"She wasn't picking a fight. She just really wanted to know."

Remember when the madre told me to put down the crap and pick up a quality book? And remember how the quality book in question was Laura Moriarty's While I'm Falling?

The madre had just finished reading it and pretty much forced my in to literary compliance.

And she was right. She was so right.

Now, people read different books for all sorts of different reasons. Sometimes we read books to escape. We read to feel part of something. We read to gain historical knowledge. We read to laugh and be amused. We read to articulate something we feel.

And sometimes, there comes a book that articulates how we feel right at this very moment. It is literary kismet.

Reading While I'm Falling depicted so many inner conflicts within myself. On the one hand, all of the characters are flawed. Their flaws make them real. No one is perfect. These characters get it wrong. They feel bad and make up for it. Their flaws within the unconditional love of a family unit makes my own foibles seem ok.

My favorite part deals with the mother daughter relationship. I won't give it all away (unlike usual), but a main concern in the novel centers around stay at home moms.

We know that my mom stayed home with us, and it is a fact I am fiercely proud and protective of. The mom in the story finds herself divorced after 20 odd years of devoting herself to her family. The kids are out of the house and she is left with no 'marketable skills'. At a very tense point in the novel (pre-divorce), she asks her husband if he finds her interesting. Does he think of her as her own person or simply in relation to himself.

Isn't that what we modern women fear? Being defined by others?

OK, I can't help it *SPOILER ALERT

So when one of the daughters (who ironically always related more to the dad) gets pregnant and plans on leaving lawyering to be a stay at home mom, the mom is heavily against the idea. The daughter's response? You were an amazing mother to us. I appreciated having you be there for us day after day. How could I not want that for my own children?

I won't tell you how the book ends, but I will put out a quandary. How does one be a stay at home mom but still maintain her autonomy. I'm unsure if it can be done. And perhaps it isn't supposed to. I think to do one well you might need to knowingly give up the other. For love. And for family.

"For some time, maybe minutes, maybe hours, I lay awake, eyes open, staring up into the darkness. Just two nights earlier, I'd ignored her calls. I was aware of everything shifting, new regret a sharp pain in my throat. The hurt felt real, and truly physical, and also, strangely, like something necessary and right. When I was young, lying in bed at night, the backs of my calves would hurt so much that I would sometimes cry out. Growing pains, my parents said. They were a myth, the doctor countered. But night after night, my legs hurt; until one night, they stopped hurting, and I was taller."
Laura Moriarty

When I read you like this, and I fold you like that, it's so hard to believe, but the meaning's all coming back to me now

I vaguely remember reading House on Mango Street when I was younger. I don't recall whether it was for school or for fun. I don't sense that I gleaned any mystical meaning from it. It was just another book. Another book in a long trail I have left behind me my entire life.

Don't get me wrong, I have a great affinity for Latino culture and lit. When my fam lived in Texas it took about two seconds before I was walking around yell singing O pueblecito de Belen at the holidays and The Ballad of the Alamo the rest of the time.

But Mango Street has always been filed in my mind as just a book. I didn't get all the hullabaloo. Just as with most things though, it was bad timing.

Years later, my college experience coincided with the world realizing Latino lit. Just like American Indian and Asian before it, Latino lit had been championed. By that time I had long since put Ana Castillo's So Far From God on my favorites list. I said, "Bring on Chicano Literature, viva la revolucion!"

All this was priming me for my second Mango Street reading.

Now, years later AGAIN, when I read this lovely subset of lit I get all nostalgic. Even more clearly now, I appreciate the way the accessible language allows the reader greater access to meaning. I appreciate the real quality even surreal events have. For Mango Street specifically, the first time through I completely bypassed or possibly didn't care about the themes which run throughout: ideas of home, finding yourself, and ultimately realizing that yourself was there all the time and it is actually in that place called home.

I closed the book and articulated stated, "wow."

That's my English Literature degree speaking.

All these years of meandering in between reads. I'm finally ready to hear what Mango Street had to say.

"Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free."
Sandra Cisneros

Sometimes I need to shut my mouth...about books

Remember when I was saying all those wonderful things about And Then We Came to the End and how accurate and hilarious it was?

Ummm, yeah.

Now, I fully stand by my statement that the first 50 pages are hilarious. It's just that perhaps the book should have stopped there? And been a short story?

Addendum: **SPOILER ALERT** (sorry E!)

Because it proceeds to go into this creepy children dying, cancer ridden, coworkers going crazy and coming back to work dressed as a clown and shooting people with a paint gun place.

And really, I'm not a fan of that place.

A call to the Madre was in order...

Me: What is wrong with this book?
Madre: ?
Me: You said it was FUNNY.
Madre: The beginning was very funny!
Me: Yeah, but then there are 200 or so un-funny pages. That wasn't deemed important enough to mention?!?

