Spontaneous Musings

Reading?

I figured a real good way to meet the Good Reads Reading Challenge -- just read comic books. I can easily plow through 20 comic books between now and December 31. ( Read more... )

X-men books read currently?

( Read more... )

What I'm reading outside of the X-men?

Children of Blood and Bone by Toni Adeymei -- which is a YA dystopic fantasy novel that takes place in Africa. Utilizing Nigerian folklore. It's different, but also the same. ( Read more... )

Was thinking today about writing styles, and how subjective they are. What sparked this was a New Yorker Article about The Girl Who Circumvented Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - the crowd-source funded web series that got published, won various awards, and became a best seller. I tried reading it as a web series and just couldn't get into it. I did buy the paperback and give it to my ten year old niece for her birthday, she couldn't get into it either. Read a few reviews on Amazon at lunch and realized that my difficulty with the writer is her writing style doesn't work for me. It's too academic, too cluttered, and formal in tone. I read/write/negotiate/manage public works construction and architectural design contracts and technical specifications for a living, so...I like cleaner writing. Cluttered writing tends to bug me, I think? And for pleasure, I want emotion more than intellect, and Valient's stories are more about the mind than the heart, or the intellect more than the spirit. So when I read them, I feel like I'm at work or back in school. (I think it is a really good thing that I didn't become an English Lit Prof. Sometimes what we think we want isn't good for us.)

The negative reviewers pretty much said the same things -- that the stories would be great for linguistic and literary analysis, or that they fell a bit too much into allegory. One went so far to state that they are allergic to allegory and that Valiente's story was all allegory and thick with it. It's worth noting that I'm not a fan of allegorical writing either. It irritates me. It irritated me in high school, when I read Animal Farm, in College, and as an adult. And that I had somewhat the same reaction to The Master and The Margarita, it felt more for the head than the heart. It was more philosophical or allegorical than spiritual. It didn't speak to my spirit, which is what I craved.

The book that I'm reading now, The Power of Now is a spiritual book, not a good idea to analyze it or think about it too much. It's all about turning off the mind or brain and just going with your gut, finding that place of inner peace and silence. Being in the moment.

David Forster Wallace's style also requires a different type of thinking -- his style is cluttered, undisciplined, and comes razor close to pretentious. Too literary for its own good. And then there's Elmore Leonard who believed that you should kick to the side any phrases or words that readers tend to skip. Pretentious words had no place in his writing or archaic ones. He wrote like people actually spoke. Used slang. And focused primarily on character. Theme be damned. He'd have despised Neil Gaiman and Cat Valiente's writing style - which is often more interested in the theme, world-building, allegory, and setting than character. But then there are people like my co-worker who don't like Elmore Leonard, who felt he was just writing movie scripts, and perhaps he was.

People either heap praise or criticism on individual writing styles and are chock full of opinions. They often state their opinions in dogmatic or didactic fashion as if it is fact not opinion, which I guess in a way it is - if it is something that you feel absolutely. But I think it really is a matter of individual taste. For example? While I adored James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing styles, I did not much like Roger Zelazny, Marion Zimmer Bradley, or Pamela Deans. While I enjoy Neil Gaiman's style in some of his books (not all), I don't like Cat Valiente's who has been compared to him. Illona Andrews and Jim Butcher work for me, I love their sardonic wit, but I hated Charlene Harris' writing style. Liane Moriarity and Helen Fielding's style worked, but I found Jo Jo Moyes unreadable. I enjoyed Stephen King, but not Dean Koontz. Adored Jane Austen, found Charles Dickens to be ponderous. Mark Twain amused, while Henry James could cure insomnia with his wet and sticky prose. (Mark Twain oddly, agreed.) Edith Wharton was poetical, Nathanial Hawthorn jarring. Charlotte Bronte satisfied, while Emily Bronte aggravated. Chris Claremont entertained with tight character-driven plotting, while Brad Metzler bewildered with insane plot twists that fell out of the sky and winked at me.

