Fog of Love

morning fog

“There seemed to be no hope in the world. One was a tiny little rock with the tide of nothingness rising higher and higher. She herself was real, and only herself-just like a rock in a wash of floodwater. The rest was all nothingness. She was hard and indifferent, isolated in herself.”  Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence

There are a lot of rage-full people in Women in Love. It would be a hard group to hangout with. Two love birds might have exchanges such as this:
“Would you care for buttered toast?” He asked, almost hostile.
She turned to him full of hate, glaring at him she answered, “Jam, please.”

Ah, love.

Okay that is not a direct quote, I made it up, but that is the gist of 1/2 of the book. Why so angry? It took me some time to get used to it all, but something kept me reading. I think the biggest problem facing Ursula, Gudrun, Rupert and Gerald is the strong but common tendency to over-think things. What is love? Do we love each other? How much of ourselves do we have to sacrifice in order to be in love? Is it a sacrifice at all? Is falling in love a complete failure and collapse of ones inner self, or is the inability to fall in love a failure to be a man or woman completely?

Isolated within ourselves there is only misery. Although we are told that nothing outside of ourselves will bring us true joy..no one else can make us happy…blah blah blah. That’s just a cheap dime-store philosophy designed to make all the emotionally or physically isolated people in the world feel better. If you’re not happy, look within. Blame the victim: you.
Other people do make you happy, we are social animals, to be left alone in the world , abandoned, is the most pain our fragile beings can experience; particularly the emotional kind, a physical aloneness always has an end point, even if it is death, but emotional aloneness touches infinity.

But the tension between men and women as well as the tension of the inner battle is what is explored in depth in this book. Lawrence takes his time in getting the feel of it right. When Rupert and Ursula get married their love is described so perfectly:

“In the new, superfine bliss, a peace superceding knowledge, there was no I and you, there was only the third, unrealized wonder, the wonder of existing not as oneself, but in a comsummtion of my being and of her being in a new one, a new, paradisal unit regained from the duality. How can you say ‘I love you’ when I have ceased to be, and you have ceased to be: we are both caught up and transcended into a new oneness where everything is silent, because there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one.”

Wow. Maybe someday, eh?

But not for most. The book ends with the tragedy of Gerald and it is very moving. His pain, despair and capitulation to the absurdity is something to which we can all relate.

“If he had kept true to that clasp, death would not have mattered. Those who die, and dying still can love, still believe, do not die. They still live in the beloved.”

Woulda coulda shoulda. Poor Gerald. Poor us.

Existential Baking

I found a recipe for biscuits on wordpress over at sexycuisine. It was the sort of recipe that makes you say, “That doesn’t sound at all like it would work.” Naturally I had to try them. They are Palet Breton biscuits that call for yeast. Yeast-ed biscuits sounded like an oxymoron to me, even if by biscuit what is meant is cookie, (you have to be careful on the international waters of the internet).  But sexycuisine was insistent when I inquired. When faced with someone else’s ineluctable certainty, I always yield. I’ve never really related to utter certainty and am always impressed by other people’s declarations of surety. Admittedly, this has not always yielded good results.

I mixed all the ingredients and with the resulting crumbly “dough” I was suppose to shape a log and refrigerate for 2 hours. I double checked the recipe because what I had was a barely congealed mass that would fall to crumbs without the aid of the cling wrap. “That’s not right,” I said to myself. “You know that won’t hold.” But, I reasoned, “It has yeast in it, I’m not a chemist, how should I know what effect the yeast will have. Who am I to argue? Who am I? What is the meaning of baking? If I am merely following a blueprint, what is my role here? Why do I bother?” It was all getting a bit overwhelming so I went for a walk.

On my walk I imagined God as The Baker.
God makes man: “Oh my God (wait – I am God) Oh my Me! That doesn’t look right at all. What shall I do? I’ve already added the yeast-spark of life, it’s too late. I can’t add to him now, what if I accidentally retard his development? I should just try it again.”
God makes woman: “Oh no, that’s not much better. So similar, but so different, they may not mix at all. Don’t be so negative, maybe they’re perfect for each other, fulfilling all the flaws…Oh Me! I just don’t know. I give up. They’ll have to figure it out on their own, I’ll just put them in the oven and hope for the best.”

