Books and more books
Loving them, buying them, reading them
Mixed message
Well, is this business open or closed? My guess is that someone left the sign on the night before. This is an upscale lounge, not a porn shop.
Check in
What’s your problem?
I’m not sure what defines a problem. Maybe it’s a question I don’t have an answer for. A mosquito buzzing at the ear of my consciousness.
Something I ruminate on. Funny word, ruminate. It comes from a cow chewing its cud.
Here I am, chewing on a problem. A relatively easy one (I thought): how to write about problems.
One thing I’ve learned with age: problems have a way of dissipating if you just ignore them. Stick them on the memory shelf for a spell. That disagreement I have with a friend, for example. Time will absorb it.
But. There will always be problems that don’t go away. That sad diagnosis. The relative who won’t talk to you. The credit card bill you can’t pay.
The wars.
How do we even live with war and famine, dishonor and injustice? We hate these things, and yet they never cease.
Sometimes there’s good news. Sometimes, with every small triumph, it seems, a bigger evil ensues.
I’m sorry, I don’t have a solution. I am grateful that my problems are small.
As for the big, global issues, well, I can crawl into my metaphorical bed and pull the covers over my head. The killing continues, but at least I don’t hear the screams.
And the immediate problem, writing about problems? That didn’t work out. The Gordian knot just drew tighter.
Got the ides?
March 15 is the ides of March, made famous by Shakespeare in “Julius Caesar.” It is the day Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE.
In the play, Caesar ignores a warning to “beware the ides of March.”
Then, in Act III, Caesar tweaks the soothsayer who issued the warning: “The Ides of March are come,” he says, to which the man replies, “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”
That is something to remember: each day has come but is not gone. As immortalized by the soap opera and its reprise in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”
Frost
After a spate of warm springlike weather, it turned clear and cold in Portland last week. Mornings woke to a landscape dusted with frost, quickly dissipated by the sun. Outside near 8 am, I managed a few photos before it was all gone.
Reading
Does this ever happen to you? You pick up a new book, so excited to be finally reading it, and within the first few pages, often the first paragraphs, you are caught short by a thought, or an image, or a passage that makes you stop reading. You have to go off for a while, and think about it, maybe write about it or quote it in your journal.
Recently, I cracked open a book I was looking forward to reading, Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times, by Andrew D. Kaufman. I didn’t get any farther than the preface—which Kaufman calls “An Invitation to the Reader.
Here’s what he wrote (his italics):
Literature is alive; books like it when, rather than merely “studying” them, you engage with them deeply, personally, bringing your entire self to the reading experience, both you and the book expanding to dimensions you’d never have thought possible.
This is a big thought, folks. I never thought of books liking how the reader approaches them, but once Kaufman said it, I got it.
But I had to step away from Kaufman’s book—stop reading it—to give myself time to digest the idea.
Bookmarks
My library is full of books with bookmarks in them, a few pages in, a third of the way. Sometimes I stop reading because the ideas are so striking, as with Kaufman’s book. But other times, I get distracted by a shiny new book. I often flit from one book to another like a hummingbird, taking a sip from each flower before flying off to the next, then coming back to the first for another dose.
I hope to make a list like this infrequently, no more than once a year, but here’s what I am reading (or trying to read) just now.
Book clubs
I am reading several volumes for book clubs. Do you find it exhilarating or limiting to have to read a book over the course of a month?
A group of Berkeley alumni meets online monthly. We just read The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery, and are moving on to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,* by Gabrielle Zevin (the Multnomah County Library Everybody Reads selection for 2024).
*Another reference to Shakespeare. That poet is everywhere.
Next up will be Burmese Days by George Orwell and Fire in the Heartland by Timothy Egan. I’m dipping into the Egan book early because, while it’s in great demand at the library, I snagged a Lucky Day! copy (“Hot titles. Available now. 2 at a time for 3 weeks”), so I need to finish it soon.
I’m also on my way to finishing The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd, which I’m reading for the Rose Schnitzer Manor book club. These books are provided to senior living centers by the Multnomah County Library. Extra perk: All the volumes are large print.
Then the rest
I’m still tiptoeing my way through War and Peace and Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel for the year-long slow reads hosted by Simon Haisell via a Substack called “Footnotes and Tangents.” I’m a bit behind on both but think I can catch up*
*I’m also behind, but just by a few poems, on my commitment to write a poem a day for 100 days. I plan on catching up there, too.
Meanwhile, a pile of other books have me dipping, hummingbird-like, in and out.
Sidewalk Oracles, by Robert Moss, part of a read-along with Amy Cowan at illustratedlife.substack.com
Keto Diet, Dr. Josh Axe. A little advice at a time is all I can handle.
