus Girls.
Does She or Doesn't She? Only Her Magnificent Octopus Knows for Sure.
8 out of 10 Owners who Expressed a Preference said Their Cats Preferred Magnificent Octopus.
There's More Than One Way To Eat A Magnificent Octopus.
Now with 50% more Magnificent Octopus!

My week so far

(What? It's almost over?)

As luck would have it, I've been dropping off and picking up Helena at daycare quite a bit over the last week and some, just because that's the way it's worked out. As such, I've been reading quite a bit, on those métro journeys I make alone. This was all very fine, until I'd decided a few nights ago to throw myself back into Don Quixote, which is big and heavy and is not easily accommodated for transitory reading. And so it was that I found myself staring into space for an entire 7 minutes of subway riding between here and there, and some more minutes of entirely unproductive waiting, which were not even restful, so distraught I was at having nothing to read. Of course, I could've carried a little volume of something else, or a magazine, but I'm worried about disrupting the rhythm I'm currently hell-bent on establishing with Don Quixote.

As it was, when a few days ago I opened Don Quixote to the place I'd marked, the page number was much lower than I'd remembered achieving and the text was familiar, but I'm unable to ascertain whether the bookmark was (re)placed inaccurately or if my doubt stems from the combination of wishful thinking as to my previous progress and simply being attuned since the start of the calendar year to all things DQ, leading to a sense of familiarity with the text equalling that as if I'd actually read it.

The day-to-day stuff
We attended a parent–educator meeting at the daycare this week, a general presentation to the group of us about their rules and routines. Very boring. (Excruciating for J-F, as we were pressed to make it home in time to watch the first NHL game in 524 days. Yes, he counted the days.)

We heard in great detail about the menu. And how the kids have tasks (like distributing milk glasses), and take turns, and make decisions about activities as a group. We met Brindami, the paper mouse on a stick (shades of Mr. Hat) — I couldn't help but notice that his head has been ripped off a number of times, as evidence by the cast of tape he wore around his neck.

The biggest surprise is how busy their schedule is; I knew they had regular activities, but it's much more impressive on paper than when it simply buzzes around in my head. Every Monday: music lesson. Every other Tuesday: the gym. Every other Thursday: the library. Every Friday: dance class. (Not to mention the daily washing up for snacktime, snacking, washing up after snacktime; washing up for lunch, lunching, washing up after lunch; preparing for naps, napping; washing up for another snacktime, snacking, and cleaning up.) They're busy! And on top of this, special excursions — this Wednesday it was the botanical gardens; a couple weeks back, they went to see dinosaurs; today was supposed to be apple-picking, but cancelled due to rain. So, while I sometimes feel guilty for not keeping Helena home with me (particularly when work is slow), sometimes I don't.

The only mystery to me is where Helena's learning her letters and numbers, seeing as they have no "academic" program as such. I guess she's just piecing it all together for herself from various unstructured input.

Next week is the daycare's annual general meeting, which we've already committed to attending, and J-F, it turns out, is unable to attend, and I'm dreading facing it alone, not least because of my inadequate French, not to mention poor general social skills. Ugh.

Assorted cute things
Helena is being generally adorable and lovely, with me anyway.

In the bath, with her squirty frog toy: "La grenouille fait pipi a la bouche!"

At the grocery store, which is crawling with (decorative) huge black hairy spiders — as big as Helena: she tries to hide from them and plays scared.

She met une sorcière at la garderie this week, with a very big nose and a black hat, but it's ok because she was very nice. There was much spinning.

Helena's received her first invitation, to a real birthday party, of a classmate, to take place at the end of the month. (How much money are we supposed to spend on a present? Do I have to run it by the parents first?)

I had to stop at the pharmacy on the way home last night, and Helena was very excited about accompanying me. Then she started asking where the pigs and cows are. (If it's taking you as long as it took me to figure out: she expected farm, was rather disappointed by pharmacy.)

Not so cute
Last night, J-F gave Helena her bath (even though there was a hockey game on), for the first time in a very long time. We've gone through phases of bathing her together or regularly taking turns, but the routine somehow always falls apart, and the task inevitably falls to me alone. While I generally don't mind — we enjoy water play and I (usually) want to spend as much waking time with the girl as possible (given that she goes daily to daycare) — it still breeds resentment.

Last night's bath was one long continuous scream. (The kind that's an actual scream, not in the sense of "it was great, what a scream.") The sort of scream that makes me want to jump in and say, oh here, just let me do it, it'll be easier, no big deal. Which I've done way too often in the past.

Ditto regarding the "task" of bedtime (the pj's, the story, the tucking in). My job. And waking up. And going to the park. And after-supper walks. And pretty much everything. My job.

The two of them have got to figure something out. And I think not just for the sake of my sanity, me wanting a break.

This is related to the fact that J-F sees our parenting roles as good cop/bad cop, and he's resigned himself to being bad cop, cuz you can't be both. (By corollary, I'm not "bad" enough often enough.) I'm not convinced it has to be that way.

Meanwhile
I've discovered FlyLady. Some of you have mentioned her before, to me even. But why didn't you make sure I was paying attention?! I'm so full of hope, now, for an organized and orderly home!

Modern love
One book I zipped through at the beginning of the week: The.Powerbook, by Jeanette Winterson. (Extract.)

(One reason I'd avoided it while simultaneously being drawn to it is that upon reading the description it sounded much like an idea I've had buzzing 'round my head for years already, thinking that were I ever to write a novel it would be something like this. Of course, having read it now, I know my idea, and whatever novel might result, is nothing like this. Phew.)

I was confused at first, but soon enough I was mesmerized by the prose, and the story unfurled itself to me.

I went through a phase of reading, and loving, Winterson in my early college years, probably as much for the illicit thrill of her stories as for the beautiful prose. But after a while, I no longer felt compelled to read her latest, as if by settling into my own sexuality I no longer had need for her explorations.

