Things that blow my mind

Life:

...within a generation, biology will face its ultimate identity crisis. Researchers in the field of nanobiotechnology are racing to achieve the complete molecular integration of living and nonliving materials. We will hack into the CPU of life in order to insert new hardware and software. The purpose is to extend the capabilities of biology far beyond the limits imposed by evolution, to integrate the incredible biochemistry of life with the equally spectacular chemistry of nonliving systems like semiconductors and fiber optics. The idea is to hard-wire biology directly into any and every part of the nonliving world where it would be to our benefit. Optoelectronic splices for the vision impaired, micromechanical valves to restore heart function.

But the moment we close that nano-switch and allow electron current to flow between living and nonliving matter, we open the nano-door to new forms of living chemistry — shattering the "carbon barrier."

The universe:

The burst, named GRB 050904, originated 12.8 billion light-years away, which means it occurred 12.8 billion years ago and the light took that long to reach us. It erupted very nearly at the beginning of time.

You know, everything!

Books to movies

Books into movies:

And a not-so-funny thing happened. The books began to change the movies. (André Bazin argued that the Italian neorealist school was really "the cinema of American literature.") And the movies began to change the books.

There was an element of mercy to this. Authors no longer had to lard their chapters with physical description in the manner of a Balzac or a Trollope; the fund of common visual reference bequeathed to us by movies (and later television) meant that we were all, writers and readers, on the same page. Except that the page itself was changing: Text was losing ground to image.

(I wonder how different Middlemarch would be were it written today.)

Bibliophiles fall back on the assurance that books alone can draw us into the human soul. Or, as theorist George Bluestone puts it, a film "can show us characters thinking, feeling, and speaking, but it cannot show us their thoughts and feelings."

Increasingly I find authors are afraid to show us thoughts and feelings, thinking it more clever if we're made to infer them from the characters' actions and words, from the juxtaposition of scenes. But what's wrong with clearly writing about what's inside a person's head? This is precisely why I like authors like, for example, Auster and Saramago and others think they're overrated.

Larry McMurtry:

And finally I'm going to thank all the booksellers of the world. Remember, "Brokeback Mountain" was a book before it was a movie. From the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world. All are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book. A wonderful culture, which we mustn't lose.

We won't lose it, but it will evolve, again, and again.

Update on reading Middlemarch

Henceforth I will not utter a word on Middlemarch here (unless I feel like it). All discussion will be confined to Reading Middlemarch (as much as one can confine literature or keep it from spilling over into real life).

I think I've tracked down everybody who expressed interested in reading along. If I've missed you, I apologize — please contact me again. Or reconsider your anti-Middlemarch stance — there's still time to join us!

Also, I'd like to highlight Rachel's apology in advance for being a Middlemarch smartypants and a hog. For this I also apologize to the rest of you.

Thanks for everybody's kind comments and emails.

Now. Back to work.

The week in transit

I've been responsible for much of the dropping and collecting of the child at and from daycare recently. There have been developments in matters related to public transportation, general mobility of said child, and of course my reading habits.

1. Helena doesn't much like crowded subways. Who does? During rush-hour somebody usually offers us a seat, but not always. I've tried a few times to get her to stand on her own, but in the time it took to crouch to let her down easy I realized just how unpleasant the ride would be for one who's only just over 3 feet tall. So I usually balance her on my hip. Earlier this week, I warned her I'd be putting her down for a minute when we pulled into the next station, so I could readjust my stance. And very bravely, and I suspect even in sympathy for the plight of the heavy load I was carrying (being said child), she told me she wanted to try to stand. And stand she did, holding onto the pole and lurching in fun with the train's momentum, the rest of the way and every metro trip since, even when seating was available.

2. Helena walked of the train onto the platform all by herself. "J'ai pas tombé dans le trou!"

3. Helena doesn't much like escalators. (Some of her classmates are pros at escalators; Helena opts for regular stairs.) She tried once, about a year ago, to step onto one, but she turned back at me in tears. So when regular stairs are not an option, I balance her on my hip. This week, she wanted to try. She did not turn back, but after we stood there for about 5 minutes, Helena mesmerized by the patterns of moving lines, I had to lift her on. But she rode up (and later down) on her own 2 feet, hand on handrail, and stepped off without hesitation.

4. Helena on hearing the subway approach, stretches up her arms for me to lift her. After a few runs this week, she held my hand till the doors opened; we stepped on to the train together. "J'ai pas tombé dans le trou!"

5. I had a fit of panic when, returning home alone, I finished reading the book I'd been carrying around in my bag, with 3 stops (of a 5-stop trip) still to go. Once home I wasted hours (!) looking for unread books the right size for my next metro journey, tucking them into my bag to check for fit. Luckily, I found a couple Penguin 60s (Virginia Woolf, Killing the Angel in the House: Seven Essays, and Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell). I finally settled on a Dover Thrift Edition (Dostoyevky, The Gambler), greatly relieved that I'll have metro reading for the next while. Sure I like hardcovers, finely textured paper, and gloriously illustrated covers as much as the next reader, but really, there's a lot to be said for pocket-sized (and cheap) paperbacks when you're just trying to make the commute go by a little faster.

