What's in a Gendered Pronoun? A lot, Actually

I've been thinking a lot about gender lately. Over the last few years I've been trying to read books by women. I'm aware this is sexist. I'm also aware that for centuries, women's work was either ignored, destroyed, or passed off as men's. So all you guys who want to cry sexist at the current idea of someone excluding you, be off with you. Men who are secure enough to understand why women and other minorities might want to focus on our own histories, welcome and thank you for existing.

A few weeks ago, I wanted to take a bit of a break from reading anything that might distress me and read something a bit lighter, like say, a murder mystery.  I saw a copy of an Ellis Peters mystery languishing on my shelf, so I picked up One Corpse Too Many (I mean that sounds light, right?) expecting to be diverted for a few days. I didn't expect to be enthralled by the story and by the prose. I also had no idea Ellis Peters was in fact, Edith Pargeter.

Then in my quest to find a book club, I found that my new-ish local bookstore in Winston-Salem (Bookmarks) has a book club, and for October, they are reading Himself by Jess Kidd. I had never heard of either the book or the author. I almost didn't read this book, because of the title. Halfway through and loving it, I googled the author and realized she was a she, not a he, as I had assumed. To make this assumption even worse, her picture is inside the back cover of the book I am reading. (I avoid the interior of the back of books. Many plots have been spoiled by even the merest glance there.)

Just this week, when recommending the Brother Cadfael series by Edith Pargeter to a friend, I remembered the Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis and recommended it too. I had also assumed this series was written by a man. My soon-to-be daughter-in-law is named Lindsey, and I still assumed these books were written by a man.  Wtf?

It seems that I, even after half a century existing as a woman who tries to be inclusive and open-minded, still automatically assume a book is by a man if the author's name is gender-neutral or male, even though I am well aware that women often assumed male names to get their books published and accepted.

So, where does this leave us? Well, it leaves me with a reinforced sense of purpose when it comes to reading works by minority voices and with the thought that if your response to this is to tell me to stop being so sexist, you might not like the answer you get. It will be gender-neutral, but it won't be rated G. Read on, friends, and be sure to include minority voices in your journey.

Church Picnics at Doughton Park: The Persistence of Memory

 

 When I was young, my church went to Doughton Park for a picnic every October. I had no idea where we were once we got there. I never drove, so in my memory, it has always been this nebulous, unreachable place. I wasn't even aware it was on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I think I’ve been afraid to look for it. Maybe I felt like I no longer deserved to find it. I’ve spent decades puzzling over where this place might be when it was so close, if I had just been brave enough to look.

Today I found the spot of those church picnics:  all those hours of food, communion, peace, love, and acceptance. Was that not real? How did we lose all of that? Was it a ruse based on the facade of conformity the whole time?  Looking over the empty tables, haunted for me by so many ghosts, I had to make myself stop searching for and grieving all those people who once meant so much to me and who are now lost to me.

So I parked there and walked through the fields I used to run through as only a child can, over cow patties (that at least hasn't changed), to the rocks that awed me both then and now, and as I walked, I thought, if I wanted to reconvene these people who once meant so much to me, how would I do that? And I knew that the only answer was that I would have to die, and then some of those left living might come to my funeral, if they didn’t have some other more pressing engagement that day.

And I realized again what I’ve known now for a long time: We don’t do living right.

Why Read?

 

"I was gradually getting used to feeling the range of available human emotions, their intensity, the rapidity with which they could change. Until now, anytime that emotions, feelings, had threatened to unsettle me, I'd drink them down fast, drown them. That had allowed me to exist, but I was starting to understand that I needed, wanted something more than that now."

 ~Eleanor Oliphant

For those who don’t see the point in reading fiction, here is an example of what fiction can do for you. In the book Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, toward the end of the book, which is the beginning of Eleanor Oliphant’s healing, Eleanor finally realizes that the negative, hateful, judgemental voice in her head that she always took for her own voice is actually the voice of her mother. Quirky, bizarre, broken, naive, and vulnerable as Eleanor Oliphant’s true voice is, she reminds me of who I might become if only I were brave enough.  Her complete honesty and lack of facade are what I would like to strive for in my life.