God’s abandonment has really got me down. I understand, one doesn’t want to make matters worse, but really, if you are the creator- do something!

I add a dash or two of cream so that I can go ahead and cut the dough into 12 disks. I may have ruined it. I told sexycuisine I would give full credit for a failure, but I can not. The failure will have to be mine. I am the creator after all. If belatedly adding cream produces a tile of a biscuit, the fault is mine alone.

My version is the ugly step-child of sexycuisine’s, but by placing a distracting dollop of strawberry preserves I hope to disguise this truth.  I can’t say that I understand the function of the yeast in the recipe, but of course, I’m sure I did something wrong. Certainty after all! Well, they are tasty.

“Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.” Salvador Dali

Library of Eden

Pears – oil painting by Victoria Accardi 2009

2 days ago I left the library triumphantly- I had returned all my borrowed books! My step was lighter as I walked out into the sunshine with nary the threat of a looming due date spasmodically  interrupting my thoughts. Today – I have five books out. Here’s how it happens:
In naked innocence I drove to the library to meet my son. He was not there, he was on the green playing ultimate frisbee but, “Can I please give [him] 1/2 hour.”  I have eggs in the car, but okay – I tell him 10 min.

I went upstairs to sit in one of the comfortable chairs and took out my own book, Women in Love. I swear I did not look at the books displayed on tables and counters as I walked up, because – I don’t need another book to read. I know that. But there as I sat down, I could not help but notice, on a low table placed directly in my line of vision, a display of the library’s canon of Carlos Fuentes. Oh no. He died last week while I was in South Carolina; my aunt and uncle noted his passing as they had met him and remembered him fondly. They put that (amongst 1000) seed in my head, the seed of writers to read. I’m  just going to look at the titles, I tell myself. Oh, there’s a book of essays, just a quick peek at the titles of the essays. The book Myself with Others begins with an essay titled How I Started to Write. I am resolute: I’ll only just read this one….

“The French equate intelligence with rational discourse, the Russians with intense soul-searching. For a Mexican, intelligence is inseperable from maliciousness – in this, as in many other things, we are quite Italian: fuberia, roguish slyness, and the cult of appearances, la bella figura, are Italiante traits present everywhere in Latin America: Rome, more than Madrid, is our spiritual capital in this sense.

For me, as a child, the Untied States seemed a world where intelligence was equated with energy, zest, enthusiasm.”

It is a brief but fascinating telling of his early years; the influence of different countries and writers on his formation as a man and as a writer. His sense of humor pervades in descriptions of all sorts:  explaining his decision to write in Spanish,
“The English language, after all, did not need another writer. The English language has always been alive and kicking, and if it ever becomes drowsy, there will always be an Irishman…”  
talking about his friend writer Alfonso Reyes,
“He liked to quote Goethe: Write at dawn, skim the cream of the day, then you can study crystals, intrique at court, and make love to your kitchen maid.” 

But it is what he has to say about language and literature that is most impressive and moving,
“Like bread and love, language is shared with others. And human beings share a tradition. There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.” 

Women in Love sat on my lap as I read the essay. It’s not my fault after all that there is so much to read, sweet fruits of literature that call out to me begging to be tasted. Chagrined, I checked the book out. I should probably stay away from the library, temptress that she is.

“We have not finished thinking, imagining, acting. It is still possible to know the world; we are unfinished men and women.”

Carlos Fuentes  1928-2012

Tragedy in a Cup of Joe

“serenity now: insanity later.”

After a stressful series of errands to run and an hour to kill before I had to go to the library to meet my son, I went to a little cafe to sit for a moment: actually it was only after I was anxiously and studiously weighing the expenditure, indulgence, extravagance  and a voice finally screamed at me in my head GO HAVE A CUP OF COFFEE AND A COOKIE FOR CHIRST’S SAKE, JESSICA! that I wearily drove there.

