I mean I want to see

Read this

I’VE finally read From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, which I absolutely adore. I hold it close to my heart. I want to be in the book. It’s about a precocious 12-year-old runaway who decides to stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with her younger brother — she’s chosen him as he has a secret stash of cash. So off they go, with their trumpet and violin cases packed full of books, and embark on a week-long adventure.

I love how the relationship between the siblings is described — it’s great in a family when you not only love one another, but like one another too.

*

Jamie waited while she thought. “Well? What do you say? Want to wait until Friday?”

Claudia hesitated only a minute more before deciding. “No, we have to go on Wednesday. I’ll write you full details of my plan. You must show the plan to no one. Memorize all the details; then destroy my note.”

“Do I have to eat it?” Jamie asked.

“Tearing it up and putting it in the trash would be much simpler. No one in our family but me ever goes through the trash. And I only do it if it is not sloppy and not full of pencil sharpener shavings. Or ashes.”

“I’ll eat it. I like complications,” Jamie said.

“You must also like wood pulp,” Claudia said. “That’s what paper is made of, you know.”

*

As soon as they reached the sidewalk, Jamie made his first decision as treasurer. “We’ll walk from here to the museum.”

“Walk?” Claudia asked. “Do you realize that it is over forty blocks from here?”

“Well, how much does the bus cost?”

“The bus!” Claudia exclaimed. “Who said anything about taking a bus? I want to take a taxi.”

“Claudia,” Jamie said, “You are quietly out of your mind. How can you even think of a taxi? We have no more allowance. No more income. You can’t be extravagant any longer. It’s not my money we’re spending. It’s our money. We’re in this together, remember?”

“You’re right,” Claudia answered. “A taxi is expensive. A bus is cheaper. It’s only twenty cents each. We’ll take the bus.”

“Only twenty cents each. That’s forty cents total. No bus. We’ll walk.”

“We’ll wear out forty cents worth of shoe leather,” Claudia mumbled. “You’re sure we have to walk?”

“Positive,” Jamie answered. “Which way do we go?”

“Sure you won’t change your mind?” The look on Jamie’s face gave her the answer. She sighed. No wonder Jamie had more than twenty-four dollars; he was a gambler and a cheapskate. If that’s the way he wants to be, she thought, I’ll never again ask him for bus fare; I’ll suffer and never, never let him know about it. But he’ll regret it when I simply collapse from exhaustion. I’ll collapse quietly.

*

Saturday seemed a good day for housekeeping chores. There would be no school groups for them to join. Claudia suggested that they eat both meals outside the museum. Jamie agreed. Claudia next suggested a real sit-down restaurant with tablecloths on the tables and waiters to serve you. Jamie said “NO” with such force that Claudia didn’t try to persuade him.

*

Claudia began her studies never doubting that she could become an authority that morning. She had neither pencil nor paper to make notes. And she knew she wouldn’t have a lot of time to read. So she decided that she would simply remember everything, absolutely everything that she read. Her net profit, therefore, would be as great as that of someone who read a great deal but remembered very little.

*

Jamie couldn’t control his smile. He said, “You know, Claude, for a sister and a fussbudget, you’re not too bad.”

Claudia replied, “You know, Jamie, for a brother and a cheapskate, you’re not too bad.”

Something happened at precisely that moment. Both Claudia and Jamie tried to explain to me about it, but they couldn’t quite. I know what happened, though I never told them. Having words and explanations for everything is too modern. I especially wouldn’t tell Claudia. She has too many explanations already.

What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they had acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. Becoming a team didn’t mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats. To an outsider the arguments would appear to be the same because feeling like part of a team is something that happens invisibly. You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time — especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other.

*

“Come along, Sir James. To our bath. Bring your most elegant pajamas. The ones embroidered in gold with silver tassels will do.”

“Where, dear Lady Claudia, dost thou expect to bathe?”

“In the fountain, Sir James. In the fountain.”

Jamie extended his arm, which was draped with his striped flannel pajamas, and said, “Lady Claudia, I knew that sooner or later you would get me to that restaurant.”

(It makes me furious to think that I must explain that restaurant to you, Saxonburg. I’m going to make you take me to lunch in there one day soon. I just this minute became determined to get you into the museum. You’ll see later how I’m going to do it. Now about the restaurant. It is built around a gigantic fountain. Water in the fountain is sprayed from dolphins sculptured in bronze. The dolphins appear to be leaping out of the water. On the backs are figures representing the arts, figures that look like water sprites. It is a joy to sit around that wonderful fountain and to snack petit fours and sip expresso coffee. I’ll bet that you’d even forget yhour blasted ulcer while you ate there.)