There's something very unsettling about this book, even as I melt into her words. It's almost as if maybe, just maybe, I've never actually been in love after all.

Who shall be the master?

Today I suffered a great injury by Don Quixote. While easing him into my lap for an afternoon escape, I was caught off guard — having forgotten — so long it's been since last I sampled the pleasure he has to give — by his massive girth. And so it came to pass that my own left forearm has been horribly twisted. I let him drop to the ground — doubtless he was as aghast as I at this unsuspected turn in our long overdue rendezvous. I am tender at the thought of him.

As is so often the case with great books and slightly lesser men, while I love the idea of him, I'm coming to loathe his physical presence.

Death and glory!

Finally I finished Alexandre Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask. It's very funny, except for that almost everybody dies.

For example, as far as funny goes, when a messenger arrives for the governor of the Bastille at some ungodly hour and he is finally granted entrance,

addressing Aramis, [the governor] added in a lower tone of voice, 'Do you know what it is? I warrant it is something about as interesting as this: "Keep fire away from you powder magazine," or, "Keep an eye on so-and-so; he is an expert gaol-breaker."'

And on it goes sarcastically about, essentially, the stupidity of office memos.

Dumas also imagines some witty exchanges among poets and artists — friends of the court — including Molière and La Fontaine.

I was inspired to spend time with Dumas after reading Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Queen of the South, which refers quite a bit to The Count of Monte Cristo, which I haven't read and which would've been a more appropriate follow-up reading candidate, but somehow I found myself face to face with The Man instead (I'd read The Three Musketeers year ago). So here we are.

My reading of the book got off to a difficult start, if not exactly a slow one. The political and romantic machinations amid which I found myself were so fast and furious that I was wishing for diagrams to plot out the characters' relationships to one another. I was plagued with questions such as, "Who's this Raoul fellow?"

The introduction alerted me to the proper sequence of Musketeer stories: The Man in the Iron Mask is but one section, with a disputed starting point, of The Vicomte de Bragelonne — none other than the aforementioned Raoul, son(!?) of Athos — which was the serialized follow-up to The Three Musketeers and its sequel, Twenty Years After, the latter of which I've not read and familiarity with which might've eased my entrance into the intrigue.

One of Dumas's biographers, André Maurois, is quoted as saying:
"Does Dumas make us think? Not very often. Dream? Never. Go on turning the pages? Always."

And so I turned some 600 pages.

I can't believe everyone dies. Everyone except Aramis. And Aramis should've died. It was his doing that caused so much misfortune to befall so many around him. And him a man of God! It's distasteful to watch a musketeer become this. Does Aramis have more adventures, I wonder. I hope he dies a miserable death. I'd like to read about it.

And d'Artagnan! Was it worth it? How did your ambition come to be stripped of your honour and integrity, to be so naked. Oh, d'Artagnan, you disappoint me. (I used to have such a crush on you.) You had the death you deserve.

Their glory days are so far behind them.

Did you see the movie? With those gloriously cast aging musketeers? The book is nothing like that. The movie picks up a plot point that in my edition begins on page 178 (of 616) and carries on for maybe two hundred pages, but it's difficult to measure precisely because the movie goes off to resolve that plot in a wildly different (if still thrillingly entertaining) manner. (That bit where the 4 of them charge the line of musketeers at the Bastille and they're shocked when the smoke clears to find themselves still standing — I love that scene. But this scene is not to be found in the book; I don't think the 4 of them are ever even together on the same page in the book.)

The story is so much more than who is on the throne of France, or to whom it rightly belongs. If anything it lends import to the the tiniest gestures, merest glances, careless words, and romantic whims that affect matters of state.

To this end I find the title odd and misleading, as the title character is on stage for merely a few scenes, his only purpose to reassert the question of the kingliness of the king. Which is a great question. While the theory regarding the identity of the mysterious prisoner in the Bastille is dramatic, Dumas could've effected the plot bits of treason and exile with equally conspiratorial and less far-fetched devices to ensure the coming of age — solidification — of the king. Whatever.

I just hope they keep discovering more Dumas manuscripts. I eat this stuff up.

Out the door

This morning as J-F and Helena were on their way out the door to daycare, she turns to him in all seriousness and tells him,

(I paraphrase her French toddler speak here — how natural it's become to smooth out the grammar, fill in the blanks, know exactly what she's trying to say, and how difficult to recreate her actual utterances and to explain how I know the sense of it, the sum of it being so much more than its little garbled parts...)

"Papa, I'm not going to cry. At la garderie. I won't cry. Un bisou, calin, and that'll be that. And I won't kick the back of your seat in the car."

And that's exactly how it was.

Weekend pleasures

Helena spent the weekend with her grandmother — I feel greatly refreshed, and not certain why I can't achieve or maintain this feeling of equlibrium when she's here. As if every word or glance from her is momentous enough a force to hurtle me along some new emotional spiral, whether up or down — I'm physically dizzy with her. Off balance. But I have realignment now.

I slept! Twelve hours a night, for two nights! I love sleep! God, how I miss it sometimes! (Of course, I could be napping now...)

I shopped for books! It's buy-a-friend-a-book week after all. The experience was remarkably peaceful and restorative, the way I remember it being long ago, when unhampered by toddler in tow.

I browsed magazines! While chatting with J-F about current events and deciding where to lunch, I read all of Doris Lessing's "Death of a Chair" in this month's Harper's (without buying it).

This, and all sorts of mundane things like hanging pictures and mopping floors! Such happiness!

But all this — restoration of order at home, the procurement of books, and Lessing's story — leaves me wanting a proper reading chair. I want to sit sideways in it, dangle my legs over its arm, rest my head on its back. I've been searching for the perfect chair for about 5 years now. Where are you? I need you!

The mystery of heat

Mystery the first:
How is it that, although all known thermostats are still set to zero, the two baseboard electric heaters in the dining room radiate warmth?