Middlemarch reading

As mentioned, I'm about to embark on George Eliot's Middlemarch. Diana has already bravely agreed to accompany me on this journey. Anyone else?

Email me, or leave a comment below, if you're interested in joining us. Because it's nice to have a group of people to turn to for encouragement, questions, comments, clarifications, insight. This is an unstructured approach to get 'round to reading a "great book," to see what all the fuss is about. Read at your own pace!

(The text is available online; I picked up a bargain copy a while ago.)

If responses warrant, I'll set up a separate blog à la last year's Don Quixote project, where readers can post their thoughts, raise questions, link to background material, etc. Or else I'll just bombard you all with my own progress here.

Heck, does anyone even read this blog anymore? Now would be a good time to leave a comment: click on "comments" at the bottom of the post (Oh wait, it says "fish" — is that what confused you?) and type. (This includes you, Iwonka.) Let me know if:
A. I bore you, utterly and completely.
B. You have no interest whatsoever in reading Middlemarch for yourself but yearn for the vicarious thrill of my interpreting every sentence.
C. You wish I'd take my attempts at critical analysis elsewhere.
D. You've read Middlemarch and can't wait to see me make a fool of myself.
E. You love me, no matter what.

While I hope to finish Middlemarch before October, I do intend to give it a considered reading, pencil in hand (that is, I won't be rushing through it this weekend; this should take me well past the middle of March).

I have thus far read the prelude and two whole pages of Chapter One. So far, so good. I'm motivated. This book is now at the right time and place for me.

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

David

David was a genius.

I knew David from the university. He approached me casually one day, hoping to come up to speed on The Death of Ivan Ilyich. He'd noticed I was in many of the same classes as him. That is, he was just hanging out on campus, sitting in on what he thought was an interesting sample, but eclectic mix, of classes, in a couple cases officially auditing them. Metaphysics, 19th Century Russian Literature, Computer Logic, Modern British Poetry. And there I was, actually enrolled in them.

We went for coffee. He quizzed me a bit on my course of study, mining me for information really, how to consolidate these interests into a practicable academic path toward... something.

Of course, I didn't know the answers to his questions. We were essentially doing the same thing, trying to find ourselves, only I was paying a lot more money for the privilege.

The year passed, measured out in coffespoons after class.

Eliot's Four Quartets.

He pressed Cortazar's Hopscotch on me; I loaned him my Calvino. He stopped by my place whenever he was passing by. We had tea and listened to my Philip Glass.

We saw Man Facing Southeast, twice, and argued Bach's mathematical head versus Beethoven's wild heart.

We stared at Francis Bacon's pope-in-a-box.

I didn't know anything about David really, beyond his ideas on art, literature, music. Maybe that's all that matters; I knew him in a "pure" way. He was very private. I think his mother was ill, very ill. Or maybe she just had the flu that week.

I, on the other hand, was an open, and, that year, very emotional, book; he heard all about my family, friends, and romances.

He took me to a Christmas party, hosted by a Polish friend of his. In the kitchen was a young Jesuit studying for the priesthood. That night David argued him out of God. Later we heard the monk had packed his bags, hadn't returned to school, hadn't been heard from since.

After much research David had found a college he wanted to attend. He spent months bouncing his essay for application off me, how our perception of art is a product of our experience.

Before he left for the States, he brought me a cassette tape of Beethoven's Late Quartets. To this day, it's the most excruciatingly beautiful music I've ever heard. (I have it on CD now, many recordings of the same pieces, in fact.)

We exchanged a letter or two, then fell out of touch.

Something happened to him. He'd seen things that terrified him, but fascinated him. Terrible beauty. I don't know if he finished his program.

I saw him once — no, twice — after he came back. We ran into each other in the street. The first time we immediately adjoined to the nearest coffeeshop.

I don't remember the details; I think now that whatever it is I heard frightened me too much at the time to seriously consider it. It seemed so unreal. I was incapable of deciphering the truth of it. He admitted his own memory of the events was sketchy. I don't know if it was part of his studies or a job he took or a cult he joined. A charismatic entrepreneur and mentor. They travelled (Africa? South America?). Something about isolation tanks, mind control experiments.

Frankly, I have no idea what he told me that day. The impressions I retain are as likely to be a feeble interpretation I pieced together from his cryptic behaviour as to bear any relation to the conversation that transpired between us, let alone to what really had happened to him. He told me because he needed to tell, but as if in confession, as if no living soul, myself included, could bear the weight of knowing what it was. I wonder that he didn't hypnotize me himself to erase all — most — traces of what he'd said.

