The Gerson Therapy: The Proven Nutritional Program for Cancer and Other Illnesses

The Gerson Therapy: The Proven Nutritional Program for Cancer and Other Illnesses

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston. rating: 2 stars

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston

MEH- I thought this book would actually be about the trees (!), but most of it seemed to be about the people who climb/study them. It seemed like a kaleidoscopic series of mini-biographies which rather bored me. (I am weirder than all of them put together. Also, I couldn't see that the author made any real choices while writing- seemed to just write about everything because he could. Not interesting.)

Basically, I couldn't see the forest for the people.

Watership Down, by Richard Adams

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Still one of the best books I have ever, ever read.
(Last read August 2008)

Some of the quotes that mean the most to me:

"I don't know what it is," answered Fiver wretchedly. There isn't any danger here, at this moment. But it's coming- it's coming. Oh, Hazel, look! The field! It's covered with blood!" (p.14)

And Frith called after him, “El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.” And El-ahrairah knew then that although he would not be mocked, yet Frith was his friend. And every evening, when Frith has done his day’s work and lies calm and easy in the red sky, El-ahrairah and his children and his children’s children come out of their holes and feed and play in his sight, for they are his friends and he has promised them that they can never be destroyed. (p. 37)

Just as a battle begins in a state of equilibrium between the two sides, which gradually alters one way of the other until it is clear that the balance has tilted so far that the issue can no longer be in doubt- so this gathering of rabbits in the dark, beginning with hesitant approaches, silences, pauses, movements, crouchings side by side and all manner of tentative appraisals, slowly moved, like a hemisphere of the world into summer, to a warmer, brighter region of mutual liking and approval, until they all felt sure that they had nothing to fear. (p.82)

They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, and they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away. They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They found out other marvelous arts to take the place of tricks and old stories... and though these could not help them at all, yet they passed the time and enabled them to tell themselves that they were splendid fellows, the very flower of Rabbitry, cleverer than magpies. They had no Chief Rabbit- no, how could they?- for a Chief Rabbit must be El-ahrairah to his warren and keep them from death: and here there was no death but one, and what Chief Rabbit could have an answer to that? (p. 123)

^Tokenism

Human beings say, "It never rains but it pours." This is not very apt, for it frequently does rain without pouring. The rabbits' proverb is better expressed. They say, "One cloud feels lonely": and indeed it is true that the appearance of a single cloud often means that the sky will soon be overcast. (p. 184)

When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel- and did his heart not falter as he realized- that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you. (p. 297)

Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter.
....
For rabbits, winter remains what it was for men in the middle ages- hard, but bearable by the resourceful and not altogether without compensations. (p. 465-6)

Since the night of the siege, Fiver had spent much time alone and even in the Honeycomb, or at morning and evening silflay, was often silent and preoccupied. No one resented this- "He looks right through you in such a nice, friendly way," as Bluebell put it- (p. 466)

Finished Dec 24th

James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl

James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl

Just finished reading this (on December 17th) to the kids. This is the first (real) chapter book that we’ve used for bedtime stories. :D

The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood: 4-1/2 stars

Read December 10th- 15th.

Iris starts with her sister Laura's death. The narrative of Iris' memoirs cover her present life as well as her past- and this is juxtaposed with the novel that Laura wrote, and the story within that novel. Gradually, inevitably, you realize that nothing is what it seems, and that everything is coiled together.

This is a beautifully executed social commentary as well as a wonderfully told story. Atwood has a brilliant way of wording and presenting things.

The dynamics between the sexes are rather brutal and sometimes hard to read, even between loved ones, but still the portrayals ring true. I find the peach women particularly disturbing, as it reveals such disturbing thinking, and is purportedly told to be more or less amusing. What happens to Iris and Laura is especially upsetting as well.

That kind of thing doesn't run in her family: her mother Reenie never went in much for God. There was mutual respect, and if you were in trouble naturally you'd call on him, as with lawyers; but as with lawyers, it would have to be bad trouble. Otherwise it didn't pay to get too mixed up with him. Certainly she didn't want him in her kitchen, as she had enough on her hands as it was. (p. 52)

Standing there with the jar in one hand and my finger in my mouth, I had the feeling that someone was about to walk into the room- some other woman, the unseen, valid owner- and ask me what in hell I was doing in her kitchen. I've had it before, the sense that even in the course of my most legitimate and daily actions- peeling a banana, brushing my teeth- I am trespassing. (p. 56)

All around them were the snow-covered rocks and white icicles- everything white. Under their feet was the ice, which was white also, and under that the river water, with its eddies and undertows, dark but unseen. This how I pictured that time, the time before Laura and I were born- so blank, so innocent, so solid to all appearances, but thin ice all the same. (p. 69)

The picture in the book is of a leaping man covered in flames- wings of fire coming from his heels and shoulders, little fiery horns sprouting from his head. He's looking over his shoulder with a mischievous, enticing smile, and he has no clothes on. The fire can't hurt him, nothing can hurt him. I am in love with him for this reason. I've added extra flames with my crayons. (p. 82)
&
This messenger appeared to him in the guise of a flame, with numerous eyes and wings of fire shooting out. (p. 117)

(What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies. Now that I've been one myself, I know.) (p. 94)

She began to fret about God's exact location. It was the Sunday-school teacher's fault: God is everywhere, she'd said, and Laura wanted to know: was God in the sun, was God in the moon, was God in the kitchen, the bathroom, was he under the bed? ("I'd like to wring that woman's neck," said Reenie,) Laura didn't want God popping out at her unexpectedly, not hard to understand considering his recent behavior. Open your mouth and close your eyes and I'll give you a big surprise, Reenie used to say, holding a cookie behind her back, but Laura would no longer do it. She wanted her eyes open. It wasn't that she distrusted Reenie, only that she feared surprises.
Probably God was in the broom closet. It seemed the most likely place. He was lurking in there like some eccentric and possibly dangerous uncle, but she couldn't be certain whether he was there at any given moment because she was afraid to open the door. "God is in your heart," said the Sunday-school teacher, and that was even worse. If in the broom closet, something might have been possible, such as locking the door. (pp. 137-8)

More and more I feel like a letter- deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one. (p. 169)

Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist;it means testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies - loaf givers. (This, and the following commentary- p. 181)

Water is nebulous, it has no shape, you can pass your hand right through it; yet it can kill you. The force of such a thing is its momentum, its trajectory. What it collides with, and how fast. (p. 270)

[What is] More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?
That's a new one.
Take a guess.
I give up.
Nothing. (p. 271)

Into the plastic basket went my selections, and off I set, step by step, sideways down the stairs, like Little Red Riding Hood on her way to Granny's house via the underworld. Except that I myself am Granny, and I contain my own bad wolf. Gnawing away, gnawing away. (p. 366)

But why bother about the end of the world? It's the end of the world every day, for someone. Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes, you drown. (p. 478)

We weren't prepared for it, but at the same time we knew we'd been there before. It was the same chill, the chill that rolled in like a fog, the chill into which I was born. As then, everything took on a shimmering anxiety- the chairs, the tables, the streets and the street lights, the sky, the air. Overnight, whole portions of what had been acknowledged as reality simply vanished. This is what happens when there's a war. (p. 478)

ET 101: The Cosmic Instruction Manual for Planetary Evolution, by Zoev Jho

ET 101: The Cosmic Instruction Manual for Planetary Evolution by Zoev Jho

(Also, here.)