Lady Claudia and Sir James quietly walked to the entrance of the restaurant. They easily climbed under the velvet rope that meant that the restaurant was closed to the public. Of course they were not the public. They shed their clothes and waded into the fountain. Claudia had taken powdered soap from the restroom. She had ground it out into a paper towel that morning. Even though it was freezing cold, she enjoyed her bath. Jamie, too, enjoyed his bath. For a different reason.

When he got into the pool, he found bumps on the bottom, smooth bumps. When he reached down to feel one, he found that it moved! He could even pick it up. He felt its cool roundness and splashed his way over to Claudia. “Income, Claudia, income!” he whispered.

Claudia understood immediately and began to scoop up bumps she had felt on the bottom of the fountain. The bumps were pennies and nickels people had pitched into the fountain to make a wish. At least four people had thrown in dimes and one had tossed in a quarter.

“Some one very rich must have tossed in that quarter,” Jamie whispered.

“Some one very poor,” Claudia corrected. “Rich people only have penny wishes.”

Together they collected $2.87. They couldn’t hold more in their hands. They were shivering when they got out. Drying themselves as best they could with paper towels (also taken from the restroom), they hurried into their pajamas and shoes.

They finished their preparations for the night, took a small snack and decided it was safe to wander back into the Great Hall to look again at their Angel.

“I wish I could hug her,” Claudia whispered.

“They probably bugged her already. Maybe that light is part of the alarm. Better not touch. You’ll set it off.”

“I said ‘hug’ not ‘bug’. Why would I want to bug her?”

“That makes more sense than to hug her.”

“Silly. Shows how much you know. When you hug someone, you learn something else about them. An important something else.”

Jamie shrugged his shoulders.

Both looked at Angel a long time. “What do you think?” Jamie asked. “Did he or didn’t he?”

Claudia answered, “A scientist doesn’t make up his mind until he’s examined all the evidence.”

“You sure don’t sound like a scientist. What kind of scientist would want to hug a statue?”

Claudia was embarrassed, so she spoke sternly, “We’ll go to bed now, and we’ll think about the statue very hard. Don’t fall asleep until you’ve really thought about the statue and Michelangelo and the entire Italian Renaissance.”

And so they went to bed. But lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that. It was very difficult for Jamie to control his thoughts when he was tired, sleepy, and lying on his back. He never liked to get involved just before falling asleep. But Claudia had planned on their thinking, and she was good at planning. So think he did. Clouds bearing thoughts of the Italian Renaissance drifted away. Thoughts of home, and more thoughts of home settled down.

“Do you miss home?” he asked Claudia.

“Not too much,” she confessed. “I haven’t thought about it much.”

Jamie was quiet for a minute, then he said, “We probably have no conscience. I think we ought to be homesick. Do you think Mom and Dad raised us wrong? They’re not very mean, you know; don’t you think that should make us miss them?”

Claudia was silent. Jamie waited. “Did you hear my question, Claude?”

“Yes. I heard your question. I’m thinking.” She was quiet for a while longer. Then she asked, “Have you ever been homesick?”

“Sure.”

“When was the last time?”

“That day Dad dropped us off at Aunt Zell’s when we took Mom to the hospital to get Kevin.”

“Me too. That day,” Claudia admitted. “But, of course, I was much younger then.”

“Why do you suppose we were homesick that day? We’ve been gone much longer than that now.”

Claudia thought. “I guess we were worried. Boy, had I known then that she was going to end ujp with Kevin, I would have known why we were worried. I remember you sucked your thumb and carried around that old blanket the whole day. Aunt Zell kept trying to get the blanket away from you so that she could wash it. It stank.”

Jamie giggled. “Yeah, I guess homesickness is like sucking your thumb. It’s what happens when you’re not very sure of yourself.”

“Or not very well trained,” Claudia added. “Heaven knows, we’re well trained. Just look how nicely we’ve managed. It’s really their fault if we’re not homesick.”

Jamie was satisfied. Claudia was more. “I’m glad you asked about that homesickness, Jamie. Somehow, I feel older now. But, of course, that’s mostly because I’ve been the oldest child forever. And I’m extremely well adjusted.”

They went to sleep then. Michelangelo, Angel, and the entire Italian Renaissance waited for them until morning.

(End of excerpts)
*

A graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University, Mrs Konigsburg did research into organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburg and taught science at a school for girls before becoming a full-time writer.

WATCHED Charade, which is one of the most enjoyable, classy, snappy movies I’ve seen.

A: Do you know what’s wrong with you?
B shakes his head.
A: Nothing!

B: How would you like a spanking?
A: How would you like a punch in the face?

A: You don’t look so bad in this kind of light.
B: Why do you think I brought you here?
A: I thought you’d like me to see the kind of work the competition was turning up.
B: Pretty good huh. I taught them everything they do.
A: Oh did they do that kind of thing way back in your day?
B: Sure. How did you think I got here?