The second time we passed each other in the street was insignificant. The connection was lost, both of us still, I think, trying to find ourselves, but too caught up in the practicalities of the day to day to devote ourselves to that task properly. Maybe I should've looked for myself more carefully; I think he could've helped.

Years later I was dating someone who, it turned out, and I don't recall how we figured it out, had been at that Christmas party and knew David. I heard he'd married, was working in IT.

I don't remember when it was, whether soon after first meeting or the last time I saw him, David told me I had to read Middlemarch. Had to. His urgency scared me. I didn't read it then, but I'm about to.

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to David.

Days gone by

Le grand spectacle
Somehow, my weekend was perfect. (I even had time to read!)

I'd been dreading it actually, knowing that J-F was to work on Saturday and I'd have to wrangle the child on my own. But it was lovely. We had a picnic in her bedroom. We dressed all her dolls. We did puzzles and had adventures.

Helena asked me to read the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary to her, which I'd left lying on the floor. I complied, skipping over the boring bits. Her favourite entries are "Norwegian elkhound" and "lute," which inspired a song, "La guitare, ma guitare...," in the flamenco style.

Sunday evening Helena made preparations for a "pestacle," converting our second bathroom into a performance theatre space. The crowd was assembled. We parents were also invited — standing room only. Much to my surprise, I was called on to open the show. Though unprepared, I performed an abridged version of Don Quixote, throwing in a chorus of "The Impossible Dream," which was well-received. J-F used the chalkboard to illustrate an alternate battle plan from the Lord of the Rings, or some such, involving helicopters. Helena herself finally took the podium to read a Caillou story. She then attempted to lure one of her babies on stage, but baby kept dropping her chalk, so we adjourned for supper.

It's days like these that dissolve all our petty growing pains. Of course, the weekend's joy was balanced by the migraine that developed Monday morning, the one that made me want to die, and Helena's pesky new habit of trying on all her underwear after every trip to the bathroom to find a pair sufficiently comfortable.

Some kind of burgeoning
I couldn't put down Ami McKay's The Birth House. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to like it so much. Based on my very limited experience with "Canadian" fiction, I didn't expect early 20th-century Nova Scotia — an isolated village — to hold more than over-the-top melodrama, the hardships of small lives peppered with sugar. I was very wrong. The Birth House is lovely (and a joyful complement to my other recent maternal readings).

Excerpt.
The Birth House website.
Ami McKay's blog.
CBC profile.

It's the story of a midwife's apprentice. Yes, there are hardships, and it is emotional, but it never induces eye-rolling. The writing is clear and honest, the heroine very likeable.

One blurb notes that this is "a world where tradition collides with science." I say it's where tradition and progress (scientific and other) both collide with common sense.

One of my favourite, and subtle, aspects of the novels is that our heroine Dora Rare is a reader behind her father's disapproving back, "borrowing" books — Dickens, Austen, et al — from forgotten cupboards. "Every woman needs a sanctuary." (For some of us, it is found in books.)

(It's clear, too, that the author loves books. This may seem like a no-brainer, but I find myself discouraged by all the wannabe writers with a blog presence who wouldn't know a classic if it bit them on the ass, who have no reverence for the tradition that's gone before them. McKay's sincerity when she notes "You gotta read to write," is hard to resist.)

(Thank you, Patricia! (who met The Birth House's author) for helping me get my reading groove back.)

My sense of Smilla
Not very good.

Last week I finished up Smilla's Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg. Part murder mystery, action thriller, forensic investigation, police procedural, social commentary, sea voyage, psychological drama, and science fiction. Ordinarily, I embrace this kind of genre-spanning refusal to be pigeon-holed; here, I couldn't find a comfortable foothold. And really, the suggestion of the possibility of an alien life form, or life force? Ridiculously out of place. (Oops. Did I just ruin it for you?)

I was never convinced that Smilla cared what had happened to Isaac up on the roof. Perhaps this is an effect of the translation. Perhaps her motivation is a kind of distinctly Danish or Groenlandian attachment emotion that I cannot hope to understand. Perhaps she really does not care what happened to Isaac; in fact, Smilla's investigation is to lay to rest the psychological demons leftover from her own childhood. Thinking of it in this last way, now, makes it a little better.

She's emotionally cold, or at least suppressed, though she evolves somewhat on this front. This makes her drive — her desperation — for truth all the more puzzling.

Smilla doesn't strike me as very smart, starting with the illogic of pursuing the question of Isaac's death. She knows mathematics; she knows ice and snow on molecular level; however, this is not a product of extraordinary intelligence, but rather an offshoot of her instinct. Neither is she street smart, walking into situations she shouldn't. Granted, she always extricates herself expertly, thanks to luck and instinct. (I suppose this raises some questions of definition. Is instinct a kind of intelligence? Are book smarts in and of itself not sufficient to prove intelligence.)