Definitely a trip. But then again, any manual for dealing with life on this planet would have to be. I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt the need for such a manual!

Here are some of my favorite quotes (from the e-edition, hence the lack of page numbers):

Getting out of here is not the point. Getting more light into here is. Remember?/

The Second Coming is imminent, and you may as well get ready. This is a particularly good idea because you’re it. You are the Second Coming. Mission Control does not wish to stay on this topic very long because we are aware of the charge that surrounds it due to 2,000 years of organized denial. For this reason, we will give you only one more helpful hint: Become your own Messiah—why wait?

That statement is not only not heretical, it is the entire point. /

Nothing you do or say is an acceptable substitute for becoming who you truly are./

The temptation to remain dysfunctional arises from the fact that it has been such a thorough and arduous journey getting there; somehow, it feels wasteful to just chuck it. Because of this illusion of waste, you may find yourself clinging to false identities or co-dependent relationships that prolong the recovery act. These double-dealing relationships, whether with yourself or others, are based on a dysfunctional complicity that thrives on an unstated request. That request can best be expressed as, “Please don’t disturb my sense of limitation. It may be Auschwitz, but it’s home.”/

Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry, by Delfina Vannucci and Richard Singer

Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry, by Delfina Vannucci and Richard Singer (AK Press)

This would have come in very handy dealing with IEP meetings and all. It gave me a better perspective on group dynamics in general and on several instances in my life when group dynamics went to hell in particular. It certainly clarified to some things and opened my eyes- I had at least one distinct "aha" moment.

Lines that got my attention for mostly personal reasons:

Capitalism has been built and developed over the course of its long and bloody history in a way that keeps us continually at odds with one another, and yet, at the same time, discourages any real independent thought amongst the masses. (p.13)

Not everybody has the same skill at navigating interpersonal exchanges. Some people are not good at recognizing that split second when someone has finished talking and it's okay to jump in. They are the ones who are most likely to interrupt, and be reprimanded for it, while they also, ironically, are the least likely to get a word out and have their opinions heard. (p. 70)

Regardless of the merits or faults present in each situation, it's not okay for us to inflict emotional pain on one another. That should be a basic tenet.
A commitment to compassion and justice and against cruelty (yes, that's what it is) needs to be overtly stated as the basis for an egalitarian group operates. (p. 100)

The end result of a project that has been produced collectively is an uneven patchwork of viewpoints and ability levels. Making room for everybody to contribute, even when ability is not equal, is a strength, not a weakness; so is letting the process show. We are accustomed to valuing a slick, polished presentation, but if we let the seams show, this will empower others with information about how something was put together. If we accept a heterogeneous, bumpy outcome as a given, before the work even begins, we will avoid a lot of head-butting further down the road.
Because groups based on equality presuppose mutual trust and a shared sense of mission, many of us may expect solidarity, harmony, and kindness to permeate such groups. On the contrary, adhering to egalitarian, anti-authoritarian principles means applying minimal interference to one another, or letting people be who they are- including the annoying, the trying, and the obnoxious- and accepting the outcomes as well. (p. 111)

What an empowering little book! I will have to hunt down a couple of reads they recommended.

The Judgement, and In The Penal Colony, by Franz Kafka

The Judgement and In The Penal Colony, by Franz Kafka

read on December 3rd. The transition from Hellboy (especially Del Toro) to Kafka is nonexistent.

placeholder- I am currently digesting the stories. Then I will reread. And then I will start sorting out the words for what I want to say.

It's Kafka.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (The Official Novelization), by Robert Greenberger

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (The Official Novelization), by Robert Greenberger

Read November 30th through December 2nd.

It's a novelization. The writing is nothing special. As far as books go, it's basically candy. But at least it's not cheese.

"How on earth can they blame me for cheese," he asked and stopped as the anchor finished her report. (p. 205)

(Hellboy itself, though, is conceptual genius.)

Not much to say, really, since I already knew the story. Several of the scenes were different, however, seeing as the screenplay changed and evolved in the movie after they handed it over to this author to novelize. One such scene is the Can't Smile Without You scene, which is my favorite from the movie, and which I'm quite glad they did change from the original concept.

(After having just read Mary Daly, the concept of a hole in man's heart and of the forest god- the Elemental- took on much richer levels.)

Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Journey, by Mary Daly

Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Journey, by Mary Daly

Her most autobiographical work (or I should say most comprehensive autobiographical work, as she wrote another book about events in her life after this, entitled Amazon), intended as autobiography while still developing/ expounding upon her philosophy. This helped me to place all of her other works in context with her life as well as place her life in context with what was going on in the world in general. Things make much more sense that way. Also, the book helped me to sort out once and for all the order of the books, and so how her thinking developed and progressed.

This book also gives you a view into the personal/ professional struggles Daly had in her day-to-day life, which is sometimes a revelation in contrast to what information has been given about her/ how the story has been framed by other sources. It is easy to see why she sometimes comes across as bitter.

My goodness but she was a traveler, and just an interesting person in general. I was reminded of Gertrude Stein, though Gertrude Stein came before. Three doctorates, two of them earned in Switzerland- and in Latin (all the classes, etc.)! A reading comprehension of Greek and Hebrew, obviously fluent in Latin, and also French and German. She was amazing long before she "became" a Feminist, much less a Radical Feminist. To think that she was brought up in Catholic schools, in an Irish Catholic community- to see her entire journey step by step as she grew into her own way of thinking is really quite something.

Comparatively, I feel like a total slacker. But, I know my journey is different and equal in every way to hers; mine just involves a lot less of what constitutes "legitimacy" (like degrees and other "legitimate" accomplishments). i.e., My accomplishments are regarded in the world at large, in patriarchy, as nonaccomplisments. After all, nonquestions have nonanswers, and if something isn't on the approved docket, then achieving it is hardly noteworthy. And I know that Mary Daly understood this and would agree.

I wish she had mentioned Emily Dickinson. I wonder what she thought of her poetry. Emily, I'm sure, understood too. (Especially about Words- not to mention her affinity for clover and bees!)

MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.	5
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

Daly's style (apparently from Gyn/Ecology on, though this is only the second of her books that I've read) is rather poetic- and challenging to read: much like a dissertation written in modern poetic form. Maybe not so extremely difficult, but certainly it demands constant conscious-level attention and awareness, presence, from your brain at all times. Each and every word is precise and intentional. It makes you think.

But she plays around with the words so much, and finds such liberating ways to use words, that the lighter, and ultimately Hopeful, side of her shines through. She liberates the reader with her style, her new/reclaimed words, her spirit, and her message, while managing to be real about it all.

