lookfar

Yesterday Toby and I had one of those near-perfect days. In the morning I saw the trainer, then we went off to one of those created city centers with lots of coffee bars, restaurants, a small theater company, a public library and a movie theater that mostly shows independent films. It's ringed by a bunch of upscale apartment buildings, maybe condos, and a Hilton hotel. I wanted to get tickets for Moonrise Kingdom and I thought they might sell out on a hot holiday when some people have no air conditioning, so we bought the tiks at noon, then went to lunch at an Irish pub, then walked around looking into stores, then ended at Busboys and Poets drinking Arnold Palmers. While at the pub, we got a call from Eustace and Jane inviting us for dinner and fireworks, and when we told them what movie we were going to see, they asked to come along. Then at Busboys, I got a call from Honora, asking to discuss and strategize over her latest email from Fae*, which we did.

Driving home from the movie, I said to Toby that Wes Anderson is a delightful filmmaker and I love his films but I've never felt that they changed my life or told me something I didn't know. So we got to talking about how we know the world.

As I get older, I'm increasingly aware of how different and limited are our ways of knowing the world, and of how we construct a world based just on what we know and then treat it as a whole.

Here are some ways that people know about the world: by reading and learning about geography, politics and history; by traveling and seeing for themselves; through imaginative worlds, fiction and films; by staying in one place and knowing it, and the people in it, deeply; by observing themselves attentively. I expect that every single person has some combination of these and others I haven't thought of. And every person lives in a world that, despite its similarities to that of his friends, is radically different from every other.

If I've gotten the least bit wise in 55 years, it's in holding this truth close to me. It makes me more hesitant to weigh in when folks are very sure of a situation and how to address it, because I know that I am a blind woman holding an elephant's ear. Maybe it also helps me to listen better - sometimes.

So, to return to films that taught me something and changed my life a little, what they have in common is that they showed me a world enough like my own to make them credible but different enough to add to mine. Many years ago I saw a film about Brazilian street children, acted mainly by Brazilian street children, called Pixote. It hadn't been my idea to go, but that film has stayed with me for thirty years because it was such a convincing depiction of how experiences of extreme deprivation can shape character. The part about character development was familiar to me; the situation of the children was not, and that's why it stayed with me. Another film that had that effect was Vagabond, a French movie about a woman wandering about with a backpack, scratching up food and drugs and sex from the people available for her to use and gradually deteriorating. The film managed to show the woman up close, in something of the mystery of her situation, as well as the idiosyncratic fantasy reactions of the folks who interact with her. To me, it was a great meditation on the need we have for belonging and the unknowability of the other.

And, to be honest, a film that had a huge effect on me at age 11 was Jane Fonda's Barbarella. Why my Aunt Hala thought it was a appropriate movie for me and my 13-year-old cousin was another matter. From Barbarella I learned that if you are beautiful and sexy enough you will have the confidence to go all over the universe fucking and never be afraid of sex or feel like an ugly awkward pig. What I already knew was what any girl learns in an hour of reading magazines or watching TV – that beauty is power. So it wasn't beyond credibility that enough hotness could protect me from all interpersonal fear. This shows that the power of fiction to teach us about the world is morally neutral. And that I was 11.

Eustace, Jane, Toby and I thought it would be excellent good fun to play the Wes Anderson drinking game. I invented it. To play, you line up some Wes Anderson DVDs and some shots of whiskey on the coffee table. Every time you see an Anderson trope, you take a drink.

Cutaway dollhouse shot of building: take a drink. Diners grouped around one side of a table: take a drink. Gang of people staring unmoving at the camera: take a drink. Three-step procedure precisely followed: take a drink. Quirky or twee domicile: take a drink. Object or clothing slightly smaller than life sized: take a drink.

Eustace said that you'd need to call an ambulance before the opening credits had finished.

I developed a headache at work yesterday and it pretty much stayed with me while I took Honora to the shoe store, made a simple dinner and drove Tristan to fencing. When we got home at 9:45, I put my head on Toby's shoulder and whimpered, which is not my usual behavior but made me feel better. I took some ibuprofen and went to bed, but the headache is still with me today. Toby recommended acetaminophen and a Diet Coke, so I had that with breakfast, but it's still going on in the background. I don't get headaches very often, so I'm always surprised at how they interfere with one's happiness.

Happiness was not enhanced by Honora's announcing that she has lost part of her play costume in the drama room at school and will need me to go to Target during a break from work to find her a pair of white leggings. Her schedule and Accomplishments are driving me mad at the moment, but it should improve after the play (A Midsummer's Night's Dream) is over this weekend. Honora has a part as Second Assistant Sub-Fairy, in which she hopes to wear butterflies in her hair, but has no lines.

And here is a reading meme, gacked from hamsterwoman. It is all I can do today.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack:

Funny you should ask. For the last 15 years or so, once a day, whenever I could, I would lie on my back and read and eat candy. I thought this habit was going to follow me to my grave, an unfortunate but unalterable character defect, like heavy drinking. While I was in India, I decided to stop. I did it by realizing that I would continue my dysfunctional love affair with candy as long as I wanted to use candy in that way; in other words, willpower has never, ever, worked consistently for me. But I realized that I might sometimes want to know what I am feeling, what I am shoving out of my awareness by scarfing down buckets of candy. In fact, sometimes I even want to know that more than I want the candy. And when I came back, I didn't do it anymore.