My instinct: I don't like her. But I am somewhat intrigued by her. (Strangely, I also relate to her, as far as goes her personal, banal emotional being anyway — not so much the daredevil breaking and entering or nothing-to-lose attitude regarding this still mysteriously all-important and all-consuming quest.)

Also, there are far too many people in this novel. I couldn't keep them straight. But I'm sure this is the fault of my divided attention.

I don't know any Danes personally but am a little puzzled by Smilla's assertion that Danes are essentially optimistic. 1. This runs contrary to my sense of the reputation of Danes. 2. The Danes in the novel do not strike me as optimistic. (Similar assertion, though less problematic for me, regarding their complacency.)

Mostly it was cold, just achingly cold, without inducing the wonder of snow I so wanted to experience.

In my opinion, the book's vastly overrated. (I wonder, was it so well rated to begin with? Why did the buzz of so many years ago stick with me? The promise of mathematics to be beautifully literarily rendered?)

February for me was emotionally volatile, physically less than healthy, mentally exhausting. My reading has been overall disjointed and not satisfying. Still, it can't all be me, can it?

Unfinished business
I've resolved to finish, finally, A Whistling Woman, by A.S. Byatt — I have 50 pages or so to go to be done with it.

I hate not finishing books and it's very rare that I don't. If I've brought a book into my home, it has already been very carefully considered and deemed worthy on some level. In recent months, however, it's becoming clearer that life is short; perhaps not all books are worth finishing after all. (I almost set Smilla aside.) At the very least, I ought to revise my criteria, or consider them more carefully, for bringing books into my home.

The book is full of interesting ideas, but I can't find the life in them. It's academic and cold, which to some degree is the point of her story, but the more it goes, I think Byatt writes like an academic — her books are an exercise. There's no writerly passion in her.

A Whistling Woman more than any other novel I've read in recent years has me dog-earing pages, noting paragraphs of insight, clever turns phrase. I reach for my notebook (or blog), but I'm always stopped from quoting at length like I'd like to. Stopped cold. I can't make it connect.

All of which has me thinking: what do I like to read? Books I've wanted to read for years disappoint me; books I'd be unlikely to pick up of my own accord surprise and engross me. (Nor is it lost on me that I have more to say about books that I don't like than those that I do.) Every book has its time and its place, but the spaces within me for them to fill up are shifting too rapidly for me to finger them precisely.

Reading for the maternally inclined

I never considered myself particularly maternally inclined, but here I am.

I've been a mother for more than 3 years now. In some ways, the last month or so has been the hardest — at 3, Helena is horrid and vile, by which I mean no longer completely pliant to my will, stubborn. She is testing her boundaries, my patience. Of course, the first months were hard too, but frankly, I barely remember them anymore, if anything at all of those sleep-deprived times even registered on my cortex.

And this is one of the great mysteries new mothers puzzle over: Why didn't anybody tell me it would be this hard? I didn't think it was supposed to be hard — it's supposed to be natural. Women have been doing it for millennia. How hard could it be? And why didn't they tell me?

Because they forget. Because they know how it is, and with the years it's easier, and they convince themselves it's not so hard after all; they assure you you will arrive at the same conclusion, that it's worth it. And really, most of the time it's not that hard at all.

Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, edited by Andrea J Buchanan and Amy Hudock, helps us remember.

Earlier this month, anthology editor Andi Buchanan on her own blog responded to some questions posed by Miriam Peskowitz. Parts of those answers are worth repeating:

Why should mothers read literature?...
...As an avid reader, I can't imagine a life without reading, and even though motherhood has compressed my available "free time" to an incredible degree, I find myself needing good literature now more than ever. And when I say "good," I don't mean lofty, or Important, or boring, or academic, or literary, or whatever adjectives people like to use to describe books that seem more like assignments than enjoyments; I just mean works that lift me out of my own life. As a mother, alternately plunged into the most mundane and most vital aspects of existence, reading books is a window out of and into my busy, complicated, boring (and when you think about it pretty incredible) life...

What's the literary in Literary Mama?
...The Literary in Literary Mama is about making mother-writing count as "real writing," as writing that matters. And if you care about that — and about reading that kind of writing — then you're a literary mama.

Reading Literary Mama has been an emotionally charged experience for me. Since it arrived on my doorstep just after Christmas, I've been dipping into it when I can. Of course, this is the same timeframe that included post-holiday clean-up, bedroom furniture assembly, an ever-growing work project with a cruelly unrealistic deadline, a crashing computer, a bout of something flulike, central vacuum installation, and a sick child (twice!). Too, it seems my longest sessions with this book were accompanied by PMS.

