Nobel for Alice, Hurrah!

It gives me a little bit of hope to hear this morning of Alice Munro getting the Nobel prize. She well deserves it. After my great dismay in learning that evil Putin, a man who lives by the sword, is nominated for the Peace prize, the whole thing completely lost any credibility in my opinion. This restores a little bit of what is lost.
Here's a toast to the Great Alice, to Canadian Literature, and to all the people around the globe who live by their art. They make our lives richer.

Sherman Alexie - What a Fabulous Writer!

I'm reading a collection of short stories of this very good author, and the stories are indeed very short. Yet I find that occasionally I have to halt mid sentence and rest before I can move on to the next line, sometimes the power of his words is too much to bear. He is blunt and unflinching, looks into the lives of Native Americans and offers it to us so plainly it hurts.
It hurts not because we see the situations he writes about from above, or unrelated to other cultures as our circumstances are so very different; no, it hurst because on the basic level of human existence we all hope for the same things. Some of the people who populate his pages are damaged beyond repair, and some still have some hope. No matter where they are on their journey, he follows them around, and lets us have a peak.
Reading his stories is a humbling experience.


“I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well.” Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

“But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father would have. I miss him, the drunk bastard. I would always feel closest to the man who had most disappointed me.” Sherman Alexie, War Dances.

Unexpected Gifts

How nice it is when my appreciative customers just drop by to say hello or bring me a treat, or to tell me their latest escapades. I love that aspect of having a community shop. The best one last week was this: one of them is a great poet. He came over just to gift me one of his poetry books. This book is a beautiful thing: Two poets engage in a conversation that sheds light on their daily inner lives, across generations, genders and a wide continental gap. They come together in these pages to bring beauty and quiet contemplation to the rushed voices inside our heads. If we care to lend an eye, ear, thought to their short clear sentences.
The two are David Bateman and Naomi Beth Wakan.

Here is a little quote from the book "Pause":

no matter
how many words we say
to each other
the essence lies in the spaces between
the essence lies in the pauses

P.S. - The long Ships Movie Circa 1964

Don't bother. Awful stuff. Pure rubbish.
Truly disrespectful to the book upon which it is based. An anathema, in fact.
How can someone take a work of art and turn it into a preachy Christian snooze is beyond me.
Apparently a new Swedish produced movie is in the works as we speak. I hope they indulge in true Pagan bloodletting, slave-driving drudgery, lustful flesh, and show us the beauty of Mother Earth with proper cinematography while they're at it.
Why Swedish, when the vikings in this book are Danes, that is my question.

Books, Water, Skies - A Recipe for Happiness

These are the things I've always been partial to, since my childhood on my father's ships' decks (not his own ship, he was the captain). This combination still works to restore my sense of self: A good book, a sunny day in the proximity of a large body of water.
I've recently finished reading The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by Gerald Basil Edwards. It is a dense masterpiece which took me some time to get through, but well worth it. It was a privilege to spend time with the man in whose voice the book is written, a thoughtful kind and right-hearted man from the isle of Guernsey, who chronicles the changes of the small world around him, and leaves it in the end with only love in his heart. He lives his entire life in one house on the island, yet he never feels restricted. The way he looks at the people around him is timeless and soul-searching.


And now I'm on another long-reaching one, space wise: The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson. It is the story of the travels and adventures of a viking named Orm, told in a language so bemused and unassuming as to capture the imagination of a child, yet good enough to eat. Great fun. It could be a great adventure film. The fighting, blood, costumes and turn of fortune are perfect for the screen. In fact, there is an old movie based on it. A good one to spend the summer with.

A New Quote

"One cat leads to another"
Ernst Hemingway.

I had no idea, I thought he was a dog person. There's even an illustrated biography about him and his cats. Go figure.

What Are They Thinking When They Hear the Name "Hitler"

The world is an astounding place.
There is so much to marvel at, to admire, to discover. There is beauty, and wealth of ideas, there is good, and there is, apparently even for a secular person like myself - Evil.
I heard something astonishing last week on CBC radio 1, The Current, a short interview with a lovely sounding Indian teacher which made my jaw drop, and even the radio interviewer, a woman of words in general, was rendered speechless.
The teacher was telling that her students are admirers of Hitler. As a leader, a crusader for Germany, an orator, a truly inspiring persona. I looked it up. Indeed, it is a wildly popular idea all over India.
To think that millions of those idiots, as there is no other word for it, are walking the earth admiring scum of humanity, teaching his ideas to their impressionable youth and propagating their minds with his filth, is simply evil.
But don't just take my word for it.
Read it here, and here. And watch this video of the man who sells the books:

Oh My, Dear Life!

Alice Munro, dear Alice. Thank you. Please write me another one.
I just finished the last pages of her latest book. I took my time with this book, only allowed myself one story at a time, every few days so I can stretch the pleasure further.
Every story in this collection is a heartbreaker. Even her short childhood recollections, despite having been written in a clear prose devoid of sentimentality, have an impact of such magnitude that I ended up closing the back cover with wet eyes, panting for air. Who cries when reading a book anymore? Well, turns out I do.
In these lines she manages to compose her music of words so concisely, light in style but heavy with content, dense with life meanings, and never simple. She makes me want to write her a letter. Maybe I will.