Mystery the second:
How is that there is a thermostat in the main bathroom, but no heat source is in evidence?

Because I have cats

And because Kimberly's cat told me to.

Re rereads

Survey: how many times have you read War and Peace? Ummm, none.

Forget War and Peace. People are sharing their guilty pleasure books at Culture Vulture — the embarassing books they turn to time and again.

I don't often reread books. (Fairy tales don't count.) Too many books, not enough time.

However, I do find myself rereading children's books. They're so short! — the pay-off in comfort is worth every minute.
A Little Princess — Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Gammage Cup — Carol Kendall
The Chronicles of Narnia — C.S. Lewis
The Little Prince — Antoine de St-Exupery

There's the books I read as a teenager that I later reread critically in university, and perhaps again to satisfy a curiosity or discuss with friends. In this category, 1984, among others.

Other books I dip into (I couldn't begin to list these) to retrieve favourite bits, to flesh out current ideas that somehow make that text relevant (the narrative of life), as a kind of research, or as a refresher to a sequel. But cover to cover, rarely.

I don't really want to reread books (so little time), though sometimes I feel I owe it to my more mature self to better understand some so-called classics.

Yet, for the sheer, if inexplicable, fascination I have with them, I have reread some books countless times:
The Fifth Child — Doris Lessing
The First Century after Beatrice — Amin Maalouf
The Razor's Edge — W. Somerset Maugham
Titus Groan (but not the rest of the Gormenghast trilogy) — Mervyn Peake

Short story:
The Nine Billion Names of God — Arthur C. Clarke

But I don't feel any shame about these.

The only book I've reread (certainly 4 times, if not more), and of which I've owned several copies, having to replace the ones I gave to friends, and that I might not openly confess to: Shibumi, by Trevanian.

Oh! and Michael Moorcock's The Warhound and the World's Pain. I love that book!

The blur that is my offspring

Brief

Stephen Hawking interviewed on his new book, A Briefer History of Time.

To my delight:

He is working on a children's book about relativity with his daughter Lucy, because children are the best audience: "Naturally interested in space and not afraid to ask why."

The other, stupid, book I've been reading

The review caught my attention, made me jot down the title and, eventually, recently buy it. (In truth, the purchase was a bit of a mistake. I clicked Confirm without reviewing my order. The book was not in fact on my must-read-now-and-at-any-cost list, but on the I'll-get-to-it-someday list, and a proper review of my order would've postponed this purchase for a month or two. Let this be a lesson to me. But at least now, I've gotten it over with.)

Ugh.

While the premise of Glyph, by Percival Everett, is indeed playful, the humour of its execution wears thin within a couple dozen pages. "Genius" (or "accelerated") baby Ralph reads at a more advanced level than I do, but he chooses to remain mute. He becomes an object of scientific study, and is kidnapped, then again, and again. He narrates his story as a 4-year-old, applying a deconstructive reading to his experience, grappling with semiotics and psychology.

Footnotes everywhere, most of them unnecessary. Diagrams. And really bad poetry.

Very tedious. And it makes me feel stupid. Not subtle. I can't really appreciate an author who makes me feel stupid. Not clever.

I read a lot of literary experiments, games, in my university days, but I no longer have time for this shit.

My very long weekend

J-F was away the last few days — his annual fishing weekend with the boys.

Questions
How can having sole charge of a toddler for more than 24 hours at a time be so exhausting yet so refreshing at the same time?
Better to let her have her own seat on the Metro while tired rush-hour commuters look on resentfully, or give up one (or both) of our seats and let everyone endure a tanrum for the duration of our journey?
Why does Helena not see delicately herbed tomato pizza as a treat, the way I do?
Why is it that I so rarely can muster the energy to be motivated enough to be at the park at 8 in the morning when J-F is around?
How is that I fail to get a proper night's sleep when it's even more important that I be properly rested?

Highlights
The park! All to ourselves! Allowed her to experiment on the big-kid climbing apparatus, tackle the big slide.

Shopping! Fresh air! Exercise! Early bedtimes for her, late nights of reading in bed for me.

I enjoyed the privilege of dropping off and picking up Helena at daycare on Friday. When we got there, Helena didn't want me to leave. What the hell. I stayed about an hour, through snacktime. The educatrice was trying to get everyone excited about going to the park for the rest of the morning. One little girl said she wanted to nap, and all the others thought this was a great idea. (But they were eventually dragged off to the park anyway, and had great fun.) Snack finished, Helena reached for a jigsaw puzzle and didn't blink when I left.

Drop-off and pick-up is J-F's task. The daycare is, after all, across the street from his place of employment. Too, I always looked at this arrangement as their ritual quality time together. But sometimes I feel like I'm missing out.

Vacation's over now. Back to normal.

What I read this weekend

Dante's Equation, by Jane Jensen.

A missing manuscript by a Jewish mystic who vanished from Auschwitz.
The study of Torah code.
Quantum physics and a mathematical equation for the universal forces of "good" and "evil."

I eat that stuff up.

Dante's Equation has the additional draw, for me, of alternate universes. Throw in a government operative who monitors scientific research for potential weapons technology.

Many reviews liken the elements of Dante's Equation — a thriller built around religious symbology — to Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code (which I enjoyed, if only because of those "religious" elements). The comparison is fair (Jensen told in her Grail Templar conspiracy story in another medium years ago). The writing is, to be polite about it, inelegant.

The characters are mostly unlikeable, but this in fact serves a purpose in the second half of the book. At that point, the physical laws of the universe sort the characters off to alien worlds that reflect their truest natures, their own personal heaven-hell, from which they all emerge in the end, perhaps too neatly, enlightened.

As one review notes:

Jane Jensen is careful to make clear that "good" and "evil", with all their moral baggage, are subjective concepts, while the universal forces these ideas reflect are simply physical laws, devoid of moral weight. Also, for all the lavish employment of religious imagery, she is wise enough to leave relative the question of God. While Aharon finds in his experience a new and restored faith, to Jill it's all about science.