As I mentioned a few months ago, I’ve been going back to therapy this summer, and one of the things I’ve been trying to learn is to see, recognize, and know myself. I realize this sounds elementary and like something that should have been handled decades ago, but if you grew up a woman, especially, I think, in a rural society, you will probably understand why self-knowledge and self-determination has escaped me. Like many other women I know, I have spent too much of my life worrying so much about pleasing and displeasing others that I never truly learned what I needed to make myself happy. As my therapist has pointed out on numerous occasions, this is both an impossible and an exhausting way to live.

 

As children most of us were taught to subject our wills and opinions to those of our parents, and sometimes we internalized the voices of our parents so much that we never developed our own voices. I’ve always been overly-sensitive to the moods of others and as a child and teenager wanted more than anything to please my parents. I learned the lesson of worrying about other people’s moods and needs so much that it became who I was without my even realizing it was happening. Even now, I am still working to understand and believe that I don’t have to be this way, that learning to recognize my own voice is not selfish. Most importantly, I am learning that the voice in my head sometimes isn’t my voice at all, and that my job now is to find my own voice and use it. Thanks to Eleanor Oliphant for helping me verbalize this realization. Read a novel once in a while. You’ll be amazed what you can learn about human nature and about yourself.

Less Sure About Less

"And at fifty, Less muses drowsily, you're as likeable as you're going to get."

I experienced a strange transition reading this novel. I didn't think I was going to like it for a while. I wasn't even sure I would finish it. It just wasn't catching my attention. I don't know why. But then, about the time Less gets to Morocco, which is toward the end of the book, I loved it. 

A lot of the book was too much hapless Less mess for me, and I got tired of it. Maybe that was my problem with it. Maybe it was just because Zohra was the only character I could personally identify with, and she doesn't show up until Morocco. Maybe it was just due to my mood.  Who knows? 

In the end, though, I enjoyed the book and am glad I read it. It was definitely laugh out loud funny in many places.

How to Save a Life, One Day at a Time

photo by Amy Brandon

 

"Little things heal our hurts. Sounds, scents, the spoken word, and music that may mean nothing to someone else can reach into our souls and do a work that ordinary methods cannot touch."

 ~Joyce Sequichie Hifler

In the wake of this week sad news on the mental health front, I feel like I need to say this. I'm probably going to spend tonight spinning in my head about whether I should have shared this or not, but I'm going to be brave and say it anyway. I have struggled with depression for years. I've fought my own battles. So far, I've won those battles, but not without a considerable amount of self-harm, both physical and emotional. I've been lucky. Somehow, I've been able to continue to see the love surrounding me. If you are one of those people whose go-to reaction about suicide is to jump in and pass judgement, just stop. Each of us, especially those of us who live with mental illness, fight battles every day no one else can see, and just because you can't see something doesn't mean it isn't real. Unfortunately, mental illness is much more common than most people realize because the old-school stigmas still persist, and we just don't feel comfortable opening up about our struggles. People who are depressed aren't making a choice; they aren't being selfish; they aren't weak. Being awake to the darkness and staying alive through any days with that knowledge requires strength beyond what most of us understand.

In December, 2016 I spent a week at Forsyth Hospital on the psychiatric floor. This was quite probably the most important week of my adult life. It was the first time I had been taught that what was happening to me was not my fault, told that I didn't have control over it, that I didn't cause it, and that I couldn't fix it myself. It was the first time I learned to take care of myself. I'm not going to be glib and say it's all been uphill from there. My life since then has, in large part, consisted of my learning to set boundaries to facilitate my own mental health. Until I started therapy in 2014, I had never even heard of the concept of setting boundaries to protect my own mental health. (Probably this goes a long way toward explaining a lot of my adult life.) I know that many memes are shared on social media about getting away from things or people who make your life harder, and I know that a lot of us, including myself until recently, click "like" and "share" without giving those truisms another thought, but what I am beginning to discover is that in order to achieve real health, we do have to remove ourselves from situations and people who cause us harm. More importantly, we also have to learn to stop causing ourselves harm. The difficult loop here is to realize that you are causing yourself harm if you stay in a situation that harms you in any way. We are good at recognizing physical harm. Emotional and mental harm is much more difficult to see. When you learn to respect yourself, when you finally figure out that achieving self-worth has to be your most important job, it becomes so much easier to remove yourself from situations and people who damage you. I am speaking here only of my own experience. I don't pretend to have any idea what other people go through.

