Chernevog, by C.J. Cherryh. 4.5

In Rusalka’s sequel Chernevog, we are once again transported via historical fantasy to pre-Christian Russia with Sasha and Pyetr, who had thought their adventures were over. Sure, they were still living in an enchanted forest whose population included wizards, magical river-things, house-things, yard-things, forest spirits, banniks, and people in various states of being dead... but things had pretty much settled down, and so had Pyetr with his new wife, whom Sasha was ever dutifully trying to appease.

Sasha was not a young boy anymore, and felt out of place in the young couple’s house, and yet he would not leave his best friend Pyetr, and even if he did, there was nowhere for him to go. This, however, was not the reason Pyetr’s wife felt increasingly uncomfortable with him; nor was it because both she and Sasha were wizards, and wizards find it hard to get along together. Rather, she had a most disturbing premonition about who Sasha reminded her of more with each passing day: Uulamets, the wizard who had stifled and tormented her, and who had healed Pyetr just to use him for his own purposes. And yet, as Sasha and Pyetr looked on, she herself was becoming more and more like someone from her past.

A series of unexpected and seemingly trivial occurrences takes a cataclysmic turn, separating the three of them in a forest gone suddenly wrong. Their usual protections failing, doubts proliferate and undermine their alliances, and a most bizarre and unnerving exchange of hearts threatens Sasha and Pyetr’s friendship and the life of them all. One thing becomes resoundingly clear as they struggle to survive: once a wish has been made, it lives on, no matter if the one who made it is now dead and gone…

;)

here is a very apt quote to end with, I think:

“God,” Pyetr said. “I’m going to go talk to my horse. Books make you crazy, you know.” A motion at his head. “Thinking all those crooked little marks mean real things, that’s not sane, you know.” He waved the same hand toward the front door. “Out there is real. Don’t lose track of that.” (p.42)

_{and I note a beautiful wish on page 141.}

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The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, by Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck, the legend. I didn’t realize how old she was, either. ;) In this book she chronicles her family’s move from a cramped city apartment to the wonders of Suburbia.

mind you, this was back when Suburbia was brand-spanking new, a wild frontier. before there were post offices and schools there. they actually moved in before television became popularly available, which, when you think about it, is a huge cultural change. and fodder for some delightful parodies.

I can relate to her completely in some instances:

“Let me lay it on you, Cleavie, the high spot in my day is taking knots out of shoestrings- with my teeth- that a kid has wet on all day long.” (p. 29)

“For a moment, there was only the silence of a toilet being flushed consecutively, two dogs chasing one another through the living room, a horn honking in the driveway, a telephone ringing insistently, a neighbor calling to her children, the theme of “Gilligan’s Island” blaring on the TV set, a competing stereo of John Denver, one child at my feet chewing a hole in the brown-sugar bag, and a loud voice from somewhere screaming, ‘I’m telling.’” (p. 94)

oh, can I ever relate. ;)

but in other ways, I’m too atypical to relate to her. it really hit home when she was parodying/conveying her desperate loneliness to her friend, who was sitting with her in the house having coffee, and she was constantly interrupted by friends calling her on the phone and showing up on her doorstep out of the blue. and I thought, wow, that is so not my life. that is so not my life that if I dreamt something like that at night, I’d frame it and put it on the wall as it would be the most unrealistic thing I’d dreamt all year, even compared to the dancing rhinoceroses.

it’s brilliant, mind you, but you have to be close enough to her experience for the humor to really shine through. and I never realized how different my personality was from Erma Bombeck’s. (I only read her all the time when I was growing up.) I’m just such an odd duck.

Still love her, though.

---

between the reaction I had to her and to Dave Barry (a growing melancholy!), I think I will just not even pick up Lewis Grizzard’s work. he used to be my favorite of all. but I’m not in the South anymore, and I’m afraid to look and spoil the good memories. ever since he wrote once about being in an airport in the North and being brought Pepsi instead of Coke, and the waiter saying, “It’s the same thing”, and him jumping up out of his seat with “No, By God, it’s not!”... that endeared me to him forever. ;) so, I guess I’ll leave him be, at least for now. even though I’ve always wanted to read his book Elvis Is Dead And I Don’t Feel Too Good Myself.

sounds like my kind of book. but I'll wait.

