Came across this last night; ended up crying real tears into my couch cushions. If you don't find this tumblr hilarious, we are not friends. Leave my life. We don't understand each other anyway.
Iceland on Tumblr
Hm. Making a blog in the voice/perspective of every country on earth? Now *that* is a project I could get behind/waste my life on.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
The Beggar Maid
It's a rainy, warmish night in my neck of the woods. Warm enough to have the bedroom window open to the outside air, after months of being stifled and confined, after all that bitter cold and ice. It feels heavenly.
So I'm in my bed, eating cookies and drinking green tea out of a mug that was a present from someone I adore, which feels nice. And I'm working my way through a big, heavy, marvelous book - Alice Munro's Selected Stories. I'm not sure there could be a better way to spend a Thursday night, for me.
Every single story in this book - in any of her books, this is my third - has at least one sentence that leaps through the page and punches me in the face. But somehow, gently. With grace. She is masterful.
(I suppose this is why they gave her a Nobel Prize this year. I am so late to this party.)
I tend to be enthusiastic about things that I love, it's true. But I'm glad, now that I'm learning more about "serious" literature (although I'm always down for non-serious literature, let's not be snobs, people) that I'm learning discretion. The more widely I read, the more able I am to discern something worth truly marveling at.
When I read Alice Munro, all I can think is, this is a woman who understands people. Who tells the truth about them. Even though it's fiction, it is all lined with razorblades of truth. And it's all so ordinary, just stories about ordinary people living ordinary lives. But illuminated. My very favorite kind of stories - simple and true. If you've never read her, begin. I just read The Beggar Maid, and feel like I could read it five more times before I can even begin to discern the layers of intelligence and depth under the surface line of the plot itself.
Oh, graduate school. You're going to exhaust me, aren't you?
"This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
This is what happens.
Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you."
- Runaway, Alice Munro
So I'm in my bed, eating cookies and drinking green tea out of a mug that was a present from someone I adore, which feels nice. And I'm working my way through a big, heavy, marvelous book - Alice Munro's Selected Stories. I'm not sure there could be a better way to spend a Thursday night, for me.
Every single story in this book - in any of her books, this is my third - has at least one sentence that leaps through the page and punches me in the face. But somehow, gently. With grace. She is masterful.
(I suppose this is why they gave her a Nobel Prize this year. I am so late to this party.)
I tend to be enthusiastic about things that I love, it's true. But I'm glad, now that I'm learning more about "serious" literature (although I'm always down for non-serious literature, let's not be snobs, people) that I'm learning discretion. The more widely I read, the more able I am to discern something worth truly marveling at.
When I read Alice Munro, all I can think is, this is a woman who understands people. Who tells the truth about them. Even though it's fiction, it is all lined with razorblades of truth. And it's all so ordinary, just stories about ordinary people living ordinary lives. But illuminated. My very favorite kind of stories - simple and true. If you've never read her, begin. I just read The Beggar Maid, and feel like I could read it five more times before I can even begin to discern the layers of intelligence and depth under the surface line of the plot itself.
Oh, graduate school. You're going to exhaust me, aren't you?
"This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
This is what happens.
Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you."
- Runaway, Alice Munro
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
Be we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so remarkably well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end has magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in a tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
- Jack Gilbert
Italics mine, above.
I struggle with poetry that is religious, because I am not religious. I envy those that have faith. I wish I had access to that particular well, but I don't. And although that element is missing for me, the poem here still rings true, doesn't it?
I don't need to put my faith in a religion, or into the hands of a hard formulaic god, in order to believe in praising the beauty of simple things.
Our lives are made up of these simple things, these ordinary moments. And I fervently believe in paying attention, and in offering up appreciation for all of my moments - the dark and the light.
Who do I offer my appreciation to? The air, I guess. The sea. Directly to the source - the music itself, or the laughing friend. The Bengal tiger, the seaside town. I thank the things themselves, instead of an unseen creator pulling invisible strings.
Does it matter who I thank? To me, what matters is the noticing. The appreciating. The love.
Last night I walked my dog down a dark, silent street that's covered in ice, under a clear black sky lit with stars. My dog was jaunty, pouncing at nothing, her warm breath making little puffs over frozen snow mounds. It was a sad night. I was thinking of a friend of mine, who I knew to be suffering. I was thinking, then, of other friends, old and new. Lost and kept. Of their past sufferings, and my own, and all of our collective future ones, always hovering just over our heads. All the warm spots we each inhabit on this frozen, spinning planet, and the love that connects us to one another on our own dark nights.
I appreciate the connections. The beauty. The loss. My friend, and his heavy heart.
All of us.
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
Be we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so remarkably well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end has magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in a tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
- Jack Gilbert
Italics mine, above.
I struggle with poetry that is religious, because I am not religious. I envy those that have faith. I wish I had access to that particular well, but I don't. And although that element is missing for me, the poem here still rings true, doesn't it?
I don't need to put my faith in a religion, or into the hands of a hard formulaic god, in order to believe in praising the beauty of simple things.
Our lives are made up of these simple things, these ordinary moments. And I fervently believe in paying attention, and in offering up appreciation for all of my moments - the dark and the light.
Who do I offer my appreciation to? The air, I guess. The sea. Directly to the source - the music itself, or the laughing friend. The Bengal tiger, the seaside town. I thank the things themselves, instead of an unseen creator pulling invisible strings.
Does it matter who I thank? To me, what matters is the noticing. The appreciating. The love.
Last night I walked my dog down a dark, silent street that's covered in ice, under a clear black sky lit with stars. My dog was jaunty, pouncing at nothing, her warm breath making little puffs over frozen snow mounds. It was a sad night. I was thinking of a friend of mine, who I knew to be suffering. I was thinking, then, of other friends, old and new. Lost and kept. Of their past sufferings, and my own, and all of our collective future ones, always hovering just over our heads. All the warm spots we each inhabit on this frozen, spinning planet, and the love that connects us to one another on our own dark nights.
I appreciate the connections. The beauty. The loss. My friend, and his heavy heart.
All of us.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)