None of this is easy. I have to work hard every day to be well. Some days, I am well.  Some days, I am just ok, and some days, I'm a fucking train wreck. Wellness requires commitment and daily work. But how is committing yourself to daily mental health any different from going to the gym or getting an antibiotic for an infection? After telling myself I couldn't afford it, I went back to therapy a few months ago, and I am so much better now than I was even a month ago. Before you assume anything about me and my financial situation, I pay full price for those thearpy sessions because I have shitty health insurance, and I've had to give up some things to do that, but it is absolutely worth it. Sometimes getting help truly becomes a question of what your life is worth. Here are some of the free things that have helped me:  yoga at home (YouTube), meditation at home (free apps), reading (library books), Krista Tippett's On Being Podcast, The Hilarious World of Depression Podcast, my dogs and cats, writing in my journal, gardening, bird-watching, cooking, cleaning my house, and reaching out to talk with people who make me feel better. Spend some time making your own list of things that make you feel better, and then do at least some of them every day. If you think you don't have time, consider how much time you spend watching TV or on social media.  Think of this list as your mental health tool box and use those tools daily. A few days of self-care can make all the difference in the world. You don't need permission or an excuse. Your life is all the reason you need.

The Power of The Power

Photo by Amy Brandon

For a book I almost didn’t finish and certainly didn’t love, The Power by Naomi Alderman has dominated an awful lot of my thinking lately. So many questions, so many interpretations.

Most of the reactions of the women I know who’ve read this book seem to be centered around the female on male violence. That violence is what almost made me stop reading. I find myself abandoning books very often that include male on female violence because I’m tired of dehumanizing misogyny, and because I find any kind of violence disturbing. Perhaps an uncomfortable question to ask myself is why I was able to read past the dehumanizing female on male violence. I didn’t like it, and I felt like some of it went way too far, but I do understand the point the author was making with it.

The most common response I’ve heard from other readers, all of whom are female, interestingly enough, has been that they were disappointed with the way the women in the book used the power they were given. They all believe, as I do, that women would behave better. One person said that because women know what it is to be oppressed, she believes women would not jump straight to being oppressors. Another woman mentioned that women tend to be more nurturing and loving than men so it should follow that women would be kinder leaders. From the narrow view of my own experience, I agree with both of these assessments, but I don’t know many women who have survived the kinds of experiences that Allie, Roxy, and Tatiana (three of the women in The Power) survived. I don’t know what my reaction to men would be if I had lived their lives. I do understand their bent to revenge more than the character, Margot’s, who seems to be a power-at-all-cost politician. I have no personal knowledge of or experience with a woman like this, although I assume they exist.

Another common comment other readers made was that they liked the book for the first hundred pages or so but not after that. It was shortly after those first 100 pages that I remember thinking I might not be able to finish the book. I detest violence. I can’t even watch old cartoons, never could. I don’t care about power. I don’t understand the desire to be in control of another person. I don’t understand the concept of revenge at all. I do understand that I speak out of the privilege of my own safety.

Violence, revenge, control, and well, power, is what this book is about. Now, granted the book is hyperbolic and satirical, but those two traits don’t necessarily make the violence any easier to read. The plot moves along very well, and I’m sure for people inured to CSI and Law and Order and all those other TV shows the majority of us consume, the violence will not be an issue.  Or anyway, it shouldn’t be. If you can consume male on female violence on a regular basis, then one book with a reversal should not be an issue for you. If you’re like me, and you generally eschew anything with violence, consider yourself forewarned. If you’re looking for love, peace, hope, or redemption, look elsewhere. Still, I think the warning this book provides makes it worth reading.

Motherhood: It's An Asskicker Every Time

These are the People I Love Best
 

Today, I realized what I've been mourning the last eight years is my motherhood. I understand that I am still a mother, but for me, the best parts of motherhood are over. I look at these younger mothers running around to little league and soccer and music, and I hate them. I hate them because I want to be them. We hate most what we don't understand, but in a crazy, only-human-way, we also hate what we want to be but can't. I know these women in a way they don't even know themselves. I know sometimes they hate what they are doing. I know some days they live for 30 minutes alone at night. I also know they have no idea what they have right now.