A: I already know an awful lot of people and until one of them dies I couldn’t possibly meet anyone else.

A: Why do people have to tell lies?
B: Usually it’s because they want something. They are afraid the truth won’t get it for them.

A: Of course, you won’t be able to lie on your back for a while but then you can lie from any position, can’t you?

A: You’re blocking my view.
B: Oh. Which view would you prefer?
A: The one you’re blocking.

Oh, and the setting in Paris! And Audrey Hepburn’s dressing! So lovely visually.

By W.H. Auden

AS I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
TIll China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.

I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry,
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or today.

‘Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare at the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant in enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand in the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

*

China is part of the Asian continent; Pakistan, part of the Asian subcontinent, which also includes India, Bangladesh, and part of Nepal. They are, literally, worlds — and at one time, an entire ocean — apart. The triangular continental plate we know as the subcontinent was once part of Antarctica. Some 70 million years ago it had reached what was the southern coast of Asia and began to slide beneath it, pushing it upward. This southern shore, once at sea level, took the full force of the collision and is now the Karakorams, the Black Gravel Range, home to many of the world’s highest peaks. The shavings, curling up eastward from the collision, became the Himalayas. The collision never really ended. It is still happening, millimeter by millimeter, every second of every hour. Earthquakes are daily occurrences. Glaciers move the distance of more than six football fields in a twenty-four-hour period and have to be bombed by the Pakistani air force when they threaten roads and villages. The Karakorams — geologically perhaps the earth’s most violent transition zone — are a lesson in the impermanence of everything and how the only really accurate map is one in constant motion.

–Robert Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth

*

A (on obsessions): I wonder if it’s possible to develop autism late in life.

I’m watching movies now in the same way that you see little kids scarfing down a bowl of ice cream. The desire to consume is so huge and so urgent that it is barely possible to enjoy the ice cream as it is going down. Even as the consumption is going on, the soul is screaming out: MORE, MORE.

REWATCHING On The Waterfront. The union mobsters are born and bred in a world of corruption, so doing the right thing is doing whatever you need to get to the top of that world. Not to question the parameters of the world: It’s just climbing up. And the sense of family Terry got — the physical affection between him and Johnny is so well done in the opening scenes — from them is real, which makes his decision all the much harder.

All the actors’ work is amazing: there’s so much realism, actors as real as the documentary-looking scenery of Hoboken where it was filmed in that blindingly cold New York winter. The ragged faces of the real dock workers, getting out in the streets. So different from Woody Allen’s Manhattan of Gershwin and avenues.

And of course, the scene in the car, which I can’t get tired of watching. Five minutes of beautiful film and filled with the focus and all that the actors can bring to the scene.

*

Also watched Sleeper, and I can’t stop laughing over the Blanche DuBois section with Keaton as Brando (”Well I say Hah! You hear me? Hah! Hah!”). Diane Keaton is such a gem!

From Bringing Up Baby, an utterly delightful screwball comedy with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn:

Clever book covers

CHECK out this collection of book covers.

*

WATCHED Annie Hall, and I LURVE it. LUFF it. Great lines all around, some of the best were given to the incidental characters.

I’ve to start doling out good movies to myself in controlled amounts, or I run the risk of quivering psychological collapse. Life’s been so full.

Checked out some books I’m really excited about from the library, I’m working my way through the 800-page Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and having a great deal of rollicking fun. Read LA Confidential, but I really prefer the movie, Ellroy’s writing was nothing to get excited about, while the acting by Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe was absolutely impeccable in the film. Have high expectations for Hopeful Monsters.

Also have to start reading Robert Kaplan, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Rebecca West for my non-fiction fix.

- To make orchids bloom again, you’ve to “stress” them by not watering or feeding them so often. If they get too comfortable they become “complacent” and just keep sprouting leaves.

- “Tubing” down a river involves sitting on a tyre with beer in hand.

- Laotian vegetables are very sweet, and Laotion people, dogs and mosquitoes (”easier to kill”) are laid-back and live life seemingly in slow motion. Laotian coffee is also very yummy, but is not available for export.

*

You must learn now, that the important lesson - as long as you have your health - is that the divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist, worrying and yawning.

– Christ In The House Of Martha And Mary, A.S. Byatt

*

Fashion critique: “It looks like a fabric morgue.”

On Chinese proverbs and breasts (don’t ask): “Hi, I’m a sparrow. I’m so small that I don’t have space for a liver. Or a brain….Hi, I’m an Asian woman, I’m so small that I don’t come with breasts.”

