Scratchings and Jotlings on Books, Houses, Pets, Art, the Exigencies of Daily Existence, and Other Ephemera
Last fall, Steve planted thickets of the stuff–and every time he admires it, he chants:
The first year it sleeps.
The second year it creeps.
The third year it LEAPS.
If he’s feeling particularly energetic, he does a little leap and flings his arms out at the last bit.
I’m not really sure if this year it’s sleeping or creeping, but there’s one crazy stalk that’s ingested steroids or something.
Basically, because it’s a a socially-acceptable form of narcissism.
No, seriously. It’s like therapy in that you get to talk about yourself endlessly, only you don’t have to pay anyone to listen. It’s like a journal.
Actually, I used to be a journal-keeper. But, like most, I found myself only writing when I was depressed and the resulting entries made me want to puke. Wallow, wallow, whinge, whine, moan. I promised I would write every day, regardless of mood. Didn’t happen. Wallow, wallow … Finally, I chucked them in self-disgust and focused on writing. You know, the Real Stuff. The stuff for publication.
Writing is hard. Writing “my own stuff” is hard when I also write “other stuff” for a living. The last thing you want to do at the end of a long hard day staring at an empty Word document is stare at another empty Word doc. And considering that “my own stuff” is a novel (well, okay, two), there’s a lot of staring. There’s a lot of getting somewhere, but never finishing.
Enter the blog.
Yes, I self-censor. I don’t write about work. For the most part, I don’t write about my feelings either. But what I really like about the blog is that I can spend 5 minutes, 15 minutes, even 50 minutes on a blog post, hit publish–and it’s done–one perfect little post, one huge sense of accomplishment.
I have written.
That is, until I catch the typos.
Last night I dreamt that my Saito woodblock print fell out of the frame, and I discovered that it wasn’t a print, but a painting. On looking closer, it wasn’t even a painting–it was cut out from a magazine.
I guess that’s a sign that I really need to get it reframed. My grandparents bought and framed it in the 1950s, long before acid free matting existed. I shudder to think of its condition.
More realistically, though, my dream probably reflects the two woodblock prints I did get framed and picked up yesterday. Excuse the pictures. Angling the camera was the only way to avoid picking up a reflection.
Here’s the Sachiko Furui that I bought in January or so:
And here’s my little Fumio Fujita print. Elizabeth helped choose the frame and matting, and she did a fabulous job:
Yesterday, Elizabeth and I spent most of the day at Pritchard Beach lying in the sun, playing Scrabble, and then paddling around when we got too hot. It was wonderful.
So I went back today with some appropriately light summer reading. I didn’t stay very long. This was a terrible book.
Janna lives on a planet that was once colonized by Earth and then left on its own. But when the “offworlders” return, the developing civilization is thrown off kilter. Everyone in her settlement is killed when she is fourteen and she and her boyfriend (later husband) set across the icy plains to find other settlements. Janna loses her child, then her husband, and finally arrives at a refugee camp where she is mistaken for a boy because of her clothing. Because it seems safer to appear as a boy, she continues the charade until the distinction between male and female become blurred in her own mind. She travels through the countries on her planet, which mirror those of Earth, seeking a home and family. It is only when she starts helping medical offworlders that she realizes her whole planet has a name–and it is then that she finds her own identity.
This was an interesting novel and McHugh has such a vivid and original imagination that it almost makes up for the mediocre writing. McHugh’s short, choppy sentences reflect Janna’s character, but they don’t capture it. I felt very distanced from her motivations. For instance, I never really understood the male/female issue, her relationships with others, or why she always picks up and leaves. There are so many different themes that it’s impossible to explore each as it deserves.
Thirteen-year old Jenny is uprooted from her Manhattan home when her mother marries an Englishman. They move to an old estate in the English countryside, which is peopled by strange creatures, such as the boggart that haunts the kitchen. The whole house is strange and scary, and Jenny eventually meets Tamsin, a ghost who died over three hundred years before. Jenny starts investigating the reason Tamsin still floats among the living, and in the process, delves into English history.