I started keeping a reading journal for this anthology, but gave up after just three entries. They all kind of went like this: "Wake up at 5:30. Helena won't go back to sleep. She drags me to the living room and turns on the TV. I try to read a couple pages but doze off. Not enough energy to make coffee." Other days are better, whether because I manage to read chapters at a time or because Helena has spontaneous bursts of affection that paint my day happy.

Some of the essays make me uncomfortable. While I don't think it's always a deliberate effect, it's still worthwhile for me to consider why. A few others — the poetry, for example — simply don't speak to me, at least not in a voice that I'm accustomed to listening to.

(I have not yet read those piece on illness and loss. That will require the emotional fortitude of another time and place.)

My favourite essay by far is The Gift, by Karen Vernon. She recognizes her daughter's creative gift and finds incentive to nurture her own. I am similarly awakening to the gifts before me and within me.

Read the introduction to Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined:

...the vein of voyeurism that is often a part of motherhood—observing children, teachers, other mothers—leads women online, often late at night, between feedings or diaper changes, to seek out other mothers’ stories.

...we assert that motherhood as a theme is worthy of great literature — and that mothers are capable of writing it.

If you've read along this "review" thus far, you might be dismayed that I've provided very little information about the book itself, that it's all about me. As far as I'm concerned, this is the point. The essays are windows, as much into myself as to other mothers. They let me try on other styles of mother for size, recognize the common denominators while appreciating the uniqueness of my own experience.

The pieces included in the anthology will hold appeal for both women and men, regardless of parenting status, wanting insight into their mothers, sisters, wives. It's great that motherhood is considered a worthwhile topic of discussion, and that mother-writers are supported, allowed a voice and given a platform. But Literary Mama's greatest gift is to the new mother, showing her her past and her future, reassuring her that she's not alone, encouraging her to embrace her Now.

Monsterpiece Theater presents

Twelve Angry Men

World literature tour

Just over a month ago, Culture Vulture kicked off a World Literature Tour. It's a great way to learn or share what you know about literature that isn't written in English. And you can have a say in where the tour stops next.

Recommendations for Finland, the first stop, have been neatly summarized. It seems there's way more to Finland than Aki Kaurismaki, Saku Koivu, vodka, and Moominland books (as if those aren't enough).

Poland was next up (yet to be summarized), and I'm proud to say I did contribute, if only because it makes me angry to think most people actually believe Czeslaw Milosz to be Poland's greatest literary export. (He's not.)

Now boarding for the Czech Republic... (Has anyone read anything other than Kundera?)

Monsterpiece Theater presents

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Can you smell the excitement?

Perfume!

Am I the last to know? Why have I not heard about this? How come nobody told me?

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patick Suskind, is being adapted to film! And with Alan Rickman! Coming to a theatre near me in September!

Trailer! (via a German fan site)

I read this book in 1995 when I was vacationing in Provence. Which was really the best place to read it. The visceral punch of it amid the lull of lavender. Absolutely horrifying! (Come to think of it, I haven't travelled alone since.)

So who borrowed it from me and failed to return it?

TV or not TV

Helena was recently introduced to my 30-odd-year-old finger puppets. Bert's lost some hair over the years. I'm pretty sure I also owned Grover (my favourite) and Cookie Monster (everybody else's favourite) — I suspect their heads were bitten off, or maybe whatever toxic material they're made of simply disintegrated with overuse. While Helena enjoys them, her enthusiasm does not rival my nostalgia for them. The reason's simple: Sesame Street ain't what it used to be.



I miss Sesame Street's good ol' days. When Kermit the Frog would interrupt our regularly scheduled program with a breaking news story from the 3 little pigs' house. When the Count would spontaneously start counting things. When Cookie Monster ate everything in sight, not just a cookie imprinted with the letter of the day. When letters and numbers of the day turned up every couple minutes, and I felt a glimmer of recognition. Big Bird was less patronizing and more stupid. Snuffleupagus was invisible. Oscar the Grouch was grouchier. When muppet denizens freely commingled in the street without being compartmentalized into narrow roles so obviously designed with a different specific instructional goal in mind.

I continued to enjoy and appreciate the genius of the Children's Television Workshop well after I grew out of their target audience range. Mostly I miss Monsterpiece Theater, hosted by Alistair Cookie. I have a particular fondness for Grover's rendition of Upstairs, Downstairs.

When I was little, I watched Sesame Street every day. My mom would sit me in a playpen in front of the TV while she did housework. My dad came home for lunch and we watched the Flintstones together. I remember watching snatches of Polka-Dot Door, Romper Room, Electric Company (which holds great nostalgia for many and is being released on DVD), with less regularity and less enthusiasm, but they too filled my world.

Afternoons, my mom and I went next door. I watched my mother watch General Hospital and The Young and the Restless with our neighbour while I enjoyed milk and cookies. Somehow I amused myself with a quiet stuffed toy, or with trying to reach the pedals on the exercise bike in the neighbour's TV room. Sometimes I just watched with them.