The end of this book is quite abstract, and disorienting, being told almost entirely through symbols and allegory. If you haven't been following up to that point, you might wonder what she's smoking. It's in any case brave to play around with inspiration so openly.

Read November 21st through the 28th.
___

I finished the book [The Church and the Second Sex] in the summer of 1967 and waited. I did not fully realize at that time that the writing of this, my first Feminist book, would profoundly affect/effect the Outercourse of my life. It was an Act of Be-Speaking that would hurl me into conflicts that I had never anticipated. The book itself had seemed to me to be eminently sane and reasonable- and indeed it was. Yet it was very radical in its impulse and in its Time. I was, after all, "merely" trying to reform the catholic church, and that act was too threatening to be gracefully accepted by my employers and the powers they represented. (p. 91)

When you place the book in that particular time- the 1960s- one can understand what a bombshell it was, even though it was incredibly restrained and mild (in what it set out to accomplish) compared to her later work.

In recent years I have frequently heard myself saying to audiences that a cognitive minority of one cannot survive, referring to sociologist Peter Berger's dictum that "the subjective reality of the world hangs on the thin thread of conversation." Often at some point in the same lectures I have also heard myself saying: "Even if I were the only one, I would still be a Radical Feminist." This may seem a little Strange, even self-contradictory. Reflecting Now upon the Logbook material of The First Spiral Galaxy [i.e., her early years], however, I Re-member that I was then in the situation of "being the only one"- the only one known to myself, at any rate- and that I have Survived. (p. 112)

In regards to "the thin thread of conversation," David Abram (among many others) points out that one interacts with, and thus converses with, not just other humans, but with one's total surroundings. Life is not subjective. It is intersubjective, at all times. And thus, whether or not we are consciously aware of it- or whether or not we are ever allowed to clearly realize/see/ experience the connections- even if those we are connected to are dismissed themselves as unworthy and thus the connections undermined (largely the case with the natural world and frequently the case with women and other minorities)- the connections are there.

Isolation is a foreground phenomenon. (p. 290)

Exactly. Our enculturation of the foreground "reality" keeps hidden from us our connections to others (who would think outside the guidelines of the patriarchy) and to our resources/sources of personal power. But, again, these connections are there, always, in the Background. For years I thought I was a cognitive minority of one- not on Feminist issues per se but in general; my parents maintained I was left on their doorstep by aliens- and I felt very alone. But now I see that it was never so. There are many like me the world over. (To be rather cheesy: "Walked out this morning/ Don't believe what I saw/ A hundred billion bottles/ Washed up on the shore/ Seems I'm not alone at being alone/ A hundred billion castaways/ Looking for a home" /Sting)

... the Threshold, or Limen- the Time/Space when/where subliminal knowledge becomes accessible to awareness. (p. 115)

Automatically thought of my daughter, the goddess of the doorway. Also, Turgenyev's The Threshold. And Hermes, and magic, in general.

For years I had been driven by the fact that none of my degrees, that is, academic legitimations, seemed to be "enough" to bring me freedom. As I then understood "freedom," it meant liberty to live the life of a writer/philosopher/teacher who is not tied down and drained by constraints imposed by mediocre institutions. I believed that by acquiring the "highest of higher degrees" I would earn this privilege. I Now think that on a subliminal level I was seeking something more than I could articulate at that Time. I think that what I really sought was not freedom within academia, but freedom from it. But I did not want simply to leave. I wanted to Be/Leave.
As I came to understand more about academia, I still wanted to be in that world, as it were, but not of it- to be there still, but unconstrained. I wanted academia to support my real work in the world. .... Universities could offer me a meal ticket, or rather meal tickets, as well as congenial environments in which I could do my own work, or so I then believed. (p. 121)

As one who has hungered after an academic life only then to become totally disillusioned by what that really stood for, this hits pretty close to home. Even now I treat suspiciously any desire (of mine) to get a degree, and am wary that all I really want is recognition and legitimation, which don't come with those papers anyway.

[Abortion] was not at the center of my own interests. I hardly saw the right to an abortion as the ultimate goal of the Feminist movement, or as an expression of the epitome of Feminist consciousness. But I refused to see it as disconnected from other issues and I Named the connections. (p. 143)

Thank you for the obvious! What a misery that we have to spell it out. But we do.

"We are the Nothing-losers," I cried. (p. 199)

I especially like this line. I am a Nothing-Loser! It's great fun and quite empowering to say.

Feminist theory is brought forth within a certain environment, the supportive hearing of a cognitive minority of women who recognize our situation as extra-environmentals in a male-ruled system, and whose sense of reality is different from the prevailing sense of reality. We are primarily interested in speaking to each other, because this is where we find authentic communication. Others may read and comment upon our work, but genuine hearing is something else. My presence here is an experiment, questionable and problematic to myself. In a very real sense it is a contradiction. But then, as Whitehead recognized, a contradiction can be a challenge. Whether the challenge is worth the effort remains to be seen. [from a paper delivered to the 1975 Second International Symposium on Belief, Vienna] (p. 202)

I think I shall quote that entire excerpt whenever I need to talk about/quote any Feminist issues outside of a Feminist atmosphere.

When we jumped into the car, anxious to get back to my apartment on Commonwealth Avenue and continue working [on Gyn/Ecology], I was in the perplexed state of an Intergalactic space cadet struggling to cope with mundane foreground realities. I started the car, zoomed as far as the first stop sign, and abruptly stopped. Peggy sat in the passenger seat, expecting me to get moving again, since no cars were in sight. Finally, when she asked what was going on, I explained patiently that I was waiting for the sign to say "Go." (p. 215)

I wish I could say I've never done that type of thing. But I'm glad at least I'm not the only one!

...elementary pseudoreality, which is characterized by artificiality, and lack of depth, aura, and interconnectedness with living be-ing, and which is marked by a derivative and parasitic relation to Elemental Reality.
It is not always a simple matter to recognize and communicate the differences between Elemental Reality and the elementary world- in other words, between the Background and the foreground. This is in part because of the increasing pervasiveness of the elementary world and because the latter is comprised of derivative imitations of the Elemental world, which are mere elementaries [i.e. man-made simulations which distort experience and lack depth, radiance, resonance, harmonious interconnectedness with living be-ing]. (p. 250)

As Emily Dickinson put it: "Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb." (I might seriously write a paper on these two. I can easily imagine two distinct theses here- one involving the comparison/contrast of Mary Daly and Emily Dickinson, and the other, of Mary Daly and Howard Zinn.)

The idea of the will not to know on p. 135 and of existential courage on p. 136

Bluff, or The Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopfh

Bluff, or The Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopf

This is the second (shorter) novel in the omnibus I started with Innerfar earlier this year. Bluff, or the Southern Cross, is about a young man coming of age through a tragic accident and an unlikely friendship. Like Innerfar, it explores madness and the fine line between truth, reality, and dream.

Our land may look like Heaven on earth, but its people have a dark, untold story right under the surface, one that can be told only by someone who has not given up dreaming because of embitterment in the icy shadows.