And now it is late back to the library because I couldn't renew it because someone else has it on hold and I want to tell them DON'T READ PAST PAGE 50.

Lesson learned. I will now withhold judgments and statements until the END of books.

Meanwhile, I will not comment upon but will tell you that the Madre and I are currently reading John Updike's Rabbit, Run book-club style. Feel free to join in!

"In Rabbit, Run, I liked writing in the present tense. You can move between minds, between thoughts and objects and events with a curious ease not available to the past tense."
John Updike

The day I met you I tore up all my maps

I finished Breakable You Sunday night. I have been thinking about it since then, trying to compose the words. My mom said it would make me cry, but I didn't anticipate it making me cry.

On the surface level it is about a family. Divorced parents. A writer father, psychiatrist mother, and philosophy PhD student daughter. But really is it about the choices we make in life. It is about love. It is about people making choices for love or making choices for a certain lifestyle. Brian Morton writes beautifully. I had to bend over many pages...

"Every time he saw her, he wanted to turn himself off to her, but every time he saw her, something about her overwhelmed his intentions."

I know that moment. The moment when you really like someone but you don't have the time. Don't want to make the time. But there they are. Irresistible.

"We love some people because of what we see in them; we love others because of what they help us see in ourselves...he was the only person she had loved for both reasons...when she was with him, the world seemed calmer; the world seemed to make more sense. And when she was with him, she had felt - well, she had never been able to decide whether she had felt more than herself or more like herself."

It is interesting the effect someone else can have on you. On the way you perceive yourself. The way you perceive your world.

"...it wasn't just sex anymore. He wanted this. He wanted her. He wanted to be here, walking through the park with her, holding her hand."

I'm saying these words: holding hands is great.

"'The day I met you I tore up all my maps'...'I can still remember what I was thinking when I read that line,' he said. 'I remember wondering if love was really like that. I remember wondering if I could ever feel that way about anyone.' He didn't need to say more."

The romanticism of that one line of poetry. Makes me smile. Makes me look up the author - Nizar Qabbani. I would welcome him to my closet hopeless romantic club but he refuses to be closeted. In the poem that line is from he continues:

God how is it that we surrender
to love giving it the keys to our city
carrying candles to it and incense
falling down at its feet asking
to be forgiven
Why do we look for it and endure
all that it does to us
...
I knew when I said
I love you
that I was inventing a new alphabet
for a city where no one could read
...
Your image is engraved
on the face of my watch
It is engraved on each of the hands
It is etched on the weeks
months years
My time is no longer mine
it is you

In case that was too sappy, here is a sad romantic one if that is what you need.

"Duration means nothing. Souls know no time. She had revived him, she had redeemed the idea of the future, and if he'd never met her he might have died of old age without having come back to life. The map of his life had been redrawn before he died, and she was at its center. She ws at its heart."

This is where I cried. Because she is heartbroken and has a thought flash through her mind. That she was just a short and fiery blip on his radar. A momentary flash that in the end doesn't mean much at all. But she wasn't. She meant everything to him.

"Jean-Paul Sartre said that when you ask someone for advice, you've already decided what you're going to do, becuase we know the advice each of our friends will give, and when we choose who to ask we reveal that we've already chosen what to do."
Brian Morton

He gets women

For the longest time, I believed the majority of male authors simply didn't get women. I mean, I'm sure they got women - hello, women think writers/arty types are sexy...all that connection to their feeeelings - but I mean get = understand.

And it isn't their fault. Women are tricky. And ever-changing. And volatile. And probably a long list of other scary/awesome attributes that makes capturing us sincerely on the page all the more illusive.

So when the madre brought me a book last night and preempted it by saying the author gets women I was like OMG YES, hello holy grail.

After reading Devil in the White City I need something emotionally sad, not disturbingly sad. I need to feel awww relationships...they are intricate, not hmmmm is my creepy downstairs neighbor actually an evil genius serial killer using his lonely, not socially aware exterior as a guise...

The later feelings don't promote sleeping though the night. So I say goodbye to DITWC. You were a great read, but I prefer not having creepy nightmares that make me wake up sweating, thank you.

On to feelings. I have just started Breakable You, by Brian Morton. I am in love with the title alone. Three chapters in, and I am already hooked.

Stay tuned...

"...puzzled by how comfortable it felt to walk beside him...during most of their years together, she'd felt secure with him; she'd felt blessedly safe. Since they'd been apart, she'd come to realize that in return for this feeling of safety she'd given up some of the things that were most important to her. And yet she still had an instinctive nostalgia for the old feeling."
Brian Morton

The Quiet Girl

Well - I have been on vacation, in Boston, and it was a fabulous trip. But this blog isn't about Boston, it is about the new book I bought for my flight home. It is called The Quiet Girl, by Peter Hoeg. I know a lot of people who are fans of American Lit, and I tend to lean towards British counterparts, so sometimes it is refreshing to try something new.