I LOVE this movie — the glove scene (one of the BEST love scenes ever, please, I entreat you, go rent the movie and watch it) where Marlon Brando detains Eva Marie Saint by stroking then putting on the glove she drops, Brando’s eyes expressing his struggle, shame, guilt — he never condescends to the character, or play Terry any dumber or cruder than he has too — the subtlety of the acting and directing, the documentary feel of shooting on location in Hoboken. The cab scene with Charlie — acting doesn’t come better than what those two did — it’s no typical conflict, it’s heartbreak, disappointment, tenderness. love it love it LOVE it. It’s got heart, suspense, crime, struggle, growth, depth, love, lost love, failed love, loss of trust, the gaining of hope.

I love the way Marlon Brando makes his choices when he’s playing characters — his choice of tenderly pushing the gun away in the cab — how he uses things around him, the glove, the kitten in Godfather, for instance. Steiger was great! Look at that “Oh Johnny” expression in the car.

And I’m dying because I can’t watch A Streetcar Named Desire (and other movies I checked out from the library) because of DVD region compatibility blah. Dying!

Also: Who is Kazan? He’s amazing.

NOW that I’ve been raving about movies to everyone, the pile of things to discover is heaping up as recommendations come in. Montgomery Clift next! Excerpt from Peter Bogdonavich’s Who The Hell’s In It:

Clift had been a kind of unacknowledged leader. His performances in Howard Hawks’ Red River (his first movie, though Fred Zinneman’s The Search was released earlier), in William Wyler’s The Heiress, in George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun, heralded a new acting style. It came to be known, inaccurately, as the Method. After Clift came Brando, and after Brando, James Dean. Clift was the purest, the least mannered of these actors, perhaps the most sensitive, certainly the most poetic. He was also remarkably beautiful. Over eight years he acted in eight films, became a teenage heartthrob as well as a popular star with older audiences. He was nominated for Best Actor Oscars three times in six years and should have won each time. He gave at least four performances - in Red River, in A Place in the Sun, in I Confess and in Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity - that remain among the finest anyone has given in the movies.

And also Cary Grant. Am still working on my Al Pacino/Marlon Brando kick — I’ve drawn up lists of movies to watch, googled extensively, and am contemplating an index card system.

Also, everyone, read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It’s A+ material. I am enraptured, and will write more at length — in the meantime I’m devouring Strong Motion, by Franzen too, before the book’s due back at the library tomorrow. I leave you with these reviews:

“It’s a big, showy powerhouse of a novel, revved up with ideas but satisfyingly beholden to the traditions of character and plot. (…) The greatest strength of The Corrections, and there are many, is its skillful narrative relativism, the way it delivers one version of the truth about a character, then fleshes out that reality over time into something larger and more complex.”

- Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe

“People who read this book will laugh and fidget at the dynamic ironies and the journalistic lists, but it’s the lostness they’ll remember, and the way this lostness plays into the lives of the others.(…) The Corrections is a sometimes beautifully woven narrative of disappointments, costly gains and impending losses.”

- Andrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books

*

Meanwhile, I’m rolling with laughter over this — �I can�t believe you just called me a Ferrero Rocher. Look, that�s Cindy! �Crusty on the outside, a nut on the inside!��

I LOVE this song by Don Henley: Heard it on the radio and found it again. It reflects part of my mental landscape this year.

And I thought of all the bad luck,
And the struggles we went through
And how I lost me and you lost you
What are these voices outside love’s open door
Make us throw off our contentment
And beg for something more?

There are people in your life who’ve come and gone
They let you down and hurt your pride
Better put it all behind you; life goes on
You keep carrin’ that anger, it’ll eat you inside

I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore

I;ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter
Because the flesh will get weak
And the ashes will scatter
So I;m thinkin’ about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore

I love this line “how I lost me, and you lost you” — and the image of love’s open door. And how you’ll heal. One moment I was damaged and isolated, and then I’d rejoined the human race.

*

Remember that feeling of: This encounter is going to change my life. Hitting that deep-vibrant mode that resonates — that sometimes jolts you and rattles your teeth and shakes your hairpins out. And laughter, laughter.

I CANNOT stop raving about The Godfather, and getting into conversations where we say in all seriousness things like: “In the Aristotleian sense, the movie belongs to Al Pacino, but Marlon Brando owns the scenes.” (So we have this running gag now: “In the Aristotleian sense this salmon is really good, but the tofu owns the scene…Oh, so this meal is a tragedy now? It has a plot?” “I had to go out after work and get a beer. I needed a drink in the Aristotleian sense.” “You must learn to resolve this conflict in the Aristotleian sense.”)

And also went into monologue mode about The Dead, which has the best last paragraph ever. Just read this:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted upon the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly though the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

The music of “falling faintly” and “faintly falling”, how Gabriel comes to awareness, the scope and tenderness of it. My heart literally ACHES when I read this story. I love this story for Joyce’s tenderness that comes after all the other stories in Dubliners, I love how it opens up like a hand. I have had absolutely profound experiences, reading the story. Soul-growth moments.