God knows that on this path there may not be something grandiose to recognize in the final analysis. But it's important to me, because I found out about it myself. For I belong to those who can learn only the hard way, by having to experience it first myself. But then I know it for always. (p. 231)

Both Gerhard Kopf and Roberto Calasso are food for the subconscious.

Extra tidbits:

"A poet once said: We're not allowed to describe our life the way we've lived it but must live it the way we'll tell it." (p. 179)

"To find out what we are, we must again enter the dreams that dreamed us." (p. 180)

"Only where it's hard to love will it become apparent whether you are serious about it or not." (p. 200)

"Every journey contains the wish of being able to jump over your own shadow." (p. 201)

Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, by Roberto Calasso

Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, by Roberto Calasso


As usual, Calasso's narrative is as rich, intricate, and bizarre as its subject matter.

The destruction of Daksa's sacrifice, the most radical criticism of sacrifice, came from within the sacrifice itself: it showed how irresistibly sacrifice is transformed into massacre, and thus looked forward to the whole course of a history no longer yoked to sacrifice. [emphasis mine] (p. 86)

Not only was ritual no longer able contain violence but multiplied it, like a machine, not of desire now but of disaster. Indeed, might not ritual itself, this faith in the absolute precision and truth of gesture, be the very thing, in the end, that was provoking the worst of evils? (p. 314)

No one recognized him. Shiva begged before Shiva's temples. Sometimes the devout would trample him as they thronged to worship. Sometimes he would writhe and yearn like a madman lost among other madmen. He was the nameless, he who has no country, no caste, he was the lover forever bereaved, the murderer who cannot be pardoned, the missing person who is missed by no one. (p. 88)

"Wherever life is felt more acutely, that is Rudra," [y Rudra=Shiva] page 47.

Shiva felt sympathetic, and, murmuring words they would never hear, addressed them as follows: "Whether the world be a hallucination or the mind be a hallucination, whether all return or all appear but once, the suffering is just the same. For he who suffers is part of the hallucination, of whatever kind that may be. What then is the difference? This: whether in the sufferer there is- or is not- he who watches him who suffers." More than that, for the moment, he would not say. (p. 89)

shades of Edgar Allen Poe, there.

"Who is that damn woman hiding in your hair?" said Parvati. Once again she couldn't stop herself. "The sickle moon," said Shiva, as though thinking of something else. "Oh, so that's what she's called, is it?" said Parvati, in a tone that would one day be the model for all female sarcasm.

"Of course, you know that perfectly well," said Shiva, more absentminded than ever.

"I'm not speaking about the moon, I'm speaking about your girlfriend," said Parvati, snarling.

"You want to talk to your friend? But your friend Vijaya's just gone out, hasn't she?" said Shiva. Parvati went off, white with rage. (p.117)

Ahimsa doesn't mean to refrain from violence. But to exercise violence- which is there in any event and involves everyone- in a certain way, without wounding. To wound is more serious than to kill.... The obligation not to wound the living (and everything is living), and the obligation toward the truth: the two were pronounced together, and ahimsa came before satya[truth], as if getting to the bottom of the one word discovered the other. (p. 151)

"In what are you experts?" they asked us. In the sensation of being alive. (p. 163)

This much we know: that if one seeks to define almost everything- or rather; everything except a single point [as if in relation to that point]- that point must remain undefined. As in geometry, one cannot do without an axiom. And an axiom is not defined. An axiom is declared. (p. 173)

"You see that Agni means fire- and you are satisfied. You think that such a precious and dangerous element deserves a great many honors. But you are wrong. Agni's secret name, the name the gods use when they speak of him- and it is also a common word in our language- is agre, 'forward.' Before he is fire, Agni is everything that goes beyond us, the dazzling light that darts ahead of us wherever we are. When we go forward, we are merely following Agni. Man's conquests are the scars Agni leaves behind in his progress across the earth." (p. 195)

The first of all states, the one to which, after each event, one returns to as a final barrier, behind which we shall always meet the same barrier and so on and on for all time, is the birth of fire from the waters. Of Agni from Soma. The liquid fire. (p. 197)

What is the esoteric? The thought closest to the vision things have of themselves. (p. 202)

The world is a broken pot. Sacrifice tries to put it back together, slowly, piece by piece. But some parts have crumbled away. And even when the pot is put back together, it’s pitted with scars. There are those who say this makes it more beautiful. To know the head of the sacrifice also means to know the sacrifice that happens in the head, that cannot be seen, that has no need of gestures, implements, calendars, liturgies, victims- or even words. (p. 218)

"You are that" tells us that, whatever appears to us, "you are that": that thing is within you, is in the Self, which- immensely larger than any thing, spreading out from the barley grain hidden in the heart- includes within itself, little by little, every shape that appears. Nothing is alien to it. And being everything that appears gives us the basis for understanding everything that appears. (p. 369)

Of course the true word would win, but it would be diminished by the clash. Truth does not compete with facts. Truth is not a tool. (p. 383)

Residues are ubiquitous. They hem us in on every side. The crucial things is how we deal with them: do we eliminate them? cultivate them? Sometimes they contaminate, sometimes they enhance. (p. 401)

The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy

The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy

A book of poems, some of which I really like. Some I don't feel much. That's okay; poems are that way. The ones I like may not ring for other people; they may like the ones I noticed politely better.

This book has The Low Road:

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organisation. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

and For Strong Women:

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

both of which I love.

note to self

Fitzgerald
Hemmingway
Sherwood Anderson
Samuel Clements
Ford Madox Ford
Mildred Aldrich
James Joyce
Gertrude Stein

Jane Heap? Bravig Inbs?

Moby Dick

Also, widen the posts column- seems way too skinny now

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein

I knew of Gertrude Stein's poetry (which is the only poetry ever and always to give me a headache), but was unaware she also wrote novels, plays, operas. That she lived in Paris. That she had a medical education from John Hopkins. That her best friend was Pablo Picasso. She knew pretty much everyone who was anyone, and, though I find her personality or something about her inner self to be abrasive and off-putting, her life and her thoughts are very interesting.

And yes, she wrote this "autobiography" of her friend of twenty-five years as a way of writing her own without having to really write her own, because the concept of doing this amused her. anyway...

I will have to look up some of her other work and see how I like it. Or at least how I might be able to use it. I found this book at a library sale quite by accident. I'm glad I read this before her other work and I wish I'd read it before any of her poetry!
___

[of Matisse:] Every morning he painted, every afternoon he worked at his sculpture, late every afternoon he drew in the sketch classes from the nude, and every evening he played his violin. (p. 38)

I'm not sure which is the greater dream of mine: to be so organized, or to have so much time to myself!

As she always says of herself, she has a great deal of inertia and once started keeps going until she starts somewhere else. (p. 82)

That sounds a little strange but I think it's very true- the part about starting somewhere else. Or at least I can relate. I don't really ever stop one thing simply by stopping it, but instead and only by starting something else. This goes back to Shostakovich's saying that you can't find a fresh approach, it has to find you, and it can only find you when you have a fresh (new) approach to your life- ie, when you stop doing what you have been doing, and start something (or somehow) else.