Feasting on Culture

I'm lucky to have gracious friends with membership at the AGO. Today they took me for my birthday to see the Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera show - a comprehensive study of their life of love and art.
Like many artistic couples, they fed on heart break, drama and lust. And Frieda looked so good in her suffering.
I must admit that what struck me more than their paintings, which have become iconic in recent decades, are the photographs chronicling their life, and the less known works.
I love this nude of her that he did early in their relationship:

And this portrait of her, the stillness and grace in it are perfect:

Happy Coincidences

I fell upon this exquisite piece of writing by happenstance. It is a short piece of a long poem, very long, by Stephen Berg - I urge you to read the entire thing, it's worth it. It's called Cold Cash:

"...on certain days a feeling overtakes me, sits like a happy dog in my belly, of being poor, of having nothing but friends and poetry and a warm place to sleep, and it occurs to me that intelligence of this sort is denied to those who cannot hear the crystal howling or see the milky souvenirs or experience the
despair of desire's baleful stare or know the soul's unyielding misery as it lies back letting its voice unfold the nonfactual snakes of light, of a destitute prompt unmotherly hammer driving in the nail, in the dirty unpainted wall of truth is beauty, beauty is truth, you know it and it's enough..."

Dead Poet - Wislawa Szymborska

Cat in an Empty Apartment
Die—you can't do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here,
but nothing is the same.
Nothing has been moved,
but there's more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,
but they're new ones.
The hand that puts fish on the saucer
has changed, too.

Something doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Every closet has been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken,
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.

Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle toward him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.
-- Wislawa Szymborska
(Translated from Polish by Joanna Maria Trzeciak)

A Nobel prize poet who died today, at age 88. May her poems live forever.

Another one of her poems lives here on my blog. I published it shortly after my father's death. It helped.

The Centenarian Who Climbed Out Through the Window and Disappeared

Jonas Jonasson wrote a bonbon of a story for the world to enjoy. It's not published here yet, but I'm reading it already, and I promise that with every page you turn your smile will get wider.
The strange title is simply a jumping board into adventure, into reflection of the futility of modern life, where sweet and bitter are balanced perfectly to never leave you with either after-taste of sugary melancholy nor bitter disappointment.
There is not a whimper of whining in this tale, despite some pretty dire circumstances along the way. It maintains a smirk as it talks matter of fact about grim events in the life of the main players. A rich, fun and generous book.

Great Read - Alice Munro

I'm in love again.
I've been reading an astoundingly beautiful book of short stories by Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter. It's not new, it's 30 years old now, but those stories will stay fresh as long as people keep on falling in and out of love.
"To celebrate the essential mystery", in her words, is what her writing is about. Not about solving the mysteries of life but experiencing them. And she does it with such finesse, delicacy and love that no matter who she writes about, you can't help but get drawn into her stories.
I love that she doesn't tie up loose ends at the completion of the stories, because life is all frayed at the edges, and the stories are just cut at some point, although you know that those lives, probably a mix of fictional and real characters, do go on.
And more than anything I love her language: natural, graceful, with the power to penetrate into the heart of things, and yours.

Hedgehogs

I finished reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" last week.
I kind of liked parts of it, the premise is a good one, and the literariness of it appealed to me, but I thought the ending is a complete cop out. I can't discuss it because it would be a spoiler if you haven't read it.
As a child, one of my favourite books was about a kid who is home sick and has only a hungry hedgehog as a companion. The illustrations were wonderful, and at the time, in my girlhood, hedgehogs would sometimes appear in our neighbourhood, not pets but the real things, wild ones, out on a tour of their habitat. We loved their visits but there were always cats and silly kids to disturb them and eventually they disappeared altogether.

Anyway, I looked up hedgehog on youtube, and lo and behold, there is a world out there full of hedgehog pets I'd never have guessed.

New Quote

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. –Oscar Wilde

He is so quotable, that man. I can't help it...

Atticus

I've spent the last 2 nights in the company of Gregory Peck. We watched, yet again, "To Kill a Mockingbird", and then all the bonus features, lots of them - satisfying and lengthy.
In his last years he toured the world with a one man show about himself and people flocked to see him. He told stories from his life and carrier and people had a chance to ask any questions they wished. He promised only to give the answers he wished to give.
He was gracious, eloquent and funny, and charming. His family featured highly in his life and I was reminded of my own father as I watched him speak lovingly about them. My father also had a full head of white hair, but neglected to color his bushy eyebrows black...
One question from the audience stuck in my mind - "What do you want to be remembered for?"
It played in my mind the rest of the night. I asked it myself, and realized I don't have an answer, not yet.

Must Read Books

A brilliant piece of writing in the New York Times Book Review about the evolution of reading mechanisms, which illuminates why books won't die. I hope this assessment is also a prophecy, on top of being historically informative.

Summer Reads - Ian Rankin

I've been on a roll with Ian Rankin. We've devoted this summer to him, almost exclusively.
Not terribly challenging to read, the plots unfold themselves at a slow pace, slow enough to allow me to figure them out before I get to the end and make me feel pleased with my clever self.
The main detectives are usually misfits, with vices which only hurt themselves, their lives devoted to making life in Edinborough a little tougher for the wicked. They don't always succeed in their endeavours. I suppose that's why they are so widely liked.
I've read a few of Rebus's adventures, if you can call them that. He is a fine fellow to spend a summer with. Smart, relentless, unruly with a great mistrust of authorities and criminals alike. He drinks his way around the crimes he is investigating, even when told to stop both activities.
The new guy in my current book "The Complaints", Foxy, or Malcolm Fox, is even better than Rebus. I hope he is a recurrent player, but I haven't explored the list to know if he ever comes back or not.

To compliment the books we've watched a few episodes of the TV series Rebus, only to discover their resemblance to the books that bear the same names is completely non existent. You'd think it's not important, but it is. The TV plots are not as well developed, they are shallow and not as compelling as the ones in the book. Still, not a bad way to spend an evening at home during a thundering summer rainstorm.