Fawkes
Blog kitt decided around 13:45 on 24 May 2018 to publish this:"You know you aren't writing for those three people.
"You write for the same reason your mother writes. You write because you need to write. You write because you use the words to figure things out.
"You were never writing for those three people."
No, I wasn't.
Thanks, Eric, for reminding me.
Because of Winn-Dixie
Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 12:07 on 23 May 2018When visiting Mom last week, as I was lying on my bed, she came in to lie down next to me and chat. This is a ritual we do, and I love it. We lie on the bed, talking about life, memories, upcoming plans, and sometimes hard topics. We talk about her mother, and her relationship with her. We talk about family. We talk about what's on our minds.
And sometimes, we can't talk. There's a space between us, an argument gone too far with a dead brother, a reminder of the short time we have, the distance that fluxes.
During one of these times, Mom pulled a book from the bed's headboard bookcase (one must truly love a bed that has a bookcase as a headboard, I know I do), and handed it to me. "This is a good read," she said. I said thanks, and added it to my small pile that I was attempting to read during my week visit.
It was this book. I didn't finish my previous books until today, so this one came up. The book is a Newbery Honor winner, unsure if that's the "winner" or the "finalists list" but, hey, has Newbery associated with it. which makes it a finalist, but not a winner.
The book is about acceptance: accepting losses, accepting people for who they are, accepting loneliness, accepting mistakes, accepting. I struggled a bit with the speech patterns in the book, imagining different races to the characters than what was described, based on the media portrayal of language patterns, and fought the whole book to keep the correct image in my mind of the characters' described race. I did give up and imagine the characters as I saw them, and that made for a better reading for me, even if it wasn't as the author imagined.
It is, as Mom said, a good read. It's short. I recommend reading it with a small person, and getting her take on it. If you don't have a child, niece, nephew, or the like, cuddle up with your five year old self and read to her.
“He just doesn’t want to be left alone,” I told the preacher. “That’s all. Let’s take him with us.” I could understand the way Winn-Dixie felt. Getting left behind probably made his heart feel empty.
Page 31
I finally decided that I was more afraid of losing Winn-Dixie than I was of having to deal with a dog-eating witch, so I went through the gate and into the yard.
Page 62
He was eating something right out of the witch’s hand. She looked up at me. “This dog sure likes peanut butter,” she said. “You can always trust a dog that likes peanut butter.”
Page 63
Except all dogs like peanut butter.
She told me she used to love to read stories, but she couldn’t anymore because her eyes were so bad. “Can’t you get some really strong glasses?” I asked her.
“Child,” she said, “they don’t make glasses strong enough for these eyes.”
Page 92
When I grow old and can no longer read, I want someone to read to and for me.
I said, “I don’t know. Why are all those bottles on it?”
“To keep the ghosts away,” Gloria said.
“What ghosts?”
“The ghosts of all the things I done wrong.”
I looked at all the bottles on the tree. “You did that many things wrong?” I asked her.
“Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. “More than that.”
“But you’re the nicest person I know,” I told her.
“Don’t mean I haven’t done bad things,” she said.
Page 94
“The preacher says that sometimes she couldn’t stop drinking.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria again. “That’s the way it is for some folks. We get started and we can’t get stopped.”
“Are you one of those people?”
“Yes ma’am. I am. But these days, I don’t drink nothing stronger than coffee.”
“Did the whiskey and beer and wine, did they make you do the bad things that are ghosts now?”
“Some of them,” said Gloria Dump. “Some of them I would’ve done anyway, with alcohol or without it. Before I learned.”
“Learned what?”
“Learned what is the most important thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“It’s different for everyone,” she said. “You find out on your own. But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now."
Page 95
And this was when, while reading the book, I realized why my mom had given me this book to read.
"War,” I told her. “That was the war between the South and the North over slavery.”
“Slavery, yes,” said Miss Franny. “It was also about states’ rights and money."
Page 101
Well, no.
It was about money, yes. It was about money because the slave-owners of the south didn't want to lose the cheap labor they had, so that they could keep their money.
States' rights became a sanitized cause, but wasn't really the point.
“Men and boys always want to fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently."
Page 105
"He went off to be a hero. But he soon found out the truth.” Miss Franny closed her eyes and shook her head.
“What truth?” I asked her.
“Why, that war is hell,” Miss Franny said with her eyes still closed. “Pure hell.”
Page 105
“There’s a secret ingredient in there,” Miss Franny said.
“I know it,” I told her. “I can taste it. What is it?”
“Sorrow,” Miss Franny said. “Not everybody can taste it. Children, especially, seem to have a hard time knowing it’s there.”
“I taste it,” I said.
“Me, too,” said Amanda.
“Well, then,” Miss Franny said, “you’ve probably both had your share of sadness.”
Page 114
Sometimes, it seemed like everybody in the world was lonely. I thought about my mama. Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.