She always says that americans can understand spaniards. That they are the only two western nations that can realise abstraction. That in americans it expresses itself by disembodiedness, in literature and machinery, in Spain by ritual so abstract that it does not connect itself with anything but ritual. (p. 91)

Disembodiedness as abstraction. Yes, perfect- and something I must think about more, because I feel something rumbling around in my subconscious in response to this.

But Henry McBride was firm, the best that I can wish you, he always said, is to have no success. It is the only good thing. He was firm about that. (p. 122)

Another point I agree with completely and hope to keep in mind.

Haweis had been fascinated with what he had read in manuscript of The Making of Americans. He did however plead for commas. Gertrude Stein said commas were unnecessary, the sense should be intrinsic and not have to be explained by commas and otherwise commas were only a sign that one should pause and take breath but one should know of oneself when one wanted to pause and take breath. (p. 132)

That is the main aspect of her writing that I noticed in this book: commas, or the lack of them.

How often I have heard her then and since explain that americans are republicans living in a republic which is so much a republic that it could never be anything else. (p. 152)

The maid at the hotel took great interest in my knitting for the soldiers. She said, of course madame knits very slowly, all ladies do. But, said I hopefully, if I knit for years may I not come to knit quickly, not as quickly as you but quickly. No, said she firmly, ladies knit slowly. As a matter of fact I did come to knit very quickly and could even read and knit quickly at the same time. (p. 165)

What a consolation- and inspiration! To think that I could learn to crochet or even knit and still be able to read at the same time! Woo, now I am even more encouraged to practice at crocheting.

[Said Gertrude Stein of a draft of Hemingway's novel:] There is a great deal of description in this, she said, and not particularly good description. Begin over again and concentrate, she said. (p. 213)

Something I need to keep in mind when I write. This novel, and that paragraph, made some of my mistakes as well as my purpose and ability as a writer much clearer to me. Let's hope it sticks.

As she used to explain to Virgil, the Catholic Church makes a very sharp distinction between a hysteric and a saint. The same thing holds true in the art world. There is the sensitiveness of the hysteric which has all the appearance of creation, but actual creation has an individual force which is an entirely different thing. (p. 228)

This is incredibly true. I have seen so many people (and sadly when I was younger I was included sometimes in that number) who think that simply being oversensitive and over reactive is a sign of the genius within or some such nonsense. No. Genius is not tied to drama but to one's own personal power, and personal power is evidenced by being solid and steadfast in what one has to face and courageous in what chooses to do- the exact opposite of the timid and insecure tendency towards hysterics.

Gertrude Stein says that if you are way ahead with your head you naturally are old fashioned and regular in your daily life. And Picasso adds, do you suppose Michael Angelo would have been grateful for a gift of a piece of renaissance furniture, no he wanted a greek coin. (p. 246)

Yes, I often wonder at the nihilism of the modern age, where people have to reinvent the wheel at every turn, just to prove they can do it, I suppose. My own tendency towards old fashioned things these days has nothing to do with me getting older, you see. Not at all. Seriously though, I look more at the really old, and original, ways of doing things- not just the ways I grew up with which are now considered by some to be old fashioned.

(There is a lovely mentioning of the subject of hats on page 14.)
___
I read this book from Thursday 21st until Thursday October 28th.

Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall: 3.5 stars

Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall

(eta: I just realized that I went from Of Woman Born, to Born to Run, and completely by coincidence as I got my hands on this one quite by surprise.)

Let's see- I started this one on Saturday, the 16th, and finished it last night, the 19th. Tracking down a mythical people who have kept their traditions alive well into the modern age, and realizing how much there is to learn from them? So much so that you can redefine yourself in a completely empowering way? I really enjoyed it. It inspires me. (Never mind the excitement of extreme sports and a few simply amazing races.)

I've always had problem feet. I've been in pain from my feet for as long as I can remember, even back when I was a little kid. I've tried to compensate for that or help that with all kinds of orthotics and special shoes and gimmicks and gadgets. But after reading this, I'm realizing all these things just made my problems worse. (The only thing I've tried that made a positive difference was doing toe exercises- basically, the opposite of stuffing my feet into ever more cushioning and confining spaces.) After reading this, I'm convinced I know not only how to ease the pain, but heal my feet completely, and also my knees, and lower back, and the headaches as well. And then I can get out there and move freely again. To maybe even run, myself. A wild thought!

But this story is not just about feet, or running.

Our modern feet are much like our modern selves: they ache because they are out of touch, and the more they hurt themselves overcompensating to re-establish that connection, the more we cut them off from the thing that would heal them, and the more they keep overcompensating and hurting themselves. We need to have some faith in ourselves- in and of ourselves- and reconnect with our roots and our world- because sometimes our technology causes our problems instead of healing them, exacerbates our problems instead of mitigating them.
___

He seemed to live off the land when he ran, depending on korima, the cornerstone of Tarahumara culture. Korima sounds like karma and functions the same way, except in the here and now. It's your obligation to share whatever you can spare, instantly and with no expectations: once the gift leaves your hand, it was never yours to begin with. (p. 37)

This reminds me of the quote from Faded Sun where it is said that one never gives up what one needs in/to the desert, because the desert will never give it back. This is the other side of that same coin: never give away what you need, but never hold on to what you can spare. Most of my life I've freely given away... everything. I don't have a problem with giving away. But I did have a problem with holding on to what I need. Seeing how the two concepts are related and intertwined- By holding on to everything that I need, I am free to give everything else away; by giving away what I can spare, I am able to hold on to everything I need- somehow just made it click for me.

He turned around and trotted back down. "Okay, man, lesson one. Get right behind me." He started to jog, more slowly this time, and I tried to copy everything he did. My arms floated until my hands were rib-high; my stride chopped down to pitty-pat steps; my back straightened so much I could almost hear the vertebrae creaking.

"Don't fight the trail," Caballo called back over his shoulder. "Take what it gives you. If you have a choice between one step or two between rocks, take three." Caballo has spent so many years navigating the trails, he's even nicknamed the stones beneath his feet: some were ayudantes, the helpers which let you spring forward with power; others are "tricksters," which look like ayudantes but roll treacherously at takeoff; and some are chingoncitos, little bastards just dying to lay you out.

"Lesson two," Caballo called. "Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get, that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don't give a shit how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. When you've practiced that for so long that you forget you're practicing, you work on making it smoooooooth. You won't have to worry about the last one- you get those three, and you'll be fast."

I kept my eyes on Caballo's sandalled feet, trying to duplicate his odd, sort of tippy-toeing steps. I had my head down so long, I didn't even notice at first that we'd left the forest. (pages 110-111)

Running, Life, same thing...