It's so funny how things change; you think they never will, but you are working on them unawares and suddenly the green shoot appears above the ground.


What is your favorite drink while reading?

Don't really have one, especially since I really love to read lying down.


Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

I used to avoid writing in books because it bothered me to alter them, except for textbooks, which are like fruit; the goal is to get the good part out and what's left is the rind. But in time I realized that paperbacks have a limited lifespan anyway; in twenty years you end up throwing them out because the glue has dried up and the pages are falling out.* So now I do whatever I like with them, although I don't like to make marks that will interfere with someone else reading them, eg, heavy underlining. I kind of like reading other people's marginalia.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

Don't like to lay a book face down and open because it cracks the spine. I have a nice collection of bookmarks - homemade, school photo, advertising - on the headboard table and I use them. Isn't it fun to find a bookmark in a book, like the one from the used paperback place at the beach, and remember when you got it?

Fiction, nonfiction, or both?

Fiction, with a minor in Selected Non-Fiction, usually something related to human development, prehistory or quirky historical corners like the history of underwear or something.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?

Since I rarely have the option of reading as long as I like, I stop where I must.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?

Good heavens! What kind of literary person wrote this question? Oh, wait, the other day I threw my camera across the room. I can't imagine being so angry at a book, though.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

Online dictionary has made this more likely. Sometimes I do, especially if I think I'd like to have the word in my own vocab, but I rarely look it up that moment. That's when I might dogear a page.

What is the last book you bought?

I'm going to count PaperBackSwap, since that's where I get my new books now. It was Soul Murder by Laurence Shingold, a book I've wanted to read for some time. The last book I paid for was The Naked Roommate, which I ordered for Tristan. It's a book of advice for new college students.

Are you the type of person that reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?

Always more than one. Right now it's Becoming Attached, a non-fiction history of attachment theory; Mr. D Explores the Mysteries of the East, a non-fiction lightweight book about India and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, a novel. Also, I've got that huge novel A Suitable Boy kind of on hold until the summer when I can stop driving people so frequently.

Do you have a favorite time/place to read?

Yes - two o'clock in the afternoon, on the love seat under the window, in an empty house, with a cat on my tummy.

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?

I find that the literary quality of stand-alones is better, but I will follow an author I like and read a lot of his/her work. When I like a series, though, I don't hesitate to read it until I get tired of that universe or until the author jumps the shark. I liked the Elizabeth George mystery novels because they were more novelistic than most, but, well, the shark. And I liked Charlaine Harris's Southern vampire books until I got tired of them around volume five. A lot of Shari Tepper's speculative fiction is set in the same universe, but they aren't really series books because you can work in any order and I like them.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

There is a special shelf in the upstairs book case that is reserved for sacred texts. These are books that I found to be utterly unique and magical. They are on that shelf because they are not the ones that everyone knows; everyone knows that Lolita is one, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I think that Edwin Mullhouse : The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943 - 1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright , by Steven Millhauser, is less well-known, as is Light Years, by James Salter. So I keep them there, to keep them in mind, and I rec them to people, too.

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author's last name, etc.)

Ha ha ha ha ha. Would that be the books on the floor of the landing, the ones on the floor by my bed, the shelf on the landing or the shelves in the living room? Okay, let me attempt this question. It's meant to be fiction on the landing and non-fiction in the living room (that's so people think we are serious and intellectual). On the floor of the landing are books waiting to be Paperbackswapped, children's picture books I rescued from the big kids' purge and assorted big books waiting for shelves. On the floor by my bed are only books I intend to read sometime soon. There's a single shelf unit in our bedroom with poetry and some human development books. The fiction shelves are alpha by author except where that has broken down over time. Down in the living room, there are music, modern history, Civil War and natural history sections, but it's kind of messy and also affected by the size of the books, just like in a public library.

Maybe I will take some pictures to show you this wild scene.

I tag schemingreader with this question because I have seen her house. You know how the Three Little Pigs made houses of straw, sticks and bricks? Schemey's house is made of books. If you took the books out, there would just be two beds, two bikes and a crock pot sitting under the open sky.

At 3:00 I treated the headache with two aspirin and an iced mocha, and it's gone. For good, I hope.

*Guess how many decades it took for me to figure this out.

When I come out of my office at the end of a ten-hour day, I sometimes have a religious experience right in the parking lot. Monday's was especially intense.

It was around seven o'clock and the sky was overcast but lambent, like a giant abalone shell turned over the world, and to the west was a strip of creamy yellow light as the sun set behind the clouds. It had rained off and on during the day while I was inside, and the empty lot reflected the silver sky in puddles. The parking grid glowed in that unearthly light, too, its geometric pattern stretching precisely to the far reaches of the lot.

The air smelled of rain and loam, and in the tallest, dead branch of a tree where he always sits, a mockingbird sang his chain of unrepeating trills.

Everything, everything, was rich and gorgeous - the heavy green of the trees and vines, the weighty light, the sheer three-dimensionality of the scene. I stood in the parking lot turning around and around. I realized that what gives me that feeling is coming out of my lovely ten-by-twelve office to the world and plunging into the depth of field like an ocean - total, magical.