Here’s an essay by Mary Gordon:

Mary Gordon on James Joyce’s “The Dead”

It begins with a slap in the face. “Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet.”

Well, and did you fall for that one? Literally? Don’t you know the difference between literally and figuratively? You’re no better than Lily herself, are you? Or perhaps you’re not Lily, but the garrulous speaker of the second paragraph, the platitude-spouting fool. “It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan’s annual dance … Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style as long as anyone could remember … Though their life was modest they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout.”

“The Dead” is built around a party, and for most of its duration we, like partygoers, swim in a clamor of voices, not only Gabriel’s and the omniscient narrator’s. Even Gabriel has many voices. There is the self-conscious Gabriel, the prissy Gabriel, the pompous Gabriel, the affectionate Gabriel, the lustful Gabriel. But many others speak: Miss Ivors, the political nettler; Mr. Browne with his forced jokes; Freddy Malins, who’s just a little bit “screwed”; his mother, who tells us everything is “beautiful”, including the fish her son-in-law caught in Scotland and had boiled for their dinner by the innkeeper. There is the novelettish voice of such sentences as “Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief,” and the society-page gabble of “the acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time.” There is Aunt Julia’s voice singing “Arrayed for the Bridal” and Bartell D’Arcy’s singing “The Lass of Aughrim.” There is the voice of Patrick Morkan, Gabriel’s grandfather, imitated by Gabriel: the very model of a stuffy twit when his h orse makes a fool of him by walking round and round the statue of the King: “Go on, sir! What do you mean, sir? … Most extraordinary conduct! Can’t understand the horse!”

To add to the tumult, Joyce offers us a series of lists, giving us information we have no need of: things that are only there for the pleasure of their naming. Guests are introduced briefly, for the sound of their names: Mr. Bergin, Mr. Kerrigan, Miss Power, Miss Furlong, Miss Daly. There are the secondhand booksellers on the Dublin quays: Hickey’s on Bachelor’s Walk, Webb’s and Massey’s on Aston’s Quay, O’Clohissey’s in the by-street. And, most important, the meal spread out before us, like Homer’s catalogue of ships. Followed by dessert, the sweetmeats joined together by their jumpy integument of “and’s”.

This is the hubbub of realims, the buzz and Babel of the nineteenth century. Words, words, words, talk talk talk, and in so many voices, such an abundance that of course there must be misunderstandings and mistakes. “The Dead” is chock full of mistakes, beginning with Gabriel’s ill-considered joshing of Lily about her beau, to which she replies, “The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.” Twice, Aunt Julia misunderstands: she doesn’t know what galoshes are and doesn’t get Gabriel’s reference to the Three Graces. Browne repeated calls Freddy Malins Teddy and embarrasses the young laides by telling the kind of joke they don’t like. Errors of tone abound. Gabriel takes the wrong tone in responding to Miss Ivors’s political challenge, and he mistakes the pressure of her hand for a conciliatory gesture, when it is really a prelude to her standing on tiptoe to whisper into his ear: “West Briton.” Aunt Kate offers an ill-considered criticism of the pope’s decision to banish women from choirs in favor of young boys, and she is chastised for doing this in the presence of Mr. Browne, who is of “the other persuasion”. A conversation about monks sleeping in their coffin is dropped because it is too “lugubrious”. And Freddy is ready to pick a fight in defense of a black opera singer whom no one, in fact, has criticized. “And why couldn’t he have a voice too? Is it because he’s only a black?”

The mistakes and misunderstandings seem to be smoothed over by Gabriel’s speech in praise of his aunts and cousin, whom he compliments for their hospitality, their harmoniousness. There is the bustle of leave-taking, when Freddy Malins and Mr. Browne can’t make the cabdriver understand them, and everyone shouts directions from the door, only adding to the confusion. Finally, the cab takes off, and upstairs there is the sound of music.

In the quiet surrounded by music, Gabriel sees his wife standing on the stairs. “There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of.”

We usually think of mistakes as affairs of language, a by-blow of the very separateness that causes us to wish to communicate with one another. But what Gabriel perceives and tries to create in silence — a woman who is a symbol — constitutes the central mistake both of his life and of the story. He assumes that the light in her eyes and the color on her cheeks have to do with him, as he will later assume that she has understood his desire for her and shared it. In his silent creation of Gretta — a creation brought about without a word from her — Gabriel has misconstrued the woman he has lived beside. Just as the narrator refers to Gretta only as Mrs. Conroy or Gabriel’s wife, Gabriel assumes that Gretta’s whole identity is connected to him. It is only after she speaks what is in her heart, after she tells her story, that the vision which both takes in and transcends separateness can occur.

She tells him of a boy she knew as a young girl in the West Country, a boy who died for love of her. Afterward, she sleeps. And in this silence, the silence which comes after true speech, Gabriel is transformed from petty if dutiful pedant to a man of vision.