As with life, as with literature.

This book is distinctly Russian and I love it. I am about halfway through and have already demolished the book with a magnitude of folded pages and underlined phrases... I own it, what do you want?

First things first, I like the title. It always says so much about a book. Mainly I sympathize because I used to be the quiet girl. A lot of people scoff at this, but seriously! My confidence came to me after years and years of quiet servitude to society. Now you can't shut me and my opinions up, and I must admit I like it that way.

One side note. This book is Russian. Dark. Think Dostoevsky, only slightly less suicidal.

Alright, let's get to the meaty excerpts and my commentary:

"As a rule there's a part of oneself that knows. And a larger part that doesn't want to know."
Usually, I ignore the part that knows. Then my mother reminds me and I have to pay attention. The large part of ourselves wants to be happy and carefree, much of the time this is only possible when you ignore the nagging truth in the back of your head. Although I will say that if you listen to the small part there would be a lot less delusion in this world. I am on the fence as to whether that is a positive thing.

"April light was unlike any other. It had a charming, optimistic unreliability, like an overbid hand in poker. It gave a promise of spring it wasn't sure it could keep."
Promises. Lots of times, people throw out promises like they are compliments, because they sound nice. Also because they want to fulfill them, even when they know they can't. This is dangerous. When you throw a promise out it leads to expectations, inevitably leading to disappointment.

"We'll be back tomorrow... We can hope so, but can we plan on it?"
You really can't plan on it, so live with no regrets. Today is the only thing you truly have the slightest chance of influencing. Tomorrow, next week, next year? Forget about it.

"Happiness doesn't consist so much of what one has scraped together and gotten off the ground, but of what one has been able to let go of."
Man have I had to learn this the hard way, in love and life.

I used to think, in love, that if you let go of the past you could be happy with that person who had previously ruined your life so successfully. But really? It is about letting go so that you can be emotionally available for the next person, so you don't walk around with a bitter chip on your shoulder. Because no one wants the mean, broken girl.

In life, you have to let go of what you can't change. What benefit is it if you pull yourself up and create a life, but are still so wrapped up in the past you can't appreciate it?

"He hadn't had a word for it, but he had known, they both had known, that they were in the path of a storm it would be hard to ride out."
This is a sad moment in a relationship, any relationship. When you realize everything you had is in jeopardy of being lost because you or the relationship isn't strong enough, when it was all you thought you had. After you lose it, the pain in your heart never goes away. The what if we had been stronger fades though, because you realize - after as much time as is necessary - it just wasn't meant to be. Is someone at fault? Possibly, but that is really isn't the point.

"You have very little talent when it comes to being satisfied in everyday life. But your longing. Sometimes I envy you that."
My mom will tell me I am always looking for the next "thing." Everyday life is very difficult for me to appreciate. My mantra of living in the now is helping, but I still get excited and want to jump 50 steps ahead. Most times, people don't want to jump that far with you. I will say, though, I would rather perpetually strive to improve myself as opposed to complacently stagnating. Although can I have both? Striving and yet still being satisfied? But if you are satisfied, then where does the motivation come from? So many questions.

Also, I think this longing in myself forces me to put myself out there in all aspects of life. Two of my friends have recognized this lately and given me meaningful commentary which supports and validates some of my harder decisions, and brings a loving tear to my eye:

M: Heart on sleeve is so hard, C, but I'm proud of you. Because you wear it beautifully.
P: You earned it, Claire and I'm so proud of you taking charge of your life and not settling.

"Touching doesn't help; we never reach each other anyway."
This really goes back to the whole letting go theme. Sometimes we make mistakes and take steps backwards - why? - because it is comfortable. We know what to expect, even the problems. But then it is the same problems, like the two parties are on completely different wavelengths. No one wants to keep banging their heads on the wall when there isn't symbiosis, even where there once was.

"You think people will always be abandoned."
If I am being harshly truthful with myself, I live my life by this saying. No one can let you down if you don't expect anything of them. You like someone? Well that's nice. You better push them away before they let you down. What kind of a life is that? I spoke to Kimberly Jo the other day and, per usual, she hit me with a truth about myself. She said, "Claire, you put up walls. You know you do."

Here is my thing: Letting other people in? Giving up some control over yourself? Scary. I can't even type giving up control, I can only resign myself to 'some' control. I am working on it.

"Do we ever hear anything other than our own monstrous ego and the immense filter of our personality?"
Some people really do, I think. I applaud them. Me? Everything is filtered through my preconceptions and philosophies. This isn't always a bad thing. For example, I only ever ask people questions which I would be comfy answering myself, out of courtesy. Does this limit my questions? Yes... On the other hand, many times you should really listen to people, because they only ask the questions that they are dying to answer.

Tricky, people are tricky. They tell you a lot about themselves if you are willing to listen.

"There is no past, only the present."
Word. Make the most of it.


P.S. Date night : )