My first impulse was to purchase the entire shelf. I took a deep, centering breath and selected Kafka. To start, mind you.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Judging By The Cover
I stumbled upon a used/rare/out-of-print bookstore. The owner has been collecting vintage editions Modern Libary with their original paper covers. He has a good eye.
My first impulse was to purchase the entire shelf. I took a deep, centering breath and selected Kafka. To start, mind you.
My first impulse was to purchase the entire shelf. I took a deep, centering breath and selected Kafka. To start, mind you.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Storytime, 5/16/2010
Important Things
She acquiesced to a hike. But not far away, nothing that would take all day, she told him. She said she hated the idea of being cooped up in a car for hours. She didn’t say she felt a roaring need to stay close to her laptop for official responses or have her phone in range for a possible text.
He drove them to the outskirts of the city and they hiked into the gully of Tryon Creek. It was spring, the end of April, and the day had a heavy, wet warmth to it. She regretted not suggesting the Gorge instead. Out there the winds off the Columbia would have made everything clean and clear. Here it was full of dense, dripping foliage, ferns, moss, twisting vines. Green, damp and smothering. John kept stopping to examine a leaf serration or slug trail, calling her over to investigate with him. She’d look and murmur something polite before turning away, intending to emphasize she was in her own world of thoughts and uninterested in leaves and sticks. She struggled to keep a hold on what she knew he would think was illogical impatience. What she wanted a swift walk in the woods and then to be done. This lingering of his was keeping her away from important things.
When after an hour they began the steep climb out, shirts clammy with dampness, skin half-chilled, half-warm, the relief to be heading home relaxed her tension. John was a little ways ahead, having finally picked up on her aloofness and abandoning companionable efforts. But now her happiness to be wrapping up this obligation made her feel less prickly.
“You know that guest professor we had for a term, right before all our funding was pulled?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, did I tell you what he said about feminism, feminist theory?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, it was ridiculous. Exactly what an older, privileged white male would think was a complex thought. We were at a department lunch, and he said that feminism has had a critical role in history to correct injustice, but that first-wave feminism was corporate, a group effort, where the vast majority was thinking of the good of the female population as a whole. He said that now the bulk of feminist jargon—he called it jargon!—was directed at the individual or towards the speaker, and used solely to justify self-centered, shallow life expectations. He said once it ceased to be a corporate movement it ceased to have meaning and impact.”
“Huh.”
“How can he say that a personal belief is ineffective just because it serves an individual’s desires?”
“Haven’t other feminists said that, too?”
She felt a flare of annoyance at his query and glared angrily at his back. The sweat glistened on his neck and there was a damp trail down the center of his t-shirt. His faded, shapeless Dave Matthews t-shirt. He’d never let her throw out. It was so dumb, no one listened to them anymore. Her voice raised in exasperation.
“NOT like that! They’ve said it has become an individual experience and at times that can lead to a muddying of the waters. But that in itself is its own liberation! Haven’t men used their masculinity for eons to excuse unacceptable behavior? Why have women got to bear the burden of being altruistic at every move? It’s like we’re still imprisoned with that outdated ideal that we uphold some kind of moral structure, that our desire for power and autonomy is the reason for all current societal failings. Don’t you get it?”
“It’s just another form of male control,” he confirmed, “a reaction to the puritanical, self-protecting fear that woman unleashed would have higher competencies in nearly every endeavor. Including the licentious ones!” he added, thrusting his finger authoritatively in the air and continuing at rapid-fire pace, “Which is the reason, for example, lesbianism has a profound attraction-slash-repulsion to the male viewer. He is fascinated at the display of lust and confidence between two female lovers, knowing he can never feel as secure and adept in his own sexuality, whether hetero or homo, due to the still lingering need to be a conqueror and debilitating fear of failure that accompanies this practically primordial impulse.” He took a deep gulp of air and continued in sing-song, “Whereas, women, wonderful, amazing women, thrive in true partnering and cooperation, both mentally and physically, thus achieving higher erotic satisfaction together as they are not conflicted by ideals of self-sufficiency and subjugation. In summary, the world would be a better place if men would stick to the skills of being pack-animals, sperm donors and unscrewing the tops off jars. Women will take care of everything else with their supreme and unerring competency!”