[T]here was never anything wrong with Jenni that couldn't be fixed by what's wright with Jenni. (p. 200)

Back straight
Knees bent and driving forward
Heels flicking back (p. 213)

[I]t's easy to get outside yourself when you're thinking about someone else. /Scott Jurek (p. 253)

And a note on Charles Bukowski/ Dharma Bums on page 145.
___
A note on journalism:

The style of writing (in this book) is much like a magazine article, which is to be expected as the author is a journalist, having worked for the Associated Press and Runner's World magazine, etc. There tends to be more flash and sparkle with journalistic writing than I care for. I don't need to be continually impressed and enticed from word to word, sentence to sentence, with invented drama or hype. I'm looking for the story itself, the coherency of the writing, the connection to the people/subject I'm reading about, to pull me along. And yet, these journalistic kind of books are very popular and well-liked by many for the same reasons they put me off: being snarky, sensationalistic, and self-indulgent. And yes I'm putting Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Woman: An Intimate Geography squarely in that camp. (Also, Early Spring, if you're familiar with that one.)

I really can't stand it. I really, really can't stand it. Well, maybe I can stand it from Dave Barry or Erma Bombeck or Lewis Grizzard, but they write satire and humor. Somehow that's different. You're not supposed to take them seriously- they're being ridiculous; and they're poking fun at themselves as often as at their (additional) subject matter. But with the others, I'm sorry, I didn't pick up those books to be overwhelmed with waves of their oh so obvious talent. If they'd just tell the story without all the tricks that are supposed to keep me reading, maybe their talent (or lack thereof) would speak for itself.

Meh.

That being said, this book, though it read more like a magazine, was very enjoyable. The writing wasn't so full of self-importance that it overrode the story being told. A rare feat, McDougall!

And this story is well worth the read.

Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich

Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich

Patriarchy is the power of the fathers: a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men- by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which everywhere the female is subsumed under the male. It does not necessarily imply that no woman has power, or that all women in a given culture may not have certain powers. (p. 40)

Under patriarchy, I may live in purdah or drive a truck; I may raise my children on a kibbutz or be the sole bread-winner for a fatherless family or participate in a demonstration against abortion legislation with a baby on my back; I may work as a "barefoot doctor" in a village commune in the People's Republic of China, or make my life on a lesbian commune in New England; I may become a hereditary or elected head of state or wash the underwear of a millionaire's wife; I may serve my husband his early morning coffee within the clay walls of a Berber village or march in an academic procession; whatever my status or situation, my derived economic class, or my sexual preference, I live under the power of the fathers, and I have access to only so much of privilege or influence as the patriarchy is willing to accede to me, and only for so long as I will pay the price for male approval. And this power goes much further than laws or customs; in the words of the sociologist Brigitte Berger, "until now a primarily masculine intellect and spirit have dominated in the interpretation of society and culture- whether this interpretation is carried out by males or females... fundamentally masculine assumptions have shaped our whole moral and intellectual history." (p. 41)

Again: some combination or aspect of patriarchal values prevails, whether in an Orthodox Jewish family where the wife mediates with the outer world and earns a living to enable the husband to study Torah;or for the upper-class European or Oriental couple, both professionals, who employ servants for domestic work and a governess for the children. They prevail even where women are the nominal "heads of households". For, much as she may act as the co-equal provider or so-called matriarch within her own family, every mother must deliver her children over within a few years of their birth to the patriarchal system of education, of law, of religion, of sexual codes; she is in fact expected to prepare them to enter that system without rebelliousness or "maladjustment" and to perpetuate it in their own adult lives. (pages 44-45)

Wow.

I'll admit there are some parts that just lost me- I don't see how the quotes fit in etc. - and I'm not sure if it's me or what. But then there are some brilliant passages. Definitely worth reading for those (and how she expands on them). It's nice to see her take on some of the other feminist writers, too, for what it's worth.

>re: Motherhood and Daughterhood

...whatever our rational forgiveness, whatever the individual mother's love and strength, the child in us, the small female who grew up in a male-controlled world, still feels, at moments, wildly unmothered. When we can confront and unravel this paradox, this contradiction, face to the utmost in ourselves the groping passion of that little girl lost, we can begin to transmute it, and the blind anger and bitterness that have repetitiously erupted among women trying to build a movement together [or just living life] can be alchemized. Before sisterhood, there was the knowledge- transitory, fragmented, perhaps, but original and crucial- of mother-and-daughterhood. (p. 226)

Few women growing up in patriarchal society can feel mothered enough; the power of our mothers, whatever their love for us and their struggles on our behalf, is too restricted. And it is the mother through whom patriarchy early teaches the small female her proper expectations. The anxious pressure of one female on another to conform to a degrading and dispiriting role can hardly be termed "mothering", even if she does this believing it will help her daughter to survive.

Many daughters live in rage at their mothers for having accepted, too readily and passively, "whatever comes." A mother's victimization does not merely humiliate her, it mutilates the daughter who watches her for clues as to what it means to be a woman. Like the traditional foot-bound Chinese woman, she passes on her own affliction. The mother's self-hatred and low expectations are the binding-rags for the psyche of the daughter. (pages 246-247)

"I have always gotten more support from men than from women": a cliche of token women, and an understandable one, since we do identify gratefully with anyone who seems to have strengthened us. But who has been in a position to strengthen us? .... Men have been able to give us power, support, and certain forms of nurture, as individuals, when they chose; but the power is always stolen power, withheld from the mass of women in patriarchy. And, finally, I am talking here about a kind of strength which can only be one woman's gift to another, the bloodstream of our inheritance. Until a strong line of love, confirmation, and example stretches from mother to daughter, from woman to woman across the generations, women will still be wandering in the wilderness. (p. 249)

The double messages need to be disentangled. "You can be anything you really want to be" is a half-truth, whatever a woman's class or economic advantages. We need to be very clear about the missing portion, rather than whisper the fearful subliminal message: "Don't go too far." A female child needs to be told, very early, the practical difficulties females have to face in even trying to imagine "what they want to be." ....

"You can be anything you really want to be"- if you are prepared to fight, to create priorities for yourself against the grain of cultural expectations, to persist in the face of misogynist hostility. Interpreting to a little girl, or to an adolescent woman, the kinds of treatment she encounters because she is female, is as necessary as explaining to a nonwhite child reactions based on the color of her skin.

It is one thing to adjure a daughter, along Victorian lines, that her lot is to "suffer and be still," that woman's fate is determined. It is wholly something else to acquaint her honestly with the jeopardy all women live under in patriarchy, to let her know by word and deed that she has her mother's support, and moreover, that while it can be dangerous to move, to speak, to act, each time she suffers rape- physical or psychic- in silence, she is putting another stitch in her own shroud. (pages 251-252)

In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the culture. Throughout this book I have been thrown back on terms like "unchilded", "childless", or "child-free"; we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself. "Unchilded", "childless" simply define her in terms of a lack; even "child-free" suggests only that she has refused motherhood, not what she is about in and of herself. (p. 253)

That is an issue for me. I have for quite a while been tired of being Wo-Man or Fe-Male and I am no longer a girl. I am not merely a wife or a mother or a daughter. Why have we no word? Besides Person which implies that you have no gender whatsoever and so is false. (woman, btw, comes from wif-man, meaning literally wife of man where man means person. so wife of a person. because women weren't persons.)