I had forgot earlier in the day that I was going to meet my son so had already been to the library to pick up a few plays that we are reading for our book group. I brought one of the plays in with me to read, my choices were Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Euripide’s Medea, or Sophocles’ Oedipus. I choose Oedipus because it was the newest most handsomest book. These are all stories everyone is familiar with, but it is interesting to read or re-read them. David R. Slavitt’s translation was a crisp, clip of a read. The first half seemed to go something like this:

Oedipus: Tiresias, prophet man, tell me who killed Laius.
Tiresias: No sir.
Oedipus: You better tell me right now.
Tiresias: No way.
Oedipus: Wow, you are seriously pissing me off.
Tiresias: Never the less…
Oedipus: Tell me immediatly or I will banish you!
Tiresias: Go right ahead, I didn’t even want to come here.

And so on. Oedipus tries to get his wife Jocasta involved, but she wisely sides with Tiresias and then in a flash of understanding tries in earnest to get him to drop his inquiry. It’s all very tragic as a Greek tragedy should be I suppose – torn hair, gnashing teeth, eyes poked out: a bloody mess.

I don’t know, maybe my formative years were unduly influenced by books such as Hyemeyohsts Storm’s Seven Arrows and John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire, (both unusual stories of consenting adult incest) but I just wanted to say to Oedipus and Jocasta, “Relax. You didn’t know. How can the sin of incest be a sin if there was no intent anyway? Perhaps going forward, you have some issues to work out, but hey, your kids all seem fine: as Fezik asks in The Princess Bride- ‘Doesn’t that you make you happy?’ No need to torture yourselves. Yes, you killed your father, but the crime was murder not really patricide. Come on people, letter of the law verses spirit, everybody chill out.”
This is probably why I don’t write fiction. Then again, I can make my own little Greek drama out of purchasing a cup of coffee….

Primitive Urges

print by Marco Accardi (made at age 8)

I was all set to get through my history pre req this first summer session with Western Civ, but it was cancelled at the last minute. The choices were slim for the evening classes so I enrolled in Art Appreciation.

It’s an art through the ages intensive, but all in all there are worse ways to spend ones evenings than looking at beautiful works of art. In our first class we contemplated the possible reasons for Paleolithic and Neolithic cave paintings. I saw an interesting documentary years ago, (read: I cannot remember the name of it) that suggested a lot of the art was hallucinogenic-ally  generated. They went to Africa to talk to Bushmen whom at least had memories of  relatives in similar ceremonies producing very similar images: Dots, or spotting that one might experience while on drugs, grid lines, hand prints (babies and people tripping seem to love their own hands).

I read The Story of Art to my children by E.H. Grombich a couple of years back, and it is a wonderful art history book (his book A Little History of the World is also excellent for the under 10 crowd). He didn’t discuss the hallucinogens, but he had a lovely attitude concerning art’s evolution. In his interpretation art does not “improve” or get better, it simply changes and builds upon former ages and techniques. The only problem with the book was that I got it used from Amazon and its previous owner had obviously been a smoker. Now, whenever I look at art, I feel as though I ought to be holding a cigarette.

Sister Wendy also does a wonderful job of presenting art to the masses. Every time I think of her I hear her saying, “Mr. Degas, I don’t think I like you.” Oh my, she is sweet. Simon Schama is another good art/historian documentarian and writer. Last summer I read the first half of his hulking  Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (I harbor high hopes of finishing it this summer), his attention to artist Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s influence on the softening attitudes of the hoi polloi towards Marie Antoinette (and the emerging age of Romanticism) were very interesting (alas, poor Marie, too little too late- c’est la vie).

I did not mention the drug induced painting theory in class- don’t want to make the wrong impression; but then when I got home and read the text, there it was- already a well accepted theory. Now if I can just manage to stay alert after 8 pm I may be okay- I just have to remember to bring a supply of my drug of choice: chocolate.

A Love Story, for real.

 

Oh Rhubard, you’ll never leave me! If you do, I’ll eat you up…in a crisp.