Often at my age, women take up "nannying" someone else's kids. While I now understand this inclination, it won't work for me. It's not kids I want. I don't even like kids. What I want is my kids back. I want my kids when their breath at night woke me up, when I was the reason their faces lit up when I walked into a room (is there anything else on earth like that?), when they would wake up and ask me what's for breakfast, and I would say, fix your own breakfast and pack your lunch while you're at it, yet still I felt safe in this world because I knew that no matter how much of a clusterfuck I was, motherhood was something I could do right every day, and I knew that here were two people who, no matter what I ever did, worshipped the ground I walked on. I know how they feel, because every day of their lives, I've felt the same way about them, even when I was mad enough to throw things (Sorry, B. I may have over-reacted. When you have your own kids, you can tell me. I love you). When I look at my kids these days, I feel content just to dial it in from here on out. Even if I never do one other good thing, I've done what I was sent here for.  I hope you've had that in your life. It's the best I can wish for us all.

Me in the Sweet Spot and Not Even Knowing It

We Are All Migrants

 

"The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart." from Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

 

Last year when I read the review of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West in the New York Times Book Review, I decided against reading it for two reasons:  I couldn’t imagine how a story about the refugee crisis in our world wouldn’t be depressing; and I found the idea of the magic exit doors to be a little off-putting. Sometimes I enjoy magical realism, but I was skeptical about combining it with the serious, sobering issue of the refugee crisis. When the book showed back up recently in The Morning News Tournament of Books, I decided to give it a try, and I am so glad that I did.

 

I can understand why this book isn’t for everyone. It is not a deep, heavy treatise on the refugee crisis, but I don’t think it’s any less serious for its lack of depth. I found it to be a quick read, but one that nonetheless made me think deeply. The use of the doors worked well to reinforce the important point of how vastly different standards of living are with just a change in geography, but also of how nearly the same people are everywhere.  People in Britain and America might have reliable access to electricity, clean water, cars, food, and safety, but they are not immune to the xenophobic herd mentality that plagues people everywhere. In fact, easy access to comfort and riches seems to make one more susceptible to isolationism. When you choose to look askance at the young men who join any kind of gang or militia, look around at how much this kind of assimilation happens everywhere (only the details are different), especially when family and society break down and leave people feeling alone and unsupported. Saeed and Nadia have fled a broken society where a militia has taken over and wreaked havoc, only to end up in London where “nativist provocateurs” threaten violence, and refugees under threat then retreat into factions of “their own kind.” Safety in numbers; comfort in sameness….this is common to us all. Whether you believe in a god or not, I think a lot of us would benefit from being more aware of the sentiment behind the phrase, “There but for the grace of god go I.”

 

 

Exit West Notes

P4 “...one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.”

P11 war escalates time (in this example due to the deteriorating of a bldg’s facade)

P 28 Ironic that Sadeed uses a burqa to sneak into Nadia’s apartment to date. When everything is hidden, everything is hidden…

P42: virtual world that is available to people in undeveloped nations stands in stark contrast to their own reality:  “...children who went to sleep unfed but could see on some small screen people in foreign lands preparing and consuming and even conducting food fights with feasts of such opulence that the very fact of their existence boggled the mind.”

pp46-47 description of psychodelic mushrooms on consciousness

pp87-88 I like the idea of the exit doors...desperate people searching for a way out, but the theme is embedded in a somewhat clunky, jarring manner. I liked it better when he just used the vignettes instead of explaining anything. It is an interesting concept though, that you could just step through a door anywhere and get somewhere else, especially given how difficult it is to enter and exit some countries now.  Maybe he’s making a point about the pointlessness of all the borders and patrols and “safeguards?”

P94 Nadia is more comfortable with change and progress and variations of movement in her life than Saeed, in whom “the impulse of nostalgia” was stronger, perhaps because his childhood had been more idyllic?  Same idea as people who have more fearing loss more

P96 parents have to let go of children in order to save them

P98 “...for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind…” so many people here for instance not being able to see their parents any more…

P106 Doors west are heavily guarded; doors east are not

P109 “ ...the militants had perhaps hoped to provoke a reaction against migrants from their own part of the world...and if that had been their hope then they had succeeded”

[Violence as a vicious cycle:  Militants kill citizens and in return “nativist provocateurs” attack anyone who looks like the militants.  What’s the difference in these two violent groups? Any violence:  physical, verbal, mental, emotional, is equally wrong.  People’s motives are easier to grasp:  revenge or maybe just sadism, but regardless of motive, violence is wrong. And I know we think smugly to ourselves that we would never, but we do.  We do every time we lash out at each other, it’s just a matter of degrees. Violence starts with ideas, moves to words, and so on, and violence always breeds violence, so it can never be an answer. I don’t have the answer.  I just know it isn’t violence.]

P138: build up to conflict, waiting:  “the calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be.”