The process happens in stages. He is dully angry, and this anger rekindles his lust. He is jealous. He is ironic. He feels humiliated, seeing himself as far less than the boy who died for her. When he speaks, his voice is “humble and indifferent,” the humility and indifference Joyce thought to be the necessary conditions of the true artist. Then he is terrfied at the “impalpable and vindictive being … coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world.” He notes that Gretta’s not as young as she used to be and feels disgust for the reality of her body, represented by her petticoat string and the limp upper of her boot.

He thinks of his Aunt Julia’s impending death, and this thought, born of benevolence, leads him to understand that to be alive is to be in the process of becoming a shade. Tears fill his eyes, and his blurred physical vision allows him to imagine the dead boy — a shade, to be sure, but standing near, under a dripping tree. Gabriel loses himself, that distinct and separate self by which he has been able to be named. He is among the dead.

“His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world in itself which these had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.” What a strange word, the word “reared”. What does it imply? That the dead have nurtured the world we think of as the real one as parents “rear” a child, feeding it, sheltering it, educating it, until it is ready to leave them?

Gabriel’s vision takes him to the graveyard where the boy is buried. The snow is falling. In the extraordinary last paragraph of “The Dead”, the word “falling” is repeated seven times: seven, the theologically magic number, the number of the seven deadly sins, the seven moral virtues, the seven corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

The vagueness of the flickering shades subsides. Gabriel sees the snow on “the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns,” those singular sharp things asserting, inexorably, their individuality, their separateness from their fellows. But the snow that is falling generally falls on them all alike and muffles their sharpness, their distinctness. “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

Consider the daring of Joyce’s final repetitions and reversals: “falling faintly, faintly falling” — a triumph of pure sound, of language as music. No one has ever equaled it; it makes those who have come after him pause for a minute, in awed gratitude, in discouragement. How can any of us come up to it? Only, perhaps, humbly, indifferently, in its honor and its name, to try.

And he did it all when he was twenty-five. The bastard.

*

I like the sounds of these words:

Malfeasance
Syphilis (”It sounds so pretty. Like what you’d name a child.”)
Elixir
Liquor
Oceanographer

I also like this sentence by Franzen:

Melanie could make her voice beautiful when she chose. It was like a brook in a valley running in and out of the sunshine and pooling among willows, the clear kind of brook you want to plunge your hands into and drink from and forget about the deer carcasses and feedlots upstream, which may not even be there anyway.

Photos from here

I’VE always been blown away by the work of Wing Shya. He’s a Hong Kong based photographer who is best known as the exclusive still photographer and graphic designer for director Wong Kar-wai’s films and projects. You can just feel the themes of time, memory, nostalgia, missed connections, and melancholy in his work.

His fashion editorial work — see above — is also absolutely stunning. I’m wiping the drool off my keyboard. The light and the placing of the figures remind me of Hopper and Vetriano.

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I’m so excited! For my Pacino/Marlon Brando kick: Got Dog Day Afternoon, On The Waterfront, Streetcar Named Desire videos!!! And listening to David Brubeck, and am blown away by the musicality, the joy, the beauty of his music. Everyone has to go listen to Take Five — the tempo shifts, counterpoint, everything. Thelonious Monk, too. Genius.

Credit: ???

FIRST off, I’ve just watched The Godfather I and II. In fact, I’m going to watch the movies again after I finish writing this, and I’m all togged out in comfy pajamas, with green tea ice cream and cashews. Am absolutely blown away, and am blabbering about the movies nonstop to anyone who will listen. Reactions range from bemused to excited (”I watch it once every two months!”) to incredulous (”How did you live for so long without watching The Godfather?”) Discussions aplenty on scenes and characters and how they got offed. It’s really awesome stuff. And oh, Marlon Brando, I think it’s the start of an obsession.

It’s really ridiculous how few movies I’ve seen. Am on a rampage to rectify all of that. I’ve added a “To watch” section under the “To read” page.

Am also cramming myself with Jonathan Franzen’s works — I really love The Corrections — he is so fascinated with life, clever and rapier-sharp and plural and exciting. There’s electricity in his works, and generosity too. On top of that I’m throwing myself into my Graham Greene and James Joyce obsessions. I used to be able to go into sustained monologues about Joyce — I’ve forgotten how much I’ve forgotten. I’m beginning to regain that sense of brimming over again, of unrestrained bubbling enthusiasm. Life is full!

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Also coming up with pretentious blog titles for a lark — my previous blogs have been named “Pandora’s Box” (I was 20) and then “The Proper Binge” for a few years. You’ll see different titles and quotations popping up now and then, I’ll try to be as ridiculous as possible.