He swung around to look at her, a teasing, self-satisfied grin plastered on his face. She had stopped hiking midway through his spiel and was glaring at him.
“You don’t take my work seriously, do you? You think I’m being self-indulgent, don’t you? You think the need for gender equality is just some kind of overblown entertainment you can mock.” His playful smile dropped. He frowned and swung back around, walking swiftly and throwing over his shoulder, “I take it all very seriously. I’ve never had the luxury to take it anything other than seriously.”
On the drive home he stopped at a café tucked in a SE neighborhood for a late lunch. It was one of her favorite places. A peace offering that angered her further. He’d driven straight there, had not even asked her. It was so possessive, like he was proving how well he knew her. She didn’t bother to protest but got out of the car in the icy silence she’d maintained for the last half hour. There was a burning defeat in knowing that regardless of where they went, they’d be together…eating, drinking, sleeping, all of it. She was stuck. More stuck by the fact he wanted to stay stuck with her. He kept putting effort into their togetherness and seemed oblivious to all her twisting and straining to get away. These last months of raised eyebrows and petty bickering…she’d cultivated these things, lunged at the opportunity to drive in any additional wedge of disapproval. The fact he didn’t notice increased her disdain. She wondered if a Siamese twin had ever bared teeth and tried to gnaw through the connections to its sibling. If she and John were Siamese twins, her mouth would be full of blood and bone.
She acquiesced to a hike. But not far away, nothing that would take all day, she told him. She said she hated the idea of being cooped up in a car for hours. She didn’t say she felt a roaring need to stay close to her laptop for official responses or have her phone in range for a possible text.
He drove them to the outskirts of the city and they hiked into the gully of Tryon Creek. It was spring, the end of April, and the day had a heavy, wet warmth to it. She regretted not suggesting the Gorge instead. Out there the winds off the Columbia would have made everything clean and clear. Here it was full of dense, dripping foliage, ferns, moss, twisting vines. Green, damp and smothering. John kept stopping to examine a leaf serration or slug trail, calling her over to investigate with him. She’d look and murmur something polite before turning away, intending to emphasize she was in her own world of thoughts and uninterested in leaves and sticks. She struggled to keep a hold on what she knew he would think was illogical impatience. What she wanted a swift walk in the woods and then to be done. This lingering of his was keeping her away from important things.
When after an hour they began the steep climb out, shirts clammy with dampness, skin half-chilled, half-warm, the relief to be heading home relaxed her tension. John was a little ways ahead, having finally picked up on her aloofness and abandoning companionable efforts. But now her happiness to be wrapping up this obligation made her feel less prickly.
“You know that guest professor we had for a term, right before all our funding was pulled?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, did I tell you what he said about feminism, feminist theory?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, it was ridiculous. Exactly what an older, privileged white male would think was a complex thought. We were at a department lunch, and he said that feminism has had a critical role in history to correct injustice, but that first-wave feminism was corporate, a group effort, where the vast majority was thinking of the good of the female population as a whole. He said that now the bulk of feminist jargon—he called it jargon!—was directed at the individual or towards the speaker, and used solely to justify self-centered, shallow life expectations. He said once it ceased to be a corporate movement it ceased to have meaning and impact.”
“Huh.”
“How can he say that a personal belief is ineffective just because it serves an individual’s desires?”
“Haven’t other feminists said that, too?”
She felt a flare of annoyance at his query and glared angrily at his back. The sweat glistened on his neck and there was a damp trail down the center of his t-shirt. His faded, shapeless Dave Matthews t-shirt. He’d never let her throw out. It was so dumb, no one listened to them anymore. Her voice raised in exasperation.
“NOT like that! They’ve said it has become an individual experience and at times that can lead to a muddying of the waters. But that in itself is its own liberation! Haven’t men used their masculinity for eons to excuse unacceptable behavior? Why have women got to bear the burden of being altruistic at every move? It’s like we’re still imprisoned with that outdated ideal that we uphold some kind of moral structure, that our desire for power and autonomy is the reason for all current societal failings. Don’t you get it?”