That is to say, I watched easily 2 hours of television a day. And I turned out OK.

Nobody really knows the long-term effects of TV on kids. I'm not convinced it matters.

Beside my desk

Baby math

Babies may have abstract numerical sense (via Mirabilis):

Even before babies learn to talk they have a bit of a grasp of math, according to new research concluding that infants may have an abstract sense of numerical concepts.

. . .

"As a result of our experiments, we conclude that the babies are showing an internal representation of 'two-ness' or three-ness' that is separate from sensory modalities and thus reflects an abstract internal process," researcher Elizabeth Brannon wrote.

. . .

Understanding the research could be useful in devising methods for teaching basic math skills to the very young, Brannon said.

It's clear to me that babies already have basic math skills. No? The trick is to teach them to express it in the formalized manner we expect.

My metaphorical houses

Nothing has gone as planned.

The child was home sick a couple days, the physical house is only slightly (but somehow, magically!) more ordered, the work house entirely neglected, the house of love is cold. All my metaphorical houses are toppling. And my blog house feels so empty.

One sentence — "A small child kept me circumscribed." (Doris Lessing, in "Now You See Her, Now You Don't," Time Bites). One sentence, in an essay on Muriel Spark, not meaning anything but to explain a difference in their social circles. One sentence bursts a dam, and I dissolve in tears. I feel circumscribed.

The horrid child. (The first sick day was awful, starting in a sleep-deprived state. It got better, easier. I'd like to think it's just a matter of finding the rhythm, adjusting to it. But I spent hours feeling incompetent. How do other mothers do it? I have it relatively easy — this child spends weekdays in daycare — but this week it feels very hard.)

(Yes, having a tough time of things this week. Part domestically overwhelmed. Part parenting-skill-challenged. Part revisiting emotions, previously thought resolved, in reading Literary Mama. Part PMS. Part professionally unsatisfied. Part where am I and how did I get here.)

Serious questions
How do you keep a small child in bed who doesn't want to stay there? How many stories should I reasonably be expected to read? How many songs should I sing? How many times should I sing the same song over again? Do I really have to stay with her till she falls asleep (as she's requested a few times, and as I've acceded) (She says she's not afraid, she just wants me there. Me. Not Papa. There's a nightlight on and the door stays ajar — should I not do that?). Must I threaten her? Close the door on her? Is there a way to do it without tears (hers or mine)? Is bedtime the province of one parent or is it shared or in turns? Is this just a phase (no, I don't think it's related to her feeling under the weather this week)? How long does this phase last? Should I read parenting manuals?

Moments of joy
Seeing Elmo on television, Helena rushes to find her Elmo and sits him down to watch.

Perusing Where Is the Green Sheep? with Helena, anticipating the English text in her bilingual head she recites: "Here is la lune sheep."

The grin on the face of the T-shirted twenty-something driving a massive and noisy snowplow through narrow Plateau streets yesterday. Like Christmas! We should all love our jobs so much.

"There is water at the bottom of the ocean."

The natives are restless

And I'm still bored, and experiencing severe cognitive difficulties.

(What does it mean when you no longer feel guilt over your guilty pleasures?)

I may or may not be here this week. Excuse me while I struggle to put my metaphorical houses in order.

(Coming February 23: Literary Mama Blog Book Tour stops here!)

Bored and stupid

1. I'm bored.

(NPR interviews Gillian Anderson and includes a clip of her boredom.)

Is anyone else watching Bleak House who's never read the book? Or like me you tried to read it 20 years ago because it had a cool title and you can't remember a thing about it? Only you realize you did read some of it and some of it must lurk in your head in a dark room with no doors and watching it now something is starting to seep through its floorboards? And it pisses me off that I can't stop watching — I'm riveted — to break away and read it cold, or anew, that I'll never know whether the obviousness of the story is actually there in Dickens's story, or whether it's an effect of a director's interpretation and editing, or whether I've simply found access to forgotten memories. And this review, which I finally got round to reading, confuses me all the more, because I am on the edge of my seat and dizzy with it, it's the exact opposite of "languid," exactly not "a luxurious cat stretch" or "seductive languor." More a cat bristling, wriggling its little butt preparing to pounce. Is it me?

2. The public wants what the public gets.

3. Have been very, ugh, domestic this week. Not in a satisfyingly domestic-goddess kind of way, but just barely keeping it together. Taming books and toys and bills and wrapping paper. Ugh. But we're eating well, and I've determined that I'm a better cook than I, and other people, think I am — I just need to sell myself better by, for example, saying "blanched asparagus with lemon and herbs" instead of "some vegetable."

4. Other people's children are amazing.

5. Am mildly bewildered? amused? horrified? that one of Helena's baby dolls has developed an identity as her baby brother Philipe.