Likewise, The Circadian Code, by Satchin Panda. Learning to live life in a different rhythm, again accessible in small bites.
The Daily Mirror, David Lehman. Lehman wrote a poem a day for a year, then selected 100 of them for this volume. One a day is about right.
Lost Horizon, James Hilton. I recently found a paperback of this chestnut. I want to write about cultural appropriation, Pocket Books and Sam Jaffe, all connected to this book, in some later posting.
Heloise’s Housekeeping Hints, by Heloise (real name: Poncé Cruse Evans). I hope to mine this dinosaur of book to write about spring cleaning.
The I Ching or Book of Changes, translated from Chinese to German to English and published by Princeton University Press starting in 1950. I’m slowly working through the foreword by Carl Jung.
Look at the Lights, My Love, by Annie Ernaux, translated from the French by Alison L Strayer. You’d think I’d race through this slim 81-page volume about the supermarket near Paris, but no, I keep stepping out to look up her references to streets, scenes and books. This has to go back to the library! Finish it, already!
Crayon, By Monika Forsberg, part of a series called Anywhere, Anytime Art. This book advocates using water-soluble crayons, a product neither I nor the gurus at jetpens.com had ever heard of, to make art. I’m still trying to get a drawing, artsy practice going. This book is my current passport.
The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, Robert Macfarlane. This is a book like The Salt Path, which I thoroughly enjoyed. My daughter Lyza says to read chapter 4. “Silt” (or was it Chapter 3, “Chalk”?) Either way, I keep adding it to the pile, where it gets superseded by War and Peace or A Fever in the Heartland.
Lately, I’ve been exploring the 1970-era Chinese Cookbook, printed in Japan and written by Mrs. Lydia Wang. I was looking for Egg Foo Young, but of course it wouldn’t be in a bilingual Chinese-English cookbook. EFY was probably developed by Chinese in America for the American palate. The Western-style gravy is a tip-off.
Finally, a group of us who meet with the Christian chaplain at the mostly Jewish Rose Schnitzer Manor each week have decided to work our way through a new book, How to Know a Person, by David Brooks. It took me a solid year to read another book by Brooks, The Second Mountain, but it was worth the effort.
Poetry
I keep several books of poetry by my bed, to read upon retiring and awakening.
The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. Who knew Homer could be an easy read? Reads like a novel in iambic pentameter.
Omeros, by Derek Walcott. A Caribbean take on The Odyssey. This work was mentioned often in a fine book, We Should Not Be Friends, by Will Schwalbe.
Two translations by the poetic Stephen Mitchell: The Tao Te Ching and Bhagavad Gita. Mitchell doesn’t know Asian languages, yet his work sounds authentic. Still, these are interpretations.
American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, compiled by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. This one poem, “The Field Trip,” starts out so ordinary:
“This time they’re thirteen, no longer interested in the trillium on the path but in each other,” But it ends up in a surprising place: “Sixteen children, two adults, and one bad boy who carved a scorpion on his arm.”
The Dream of a Common Language, by Adrienne Rich. I bought this book because Cheryl Strayed took it with her on the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild. I’m still trying to make something of it.
Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon. Many good poems here.
Incarnadine, by Mary Szybist, an incandescent book that won the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry. Szybist teaches at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.
And Shakespeare. Always.
In my ongoing effort to avoid patronizing Amazon, I always look first for books at betterworldbooks.com. I can usually snag a used book for a good price, postage paid. One downside is the books come with hard-to-remove stickers on the spine.
About Tolstoy
Robert has long had a copy of this image of young Leo Tolstoy. Most of us are familiar with portraits of the aged Tolstoy, with his overgrown beard. This young version bears some resemblance to a onetime friend of Robert’s named Andrew.
This is a poem I wrote in 2004 based partly on that image. Robert and I were falling in love at the time, and we were married later that year.
Nicotine and ink
Young Tolstoy, Without a beard Andrew precursor Holographic proof But not proof of love Only love can prove love. Absent love, there’s nicotine, Nicotine and ink, The material of sublimation. No room here for chocolate No room for love Just nicotine and ink And a glass of Something red And a candle Over the foot-worn carpet That wraps up memory In strands of nicotine and ink. I wrote this poem at bygone cigar bar called Greater Trumps, part of the McMenamin empire (it was next to the Baghdad Theater). I like nicotine in small doses. I am more intemperate with ink.
Kaiser dental
Robert and I had our first visit with Kaiser dental this week. New impressions and adventures! The office was well-lit, well-designed and clean. We were asked if we could use some water, lip balm or a tension ball. No charge.