*

I’ve finally gotten an iPod! I’d bellyached over it for years while I continued to burn my CDs to put into my trusty 5-year-old Sony Discman — but I finally forked out and it’s totally worth it. This experience is sending me into some kind of manic revelatory ecstasy, and I’m jittering on the edge of psychological collapse. I’ve been busy burning and importing and syncing — I’ve to reload it, I think, I’ve got 7 Libertangos (4 of them the same), for instance, in the iPod now. And my colleague’s offloading her jazz collection with me 10 CDs at a time — started after I raved about Sarah Vaughan’s voice to her after E showed me jazz was not boring and “goes round and round and round”. OMG, Julie London! Dinah Washington! Coltrane! Vistas and vistas opening.

THIS collection of bad lyrics made me laugh:

Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak
Somewhere in this town
“Jailbreak” - Thin Lizzy

There’s gonna be a jailbreak? Somewhere in this town? Where now? Maybe AT THE JAIL?

*

Is that yo ass, or yo momma half reindeer?
“Shake Ya Tailfeather” Nelly, Diddy, Murphy Lee

It doesn’t even make sense, y’all. First of all, where did I miss the memo that having reindeer-like hind quarters was something to covet? Probably that same memo that explained to me what I should drop like it’s hot, and how to make it clap. Regardless, shouldn’t he be telling the girl that her ass implies that she’s 1/4 sleigh-puller, rather than making it an either/or? My dad used to say, “did you walk to school or bring your lunch?” Which is completely stupid right? Same thing. Truly, to be sharing a song with Puffy Combs and have the worst lyrics is an accomplishment. Which brings me to. . . .

*

You can say that I’m one curly fry in the box of the regular
Messing with the flavor oh the flavor that you savor
Saving me for last but you better not eat me at all
Living in a fast food bag making friends with the ketchup and salt
“Too Much Food” Jason Mraz

*

Blah blah blah
We’re not Christian Rock
Blah blah blah
I’m a total flop ass llama
Blah blah blah
Scotty likes Chicken
Blah blah blah
WRIII AAHHHHHMS WRYYYYY OOHEN!!
Creed, Any Creed Song

I don’t need to say anything.

*

Making love to a vampire with a monkey on my knee
“Making love to a vampire with a monkey on my knee” - Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band

For those of you who are familiar with Mr. Beefheart you can see my dilemma in choosing one lyrics of which to find “bad”. Such classics as “Ashtray Heart” and “Frownland” come to mind, but none as boldly retarded as MLTAVWAMOMK.

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“The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops
The raindrops”
Radiohead, Sit down. Stand up.

Thom Yorke’s THE RAINDROPS key must be stuck on his keyboard.

To change your life: Start immediately; do it flamboyantly; no exceptions.

– William James

IN BALI we went around the table and said which books had the most impact on us. I said Ulysses, but I’d forgotten much of the electric obsession I had when I first read it. The book burnt itself into my psyche as something new, something fabulous, something so exciting that I couldn’t even bear it. All I wanted to do was know how he had learned how to do that. I’ve always wanted to follow the ones who held the brightest torches, and Joyce was one of the brightest.

*

THEY will be “always people” in my life. They won’t just drop out of sight and heart and mind, like some of the others. I have known this for a while, but it still amazes me.

A (poking at a crab shell): Eat the crab placentas, it’s the most nutritious part of the crabs. Placenti? Placentas?
B: It’s the roe right.
C: Only mammals have placentas. Placenti. Crabs lay eggs. So that can’t be the placenta.
A: I cannot believe we’re having this conversation.

(Discussing Ferberisation)
D: So the theory goes…
E (a mother looking aghast): It’s not a theory!
…
A: But there’s sometimes a reason why they cry. Like if they’ve a fever. Dying of a fever.
D: Yeah then the kid will be silent…because he’s dead. Good point.

D (to friends from London): So there’s that durian place opposite. But don’t go there, it’s expensive. It’s named Four Seasons Durian. That’s like the Ritz-Carlton Durian.

C: My friends tend to be inward-looking and endearingly neurotic.
A (turning away and looking around out of the window in an exaggerated manner): Who? I’m outward looking.

“A great writer within any culture changes everything. Because the thing is different afterwards and people comprehend themselves differently. If you take Ireland before James Joyce, and Ireland fifty years afterwards, the reality of being part of the collective life is enhanced and changed.”

– Seamus Heaney

BOUGHT Atonement at Borders a couple of weeks ago, which I read earlier this year.

I had no idea what will happen, but oh, I take comfort (weirdly) from the fact that the name of the book is Atonement, and not Shrieking Revenge or Hatred Forever or You Ruined My Life. Through all the chaos, and pain, with characters lives being ruined, literally, I hold onto the fact, “Okay, hold on, hold on….McEwan called this book Atonement…Hang on, hang on.”