Page 132
“There ain’t no way you can hold on to something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”
Page 159
The Wife Between Us
Book Notes kitt decided around 16:10 on 22 May 2018 to publish this:Despite being on a non-fiction reading kick as of late (no, I don't know why either), this book caught my eye when I was wandering a bookstore (people do this, right? Just wander in bookstores. Right?), so I added it to my hold list at the library and pretty much forgot about it until it dropped into my reading list.
Problem was, when I actually started reading the book, I didn't know why I had added this book to my reading list. Then, when I read the book details, the summary and one-line reviews of the book, I was annoyed that they all commented about the O'Henry style plot twists (which, actually, I adore, but not if I see them coming). Don't tell me about the plot twists, because then I'll be all suspect of everything in the book.
Which is why I was surprised when the first one dropped. I was stunned, and went back to reread the part before and after several times. And, thought, "How clever!" And then the book kept going, and, "Oh. Hello."
I can't say I particularly liked the fundamental motivation of the plot, it struck a lot too close to home for me to feel comfortable, but the tale is told delightfully well and the ending, okay, I'm REALLY glad I didn't skip to the end for this one.
The book is a new-release, which is somewhat odd for me to have read, as I tend to read books 1-2 years old, if not 60 years old or more, but this one is a quick, totally O'Henry twist, entertaining book to read.
It wasn’t difficult to dodge questions once you learned the tricks. When someone asked about your childhood, you told them about the tree house your father built for you, and your black cat that thought he was a dog and would sit up and beg for a treat. If college came up, you focused on the football team’s undefeated season and your part-time job at a campus restaurant, where you once started a small fire while making toast and cleared the dining area. Tell colorful, drawn-out stories that deflect attention from the fact that you aren’t actually sharing anything. Avoid specifics that will separate you from the crowd. Be vague about the year you graduated. Lie, but only when completely necessary.
Page 23
Something about their fearlessness, the way her coworkers exposed their hearts and chased their dreams despite the rejection they continually suffered, spoke to a part of Nellie that had been switched off during her last year in Florida. They were like children in that respect, Nellie realized—they possessed an undaunted optimism. A sense that the world and its possibilities lay open to them.
Page 40
I was happy, I think, but I wonder now if my memory is playing tricks on me. If it is giving me the gift of an illusion. We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.
Page 96
I couldn’t stop thinking about that shoe, or the woman it belonged to. She must have gotten up that morning, gotten dressed, and stepped out of a window into the air. I searched the newspapers the following day, but there was only a tiny mention of the incident. I never knew what had made her commit such a desperate act—if she’d been planning it, or if something inside her had suddenly snapped. I think I’ve figured out the answer, all these years later: It was both.
Page 130
“Lovey, you seem so concerned by what he thinks all the time.”
Page 135
But instead of racing toward my future, I began making plans to run away from my past.
Page 245
In my marriage, there were three truths, three alternate and sometimes competing realities. There was Richard’s truth. There was my truth. And there was the actual truth, which is always the most elusive to recognize. This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-seeing judge, the arbiter of reality.
Page 248
I’d told myself I’d been partly to blame for Richard’s violence.
Page 281
A Confluence of Historical Threads
Blog kitt decided around 22:17 on 21 May 2018 to publish this:I'm at the confluence of two events in my history.
There are echoes of other moments, with these two standing out, these two being the first order variables that are dominating the signal.
Once, when running up the hill at the Stanford Dish with some Mischief people, Chris, Kris, Brynne, Shirley, someone else, and me, during a break, Brynne commented, "Do you ever have the pains in your ovaries? They just cramp when running, then go away after a bit?"
I hadn't know what she was talking about then. I know what she's talking about now.
I went for a run today, a run that I expected to be an easy run, and it was for the most part. Bob said it was only spittling outside, not raining. As he was right, I went on this run. It was short, barely over a mile, enough time to loosen my legs and find my stride, not enough time to tire.
As I approached the Dillers' house on my return, though, I started feeling the cramps. I had experienced them yesterday, the intense ovarian cramping pain that overwhelmed all thought, that only nearly drawing blood in my hand, and the pain from that near draw, stopping the cramping pain long enough for me to be able to relax into the pain and encourage it to go away. Today felt like it would be the same, and it was.
A good ten minutes later, I could breathe again. I finally understood what Brynne was saying those 14 years ago.
These might cause me to stop running.
I don't want to stop running.
Even more years ago, John Schmidt told me about a teammate on his high school cross country running team. Said teammate had the fantastic Pavlovian response to putting on his running shoes: he immediately needed to vacate his bowels. Shoes on, take a dump, go for a run.
After hearing about this response, I realized it could be a learned response, and trained myself the same.
Except that with the year of not running, I have lost that response.
Contributing factors to overwhelming ovarian cramps include strained abdominal fascia, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, dehydration, low blood sugar, and, in the case of someone with seriously messed up lower intestinal issues, digestive tract issues.
Or, in my case, the confluence of Brynne and John in a moment, as I doubled over, breathing through these pains, willing them to go away.
Us, at the Huntington
Blog Posted by kitt at 11:20 on 21 May 2018This is one of my most favorite pictures of Jonathan and me.
Look how giggly happy he is!