Another review points out some shortcomings:

For any reader who has some basic knowledge of quantum mechanics or wave theory, the scientific concepts that represent the core of the book are ludicrous mumbo jumbo. It is also annoying in an SF novel for the author not to know the difference between a bacterium and a virus, or not know that rotting fruits are not dying but being consumed by microorganisms. It is also annoying for the scientists not to express surprise that Torah code provides insights into quantum physics and future history.

There's so little science talk in this novel, I can't say I noticed. And I don't really care. The ideas are still pretty cool.

Excerpt.

Mind your language

Today: European Day of Languages 2005 (being also a day featuring European languages). "The Day aims to encourage language learning among all age groups, to emphasise the importance of diversifying language learning, and to foster respect for all of Europe’s languages, including those spoken in regions and by minorities."

Quiz, in 6 thematic areas (general; scripts and writing; etymology; countries and languages; language families; miscellaneous), in which you may learn how much you don't know.

Interactive game: official languages of Europe.

Say "hello."

To be monolingual is to be dependent on the linguistic competence, and goodwill, of others. Learning to use another language is about more than the acquisition of a useful skill — it reflects an attitude, of respect for the identity and culture of others and tolerance of diversity.

See The Literary Saloon for links to articles on second-language stats and rankings.

The Snow Queen, and more

I did re-read Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen and, while I'm sure I could read many other fairytales in ways that tell me about my world, this one suits me well.

One translation begins simply: "When we are at the end of the story, we shall know more than we know now." Words to live by.

From Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen (from the first part, of seven):

You must attend to the commencement of this story, for when we get to the end we shall know more than we do now about a very wicked hobgoblin; he was one of the very worst, for he was a real demon. One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. The most lovely landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and the people became hideous, and looked as if they stood on their heads and had no bodies. Their countenances were so distorted that no one could recognize them, and even one freckle on the face appeared to spread over the whole of the nose and mouth. The demon said this was very amusing. When a good or pious thought passed through the mind of any one it was misrepresented in the glass; and then how the demon laughed at his cunning invention. All who went to the demon’s school — for he kept a school — talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world and mankind were really like. They carried the glass about everywhere, till at last there was not a land nor a people who had not been looked at through this distorted mirror. They wanted even to fly with it up to heaven to see the angels, but the higher they flew the more slippery the glass became, and they could scarcely hold it, till at last it slipped from their hands, fell to the earth, and was broken into millions of pieces. But now the looking-glass caused more unhappiness than ever, for some of the fragments were not so large as a grain of sand, and they flew about the world into every country. When one of these tiny atoms flew into a person’s eye, it stuck there unknown to him, and from that moment he saw everything through a distorted medium, or could see only the worst side of what he looked at, for even the smallest fragment retained the same power which had belonged to the whole mirror. Some few persons even got a fragment of the looking-glass in their hearts, and this was very terrible, for their hearts became cold like a lump of ice. A few of the pieces were so large that they could be used as window-panes; it would have been a sad thing to look at our friends through them. Other pieces were made into spectacles; this was dreadful for those who wore them, for they could see nothing either rightly or justly. At all this the wicked demon laughed till his sides shook—it tickled him so to see the mischief he had done. There were still a number of these little fragments of glass floating about in the air, and now you shall hear what happened with one of them.

That's the version I pulled off my shelf yesterday. The Polish version, unsurprisingly, maintains the same references to angels; the demon nears not only the heavens, but God himself. But checking another English edition (yes, I have many books of fairytales) I find the demon is a wicked magician, the "grins" in the mirror are "wrinkles." Elsewhere a goblin. Yet another secular version (online) features a wicked sprite who flies up to the stars.

I note now that the demon keeps a school. Their "education" is filtered. Know thy source.

How it frames my worldview:
That people are inherently good. Evil acts have an external source, in experience and environment.
That when one loses focus, strays from one's task, it is owing to treachery and deceit. Even then, the heart remains true.
That everyone, everything (the river, the flowers, the sparrows), "knows" things, but we cannot expect them to know things beyond their experience.
The power of tears to clear one's vision.

The seductive power of snow. The witch of that book with the lion and the wardrobe is surely based in this queen.

The universal experience of reading The Snow Queen (from Deborah Eisenberg as quoted here):

The febrile clarity and propulsion [of the story] is accomplished at the expense of the reader's nerves. Especially taxing are the claims on the reader by both Kay and Gerda. Who has not, like Gerda, been exiled from the familiar comforts of one's world by the departure or defection of a beloved?

And what child has not been confounded by the daily employment of impossible obstacles and challenges? Who has not been forced to accede to a longing that nothing but its object can allay? On the other hand, who has not experienced some measure or some element of Kay's despair? Who has not, at one time or another, been paralyzed and estranged as his appetite and affection for life leaches away? . . . Who has not, at least briefly, retreated into a shining hermetic fortress from which the rest of the world appears frozen and colorless? Who has not courted an annihilating involvement? Who has not mistaken intensity for significance? What devotee of art has not been denied art's blessing? And who, withholding sympathy from his unworthy self, has not been ennobled by the sympathy of a loving friend?

How it ends:

But Gerda and Kay went hand-in-hand towards home . . . They went upstairs into the little room, where all looked just as it used to do. The old clock was going “tick, tick,” and the hands pointed to the time of day, but as they passed through the door into the room they perceived that they were both grown up, and become a man and woman. . . And they both sat there, grown up, yet children at heart; and it was summer, — warm, beautiful summer.

Someone else's Snow Queen life.