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Dave Barry Turns 40

or, he turned 40. about 20 years ago! jeesh, I didn’t realize it had been so long.

as usual, Dave Barry had me laughing out loud on and off throughout the book:

on marriage
“Because all of the grand claims your husband made, back when you were dating, about how you two were going to be Equal Housework Partners, turned out to mean in actual practice that he occasionally, with great fanfare, refills the ice-cube tray.” (p. 37)

on politics
“But the biggest problem I have with both major political parties is that they seem to be competing in some kind of giant national scavenger hunt every four years to see who can find the biggest goober to run for President.” (p. 124)

on memory
“If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Right? Even as you read these words, your brain, which cannot remember more than two words of your wedding vows, is cheerfully singing:

Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed…” (p.165)

and on the aging body. etc.

Yet.

and yet. I don’t read the paper anymore, and I hardly ever read Barry’s column online (though sometimes gems are sent my way), so it had been a while. and I realized reading through it now that his humor works because he is, in his own words, his own description of his humor here, “irresponsible and vicious”. and it was funny but it was way too true sometimes to be really funny, you know? so I had mixed feelings all the way through.

Barry is not always just making jokes, and there is a short section of the book in which he is deadly serious, and makes a brutal point, and I’m glad he did that; what he said was important. but it lead me even further into this strange melancholy.

what a strange creature I am if I get depressed reading Dave Barry. I think it is a sign of how detached I’ve become from my “own” culture…

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The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz.

ok, this could take a while to discuss, as it is meant to be how to change your life and is meant to provide you with a practical philosophical guide for doing so.

even if the book is incredibly short.

I have a goal just for this book.

first off I will say that, yes, I’ve read Carlos Castaneda’s books and, no, I don’t consider them to be very anthropological! they are also an exploration of and discussion of the Toltec tradition that The Four Agreements draws from. I consider all these works to be a kind of grand thought experiment which is highly interesting to read sometimes and always gives you something to think about, including your own cultural assumptions that you might not even have been aware of before. that is about as anthropological as it gets.

I don’t really want to go into the whole nagual thing; primarily as it isn’t necessary to the rest of the discussion.

The four agreements (through which it is said you can change your life from being a passive victim/active judge caught up in a never-ending cycle of condemning yourself and everyone around you for not attaining some mystical perfection that is the cultural ideal… to being more in control of your own thoughts, emotions, actions, and reactions and therefore free to live your life in love and contented peace even in the midst of this crazy world of ours… are, basically, one agreement. with three more specific aspects of the first agreement.

So, really, for the sake of honesty and felicity, the book should be entitled: The Agreement. ;p

Be impeccable with your word. That’s the main agreement.

What am I talking about, agreement? Ruiz says that we are conditioned in childhood to agree to things that we don’t really want to, but as children cannot argue much with, and that we come to think of those ways of thinking as the only possible or real ways. In fact, we forget that we ever agreed to anything at all, we just think there is only one way and that’s the way it’s always been. Mostly they are a lot of small agreements that even cancel each other out or are in conflict with each other. The example is given how a small child is happily singing and playing and her tired mother snaps at her because of a headache. The child unwittingly believes that yes, her singing must be horrible, or her mother wouldn’t have snapped. And so she no longer sings in that carefree childlike manner, ever again, because in the back of her head she thinks she sings badly, and this causes her doubt and grief. She doesn’t sing around other people, or even just for the joy of it, but only reluctantly, and if anyone overheard her, they’d hear how timid and uncomfortable she is with her singing, and so reinforce the idea she cannot sing well.

And yet, the idea that she sings badly has no real ground. Her mother just had a headache and snapped mindlessly at her. She actually sings fine. Or she used to, before she became hesitant and guilty about it, before she started comparing herself unfavorably to those who sang very well.

By agreeing with her mother’s comment, and notice the mother did not even do that on purpose, she would never have done that on purpose, the girl has actually changed the way she sings (except she doesn’t even sing anymore). As an adult she may not even remember the incident or know why she feels so self-conscious about singing. But she still has this agreement in her head (that she sings badly).

There are billions of such agreements we make in the course of a lifetime, and this book discusses how to become aware of them, change them, or get rid of them altogether.

It is, rather obviously, a formidable task.

Yet the first, and main, agreement can eventually, when followed diligently, change those other agreements which are holding us down.

Be impeccable with your word. This means using what you say, including your self-talk, positively for the best for yourself. It also includes not lying, gossiping, or saying hurtful things to others, as this can only come back to hurt you, and therefore isn’t the best for yourself.

This agreement includes the other three (basically,):
Don’t take things personally
Don’t assume
and
Always do your best

Don’t take things personally. Nothing belongs to you, you belong to no one… in the context that death could take you (or your loved ones) at any moment (all the more reason to be alive). Also because all of us literally live in our own little worlds. We interpret reality subjectively and then project that subjective reality onto everything and everyone around us. (This is actually WHY the four agreements can change your life; the way you interpret things is how you experience them.) Nothing anybody ever does is because of you and your reality, but is always because of their interpretation of reality and events, even their interpretation of your behavior.