6. Also, I'm feeling stupid.

I've never read David Foster Wallace, but I will, having been inspired by Callie's encounter with him (parts 1, 2, 3, and especially 4).

...it smacked a bit of..."Look, at the end of the day, I'm really too smart for all of you, you will never understand my work because you are idiots, so can we just end this thing already?" But in the most charming way possible.

How can I not see that as a challenge? I feel stupid just reading about it, made to feel stupid by proxy, dreading to think how I would've withered were I in his actual presence.

But I have read the commencement address he delivered. I've printed it out and reread it several times already. Somehow it makes me feel better. (Even the ouch of "Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out." — gives me perspective.) Read it if you're having a bad time at the grocery store or just wondering what the hell you're doing with your life.

7. A package of books arrived for me yesterday! The book I ordered that I was most looking forward to was not among them, but I will console myself and rest my brain by indulging in a guilty pleasure for the rest of the week, and then probably getting all worked up over how stupid it is.

There you are. Bored and stupid.

Days go by
Endlessly
Endlessly pulling you
Into the future...

Inspiration, and hard work

If I could choose any living author with whom to sit and chat over a bottle of wine, Doris Lessing would be it. Not given that opportunity, I took some time last week, finally, bundled in pyjamas and blankets, tea and cold medication at my side, to watch Doris Lessing deliver the first Monique Beudert Memorial Lecture, "a series of events that focus on literary writers and their relationship to visual culture" (recorded in December).

The lecture purports to be about images in literature from visual art. Where do writers draw their inspiration? Lessing says we make things too simple; people tend to offer banal answers — composites of acquaintances, a dream, a picture reminds one of a character.

But there must be more to it? Something deeper? That a picture, as an indirect inference, corresponds with one's view of life.

Virginia Woolf describes, she says, an old woman's mind as an opening of doors, letting in a stream of ideas and associations.

With age, space and time become extremely fluid. Every face one encounters reminds one of other faces, in other times and different places.

The webcast is over an hour long, with the first 25 minutes, and then some at the end, devoted to Proust and Vermeer's yellow patch of sunlight.

This is difficult for me to summarize. Lessing rambles and digresses through her mind's labyrinth of associations, and connections are not always evident. Is it contradictory then for me to say what I admire most about her is her straightforwardness? She says what she thinks. And she thinks a great deal.

Mara and Dann is an adventure story (possibly, she confides, soon to be an animated film) with that most classic element of stories found the world over: orphan children.

Set in the future, Europe is in an ice age. She pictures it like the mountains in the background of Brueghel's "Hunters in the Snow," a poster of which she has hanging on a door: unnatural and otherworldly, not a real part of Brueghel's countryside, improbable, mythical mountains of snow.



Now there is sequel, The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog.

Mara's daughter looks like this:


Because she does. This painting ("The Parasol," Goya) makes Lessing feel like she's being stroked like a cat.

What strikes me most from this lecture is what she unwittingly divulges about her writing process. She knows the end, knows her characters; she still allows for minor characters to pop up, some unexpected incidents to occur, but she knows where's she going, she knows the shape of the thing. Yet for the first time — remarkably I think, for a woman of 89 years who has published scads of novels — in Griot did a character "take on a life of his own." She always knows how things turn out, but not so with Griot.

(Remarkable, I say, because I read and hear often about writers discussing the ease of writing: characters simply come to life, stories write themselves. I wonder how many of them are lying, what is their motivation in perpetuating the myth of the inspired artist, in denying the hard work; does their reliance on that myth condemn them to lesser accomplishments, relinquish them of the responsibility to do hard work; can they be serious writers?)

So an hour after having raised the question about the source of inspiration, she answers it honestly. Sometimes things come in dreams. How can one know why something draws you, inspires you? But it does. Perhaps one shouldn't ask. "Where do all these things come from? They come from everywhere."

Through all her rambling runs a thread of... melancholy? A weight of the world, a weight of wisdom. And cynicism and even anger (at Alexander the Great, and Banda; how the media is a mechanism in keeping life tame, ordinary, boring; her lost Africa). She talks about humankind's destructive tendencies and her despair if she thinks about it too much — better to pretend it isn't there. And yet. What we destroy, we will rebuild. It won't necessarily be better, but it will persevere.

Lessing would like to be remembered as a hard worker. "Life is really very hard work."

(Why, why, why do I have such a hard time writing about Doris Lessing? It's not for lack of anything to say, it's my inability to break it down, to do so concisely. It's too big somehow. Lessing says, "The human mind, can't stand too much complexity, I've come the conclusion. We have to simplify things." I think she's right, and I think she implies that this is not necessarily the right way to grapple with life, and I agree with that, and this is very much what The Golden Notebook was about for me, insofar as compartmentalizing is an attempt to simplify. Our efforts to simplify often have the opposite effect. Maybe I should stop trying to say anything about Doris Lessing, just delight in the ideas sparked and tangents followed.)