More on Little Red Riding Hood:

Beauty, horror, wonders, violence, and magic have always tumbled thick and fast through fairy tales. Folk raconteurs gave their audiences what they wanted, indulging the desire for audacious eroticism, hyperbolic fantasies, and casual cruelty. For those gathered around the hearth, Little Red Riding Hood was not necessarily an innocent who strays from the forest path. In tales that formed part of an adult storytelling culture in premodern France, she unwittingly feasts on the flesh and blood of her grandmother, performs an elaborate striptease for the wolf, and manages to escape by telling the predatory beast that she needs to go outdoors to relieve herself. Firmly rooted in the familiar, she introduces us to the great existential mysteries, in a miniature and manageable form. Her irreverent behavior, effortless mobility, willingness to take detours, and daring resourcefulness modeled possibilities for those lingering at the fireside.

Read about Crane Maiden at Pratie Place.

Fairytales

An exploration of the fairytales underlying A.S. Byatt's short stories.

Said article is fairly academic and, well, boring (and, frankly, I prefer Byatt's novels to her short stories, but I prefer novels in general over short stories) — and I've had far too little coffee yet this morning to be able to process it — but this jumped out at me:

Byatt reveals her concept of fairytale images as a way of understanding the working of imagination: "You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in."

My mother's favourite fairy tale is Little Red Riding Hood. Perhaps it speaks to her worldview, or to her deepest, darkest, truest self, more than I ever previously considered. A journey, a task, beset by danger; a naive initiated into adulthood. Perhaps her affinity for this tale is purely sentimental, as the one she remembers most distinctly her mother telling her. But it may have taken on larger significance when her childhood was interrupted by war in Poland in 1939 and treacherous journeys ensued.

(If I asked her what her second favourite story is, I'm certain she would tell me The Little Match Girl.)

My sentimental favourite is Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. It was read to me in Polish, and I was affected by the accompanying illustrations by J.M. Szancer as much as by the story itself. (The book was my sister's, but she's now bestowed it on Helena.) I'm inspired to re-read it now to know what it tells me about my world.

What fairytale are you?

Nominibus suis

I was never any good at naming things. My childhood toys bore such imaginative monikers as "Teddy." One rust-coloured bear went by the it-sounds-slightly-more-like-a-real name "Rusty," but even then, though I'd had him from birth, the name wasn't fixed till a good ten years on.

When I was 7, my sister brought home a kitten. Apparently she tried out the prog-rock-inspired handle Talybont (I only learned of this in recent years). But I, and the rest of the family and neighbours, so easily swayed by a 7-year-old's pronouncements, knew him as Blacky.

(I might've been 6. Blacky came to an early and tragic end, news of which was delivered to our door by a neighbour, while we were waiting for our pizza (what a treat!) to arrive.)

When I was 25 another black kitten came into my life. While I aspired to something more evocative than "Blacky," weeks passed before anything stuck. Still, many consider naming a pet for a favourite author precious.

Cat number 2 (Blur reference aside, not her real name) was adopted from the Humane Society. Fortunately, she already had a name, even if it is kind of stupid.

Arguably, the naming of my child was an exception amid my sorry history. However, while Helena's name had been "chosen" weeks beforehand, I fought committing it to paper for days after her birth. I was waiting to know that it suited her, looking for a sign of confirmation from her that she liked it, that it spoke to her essence.

I'm not comfortable with naming Helena's toys. My track record provides ample enough reason for me to shy away from this responsibility. And I do see it as a responsibility. They're her toys after all — it's her right to designate the essential.

Many stuffed toys come pre-named these days. Only rarely do name and object feel like a proper match. Peanut the teddybear is one of these rarities. For some reason, only the giraffe who awaited Helena's arrival and the elephant who showed up later readily gave up their sewn-in labels to become, respectively, Ginger and Fred (named — by me! — without thought for their pairing, but it's a happy fit). All the others are blank slates.

I wonder how christenings transpire in other households. Is it a parent's spontanous blurt? Is it a child's naive babble? Do families consult on the matter?

Umberto Eco in The Search for the Perfect Language:

'Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them'. The interpretation of this passage is an extremely delicate matter. Clearly we are here in the presence of a motif, common to other religions and mythologies — that of the nomothete, the name-giver, the creator of language. Yet it is not at all clear on what basis Adam actually chose the names he gave to the animals. The version in the Vulgate, the source for European culture's understaning of the passage, does little to resolve this mystery. The Vulgate has Adam calling the vaious animals 'nominibus suis', which we can only translate, 'by their own names'. The King James version does not help us any more: 'Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.' But Adam might have called the animals 'by their own names' in two senses. Either he gave them the names that, by some extra-linguistic right, were already due to them, or he gave them those names we still use on the basis of a convention initiated by Adam. In other words, the names that Adam gave the animals are either the names that each animal intinsically ought to have been given, or simply the names that the nomothete arbitrarily and ad placitum decided to give to them.

Which is it?

I've asked Helena about her creature's names. She shows as much creativity as I ever did. Her cheval is Horsey, one chien is Puppy. Her dolls, all of them, are Lala (which is the Polish word for, you guessed it, "doll"). They have temperaments and preferences, individual routines and distinct styles, but no names.

At long last, I am pleased to announce that Helena, after much deliberation on the dozens of suggestions proferred by J-F and myself, has named two of her toys. Over the course of the first day, they switched identities a few times, but in the last week they have become firmly established. The bear and the (space!) dog: respectively, Tolstoy and Buzz.

Les Deux Magots

In The New Yorker, "The strange liaison of Sartre and Beauvoir," by Louis Menand. "He liked to drink and talk all night, and so did she."

The first time I saw Paris, I had 52 hours from debarkation to boarding for home again. Very little time was spent sleeping. Drinking, dining, dancing, but mostly walking, breathing, walking.

It wasn't exactly a pilgrimage, and I'm not entirely sure what my inspiration was, but for all the glorious things to see and do in Paris, it was for some reason a priority for me to visit, of all things, not the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, not even the touristy gravesides of the inhabitants of Père Lachaise cemetery, but the site of the remains of Jean-Paul and Simone in Montparnasse, stopping to have a drink in their honour at Les Deux Magots.