“It’s just another form of male control,” he confirmed, “a reaction to the puritanical, self-protecting fear that woman unleashed would have higher competencies in nearly every endeavor. Including the licentious ones!” he added, thrusting his finger authoritatively in the air and continuing at rapid-fire pace, “Which is the reason, for example, lesbianism has a profound attraction-slash-repulsion to the male viewer. He is fascinated at the display of lust and confidence between two female lovers, knowing he can never feel as secure and adept in his own sexuality, whether hetero or homo, due to the still lingering need to be a conqueror and debilitating fear of failure that accompanies this practically primordial impulse.” He took a deep gulp of air and continued in sing-song, “Whereas, women, wonderful, amazing women, thrive in true partnering and cooperation, both mentally and physically, thus achieving higher erotic satisfaction together as they are not conflicted by ideals of self-sufficiency and subjugation. In summary, the world would be a better place if men would stick to the skills of being pack-animals, sperm donors and unscrewing the tops off jars. Women will take care of everything else with their supreme and unerring competency!”
He swung around to look at her, a teasing, self-satisfied grin plastered on his face. She had stopped hiking midway through his spiel and was glaring at him.
“You don’t take my work seriously, do you? You think I’m being self-indulgent, don’t you? You think the need for gender equality is just some kind of overblown entertainment you can mock.” His playful smile dropped. He frowned and swung back around, walking swiftly and throwing over his shoulder, “I take it all very seriously. I’ve never had the luxury to take it anything other than seriously.”
On the drive home he stopped at a café tucked in a SE neighborhood for a late lunch. It was one of her favorite places. A peace offering that angered her further. He’d driven straight there, had not even asked her. It was so possessive, like he was proving how well he knew her. She didn’t bother to protest but got out of the car in the icy silence she’d maintained for the last half hour. There was a burning defeat in knowing that regardless of where they went, they’d be together…eating, drinking, sleeping, all of it. She was stuck. More stuck by the fact he wanted to stay stuck with her. He kept putting effort into their togetherness and seemed oblivious to all her twisting and straining to get away. These last months of raised eyebrows and petty bickering…she’d cultivated these things, lunged at the opportunity to drive in any additional wedge of disapproval. The fact he didn’t notice increased her disdain. She wondered if a Siamese twin had ever bared teeth and tried to gnaw through the connections to its sibling. If she and John were Siamese twins, her mouth would be full of blood and bone.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Storytime, 05/07/2010
In The End
The guy in the book Jill had thrust at him, touching his arm and gushing about the profundity, had incurable something-or-other and was running around apologizing to the world, his mother, his boss, his sock drawer, and embarking on meaningful talks at twilight with his lover, revealing the pain and anguish that made him into the dismissive man he’d been up until this point.
He put the book down and sat up a little, rifling his pocket to find another cigarette. Lighting it, he lay back down on the green grass of the park. If he looked straight up there was the rigid twist of tree branches, rich with the complacent green of mid-summer. Frisbee players were over in one direction and parents walked slowly with a toddling child in the other. Dogs barked this way and that as dogs always do on sunny days. A beetle struggled up the rough bark of the tree.
He imagined someone walking up to him right now, lying here on the grass, breathing in the mix of clean air and nicotine, and stating, “This is it. This is all you got. Make it count.” Maybe a black-suited mobster kind of guy, short and thick with dark brows and an intense stare, sweaty and annoyed he’d had to walk so far in bright nature to deliver the words. He’d point a beefy finger at him and give the terse message. “Tomorrow you don’t exist, guy. Think about what you wanna do.”
Well, he wouldn’t quit smoking, that’s for sure. Another satisfying exhale and the smoke curled and drifted into the mosaic green and blue above. As for apologizing, sure there were people that deserved an apology from him. Annie for one, she definitely did. And Joe. And yeah, his mom. Who doesn’t need to apologize to his mom?
But what would that do for anyone? You tell them you’ve been a jerk, which they already know. Then you tell them you’re going to die so they have to forgive you. And then you die and don’t have to change or prove you were going to change and you leave them with a queasy satisfaction that doesn’t satisfy and probably just adds another layer of confusion to the mess that you left behind.
If the mobster guy pointed his apocalyptic finger at him, he’d say ‘okay’. Then he’d lie back down on the grass and watch how the sun filtered down through the leaves, deepening and changing as the hours progressed, bleeding away into twilight and then giving way to the deeper night with the stars all glowing out, one by one, through the creaking arms of the tree above. That was about all he could think of that would really be worth doing.
Hand resting on his chest, he settled into a sun-warmed doze. He had a feeling this thing with Jill was not going to work out.
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