The only magazines in the waiting room were New Yorkers. They dated from November, but still.
The X-ray tech was from Kazakstan. The hygienist was Korean, and the dentist grew up in China.
Some of the staff wore red-and-white striped masks. I was reminded of candy-stripers.
Those were the teenaged hospital volunteers of yore who wore distinctive red-and-white pinafores. I remember, back in high school, how proud my classmates were of serving as candy stripers .
Most hospitals just call such helpers “volunteers” these days, but a few, like the Medical University of South Carolina, still refer to their volunteers that way. Sadly, the pinafores are history.
Siri in real life
Kaiser has the best phlebotomists. They do dozens of blood draws a day. It’s rare that you even feel the needle slide in.
This week, I encountered a friendly Asian woman while getting a blood test. Her name is Siri. She’s blasé about having the same name as the iPhone assistant. After all, what can you do?
Siri the person, who is from Thailand, has a more pleasant voice than Siri, the disembodied AI personality. I’ll bet she doesn’t say “I don’t understand what you mean,” either.
On the way to books
On my way home from Kaiser Dental, at a bus stop on Northeast Multnomah Street, I encountered two women trying to find their way to Powell’s City of Books. One of them, Maureen, is from Michigan, near Ann Arbor. The other is her daughter, Elizabeth, from Chicago.
They had traveled to Portland, Oregon, just to go to Powell’s. Elizabeth had visited the store in 2017, sending her mom some books, and Maureen wanted to see what all the fuss was about. “It’s on my bucket list,” she explained.
Between me and and the bus driver, we got them set on their way to the world’s biggest bookstore.
Visiting an icon
My daughter Maggie was in town for a few days, and one of the places we went together was Powell’s. I read that the city block behemoth now has 1 million books.
Time was, when I worked for the Berkeley library while at school there in the 1970s, the library was pushing 1 million books for the entire campus. That seemed like a lot at the time, but it now has some 13.5 million books.
Fifty years ago, Harvard had 3 million books, as I recall. It now has 20 million, not counting documents and maps.
We’re used to thinking of books as being superseded by other media. That is definitely not the case.
I found myself in the YA section, checking out books by Maggie Stiefvater, one of my favorite authors. There I found a cheerful young woman named Addie, who is big on Stiefvater, too. We’ve both read the Raven Boys series more than once. Stiefvater is the kind of author you want to do that with. I buy a new book by her, The Scorpio Races. Add it to the pile.
Check out
I’m amassing more and more photos, good ones, I think. Coming posts will likely be photo-heavy as I start packing and planning for my move back home. Writing takes effort, but photos, once taken, are easy to pop into a posting.
Meanwhile, here’s another poem.
Healing detour
I can handle this. I can. A chance warning, A whisper, not a klaxon. “Beware of your body,” It says. “Betrayal is coming.” But that cannot be. I have a pact, after all: You heal me, I thank you— Uneven exchange? Well, no. Healing is finite Except for the heart. Gratitude grows Forever. I write in my shirtsleeves Before donning the scratchy sweater. I always dress sitting down, The balance, you know. Soon, soon, I’ll be mobile, Walking pine-needle paths, Drinking rain water From an earthen cup. Bring me to your temple, Your first and last worshiper. Just you and me, Spirit— My breathing, your breath.
Like me
Do please remember the “like” button. It’s way up at the top. And I always cherish comments. Paid subscriptions are nice, too, but not as important.
Most importantly, I hope you will continue to explore with me. Thanks for reading.
—30—
Whew! You exhausted me with all your reading. Like you, I read a word or phrase and a memory pops into my brain. Bookmark inserted! My mind is so distracted by all the cool things to do in my house, reading Craig Childs' Tracing Time or my newest find, The Secret World of Weather, by Tristan Gooley. When I can't concentrate on that, I play my piano, knit on a project (one at a time please), or force myself to perform one big housecleaning project. Lately, though, much time is consumed by Substack, both writing and reading all the marvelous post from those I've subscribed to. (call the grammar police!) One substacker I look forward to is you, Fran. Hope your eventual move goes well.
Nice to find you here. I love this book list. Like Ken Goe I read all three in the Wolf Hall series; I’ve lately become more interested in historical fiction. I’m also reading the David Brooks book “How to Know a Person.” Do you think a book on tape qualifies as having read a book? We’re trying to limit the number of hard copy books at home so I read chiefly on my IPad. I think of all the books I want to read but I’m afraid I won’t have enough time (mortal time), so if I can get more books in by listening on the bus that should be a good thing, yes?