*

There is a difference between being a genius who can work and a genius who cannot work. Zelda may have had some kind of genius for SOMEthing (her letters to Scott are unbelievable) - but it was Scott who sat down every day, and wrote, and worked, and sent stuff out, and corrected stuff, and re-edited stuff - THAT is an artist. The mixture of inspiration and discipline. Zelda, paralyzed by her own needs, her own desire to be an artist, did nothing. Wrote one novel, which failed miserably. And that was that.

All these biographies, subtle or not, are valuable, and not only for the sake of justice (when that is what they achieve) but because they tell an important truth about how artists get their work done. Many people are brilliant, and from that you may get one novel, as Zelda Fitzgerald did. But to write five novels (Scott) or seventeen (Nabokov) — to make a career you must have, with brilliance, a number of less glamorous virtues, for example, patience, resilience, and courage. Lucia Joyce encountered obstacles and threw up her hands; James Joyce faced worse obstacles for most of his writing life, publishers ran from him in droves but he persisted. When the critics made fun of Zelda’s novel, she stopped publishing; when Scott had setbacks indeed, when he was a falling-down drunk he went on hoping, and working.

*

Heard a ruan jamming at a concert tonight, which was totally awesome. The soloist played 《云南回忆》 by Liu Xing (刘星). Excerpt here.

One-down for today —

A (looking at a library book with a sticker on the cover): What’s The Chable?
B: …It’s The Untouchable.

The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass

The thing is…

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

Some Advice From A Mother To Her Married Son
by Judith Viorst

The answer to do you love me isn’t, I married you, didn’t I?
Or, Can’t we discuss this after the ballgame is through?
It isn’t, Well that all depends on what you mean by ‘love’.
Or even, Come to bed and I’ll prove that I do.
The answer isn’t, How can I talk about love when
the bacon is burned and the house is an absolute mess and
the children are screaming their heads off and
I’m going to miss my bus?
The answer is yes.
The answer is yes.
The answer is yes.

I’M opening windows and inviting the light in, saying yes to life, yes to love, meeting new and interesting people, and I know that all is well and I am safe. And I know who I am, what I can do, where I want to put my energies, and just as importantly, where I don’t.

Have been busy journalling my Bali experiences and writing to friends and sorting out some new feelings, seeing how everyone’s trying to do the best they can. E pointed this article out yesterday: Once we understand the importance of our past conditioning, we can experience a paradigm shift in the way we see things. To make large changes in our lives, we must work on the basic paradigms through which we see the world.

One of the important lessons I’ve taken from this year is to be proactive –

“We can choose to be reactive to our environment. For example, if the weather is good, we will be happy. If the weather is bad, we will be unhappy. If people treat us well, we will feel well; if they don’t, we will feel bad and become defensive. We also can choose to be proactive and not let our situation determine how we will feel. Reactive behavior can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. By accepting that there is nothing we can do about our situation, we in fact become passive and do nothing.

“The first habit of highly effective people is proactivity. Proactive people are driven by values that are independent of the weather or how people treat them. Gandhi said, “They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them.” Our response to what happened to us affects us more than what actually happened. We can choose to use difficult situations to build our character and develop the ability to better handle such situations in the future.

“Proactive people use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them. Being proactive means assessing the situation and developing a positive response for it.”

*

To read: Han Suyin.

- THE first scene of Hensher’s The Northern Clemency, and the snake on pavement scene.
- Chip selling off all his books for Julia in Franzen’s The Corrections.

“He turned away from their reproachful spines, remembering how each of them had called out in a bookstore with a promise of a radical critique of late-capitalist society, and how happy he’d been to take them home. But Jurgen Habermas didn’t have Julia’s long, cool, pear-tree limbs, Theodor Adorno didn’t have Julia’s grapy smell of lecherous pliability, Fred Jameson didn’t have Julia’s artful tongue. By the beginning of October, when Chip sent his finished script to Eden Procuro, he’d sold his feminists, his formalists, his structuralists, his poststructuralists, his Freudians and his queers. To raise money for lunch for his parents and Denise, all he had left was his beloved cultural historians and his complete hard-cover Arden Shakespeare; and because a kind of magic resided in the Shakespeare — the uniform volumes in their pale blue jackets were like an archipelago of safe retreats — he piled his Foucault and Greenblatt and Hooks and Poovey into shopping bags and sold them all for $115.”

- What the guide told S. in Siem Reap.
- The tasks in Pan’s Labyrinth.
- The bittersweetness of voices breaking in a boy’s choir.
- Deaths in the family and how people fall apart and get back together again. Taking interest again in the rich and varied world, in beauty after betrayal.

Absolute principles that exist in all human beings: Fairness, honesty, integrity, human dignity, potential and growth.

I am always intrigued by men with information. I like men who KNOW things. Who are not, perhaps, openly emotional, but can answer questions, and who can TELL ME THINGS. I like information better than emotion for now.