P139:  “people are monkeys who have forgotten that they are monkeys, and so have lost respect for what they are born of, for the natural world around them…”

P140:  If Nadia broke her promise to keep Saeed safe, would that “mean she stood for nothing whatsoever.”

[The areas where the refugees have squatted become known as “Dark London” because of power cuts and also I assume due to skin color?]

Pp146-7:   Refugees under threat retreat into factions of their own kind: safety in numbers, comfort in sameness

[This story makes me grateful for everyday things like the ability to shower and wash clothes and to work and earn an income, for blankets and soap and towels…]

P158:  everyone both converging and diverging...the migration, mixing and unsettling and so, frightening...people become isolationist (see Brexti and MAGA)  

“The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart.”

P 159:  “The fury of those nativist advocating wholesale slaughter...so much like the fury of the militants in her own city. She wondered whether she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and the buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not.”

...but then she grasps her freedom outside her homeland and grins “with a wildness.”

[Interesting that the Londoners are referred to as “Natives,” which usually connotes “uncivilized” peoples.]

Pp163-4:  “Saeed wondered aloud once again if the natives would really kill them, and Nadia said once again that the natives were so frightened that they could do anything.”

P164  “Our country was poor.  We didn’t feel we had as much to lose.”

P165 “...to love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you”

P197:  point of there being no natives left in the USA begs the question...then of where am I a native?

P 209  “We are all migrants through time.”

White Tears

"On your record deck, you played the sound of the middle passage, the blackest sound. You wanted the suffering you didn’t have, the authority you thought it would bring...Then came the terror when the real darkness first seeped through the walls of your bedroom, the walls designed to keep you safe and dreaming. And finally your rising sense of shame when you admitted to yourself that you were relieved the walls were there. The shame of knowing that you would do nothing, that you would allow it all to carry on."

White Tears by Hari Kunzru is a strange, challenging, compelling book. I almost returned it to the library after the first 50 pages because it seemed to be yet another book about socially-dysfunctional, weirdly-obsessive white guys. The writing and the development of the plot kept me going. That's the author's gift, I guess:  to compel me to read a book I think doesn't interest me that actually ends up interesting me. In the end, the white guys are just the vehicle, the cheval, for a story about lost blues musicians, the danger of obsession, futile white guilt, mass incarceration, cultural appropriation, and the powerlessness of being outside of the ruling oligarchy that is America.

Reading it made me feel a little crazy: obsessive and guilty and miserable about both our past and our present. I wonder if people who didn't grow up in the south surrounded by blatant racism and hyper-aware of their own ancestors' roles feel the same kind of pervasive guilt about the past that I feel when confronted with these truths. It feels horrifying and crippling, and I don't know what to do about it. Where does the guilt of the ancestors end and my own guilt begin? For I also am relieved that the walls are there for me, and I too am riding the easy waves instead of fighting the current.

This book was well-written with many deep, affecting themes woven into a short narrative, and the plot will keep you guessing until the end. Honestly, I'm still not 100% sure what actually happened and what didn't. It's definitely not a feel-good book, so if you're looking for that, look elsewhere, but in my opinion, it's worth reading, studying, absorbing. This post feels unfinished because I feel like this book is not finished with me yet.

White Rose, Black Forest

photo by Amy Brandon

"You are privileged to read these words so many are barred from. And why are they barred? Because the Nazis know that their real enemy is the independent thinker."

 from White Rose, Black Forest by Eoin Dempsey

I don't read on Kindle as much as I read print, but a few weeks ago, a friend recommended White Rose, Black Forest  by Eoin Dempsey to me, and when I went looking for it, Amazon First Reads seemed liked the best way to get it.  I don't know if I'll stick with the program, but I thought I'd give it a try.  If anyone has had any experience with the service, tell me what you've thought.

White Rose, Black Forest was an entertaining read.  At first I wasn't sure I was going to stick with it, because it begins with a girl contemplating suicide, and I just wasn't sure I was up for that kind of book.  Turns out, it's pretty much the opposite of that kind of book. Here are some key elements:

• a remote cabin in a snowy wood in the Black Forest in 1943
• a strong female protagonist who happens to be a Nazi dissident
• the daring rescue of an enemy spy by said protagonist
• the enemy and the dissident snowed in alone for weeks
• the dissident's ex-boyfriend, now a Gestapo officer
• an escape attempt through the snowy woods with a stay in a cave (I love a cave) 

What will happen? Read it and find out. While much of the plot defies belief, it is an entertaining, escapist story, and if you're like me, a break from reality will be much welcomed. Also if you're like me, you will have to try your best to ignore how quickly and underhandedly Hitler's Fascists took over Germany in the 1930s.  Scary stuff.

