Dogeared

From Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room:

     Had he, then, been nothing? An unanswerable question, since even if it weren’t the habit of the undertaker to close the eyes, the light so soon goes out of them. At first, part of herself; now one of a company, he had merged in the grass, the sloping hillside, the thousand white stones, some slanting, others upright, the decayed wreaths, the crosses of green tin, the narrow yellow paths, and the lilacs that drooped in April, with a scent like that of an invalid’s bedroom, over the churchyard wall. Seabrook was now all that; and when, with her skirt hitched up, feeding the chickens, she heard the bell for service or funeral, that was Seabrook’s voice—the voice of the dead.

*
     Mrs. Jarvis walked on the moor when she was unhappy, going as far as a certain saucer–shaped hollow, though she always meant to go to a more distant ridge; and there she sat down, and took out the little book hidden beneath her cloak and read a few lines of poetry, and looked about her. She was not very unhappy, and, seeing that she was forty–five, never perhaps would be very unhappy, desperately unhappy that is, and leave her husband, and ruin a good man’s career, as she sometimes threatened.
     Still there is no need to say what risks a clergyman’s wife runs when she walks on the moor. Short, dark, with kindling eyes, a pheasant’s feather in her hat, Mrs. Jarvis was just the sort of woman to lose her faith upon the moors—to confound her God with the universal that is—but she did not lose her faith, did not leave her husband, never read her poem through, and went on walking the moors, looking at the moon behind the elm trees, and feeling as she sat on the grass high above Scarborough...

That is my home

This is a text I received from my husband yesterday: "They're looking for a mountain lion near here so be vigilant if you guys get out of the car when you pick me up." That never happened in Chicago.

Speaking of which, this is where I walked my dog this morning:

And this is where I walked my dog in Chicago:

I was trying to get a picture of our friendly neighborhood rats when I took that picture. Oh, hey! We did have wildlife in Chicago! Not mountain lions, but probably even more hazardous!

Book Review

Ivanhoe by Walter Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Hard to get past the anti-semitism. Scott is incapable of mentioning Isaac "the Jew" without also commenting on his avarice. Literally. Every time. And Isaac is not a minor character--he's in virtually every chapter. On the other hand, Isaac's daughter Rebecca is a great female character. Her Saxon counterpart, Rowena, is quite flat in contrast. Ivanhoe is also pretty flat. There is very little insight into his or Rowena's emotional experience of the events of the book, particularly when you compare them to Isaac and Rebecca. So why am I giving it four stars? Because there are scenes in here that are unparalleled, any of which could alone justify Scott's reputation. E.g., Friar Tuck and Richard Plantagenet stepping carefully--and belligerently--into an acquaintance that quickly leads to a drunken sing-a-long before the altar of St. Dunstan.



View all my reviews

’tis time we were at church

The book that I am working on involves a lot of traditional religious imagery, and one of the thematic concerns I'd been considering was relevance. Practically speaking, I am an atheist, as are many if not most of the people in my life. In my little sphere of over-educated liberals, religion seems irrelevant, and encountering people for whom religion is a very central concern can be a little jarring. So it struck me that for my main character, this religious imagery might feel weirdly anachronistic, and I'd have to address that.

But then I was listening to some This American Life episodes about god and religion* (in other words, I wanted to listen to This American Life, and justified it by finding episodes about god and religion so I could call it research for my book), and was bowled over by this statistic: 83% of Americans say they belong to a religion. I really have a hard time wrapping my mind around that, given how little religion speaks to me these days.

I often wish that it did speak to me. My first year in college, a very desperate and confusing time for me, one of my neighbors in the dorm was a beautifully prototypical Iowa farmboy. He was big and strong and silent and sweet, and very Christian. One day he said to me, in his quietly unassuming way, "I've found that people who don't believe in God tend to be more unhappy." I'm sure I leapt to deny it at the time, but I think now that he is right. There are probably studies that prove it. And I've thought lately, as the depression that has dogged me for more almost 20 years now has been nipping at my heels with extra ferocity, that I could really use some sort of spiritual practice in my life.

I've been meaning to get back into yoga, which I think counts for something, even if it's just alone in my living room on the Wii Fit. (Hey, can you get Morning Vespers and Shabbat for Wii? Hmm ... pretty sure this is a joke.) I even looked into the local Unitarian church, before deciding I just couldn't stomach it. The Unitarians are just too ... hokey. There's no way I could ever find faith in the Catholic dogma I grew up with--I don't think I ever believed in it, despite my Catholic-school immersion--but I do love the solemn doom and bloody gloom of it. That's how a religion should be. More Nosferatu than Raffi. In my opinion.