Beagle does a fabulous job. Not only is his thirteen-year old character convincing, but he weaves in traditional English folklore to deliver a riveting tale. Highly recommend.
Now that I’ve read the last Harry Potter, I’ve been scouring the Internet for recommendations on other children’s books, or even well-written fantasy. (I have to confess that I have a prejudice against fantasy because there’s so much really BAD stuff out there, and besides, it conjures up images of strange dungeons and dragons types who carry around their weird dice and dress in robes.)
In any case. I read the first of William Corlett’s The Magician’s House Quartet a couple of years ago. The Seattle Public Library had the second, so I checked it out.
The plot line of the quartet goes something like this: Three siblings join their aunt and uncle in Wales for school holidays because their parents are off somewhere (I can’t remember where, that was in the first book.) There is a magician who lived in the very old house they are in, and who makes himself known to the children because he needs their help. There are animals they talk to; they can even go into their bodies. There’s something about alchemy.
I liked The Door in the Tree, just as I liked The Steps up the Chimney, but I’m having a really hard time summarizing it. Simply put, I read the first book so long ago that I’m having a hard time remembering what happened. The second does not stand well on its own.
In terms of mood, however, it is excellent, setting a similar tone to Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. The library doesn’t have the second two books, and I don’t think I’m interested enough to seek them out actively. Still, if someone were to drop them in my lap, I would happily read them. And the boxed quartet would make some kid a fine gift.
The Oregon coast was crazy this weekend. Short Sands was PACKED. There was no place to park, so we just walked on the beach at Hug Point (which is too windblown to surf).
Then we started the search for a campground. There was nothing. We finally managed to claim a stretch of grass four feet from the road in a very, um, interesting campground. The best I can say about its other inhabitants is that they were quiet– mainly because they were all passed out cold. (We’re not counting the boys singing “We will rock you” at the top of their lungs or the monster trucks driving through the river.) Who knew there was such a difference between a four dollar camp site and a ten dollar one?
Still, we got to the beach yesterday and it was a nice weekend. One of the nice things about Short Sands is that it’s filled with surfers, who tend to be very laid back when it comes to letting their dogs wander about ownerless. So I don’t feel any guilt about letting Harry loose.
And who would have guessed? Harry has a talent! He has an unerring sense of who will pay him attention. Basically, he wanders over to complete strangers, flomps down on the sand right next to them … and waits. Never for very long, though–the people he picks always start laughing and give him tons of love.
At which point I turn to Steve and say, “See? Everyone DOES thing he’s as cute as I think he is.”
for the weekend. See you Monday.
ACK! This is the last person I want to be, especially given what happened in the last one…
I have been informed that we probably won’t have one for “quite a while.”
Actually, that’s fine. I would rather have no sink and refinished floors. Of course, that’s probably not going to happen for quite a while either because it entails us moving out of the house for a few days.
But I’m inspired. There are scads of people currently blogging about their house updates, and HouseBlogs posted a google map showing where they are. I’ve wasted countless hours reading each one and looking at the pictures. With the exception of the couple who PAINTED their gorgeous, already pristine built-ins (odd, when everyone else spends hours getting the back to that state), it’s amazing what people have done.
Some of my favorites, in no particular order:
1912 Bungalow
Kenton House
Pigeon Point Project
The Little White Bungalow
The Devil Queen
Funny that I should be posting garden pics today. I just received the pictures I ordered from the city archives.
Here’s the house in 1935:
Again in 1950something:
I tried to get the same angles, but it just doesn’t work. So here it is straight on, as of five minutes ago:
Those two wood things on the concrete are actually the two parts to a platform bed someone had thrown away. We salvaged it and it’s sitting out there because I need to sand and oil it. All in all, we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.
Until last night.
Our neighbors wandered over and asked, “Oh, is that your worm bin?”
One of my Edward R. Hamilton finds, The Shopkeeper’s Wife was a strange and spare novel that is very loosely based on an actual murder and its subsequent trial.
Isabelle Martin is the wife of a prosperous late-nineteenth century shopkeeper in Philadelphia. Trapped in a loveless marriage, and finds solace in ideology: the women’s movement; the idea of free love; taking a water cure … More than anything, however, she dreams of true love. Her husband disappoints. he has blackened teeth and halitosis. He is a hypochondriac. Ultimately, he dies and she is put on trial for his murder.
The story is told through the eyes of her maid, Hanna Wilbur, who comes to her when Isabelle is pregnant. Hanna’s matter-of-fact tone, which evokes a simpler time, carries us through. Rich in period detail, we see Hanna’s transformation from a simple maid-of-all-work to someone who firmly grasps her own destiny. Simply put, one likes Hanna. It is a fondness for her character that makes this a good historical novel–and it even partially makes up for the inscrutable character of Isabelle.
I love John Singer Sargent. I love his portrait of Madame X and the story of how it caused a furor when it was first shown. And I love novels about art.
So it’s surprising that I hated this book. Okay, okay, I confess. I haven’t gotten past page 22. The writing isn’t that great. The voice of Virginie Gatreau is incredibly contrived. Perhaps I should give this more of a chance. But I don’t think I will.
It seems to me that some writers feel the need to attempt a work doomed for failure. One example is Pia Pera’s Lo’s Diary, which retells Lolita from her perspective. (I think the only reason it got so much press was because Nabakov’s estate sued. How can you possibly surpass the original?) To me–and granted, I haven’t given it much of a chance–I am Madame X falls into the same category. First of all, it cheapens the portrait with its amateurish efforts. Second, one of the painting’s appeals is its very mystery. Should one even attempt to demystify or is it better left alone? Well, I leave that to you.
Yesterday was great. I kept my bathing suit on all day and hopped in the water at Pritchard Beach three times. The last time, Elizabeth met me there and we paddled around in the water. Steve joined us after getting a haircut (thankfully not the mullet he’s been threatening). Then we all came back here, grilled ahi tuna steaks and drank gin and tonics. E and I played Scrabble, or Squabble as it is better known in my family. Which was a lot of fun because Steve refuses to play with me. He says I cheat.
A well-written, solidly-researched novel of 14th century England. Finn is a master illuminator working both for the Church and for the heretical scholar Jon Wycliffe. When he and his daughter lodge with Lady Kathryn, the widowed mistress of Blackingham Manor, the lives of all become intertwined.
Depressing, but great read.
The fictionalized account of a missing year in Rembrandt’s life places him in the English port city of Hull as the result of stowing away on a ship to get away from his creditors. The English captain discovers he can draw, and offers him a bargain: He will forgive the fare and return him to Holland if Rembrandt paints his portrait. While there, he is captivated by the Captain’s wife Amelia. So is the poet Marvell, who proposes a wager between the two artists to see whose medium is finer.
Fast forward to the present. Amy Dale, a wandering painter, ends up in Hull where she takes conservation work in her ancestors’ house, which surprise ends up being the same house. She and an engimatic laborer find Amelia’s journal and work out that Rembrandt spent a year of his life there. As they unravel the mystery, the story unfolds.
It’s too bad that Davenport didn’t just stick to Rembrandt. Those parts of the story were powerfully written, and successfully captured the voice of a man who is at first incredibly vain about his talents but comes to the realization that he is merely human. (In fact, the novel purports to explain why there was such a shift in Rembrandt’s self-portraits.)
The modern day, however, was not as finely wrought. Amy was an unconvincing female with unreal motivations. The modern day denouement was anticlimactic and clumsy.
Still, for those who enjoy combining art and literature, this was a pretty good read.