Alone Together

photo by Amy Brandon

“So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as alone as we fear.”  ~Roxane Gay

A little over a year ago, I started working part-time and from home. For the first time in my life, my days are neither full of other people nor structured by any outside influence. Think about how strange that sounds. I don’t think my life has been like this since before kindergarten. I expect that would be true for most of us. It’s been like learning to be a different person. More properly, I suppose, it’s been like learning to be fully myself. I absolutely love it, but unforeseen learning curves have presented themselves.

One of the hardest questions I’ve had to ask myself has revolved around the questions of solitude and community. How much solitude is too much? How is community defined anyway? When I feel, as I often do, that there is no such thing as too much solitude, I begin to second-guess myself, to doubt my goodness as a person. What kind of misanthrope just wants to stay home all the time? But then when I do go out, I find both my social skills and my patience with what passes for entertaining interaction these days have atrophied to the point of being almost useless. And how about community? Is spending time with my husband community enough? Does online community count? Do I have to force myself to go out and do things I don’t necessarily want to do just to meet the requirement of being a well-adjusted person? Because here’s the thing, the days I feel the most well-adjusted are the days Ken and I are home alone together all day. Is that solitude or community? Maybe our cultureal expectations for what passses as well-adjusted are not right for some of us. I don’t know. I don’t have answers here, just hunches based on my own recent experience.

A few months ago I was asked to be involved in a small group based on the idea of a “Circle of Trust,” as defined by Parker Palmer in his book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. I didn’t stay with the group, partly because I didn’t want to have to shower and dress and drive an hour round trip in the dark to go, but also partly because I don’t think I am ready for that level of openness with others right now, but that’s a different issue. What I did do was to buy the book and begin to read slowly through it. Just tonight, as I was contemplating emailing the group leader (who is also a pastor) and asking him for help with the questions I mentioned above, I picked up the book instead and came across this passage:

“If we are to hold solitude and community together as a true paradox, we need to deepen our understanding of both poles. Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one’s self. It is not about the absence of other people -- it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others. Community does not necessarily mean living face to face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other. It is not about the presence of other people -- it is about being fully open to the reality of relationship, whether or not we are alone.”

I love that passage, but I feel like I don't quite fully understand it yet. Last Wednesday night my son and I were having a conversation about what we should and should not expect from our relationships with others, both friends and partners, and some of his words helped me begin to broaden my understanding a bit. He said that we don’t need to expect a lot from most of our friends, if we have one friend or partner who is truly a reliable emotional partner to us. He said that what each of us needs is consistent, meaningful interaction with one person we trust, someone we feel free to be our true selves around. If we have this, we don’t need a lot of interaction with other people, but when we don’t have it, we feel driven to look without forethought and sometimes almost desperately for it elsewhere, and usually don’t find it because it is such a difficult thing to develop between two people. I had never formed that thought, but it explains a lot of the drama and distraction of periods of my own life when I felt that kind of connection lacking, as well as a lot of the drama and distraction of other people’s lives I watch from a distance.

As I said, at this point, I don't have any answers even for myself to most of these questions, but I am going to try to be more attentive to my own inner voice telling me what I need, even if that's just to sit on the porch with the dogs and watch the birds. Having fully internalized the puritanical, capitalistic work ethic of our society, that kind of need makes me feel selfish because I don't feel like I am contributing to society. I struggle with this a lot, but something I saw last week on Facebook, of all places, helped me re-frame my thinking:

Rough Notes on Lila

I’m going to try something different with this post. This post is going to be an unedited version of the notes I made while I read Lila by Marilynne Robinson.  I started this blog to help me remember the books I have read, and I’ve found that I’ve worried too much about perfecting the product and not enough about recording my thoughts about the books. So in this post, I’m going to be less of a perfectionist about the post and more true to my original intent. Following are my unedited notes about Lila by Marilynne Robinson from my journal in the order I wrote them.

Undated:  This books is a balm for the overactive mind and weary soul.