Charleston. Short Story.

I have spent the last week in Charleston, South Carolina, a beautiful city if ever there was one. I was visiting my aunt and uncle: enjoying their city and most especially their company.

It all began with William Trevor. Both my aunt and uncle have an earnest ardor for books. My uncle has a passion, in particular,  for short stories and thought I would enjoy the subtle poignancy of William Trevor. I read Teresa’s Wedding and was a convert. Office Romance, Afternoon Dancing, and the ironic Last Wishes all quietly shinning a light on some of life’s saddest aspects.
What could easily have passed for massive door weights, were two volumes presented enthusiastically to me of V.S. Prichett essays and short stories. The essays were almost exclusively about writers and were wonderful. I just had to read his story entitled Sense of Humor, how could I pass up a title like that? I could not. Lovely reading all.

Things to do when you’re not reading:

Charleston is a beautiful city, surrounded by rivers, lakes and of course the ocean. Sea kayaking  is a beautiful sport that my uncle loves. The zeal with which people embrace kayaking is infectious. I innocently believed that one simply got in the water and paddled, hopefully in a forward direction at will. Oh dear me no! There are strokes to learn, techniques to master, celebrity paddlers to marvel over, and don’t even get started on the rolling. It’s one of the those wonderful (if sneakily expensive) activities that offers endless permutations and advancement, but at each stage a full measure of enjoyment can be drawn. A most excellent sport that captures (by the hips) the primordial pleasure of gliding across a surface.

“He tasted the almost preverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line.” – Continuity of Parks, Julio Cortázar

Next we were onto South American writers. My uncle was a professor of Languages (Spanish and Portuguese). A mutual admiration of Jorge Luis Borges led to Julio Cortázar’s wonderful short stories Axolotl, Letter to a Young Lady in Paris, Continuity of Parks, The Night Face Up, Blow-up, and my favorite, The Yellow Flower. His stories are presented with a light tone that belie the metaphysical under-notes that linger.

Other sights to see:

Charleston has America’s only tea plantation. What look like endless rows of perfectly manicured hedges are tea bushes which get a haircut every 20  days by something called the “green monster,” it brings the top leaves in for processing. After chopping up the leaves it’s just 50 minutes oxidation for black tea, 15 for oolong and naught for green. Maybe it’s not so puerile, simply an evocation of watching Mister Rogers factory tours as a child delighting in the hidden processes, but learning about these sorts of things brings out a certain…elation in me. We all really enjoyed the tour.
A fruit is nothing
picked out of season.
Even a brute’s praise
won’t stand to reason.  – Antonio Machado (Proverbs and Songs #5)

The weekly market on the downtown green was a wonderful finish to a week spent enjoying some of the fantastic food and restaurants that Charleston is known for. The flowers, fruits and vegetables in all their colorful bounty exemplifying all that is wonderful about the south.

Walking the piquant streets of the city with my aunt, lounging on the beach, visiting the Gibbes Museam of Art where we saw the incredible skill of artist Mary Whyte (Working South watercolors) and  wonderful, whimsical, mysterious photographs of Traditional African American Gardens of the South by Vaughn Sills, coming back each day to sit, chat and read enjoying the lovely order of my aunt’s home- her former life as a master (doctorate, in fact) librarian the leading aesthetic which, naturally, I keenly appreciate-

“I who always imagined Paradise
To be a sort of library.” - from The Gifts, by Jorge Luis Borges

The wonderful abiding quality of short stories is the condensed presentation of feeling and ideas. Every moment matters, every tone has purpose and meaning. These very same attributes define the ideal vacation. If you are lucky enough to visit a beautiful spot in the world generously hosted with love, intelligence and grace, then you, as I,  have experienced the perfect short story. Edited to perfection.

A las palabras de amor
les sienta bien su poquito
de exageración. 

- Songs, Antonio Machado

For words of love
a bit of exaggeration
feels good.

“Angel Oak”

but I never exaggerate.
Here is some incredible music that has nothing to do with South Carolina apart from my first hearing it there: