The weight of winter

It's snowing. My holiday spirit was just lifted 100 percent.

Which brings us to my yearly pilgrimage into Winter Fiction. I've broadened my search from holiday fiction to simply anything with snow in it.

Enter Cathie Pelletier. I love her and her three book series about the inhabitants of up up up state Maine so much I put off reading the third and final book for almost a year. As it turns out, it is about winter.

However, the title is The Weight of Winter so I think we know that it isn't going to be sugary story telling.

My two favorite quotes actually have nothing to do with snow or winter or Christmas.

First:
"Maybe I like to remember her because I was still young myself, and things still meant something to me. After a lot of years of life go by, you get kind of like an old badger. You get a shell-like heart, and you back your way into a corner and show everyone your teeth."

Second:
"...I got more time to think, maybe that's when things seemed to sour before my eyes. It's a dangerous thing, you know, too much time to think. It can twist and turn your mind. But I got to say it now - before my mind turned, there was some awful good times."

I smile, nostalgic with a twinge of melancholy, at these words. A sigh is almost needed after you read them. An affirmation of the bittersweet truth life offers us.

Don't worry, there was snow description as well:
"You think you know about snow? Well, let me tell you about moonlight nights in the blue of January that come right out of dreams. They're too blue, too crackling with cold to be real. That's when the pines would be all crusted with snow, just like they was baked that way. And all the needles would be glistening like glass. Up overhead you could see Orion shimmering, the buckle on his belt so cold your fingers would stick to it if you could touch it."

Ahhhh winter. Makes a girl want to knit. Or read. More.

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."
Andrew Wyeth

Most of the smart ones get away

I've put aside several books in the last couple days. Nothing seems to be grabbing me in. Last night (finally), in just a few short pages, Edith Wharton gave my book roaming pause.

I'm only one chapter into her novella Ethan Frome...but I'm already hooked. A small New England town during the snowy winter. An anonymous narrator. A mysterious figure. And - of course - nosy townspeople who love to talk:

"It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance between herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with detachment. She was not unwilling to exercise this faculty..."

Men and women via Nin and Morton

The last two books I finished, I read in tandem. I read Anais Nin's Ladders to Fire on the bus because her writing demands upright, alert attention. Nin is not a bedtime read. Brian Morton's Starting Out in the Evening is, however. I would snuggle up in bed ready to savor every word, making sure not to read too fast lest the experience be finished prematurely.

I've folded down the pages I want to keep with me. I have returned to my favorite passages, and I find that the two works aren't dealing with such different issues. How does one go about this thing called being a woman or a man? What is love like? Morton and Nin also delve into being a writer and psychological aspects of life, respectively.

I feel the works are in dialogue with each other. One calls out and the other answers. I won't tell you which author wrote which quote, so just take in the following debate...


Point:
"When man imposes his will on woman, she knows how to give him the pleasure of assuming his power is greater and his will becomes her pleasure; but when the woman accomplishes this, the man never gives her a feeling of pleasure, only of guilt for having spoken first and reversed the roles."

Counter-point:
"A man can't understand how a woman feels - how she can offer up her entire life to him. The man thinks she's bringing him a burden. He doesn't understand that she's trying to give him a gift."

Rebuttal:
"For a man it is natural to be the aggressor and he takes defeat well. For a woman it is a transgression, and she assumes the defeat is caused by the aggression. How long will woman be ashamed of her strength?"

ROUND TWO

Point
"...there is a human being...spreading not his charms but his defenses, plotting to disrobe, somewhere along the night - his body without the aperture of the heart or his heart with a door closed to his body."

Counter-point:
"...to go to bed with someone - to carry your conversation into the realm of the body, a realm of insecurity and fear as well as pleasure - was always fraught with the sad evidence of how difficult it is to understand another person and make yourself understood."

Rebuttal:
"...flirting was a pleasure, and flirting with intelligent people - male or female - was one of the supreme pleasures of life."

Reading these books was a pleasure, an honor and perhaps even a flirtation.

"If reading a book is a naked encounter between two people, I have known you nakedly for years."
Brian Morton

THIS is what writing should be

A month or two ago, I read Ellen Gilchrist's In the Land of Dreamy Dreams...and loved it. Now that I have finished another collection of her short stories (Victory Over Japan), I will repeat myself: I have not read such an adept and amazing short story writer since reading Alice Munro.

A lot of what I come across in my reading travels seems cliche and worn out (in a bad way), in an amateur way (the difference between writers and people who like to write). This is opposed to reading a passage that describes something known that we can all picture, but in an interesting and so simply it was right in front of our faces why didn't we think of it kind of way. For example, here is Gilchrist describing an earthquake:

"At first she thought a cat had walked across the bed. Then she thought the world had come to an end. Then the lights went on."

So simple. It doesn't do more than it needs to. It isn't presumptuous or patronizing. It is real.

My absolute favorite part of Victory Over Japan was a revisit to a story from In the Land of Dreamy Dreams. I saw it and was all, yes(!) Nora Jane! In Dreamy Dreams, Nora Jane fell in love with a boy. This boy turned NJ into his accomplice and they robbed banks. The boy left NJ, but promised to bring her to California when he could. NJ took her life into her own hands, dressed up as a nun and robbed a bar. But now we get to see what happens after a woman follows a boy...

As it is a continuation, there was the added treat of an introduction from Gilchrist:

"When the story ended Nora Jane had successfully completed the robbery and was on her way to California. I wish I could say that Sandy was waiting at the airport when she got there, sleepless and excited and true. I wish that dreams came true, that courage and tenderness were rewarded in the world as they should be. I wish I could tell you that Nora Jane and Sandy lived happily ever after in Sunny California. Alas, that is not the way it happened."

I wish...

"Nora Jane was only practical about love most of the time. Part of the time she was just as dumb about it as everybody else in the world."
Ellen Gilchrist

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 : )