1/23/18:  I’ve just read the scene in Lila where John Ames baptizes Lila. I think these may be five of the most moving, most perfect pages I have ever read. It cracked my hardened heart right open. Love, conciliation, grace, peace, remission. Remission? What does that mean? Remit like payment?  Like a bill has been paid? The remission of sins -- I’ve never really thought about what that means before. Is that true? Is that a thing? Is it even possible? Because if it’s true, it changes everything. If the remission of sin is true, then that changes everything. And if I choose it to be true for me, then maybe it becomes true. I must think on this more. Maybe this is where hope comes from. If the birthplace of hope is in the remission of sin, then not having been acquainted with the concept of the one, no wonder I have been unable to have the other.

1/27/18: Talked some with Ken about the above and about how I feel that if this concept, the concept of the remission of sin, is true, then that pretty much negates anyone’s right to judge another person.  If your bill has been paid without your own participation, then hadn’t you better just be glad for that and keep your nose out of everyone else’s business?

2/11/18: In a world of this kind of grace, there is no place for “the spirit of self-destruction and nonbeing” (Dostoevsky) because that spirit often turns outward into judgement, cruelty, and destruction of others, all of which is antithetical to “salvation” or the “remission of sin.” If your own mistakes are wiped away, then there should never be any place in your heart for judgement of others, because judgment implies superiority.  If you ask people straight up if they think they are better than others, they will say no, then they will proceed to live their daily lives as if they do, in fact, believe this very thing. But really, this “remission” thing is always a choice. You have to choose it to be true for you, first by forgiving yourself, then by accepting forgiveness from others, which changes the way you look at things and gives birth to hope.

When your only experience of life has been of its bleakness and meanness (like Lila), then you are only able to see bleakness and meanness.  What you are unable to realize is that it is possible to forgive yourself. You are unable to see any path to wholeness. Any language of redemption and remission sounds overused and otherworldly, out of your frame of reference, so you just reject outright any exploration of the true meaning of or possibility of those concepts. Conversely, if your only experience of life has been ease and acceptance, you accept those concepts without ever really being able to grasp what they mean, I think.

2/14/18:  This may be one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

2/18/18: Lila’s rescuer, Doll, is not a Christian but behaves and lives more like Jesus than do most church folk, although Robinson does not make the church folk in her story unlikable or judgmental or ungiving. If anything I would say Robinson is more than fair in her portrayal of church folk. Matter of fact, the entire “gypsy” group Doll and Lila join remind me somewhat of the lives of Jesus and his disciples. These people are outcasts with no knowledge even of religion, yet they live in harmony and care for one another even though they aren’t all blood relatives, at least until the going gets too rough for survival. Doll never puts herself first. She trades any chance she has for her own life to save Lila, who is not even her kin. She is humble and always “turns the other cheek” to hide the burned scar on one side of her face.

Boughton and his beliefs, to me, epitomize one of the main problems with organized religion.  He sits in his safe, warm, comfortable house, out of the weather,well-fed, loved, supported, coddled, and respected. He surrounds himself with a well-worn belief system, applying it to all, regardless of circumstance. He almost alienates Lila completely with his views on the afterlife. My view has always been why would you spend your time worrying about something (the afterlife) which you cannot truly have any certainty of, especially in reference to other people? Particularly if those views are going to hurt and alienate people in your life who need love and acceptance. Maybe I misunderstand Boughton and need to re-read him a little, but he seems to have a pretty rigid, exclusionary interpretation of the scriptures.

The Reverend, on the other hand, seems too good to be true. To have lived his whole life in a small town surrounded by people who both agree with and respect him...well, it’s hard for me to believe he would end up as open-minded as he is. He did suffer a tragic loss as a young man, and tragedy does tend to open one’s mind. But the perfect love, perfect acceptance, perfect understanding that he offers Lila, who has had so little of any of those things in her life, defies belief. It’s a beautiful love story, but in real life, people are never that loving, understanding, or accepting.

2/26/18: After posting this, I realized I had said very little about Lila herself. Ironic, given that part of the reason I loved this book was that I identify so much with Lila. Maybe that needs to be its own blog post. We'll see.