I've not yet read The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog, but I plan to. In case you're wondering, there will not be another book in this story — what happens after this novel leaves off is obvious, and Lessing has nothing more to say about it.

Recent interview: San Francisco Chronicle.

Between sleep and wakefulness

My days and nights lie between sleep and wakefulness.

Helena comes home all sweetness. We chat, eat, play.

She makes tea (with tiny rubber frogs), and "washes" dishes.

She delays bedtime, tucking in all her friends before she herself is ready to don pyjamas. Tubby Dipsy has trouble falling asleep, Helena tells me. She presses an imaginary magic button on the wall that plays Dipsy's music, Dipsy's favourite — and, so far as I can tell, wholly imaginary — song, "La danse du lion." Helena tells me shh, listen (!?), isn't it pretty?

Where's Helena's magic button?

She is in bed by 9, late but not terribly unreasonable.

I snack, tidy, putter. By 9:45 I decide to ready myself for bed. I'll settle in and read. Helena is sitting on the stairs, waiting for me. I re-tuck her, but she's restless; she puts socks on, plumps her pillow, takes her socks off, doublechecks that her friends are sleeping soundly, and creeps into my room.

I invite her to read with me. With a sigh I set aside Smilla's Sense of Snow, which is maybe just as well, cuz it makes me feel a cold that no number of blankets can comfort, though I expected it to be perfect February reading, and it might be, if the snow outside where fresh, crisp, white, but it's not, it's grey and damp cold not suited to gazing in wonder, and we read about Caterpillar's Dream, which takes forever because the pages are lightly textured, bumped, and Helena has to feel every square inch of them, and then we read Guji Guji, which takes forever because Helena interrupts every sentence with urgent tapping on my hand or tugging on my sleeve or even less subtle "Mama, mama," to catch my attention to tell me, "look, c'est Guji Guji" and there he is, crocodile among ducks, I think she only does it because she likes saying Guji Guji, it's hard to fault her for this, it is fun to say Guji Guji, and then we read The Happy Lion, which takes forever because Helena must say "Bonjour, Happy Lion" whenever he is pictured and roar a little, we rarely make it to the end of this story, I don't know why, she loves the first half, but then I don't know, so she hands me the Pandi books, the reading of which takes forever because they're French, and I read French slowly on the best of days, self-conscious that my pronunciation will be corrected by the child, worried too that I'm missing the whole point of the story even if I think I know the words, and it's painfully so now that I'm tired and bleary-eyed, J-F has joined us and as much as I encourage, nag, beg him to read to the kid, especially her French books, he rarely does, and now it's a vicious circle cuz when he offers, Helena wants none of it, c'est mama who's the reader, so he offers less, nobody likes rejection, and I read two Pandi books, one about the doctor, and one about the ball, and they take forever also because Helena insists that Pandi's name be changed to Helena throughout, I don't know where she got that idea, and just for this series of books, so I proceed slowly, taking care, but sometimes I forget anyway and Helena scolds me and I have to read the page over, and then we read The Cat in the Hat, and both of them are snoring, finally, is it 11:00 already? just before Things One and Two arrive, thank goodness, I do not like those Things, Mother would not like them at all, and I sneak out to lie in Helena's bed, and I toss and turn, and I wonder what Isaiah was doing up on the roof, I think I hear Helena cry out a couple times but I do my best to ignore her and remind myself that I am far far away, until she wakes before 5 am wanting me to read her the train story and then eager to play Lego.

J-F has to go in to the office today, so I let him sleep while I make juice and coffee and muffins and fruit, we turn on the tv, I think I doze off for a while. Helena is busy camping, which entails packing the car, which entails a lot of shopping bags, each with a book or a doll or some sandals, piled in a corner of the living room. She tells me to wait in the car, I think I doze off again.

Fate smiles on me in this mysterious way: that my hair in incredibly sexy today, so this makes me feel a tiny bit beautiful and we go for a walk.

We buy matching socks — which takes forever because the store has a children's play area, a few steps, a tunnel, a slide, Helena had to slide, I actually consider for a moment leaving her unattended, what's the worst that could happen?, when I hear a child crying and I think it might be Helena, even though I'm staring right at her, I tell her she can have 3 turns and then we have to leave, this is the very longest 3-foot-high slide of my life — and butter cookies and a gerber daisy.

She sleeps a little in the stroller on the way home, maybe 20 minutes, it doesn't last, it's not deep enough that I can move her without disturbing her and I can walk no longer. I need to rest.

We spend the rest of the day shuffling our feet and not understanding each other, she's highly emotional, I cannot tell her to wash her hands or not to open the umbrella in the house without inspiring a flood of tears, we find comfort in tomato soup, cheese and crackers, staring at Dora dancing like ants and spiders, we giggle, but mostly we're silent.

She's asleep now.