It really isn’t about you, so don’t take it personally.

I am trying to find a thought I posted about that before, about taking things personally. I asked something about, if you aren’t supposed to take the things your friends do personally, then how does that affect your relationship with your friends? Can you have any real connection to other people if you don’t take it personally? as this post is already huge, if I find that previous thought I’ll tack it on as a comment.

I am still wondering a bit about that one…

I think the idea is more that, another person’s behavior (good or bad) is not based on you or your behavior or even objective reality. it’s based on their own subjective interpretation of things. and when you interpret their behavior, keep that in mind. you have control over how you interpret what they say, think, and do; and you certainly don’t let to need their behavior dictate your response.

The way you live your life should be, well, like the prayer: with acceptance for the things you cannot change, with courage for the things you can change, and with the ability (by not assuming) to know the difference. The idea is toward a joyful acceptance of life and an unconditional love towards all life.

So, maybe you don’t have the same kind of connection with certain people (???) but you have more of a connection with everyone in general…?

Don’t assume includes don’t assume what others mean, and also don’t assume what others know… which has been my personal dilemma. I have (hopefully had as I’ve been working on this for months now and I don’t do it near as often anyway) been in the habit of assuming that other people knew what I was thinking or feeling, especially those close to me. They don’t. You have to tell them, show them. You have to make the effort, just like you have to make the effort of finding out what others mean or how they feel, by asking them, etc. You can’t know their reality any other way, and they can’t know yours any other way either.

Don’t assume also includes not assuming anything about yourself, either. Find out how you sometimes gloss over your abilities or weaknesses and be more honest with yourself, ask yourself the right questions about these things. Certainly I need more work in this department, as I usually think I can either walk through walls or can do nothing at all. At least, that is something I’ve been working on.

Always do your best. As Mr. Rogers often told us, your best will vary from day to day, under different circumstances. When you are hot, hungry, and sleep-deprived, your best will not be as good as when you are comfortable, well-fed, and well-rested. But by always doing your best, the best you can at any given moment, you need never feel guilty again. If a voice in your head says, You yelled at the dog again and you know better than that, you ought to be ashamed yelling at a dog, who doesn’t even understand and only wants to please you… You can stop all that negative self-talk with “I did my best, and my best will get better.” It also works when others judge you or speak down to you; you can always answer “I did my best”.

And, your best will get better, because practicing putting these agreements into action makes it easier to do over time.

This book leaves questions but perhaps that is a good way to get started on the road to reinventing your life: asking questions. Not saying it is a philosophical masterpiece, but surely an interesting think.

3-1/2 stars?

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The Mansion, by William Faulkner (5)

wow.

this is the third of the Snopes trilogy, which follows the life of a certain Flem Snopes in his rise from a crook-in-the-road tenant farmer to bank president in Jefferson, Mississippi. in the first two books, we got a good look at what makes Flem Snopes in particular and the Snopes clan in general tick, through various characters including the incredibly interesting V.K. Ratliff (he’s my favorite of them all). we were witness to various shenanigans, adventures, and plots; the shifting of power in a family dynasty, a hamlet, and a city; and one especially cold-blooded and disturbing murder. it is in turns bizarre, horrible, hilarious, and utterly believable because it’s just too absurd to be made up.

in this perfect conclusion, Flem’s wife Eula (easily the most disturbing character, to me) is gone but not forgotten as the daughter Linda has come of age. the city attorney Gavin Stephens cannot seem to wrest his fate away from the course Eula set it on; the ubiquitous, inscrutable V.K. Ratliff cannot seem to wrest Gavin back on the right track either; and the reader cannot help but wince knowing something is going to come down. but, after all, that is why it’s called fate.

together with Gavin’s now-grown nephew Charles, Gavin and V.K. maintain their vigil against all things Snopes (including a battle to keep one out of Congress itself) as the second World War changes the economy, the voting demographics, and the way of life in Jefferson.

shut away from the world and all its upheavals is the deceivingly diminutive Mink Snopes, serving life in the penitentiary for the murder mentioned above. but Mink has unfinished business on the outside, and he is just biding his time surely, steadily, with an unearthly patience and simple-minded insanity.

but with Snopeses, one never knows what exactly to expect: Gavin isn’t the only one caught up in fate, and Mink isn’t the only one with a score to settle…

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