Ha, she did mention Tellurian, which is so obscure or obsolete that I didn't think anyone else knew it but me and some other nerdy people. It means "of the earth" and I guess if I HAVE to be defined in relation to something, I'd rather it be the earth. But, yeah, still, for now my name will have to do. Minus the patronymic. (Mia MoonRaven doesn't work for me either.)

>Yet ironically, precisely because they were not bound to the cycle of hourly existence with children, because they could reflect, observe, write, such women in the past have given us some of the few available strong insights into the experience of women in general. Without the un-acclaimed research and scholarship of "childless' women, without Charlotte Bronte (who died in her first pregnancy), Margaret Fuller (whose major work was done before her child was born), without George Eliot, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir- we would all today be suffering from spiritual malnutrition as women.

The "unchilded" woman, if such a term makes any sense, is still affected by centuries-long attitudes- on the part of both women and men- towards the birthing, child-rearing function of women. Any woman who believes that the institution of motherhood has nothing to do with her is closing her eyes to crucial aspects of her situation.

Many of the great mothers have not been biological. ... For centuries, daughters have been strengthened and energized by nonbiological mothers, who have combined a care for the practical values of survival with an incitement towards further horizons, a compassion for vulnerability with an insistence on our buried strengths. It is precisely this that has allowed us to survive; not our occasional breakthroughs into tokendom, not our "special cases", although these have been beacons for us, illuminations of what ought to be. (pages 256-257)

>Mothering and nonmothering have been such charged concepts for us, precisely because whichever we did has been turned against us.

To accept and integrate and strengthen both the mother and the daughter in ourselves is no easy matter, because patriarchal attitudes have encouraged us to split, to polarize, these images, and to project all unwanted guilt, anger, shame, power, freedom, onto the "other" woman. But any radical vision of sisterhood demands that we reintegrate them. (p. 257)

I know no woman- virgin, mother, lesbian, married, celibate- whether she earns her keep as a housewife, a cocktail waitress, or a scanner of brain waves- for whom her body is not a fundamental problem: its clouded meaning, its fertility, its desire, its so-called frigidity, its bloody speech, its silences, its changes and mutilations, its rapes and ripenings. (p. 290)

[Women], in the solitary confinement of a life at home enclosed with young children, or in the struggle to mother them while providing for them single-handedly, or in the conflict of weighing her own personhood against the dogma that says she is a mother, first, last, and always. .... the mothers, if we could look into their fantasies- their daydreams and imaginary experiences- we would see the embodiment of rage, of tragedy, of the overcharged energy of love, of inventive desperation, we would see the machinery of institutional violence wrenching at the experience of motherhood. (p. 285)

"My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness... Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance... And yet at other times I am melted with the sense of their helpless, charming, and quite irresistible beauty- their ability to go on loving and trusting- their staunchness and decency and unselfconsciousness. I love them."

- from Adrienne Rich's journal as a young mother, from the back cover

Regenesis, by C.J. Cherryh

Regenesis by C.J. Cherryh

Mind-boggling.

I was going to reread Cyteen first, and then go straight into Regenesis. But something at the last moment urged me to just read Regenesis first. I think that was the better choice. And I think it was wise to wait this long dreadful wait before reading it, so that some of my excitement could temper a bit.

Cyteen is a seminal work, and written decades ago- Regenesis (its sequel) is not supposed to be exactly like Cyteen, or a mere continuation. I will say so, at least. I like it for what it is, and I'm glad I gave myself a chance to understand it on its own.

After that foray into the birthlabs etc, I'm starting Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born (an irresistible juxtaposition). I hope to reread Cyteen (and Regenesis) sometime this year to see how they do flow together, now that I'm not as likely to directly compare them.

_____

The Faded Sun Trilogy (Kesrith, Shon'jir, Kutath) by C.J. Cherryh: 4-1/2 stars

The Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh

The reading of this book (these books) was well-timed for me. It was so apt and I was so engrossed that the household grew jealous of the book: my youngest tried to take it apart, and, when that failed, the cats tried to eat it on two separate occasions. But I would not be turned away, and I was well-rewarded.

Pertinent quotes for me:

"We do not despise your knowledge," said the she'pan. "We simply do not desire it." (p. 125)

He found no limit to what senses could absorb. He felt. He was not numb. He only wished to be... (p. 185)

And from the war there were also men like himself, thousands like himself, who did not know what they were, or from what world; war-born, war-oriented. War was all his life; it had made him move again and again in retreating from it, a succession of refuge creches, of tired overworked women; and then toward it, in schools that prepared him not for trade and commerce but for the front lines. His own accent was unidentifiable, a mingling of all the places he had lived. He had no place. He had for allegiance now nothing but his humanity.

And himself. (p. 322)

All, all those little lights which were suns, and some cloudy aggregates of suns, themselves reduced to dust motes by distance which reached out from himself, who was the center of the universe, and then not- an insignificance, less than the mote of a world, far less than a sun, infinitely less than the vast galaxies, and the distance, the cold, deep distance that never stopped, forever. (p. 513)

He understood one rule, that waste was death; that what one gave the desert it never gave back, to world's end.

He did what he knew to do, which was yield nothing. (p. 571)

Of course, the meaning is to yield nothing that you need, which is implied since the he is of a kind that do not encumber themselves with anything but what is needed- the absolute bare minimum. Determine what that is, hold it to you, and never, no matter what, let it go. Let everything else in the world go, freely and without grief, but never what you need.

Time was not... like beads on a string, event and event and event, from which Darks could sever them, breaking the string. There was only the Now, which extended and embraced all the Past which she contained and the pan'en contained, and all the past which had brought Kutath to this moment; and all the future toward which she led.

She was not single, but universal; she inhaled the all and breathed it through her pores. She Saw, and directed, and it was therefore necessary to do very little, for from the Center, threads ran far. It was that, to believe in one's own Sight. There was no anger, for nothing could cross her. There was no true pride, for she was all-containing. (p. 594)

Humans[,] accustomed to the factual instabilities of their perceptions, even lied, which was to give deliberate inaccuracy to memory, past or future. They existed in complete flux; their memories periodically purged themselves of facts: this was perhaps a necessary reflex in a species which remembered things that had not yet happened and which falsified what had occurred or might occur. (p. 603)

Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov, 5 stars

I know there is a lot of controversy about this book. Whether or not you are inclined to believe it, the work is marvelous nonetheless. And there is truth in it, profound truth, lasting truth- even if you consider the book to be a work of fiction.

This is definitely going in my permanent library.

How can you complain that it's hard to find a "fresh approach"? What is it, a wallet full of money? Can you find a "fresh approach" walking down the street- someone drops it and you pick it up? .... [Y]ou can't find a fresh approach; it has to find you. A fresh approach to music, as I have seen time and time again, usually come to those who have a fresh approach to other aspects of life, to life in general. (p. 72)

At least, it always seems that everything is different today from what it was yesterday. And it will all be different tomorrow. No one knows how, but it will be different. (p. 108)

When he was talking about torture, including the torture of animals, this phrasing caught my attention:

I see a desire to drag animals down to the level of man, so that they can be dealt with like men. (p. 124)

He deals quite a bit with the treatment of the Jews. There is little humor in it, except in this passage, which is simply so absurd:

Recently I went to the Repino station to buy a lemonade. There's a little store, a stall really, that sells everything. There was a line, and a woman in the line, who looked very Jewish and had an accent, began to complain out loud. Why is there such a line, and why are canned peas only sold with something else, and so on.