I'd studied philosophy, but by then I'd pretty much given it up as dead. I realized I was more interested in literature as a derivative of philosophical though (and interested in pursuing neither as a career). I'd been through a phase, reading all of their fiction I could get my hands on. I'd also read The Second Sex.

I enjoyed the novels, not least because of the obviousness of de Beauvoir's romans a clef. Not anything they wrote or said had the impact on me of the example of how they lived their life, particularly their emotional, romantic, sexual life. Together. Apart but still together. Buried together.

In many ways, then, in my early twenties, I likened myself to de Beauvoir; I embarked on experiments rather than relationships, exercising seuxual politics, looking for an intellectual and emotional equal (equally average, that is), looking for my Sartre. I came close, I think, a couple times.

With the publication of "Letters to Sartre," it was clear that, privately, he and Beauvoir held most of the people in their lives in varying degrees of contempt. They enjoyed, especially, recounting to each other the lies they were telling.

(I'm considering revisiting some of those novels I read. Reading Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook this summer jarred me into some kind of new consciousness — though, no, I can't bring myself to write about it just yet — of my place as a consequence of the experiences, primarily emotional, that formed me, not least drinking and talking all night. This recollection is part of that. My bed is very different from what I once thought it would be.)

But it is clear now that Sartre and Beauvoir did not simply have a long-term relationship supplemented by independent affairs with other people. The affairs with other people formed the very basis of their relationship. The swapping and the sharing and the mimicking, the memoir- and novel-writing, right down to the interviews and the published letters and the duelling estates, was the stuff and substance of their "marriage." This was how they slept with each other after they stopped sleeping with each other.

It still fascinates: Apart but still together. Buried together.

The Second Sex (English translation).
Simone de Beauvoir, portrait.

What were you expecting?

What to Expect When You're Expecting was my pregnancy bible. When I learned I was pregnant, I hied me to a bookstore and hung out there for a few hours, checking out all that was on offer. Then I bought me one. Just one. One single solitary pregnancy book. (And a Lemony Snicket volume.)

It seems many people don't like the book nearly as much as I did.

[I]n its third decade the book has turned into a publishing conundrum: It is the most popular and widely trusted book in its category and yet is coming under such regular criticism that its authors are revising some of its key tenets. The reaction comes in part from expecting parents who call it a worst-case-scenario handbook. (Nicknames include "What to Freak Out About When You Are Expecting" and "What to Expect if You Want to Develop an Eating Disorder.") Though many parents swear by it, a startling number protest that, instead of emphasizing the wondrous process of fetal development, the book dwells mostly on complications, including the pedestrian (anemia), the more exotic ("incompetent cervix") and a catalog of horrors at the book's end ("uterine rupture").

Maybe cuz I'm not a very touchy-feely wonder-of-childbirth kind of person. Maybe cuz I rather enjoy considering worst case scenarios. Yet I still basked in the glow of pregnancy. I like information.

No doubt, the book requires regular updating to adjust for scientific advances as well as for society's sensibilites.

However, what truly shocks me is that someone might purchase a title (nonfiction — a manual! for pregnancy! not exactly a one-size-fits-all experience) based on some expert's recommendation without having a clue what might be inside, without cracking the cover, without having achieved a personal confidence that "this book is right for me."

(Based on my "success" with this book, I got myself the follow-up What to Expect the First Year, but I never did read the whole thing. Mostly I'm just winging this child-rearing thing. With a little help from my blogging buddies.)

What the wise man says

Review of the Dalai Lama's new book, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

"If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims," he writes. No one who wants to understand the world "can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity and quantum mechanics."

Book buying

For education!
I received an email some time ago asking me to help promote booksXYZ. It sounds like a worthwhile endeavour (though I was unable to establish how funds from purchases from Canadians are distributed).

From the press release:

booksXYZ.com, an innovative on-line bookstore sends all profits to education, and 5% of each purchase goes to the school of the customer’s choice. All 120,000 U.S. schools, public and private, kindergarten through college, are included on the website. booksXYZ currently lists over 1.4 million titles and adds more constantly.

booksXYZ is owned by The American Public School Endowments and its affiliate and founding entity, The Acadiana Educational Endowment; both are 501(c)3 non-profit organizations. The AEE was founded in 1989 and has distributed over $200,000 to public education.

Note that the organization is based in Louisiana; existing resources are aiding schools affected by Hurricane Katrina.

For fun!
Buy a Friend a Book! week, during which one is to buy a book for a friend for no good reason, is fast approaching:

Spread the word by blogging about your choice of book and book recipient. Look at me, you'll be saying to your site's visitors, I am the sort of person who buys gifts for my friends for no good reason. Befriend me! Love me! Read me.

Belonging

The Star of Kazan, by Eva Ibbotson. I read a review of this book more than a year ago. I often save reviews, but not this one. I don't recall a thing the review said, but it must've been good. I jotted down the title, and, finally, early last week it arrived on my doorstep.

(It came in a box with a large assortment of other literary delights. Embarrassingly large. I ripped through the cardboard, stashed the contents under my side of the bed, and dismantled the box, hurriedly stuffing it and the wrapping material in the recycle bin, which fortunately was already on the curb awaiting pick-up — all traces gone, before J-F returned home from work.)

The Star of Kazan has all the classic elements of a classic children's tale, and then some:

• An orphan foundling
• Eccentric professors
• Horses (Lippizaner, no less)
• Pastries (Viennese, of course)
• Aging chorus girls
• Fabulous jewels
• Castles (dank)
• Gypsies
• Crippled dogs
• Boarding schools (severe and punishing)

Perhaps most importantly, it features a cast of kindly characters with imagination and dreams, and a love and respect for truth and books. And some villains who are pretty nasty. What's not to love!?

This is an adventure showcasing courage in the face of great adversity.