* Incidentally, if you have never heard any of Julia Sweeney's one-woman show about losing her faith, you must check it out.

how I am punish’d/ With sore distraction

Here is the problem with a home office. No matter how comfortable, organized, or otherwise suited to concentration, it is connected to the rest of the house.

I think ideally a home office should have its own separate entrance. I could come back from dropping Nugget off at school and go in the separate entrance, and imagine that the rest of the house does not exist. No opportunities for a "quick break" to throw in a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher, bake a loaf of bread and a dozen muffins, refinish the dining table ... Also no bed upstairs to lay down for "just a catnap."

Of course, just about every office has the mother of all distractions built in. I'll just take a "quick break" to check my email, read my blogs, scan the headlines, browse the sales, indulge my hypochondria ... this is why Jonathan Franzen is brilliant, whatever you may think of his novels:

Franzen works in a rented office that he has stripped of all distractions. He uses a heavy, obsolete Dell laptop from which he has scoured any trace of hearts and solitaire, down to the level of the operating system. Because Franzen believes you can't write serious fiction on a computer that's connected to the Internet, he not only removed the Dell's wireless card but also permanently blocked its Ethernet port. "What you have to do," he explains, "is you plug in an Ethernet cable with superglue, and then you saw off the little head of it." (Time, Aug. 12, 2010)

He actually sawed off the ethernet cable. I love it.

Sweet Home Chicago, the Non-sarcastic version.

Check out Trent's really excellent obituary for his time living in Chicago. I'm trying to think of something to add, as a native, but he was pretty thorough. 

So much against the mettle of your sex

Nugget has become very opinionated about what he wears. I try to let him make his own decisions whenever possible, so I stifle my desire to put him in the preppy little polos I adore. He favors his cousins' old t-shirts featuring characters from Pixar movies. At least he's saving me money.

Of course, there have to be some rules. Appropriateness for the weather is the obvious one. But how much do I let societal norms and expectations dictate what he wears? He would wear pajamas all day or, even better, would go pantless if I let him. I don't. But it bothers me when I deny him something he wants simply because I'm worried about what people will think of me.

Gendered expectations are particularly difficult. They are completely beyond him at this point. One day I took him shopping for clothes at Target. While I begged him to reconsider his complete refusal to consider the plaid flannel mini-lumberjack shirts I coveted on his behalf, he headed for the girls' clothes. "Cute!" he said, pointing to some dresses. I steered him away, feeling simultaneously guilty and ridiculous for feeling guilty.

Another day we were discussing the fact that mommy wears dresses and Nugget does not. "My get bigger, wear dresses." He said. "You can if you want," I told him, "but you know, usually boys don't wear dresses. It's mostly girls who wear dresses." He got upset and insisted that he would wear dresses when he gets bigger. "Okay," I said. I certainly hope that Nugget grows up to be the kind of kid who wears a dress to school because he wants to and doesn't care what anyone thinks. That is the epitome of cool, to me. But it doesn't always work that way in middle school. I'm not looking forward to helping him navigate the social minefield of those years. I've already failed miserably at navigating them myself. I was the worst possible combination: I tried to act like I didn't care what anyone thought, but I did, desperately. I went back and forth between flouting peer pressure and caving to it, usually at the worst possible moment for each.

For the most part I stick to the conservative line of teaching my boy to be a boy, indulging his idolization of Buzz Lightyear and quietly avoiding Dora the Explorer and her pink-themed accessories, and laugh off my guilt as the overwrought liberal intellectualism of a parent who needs to get over herself.

Mostly.

Trent sent me this article from Smithsonian Magazine about how our expectations for what little boys and girls should wear have evolved. Ladies Home Journal advised moms in 1918 to dress their boys in pink: “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

The most interesting part of the article to me was a comment by Jo B. Paoletti, author of the forthcoming book Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America. She explained that kids don't become conscious of geneder until 3 or 4 and don't understand that it is permanent until 6 or 7, "[s]o they think, for example, that what makes someone female is having long hair and a dress." I was suddenly proud that Nugget knows that men have penises and women do not.* But I'm still terrified every time he points to someone at the store and identifies them as a man or woman. Aside from the usual concern that he will misidentify someone and thereby cause offense, I worry that he'll decide to explain, in his too-loud toddler voice, what sort of equipment the man or woman has beneath his or her clothing.

* And yes, it has occurred to me that I've defined sex exclusively with reference to a male trait and now he's going to grow up perceiving women as Other. But I think he can wait to learn about vaginas, at least until he's mastered the ABCs.