And the young salesman answered along these lines: "If you're unhappy here, citizeness, why don't you go to Israel? There are no lines there and you can probably buy peas just like that."

So Israel was pictured in a positive way, as a country without lines and with canned peas. And that's a dream for the Soviet consumer, and the line looked with interest at the citizeness who could go to a country where there are no lines and more peas than you could want. (p. 158)

Ah, and it was mentioned that in a backlash against the West, French bread was renamed "city" bread. Everyone is always renaming food to show their disdain for those poor French. (p. 173)

Advice with sardonic insight:

Don't try to save humanity all at once, try saving one person first. It's a lot harder. To help one person without harming another is very difficult. It's unbelievably difficult. That's where the temptation to save all of humanity comes from. And then, invariably, along the way you discover that all humanity's happiness hinges on the destruction of a few hundred million people, that's all. A trifle. (p. 205)

The event described on pages 214-215 is quite horrible, beyond words. And yet it happened.

On censorship:

Soviet man has withstood everything: hunger, and destruction, and wars - one worse than the other- and Stalin's camps. But he won't be able to take that chapter from The Possessed, he'll crack. (p. 269)

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, by Fritz Haeg , Diana Balmori, Rosalind Creasy

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, by Fritz Haeg , Diana Balmori, Rosalind Creasy

For if lawn mowing feels like copying the same sentence over and over, gardening is like writing out new ones, an infinitely variable process of invention and discovery.

/Michael Pollan, Why Mow? (p. 35)

Wonderful book. Especially if you are American.

Innerfar by Gerhard Kopf

Innerfar by Gerhard Kopf

Actually the book I have contains both Innerfar and Bluff, or Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopf. But I’m going to read a library book before I get back to Bluff.

To oversimplify, greatly, and to leave out the cultural significance which is everything but which I am not yet able to describe sufficiently: a once-famous poet turns up in a psychiatric hospital for dementia and schizophrenia, nobody quite realizing who she is, and nobody being able to tell when she is completely disoriented or when she has her moments of absolute clarity and insight which she often expresses in allegory, quotations, or poetic storytelling. This is juxtaposed with the narrator’s remembrances of earlier times with the poet.

The editing in this book is a bit off- sometimes they forgot periods and such, and this was in the afterword by the translator so I know it wasn’t part and parcel of the novel experience. It didn’t make too much difference, the story being so liminal; it just added to the disorientation. Still, one would think they could have attended better.

From reviews (on the linked Amazon page):

Loss and fulfillment cohabit uneasily in the novel as Kopf purposefully blurs the distinction between reality and fantasy, truth and illusion, in order to make a rather Romantic point about the redemptive powers of the imagination.

[T]he book is a search for identity through memory and storytelling.

Here are two quotes from the book that both vie to be my favorite:

Every breath taken is an omission (p. 79)

&

“Praised be the subjunctive and its knight Talander.” (p.102)

(Now I must read August Bohse, who wrote under the pen name Talander.)
and my favorite passage:

Even at the table the doctor has her notebook ready. The murmuring is mentioned as well as several times the expression: “Sausage in your eye.” Also that the patient then points in turn at the sausage slices on the plate and at her left eye, which she has closed.

She kneads false teeth out of the bread.

Carefully she makes the incisors and the jaw teeth, molds a lower jaw- the likeness is astonishing.

Suddenly and unexpectedly she shoves the creation in her mouth.

The doctor asks, writing down at the same time:
“What are you doing, Mrs. Piloti?”

“You don’t play with your food.” Nurse Angela has a serious expression on her face.

“My father always used to say that before he went to Billi. Billi, my teddy bear. But you can see what I’m doing.

I’m making a mouth shoe.”

(p. 55)

It’s a trip. At one point, I was reading such as the above (basically the whole novel is like this), and thinking how familiar it seemed somehow, when son interrupted to tell me, apropos of nothing, that a bank is a wolf house that sells money. And then I looked around at my life with a different perspective and realized why the story was so familiar after all.

But I am not disconsolate at all. That would be out of place.

Finally experience has overtaken longing. Out of the reconciliation of reality and dream she draws unending strength. (p.110)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: 4.5

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This is, indeed, a pretty amazing book.

I was young when it came out, too young to be reading novels like this, so I missed it then. I’ve heard about it, though; in fact, I can’t remember a time before I heard about it- it was always ubiquitous, in the background, taken for granted. It never therefore occurred to me to read it, because I never paid attention to it, never consciously realized it as an option.

Rather ironic, given the nature of the main character, the narrator, one who has been stripped of identity and human existence.

And given the nature of the story itself, bringing to light the cultural assumptions we don’t even realize we have- like the light bulb we never think about until it goes out, or starts flickering. It’s not as if we don’t know there is a light bulb; we just have never thought about it before, because it was always there.

“Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, ‘How can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?’”

Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

The Handmaid’s Tale is powerful and probing and well-done. I won’t say it’s profound- it isn’t, although the questions it raises are- but it’s very good at revealing human-ness and underlying issues. It makes you think, and pay attention.

It reminds me of Orwell’s 1984:

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

but also V for Vendetta:

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.”

It also brings to mind the very real stories of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, South Africa under Apartheid, and many others, some of which are still unfolding around us- including our own.

Our own story, the one we write, is the one we have the most say over. We should be paying more attention. Works of art like this bring culture to our attention, into a place where we can think and talk about it.

Art destroys silence. /Dmitri Shostakovich

From The Handmaid's Tale:

Not a dandelion in sight here, the lawns are picked clean. I long for one, just one, rubbishy and insolently random and hard to get rid of and perennially yellow as the sun. Cheerful and plebeian, shining for all alike. Rings, we would make from them, and crowns and necklaces, stains from the bitter milk on our fingers. (p. 275-6)

I feel this way. I don’t have the particular problem of being denied access to dandelions, as I let them grow and they will always grow if you let them. But this description, this is why I love dandelions, too. They are my favorite flower. They are free and glorious and come complete with crowns and wishes, salad and tea.

Sometimes I look around the city and am overwhelmed with the wish for dandelions everywhere- bursting forth from cracks in the sidewalks, between concrete steps, along the sides of the roads where asphalt meets the curb. Forests of dandelions, knee-high, shoulder-high, rising up, sundering all.

Sandburg wrote, “I am the grass, let me work.” The grass will bury the dead, subsume the ghosts, restore innocence to the world.

I respect the grass. (I grok grass.) But I think something wilder is needed this time around. Something that we won’t simply tame and use to our advantage, so as to feel even more like gods- something that, instead, will untame us. Slip us out of culture and dogma and back into childhood and possibility and the joy of just being human. I think we need dandelions.