In brief (from School Library Journal):

Abandoned as a baby, Annika is found and adopted by Ellie and Sigrid, cook and housemaid for three professors. Growing up in early-20th-century Vienna, she learns to cook and clean and is perfectly happy until a beautiful aristocrat appears and claims to be her mother, sweeping her off to a new life in a crumbling castle in northern Germany. Annika is determined to make the best of things, and it takes a while for her to realize that her new "family" has many secrets, most of them nasty.

It seems to me that the best children's books feature orphans. At the very least, the parents are out of sight. What child doesn't sometimes wonder what it'd be like if their parents weren't their real parents? These stories allow kids to explore the idea, taste the freedom of it, while giving them control to come to their own conclusions about their condition.

The point of this story, succintly expressed in regard to a horse: "People belong to the people who care for them."

The title alludes to the name of a jewel, about which there is some mystery and for which there is a quest of sorts. I'm not convinced it's the most appropriate title for this book, but it does have a marvelously exotic flavour. It hardly matters.

The story was somewhat, but not entirely, predictable — though I doubt it would be tranparent to a 9-year-old — and I kept turning pages regardless. It's so lovingly told.

What I love best is that none of Ibbotson's inhabitants are one-dimensional caricatures of good or evil. They are morally nuanced. Very few decisions are black and white or to be taken lightly. For example, "Disobeying one's mother was difficult... But what if it had to be done?"

One of Annika's friends destroys the music professor's treasured and very expensive harp, for the greater good, of course. I shed a tear when Stefan admits to the deliberateness with which he acted, and Professor Gertrude assures him he did the right thing.

Even our story's villain, acting despicably and valuing the superficial, is shown to be capable of love; the deeds are the result of misplaced priorities and loyalty to tradition.

The language is simple but rich, conveying a different culture and time, while explaining to young readers the nature of spas and Swiss bank accounts.

My hardcover edition has nice black-and-white illustrations by Kevin Hawkes, but, frankly, they do nothing for me — the text paints far richer pictures. I love that a map of central Europe, 1908, sprawls across the inside covers.

The Guardian on Eva Ibbotson, who spent her early years in Vienna and whose parents separated when she was 2, and the experience that informed The Star of Kazan:

Ibbotson, as loving as she is sharp, lives now surrounded by children and grandchildren but her childhood was a recurring search for mothering.

Her mother went to Paris, while she stayed in Edinburgh with her father - a scientist who pioneered artificial insemination - and a governess. Does she remember what her eight-year-old self felt? "I think I expected things to be chaotic. I was always wanting my mother to come, waiting and rushing out into the street, looking at people with hats like hers. Thirties hat, velour, very sort of clochey.

"She was wonderful when she came. But I think it was just too soon for her to be a mother."

School Library Journal Best Book of the Year 2004.
Booklist Editor's Choice 2004.
ALA Notable Book 2005.

This book belongs on every young girl's shelf.

Sky notes

Last month when we arrived at my mother's house, a perfect half moon hung big and low in the sky. That first evening, I pointed it out to Helena in amazement.

sun moon stars rain
children guessed (but only a few
...)

She made it our habit, for the duration of our stay, at bedtime to step outside and gaze at the moon. She started singing, "Au claire de la lune...," but neither of us could remember the words. We half hummed, half mumbled; giggled and hugged. It was beautiful.

I called J-F daily to remind me of the lyrics, but they didn't take. It didn't matter.

I've since learned the words and can sing them on demand. Only there's been little need. We've been too busy or too tired to look up. Until we went to the cottage last week.

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
...)

Since our return, it's been her habit at bedtime to ask Papa to show her the stars. He drops everything at that moment (he wanted be an astronaut). Helena wants a star. They step out into the courtyard.

This evening after supper, Helena and I went for a stroll. The moon was yellow, big and low in the sky. And we sang.

(Even Malaysia goes to the Moon!)

Dress-up

This photo, snapped in Spring, just sent home from daycare.

A bunch of junk

(in no way connected, other than giving me way too much to think about, or coherently organized).

Salman Rushdie proposes points for a reform movement of Islam, in which he reminds readers that "the people most directly injured by radical Islam are other Muslims." This after his article in response to the London bombings and the debate it sparked.

Julia Alvarez (whose A Cafecito Story is in my to-read stack) on the challenge of post-9/11 fiction.

Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz once commented that "poetry below a certain awareness is not good poetry . . . that we move, that mankind moves in time together and there is a certain awareness of a particular moment below which we shouldn't go because then that poetry is no good." The same can be said of fiction.

The Christian Science Monitor on Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (in which the second half catalogs the 100 books Smiley read for her project, her reasons for choosing them, and her reactions to them).

Non-English majors read to inform themselves. But English majors read because they like to.

There is a sizable third group that ought to be recognized as well. These could be called the über-English majors: people who, long after school is done, continue to read exactly the same kinds of books required in lit courses. They are often also book club-participants. For them, hurling themselves into weighty books is a pleasure that is most delightful when shared by others.

Slate's second annual Fall Fiction Week.
The relative irrelevance of plot:
Style is not the surface, as might be assumed, but rather . . . it's plot and event that rest lightly on the surface, while style and language do the hard work of plumbing the depths.

Clive Thompson on the video-game novel.

Cross-branding is nothing new, of course, and in the video-game universe it has a long and wretched pedigree, with movie studios producing howlingly awful films like Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. But even when they sucked, these movies at least seemed like an obvious step, insofar as today's games already closely imitate cinema.

But a novel? When you're in the territory of Jane Austen and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, you're expected to go deeper. You're supposed to probe the internal lives of your characters. And this is where these books become really fascinating: They're like the Us Weekly of the gaming universe.

Of course, it's the wrong way 'round. Novels ought to inspire games — the narrative structure, the opportunities for character and plot development and backstory are perhaps even better suited to this medium than to film.

Some years ago I played Timeline. The game was packaged with the paperback, by Michael Crichton, though I assume the book came first. Later there was a film. They were all crap.