O How We Howl

photo by Amy Brandon

We are a broken people. The majority of the phone calls we get are from people we don’t know and don’t want to speak to. The majority of the mail we get is from people we don’t know and don’t want to hear from. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that digital interactions with people who check in with us on their own schedules are enough for us, that we don’t need to take the time to cultivate the living, to build non-digital relationships with others who, at times, will interfere with our own busy schedules. After all, we have hundreds of friends available 24/7 at the stroke of a computer key. Few of us , including me, seem to have the capacity any more to be real-life, in-person, on-call friends to one another in these times of digital ascendancy. It’s a lot easier to like a post or type “I love you” or “I’m praying for you” than it is to sit across from another person and let her pain assault you while you drown in your own helplessness. And we wonder why the most vulnerable, the most broken and isolated among us, break in horrific ways we don’t understand. We have neither the time, the patience, nor frankly, the interest, in being the right kind of friend, the saving kind of friend, any more. That is the hard truth. That is not the truth of the Bible we all like to say we follow.

In the midst of the horror and pain of this week, I finished reading Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Lila is a beautiful book. It is art of the kind that redeems humanity. As I’m sure you know if you’re reading this blog, I don’t review plots or discuss character development.  I hope you’ll read the book for that. But I do want to say that this book spoke to me in a particular way as I was able to identify so completely both with Lila’s logic and with her dysfunction. The one question Lila continually asks her husband, who is a minister, is why do things happen the way they do? Throughout the book, he evades the question until toward the end when he finally says what I discovered a long time ago. Some things just don’t lend themselves to being asked why. There is no fair, there is no deserve, sometimes there is no over-arching logic available to a human brain.  You can see where this line of thought could lead to nihilism.  Personally I think that is the lazy way out.  To keep trying to love, to keep working for peace, to keep hoping, these are the hard ways out. These are the paths of the brave.

No man is an island.  I’m pretty sure several famous people stressed this on several occasions over the course of written history, but we seem to do a fine job of forgetting it.  I struggle personally with this because I don’t like or need a lot of people. The truth, though, I think, is that most of us don’t need hundreds of friends. We need one friend, one friend who will hear us when we howl and who will be there to absorb that howl and to help us find our way out of it so the howl doesn’t overwhelm us all in the end.

Am I My Shadow Self?

photo by Amy Brandon

I realize this may sound strange, but I’ve waited until I was 50 years old to figure out who I am.  Some of the waiting was my fault; some was not. 

The first issue I should address is the who of who I am discovering myself to be.  This may be offensive to some of you. I prefer cats, dogs, and birds to most of the people I know. (If I’ve lost you here, you should probably stop reading.) Most of the time, I prefer silence, books, animals, trees, flowers, and mushrooms to people. Sometimes I think maybe I am a reasonably intelligent person, and then I find myself staring for hours at the birds on our feeders. I would go into debt to buy land for these birds, if my husband would let me.  This is not a sign of intelligence as we understand it. So you can see why I often doubt myself. For most of my life, I was told these qualities made me not likeable to the people around me.  The worst insult in my culture is “she's just not a people person.” This continues to be a problem. I’m pretty sure it will be until I learn to “fix that shit,” which, let’s be honest, at this point probably is not going to happen. I’ve given it (fixing that shit) a good go for 50 years though, which is why I still don’t quite really know myself.

 I go through periods of feeling like a kick-ass human being and periods of feeling particularly fragile and isolated. During recent months, mostly I’ve felt the latter. Through one of my current books, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, I discovered May Sarton, specifically, her Journal of a Solitude. From the first entry in this journal, I felt like I was reading my own thoughts. First and foremost, I discovered that I am not the only person who goes “up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour,” and for whom, all too often, “every meeting with another human being has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am exhausted by the reverberations after even the simplest conversation…the deep collision is and has been with my unregenerate, tormenting, and tormented self.” I can’t bring myself to delve into or elaborate on this journal right now.  I need more time with it, time to buy my own copy, mark it up, meditate on it.

Concurrent with my reading of The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and Journal of a Solitude, I also have been working through The Portable Jung edited by Joseph Campbell, Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, and Lila by Marilynne Robinson.  The intersection of thoughts and ideas in these works has felt eerie and has helped me begin to understand the underlying truth of Jung’s collective unconscious, the revelation that some things are true, whether or not we understand and accept them. I wonder if maybe this truth is what some of us call God.

I spent my childhood and adolescence pleasing my parents. I’ve spent my adult life shaping my children, who have turned out to be more than I could have ever wished. Now it’s my turn to find me.  I don’t think I could have better companions for this journey than the people whose works I am currently reading.  I just hope that in finding myself, I don’t lose others. That seems to be the danger, the narrow line women are asked to walk.  Find and acknowledge yourself or continue to prioritize everyone else?  Is this asked of men?  Why is this ever asked of anyone, regardless of gender?