Jane Jensen created games that she later developed into novels. I've not read them, but I love her subject material. (Dante's Equation is on the bedside table.)

Books that would make interesting video games? Codex. Perdido Street Station. Maybe Foucault's Pendulum. The Three Musketeers.

The best headline ever, according to Splinters (and I have to agree):
Suicide Grasshoppers Brainwashed by Parasite Worms

Toilet paper notes

This morning, for the first time, of her own accord and because it needed doing, the resident toddler changed the toilet paper roll. Sadly, it appears that she is of the under school.

This is a test

This morning she whined. A lot. A moaning kind of half-cry that tells me she wants something, that not all is to her highness's satisfaction, that her milk isn't warm enough, that her blanket isn't quite right, that she's dropped her stuffed toy and wouldn't deign to pick it up herself, that for my attention to turn to her is taking longer than she'd like.

I wonder sometimes if I spoil her, dote on her. I wonder if others think I do. I'm fairly certain they do.

On the whole, I believe I treat her even-handedly, with love and respect. Her needs are met; her wants are understood and considered, but not always humoured. Not always. Still, I put her before everyone and everything else. And so I should, on the whole. She is, after all, only 2.

Still, when she calls out from another room, I walk away from a conversation. I try to wait for an appropriate pause, but from the moment I hear "Mama," my attention is diverted. When I entertain phonecalls my attention is always divided. It's only polite to at the very least acknowledge her, I think, and we can't expect her to have the patience of an adult.

The whining is unpleasant, a behaviour she's adopted over the last couple months with little sign of abating. It's effective for her — I'm quick to discern and resolve whatever the problem, though increasingly it is a minor disturbance, a mere inconvenience, that sets her vocal chords to work. And still, on the whole, I find myself rationalizing that it's not worth struggling over with her — easier to, say, peel her orange for her, or reach some object or other, than to insist she do it herself, or she wait, and easier by far than to listen to the whining.

I don't believe it's simply to draw and maintain attention on herself. It is, however, manipulative, both a lazy and clever means to a desired end. How much of this is a test? What's the right answer?

This is a test, but this is not a test.

We — she and I — are establishing limits of sorts, learning and settling into our respective roles. He's there too, of course, but, in ways I can't explain, I feel it doesn't concern him. I don't by any means intend to relegate him to a minor role. This particular dramatic tension, one thread among many in the theatre of family life, is somehow personal and private — between her and me. A kind of a power struggle. We need to come an understanding. We are on the brink of a turning point in our character development.

How will her early childhood (in)form her adult attitudes? What kind of person is she going to be?

What kind of mother do I want to be?

We've been establishing a new level of communication. She's told that the whining is not nearly so effective as words. That the whining often impedes communication and delays the desired resolution. That there's no sense in getting worked up about some things. That some things have to wait, and others aren't going to happen. That some things she's perfectly capable of doing for herself. She applies the points of our discussions to subsequent like situations — whatever it was that sparked that particular whining episode. For example, she no longer whines from her bed at night; she clearly states that she'd like some milk or we forgot to leave a light on. But she has yet to generalize — to realize that everything I say applies to all her whining (or rather, that one of those points applies. As I write this I realize perhaps it's too much for me to expect of her, to sift through the options for appropriateness, to know which one applies this time, to foresee the resolution).

This morning she whined a lot. More whining in the bathroom. Was it because I lifted her onto the toilet seat when she'd wanted to wiggle up be herself? Had I pinched her in so doing? Did she want to pull her pants off instead of just down? Had I turned the fan on accidentally (she hates the noise of the fan)? Does she not want to go peepee after all? What? Tell me. Use words. The whining doesn't do anything other than signal your displeasure (and piss me off); the pointing is vague.

The lever for the bathroom sink drain was in the "wrong" position.

This morning I yelled at her. It's not the first time. It won't be the last. It's the worst feeling in the world.

All things China

The final instalment of China Miéville's interview in 3 parts at Long Sunday is finally here (though, honestly, part the first was the most exciting). (Via The Mumpsimus.)

Part 1 (previously mentioned).

Part 2 (which I somehow missed), in which he muses on prose stylings; on political narrative

[...that all political reality will be given a narrative form is inevitable — both on the left and the right. The right, though, pays only the feeblest lip service to making it believable, and instead wants to make it clearly generic not so that consumers will be fooled but so that they will understand the rules. For that purpose, the simpler the pulp form, the better.];

on Palestine; on international law ["The chaotic and bloody world around us IS the rule of law."]; and on his predilection for the Weird.

(Also he notes being pleasantly surprised by the film 'Reign of Fire', — "Post apocalypse. Christian Bale. Dragons. The only film Matthew McConaughey was ever good in. What's not to like?" — although he is mistaken in believing he is the only person in the world to have liked it.)

Part 3, on blogging, on fantasy (and whether the genre has national threads), on magic realism, and a whole lot more on international law.

On world-building and its relation with realism:

Part of the reason that it is very hard for me to conceive of a truly great Liberal novel for the last few decades is because more or less definitionally they'd be novels that take the world at its own claims. They take it for granted. That I think is partly what Trotsky's after when he says that 'art that loses a sense of the social lie' is what 'becomes mannerism.'...

I think part of the problem with the modern 'liberal' novel is that it often tends not to conceive of the totality of social life: instead it abstracts one element (stereotypically the middle-class family), and universalises it. By contrast, fantastic fiction that 'world-creates' creates a world — a totality. So whether or not it explicitly spells it out, there's a sense that an economic problem conceived of as background and the romantic plot foregrounded are part of the same universe. That's what the classic 19thC realist novel also did. Of course the bad fantasy novel proposes an utterly unconvincing totality, one with elements that we viscerally know to be present, absent.

On the London bombings at Bionic Octopus.
On Katrina fallout at Lenin's Tomb.

Freshly released short stories: Looking for Jake.
Currently finishing another novel, "licking afterbirth off a kitten."