Thinking about it too much makes me rather self-conscious about my own, which it did today. What if no one likes it? There's a sort of fear that I have that if I don't write like A, B. and Z, you won't want to read my work. But I've learned that's not true. There's no way of knowing who will read me or not read me. And worrying too much about one's own writing style is death to a writer. You can't think too much about what you are doing as a writer, art doesn't come from the mind, it comes from the heart, the spirit, the gut. Whenever the mind gets involved, the whole kit and caboodle shuts itself down, leaving the writer rending their hair in frustration, muttering, why, why, why.

* What I just finished reading?

Night Broken by Patricia Briggs - a quick read, with a clean crisp style. Not overly descriptive, as is to be expected considering the genre. This one surprised me a little because it was much better than her previous books. And I hadn't expected it to be. There's two antagonists or villains. One is Adam's ex-wife. Or rather, Mercy Thompson's husband's former wife, Christy. Christy is beautiful, manipulative, and put Adam through hell when he was married to her. The pack loves her.
And his daughter is by Christy.

Christy pops up requesting protection from Adam and his werewolf pack (hello, urban fantasy). She's being pursued by a stalker ex-boyfriend/lover. She also makes it clear she wants Adam back, even though he's remarried to Marcy and has moved on. Playing all sorts of manipulative mind games to get her way.

Enter the antagonist, Juan Flores, who is Christy's ex, and head over heels in love with her. He thinks she's the reincarnation of his one true love, the sun goddess. The metaphor isn't lost on me, a fickle goddess, who races from one place to the next, one lover to the next. Much as Christy has in the background of the books. Jesse's always talking about her mother's multiple lovers.

Juan, it turns out is a volcano god. He consumes in flames whatever he touches. And once he starts consuming, he can't stop...the hunger won't abate. And in human form, he looks like a sex god or porn star. He's lust personified.

Both antagonists are, and they are both narcissistic, it's all about them. Mercy at one point thinks they are made for each other. Except Christy is human, so..

I found that dichotomy rather interesting. Also, a few of the female characters are better developed than they'd been previously.

What I'm reading now?

The last in the Mercy Briggs series, Fire Touched. There's probably going to be more, but I'm stopping here. Actually no, there's one left, I've bought. A series of short stories about various characters in the series that I wanted to learn more about.

[Half watching "The Great British Baking Show on PBS" which I find sort of comforting, even though I can't eat anything that they make. I can't eat grains, the gluten causes severe IBS due to an autoimmune disease. Gluten basically tears my intestines apart and won't digest. Also, I ended up with a yeast build up which poked holes in my instestines, and made me ill (aka leaky gut). I'm better now. But I tend to stay away from yeast. Coconut Flour though works in a pinch -- some day I need to figure out how to make coconut flour bread. As a result, I'm not overly impressed by baking. ]

Oh, not a bad article on Do Novelists Have to Be Politically Correct?.

This is actually a topic that has resulted in some rather heated debates on livejournal in the past. My own view is of course not. I don't believe art should cater to people or be safe. The artist should be permitted, within reason of course, to speak his or her mind. To express themselves. Where I draw the line is the deliberate and harmful exploitation of others for your own personal gain. If your expression destroys someone else's life than yes, it's probably good idea not to do it. (Example - Child pornography. Video Games depicting various ways to rape women and get away with it - (and yes, this exists, sorry to say, and yes, I wish I didn't know about it too), using someone else to create the art - ie at their expense. Defamation and libel - exposing someone else's life without their consent to further yourself). But that's not the same thing as political correct art, which is just "offensive". And let's face it all art is offensive to someone, or it's not ground-breaking or memorable art.

For example? I found the books Me Before You by Jo Jo Moyes and American Psycho by Bret Easten Ellis highly offensive in places. But I'd defend to the death their right to publish those books and yours to read and enjoy them. (Haven't read the book that the article is discussing, nor do I want to. The Stockholm Syndrom is not a story trope that I can stand. I don't like that story trope. I find it cringe-inducing and offensive. But some people love it.)

1.) What I just finished reading?

Eh, a bunch of X-men comic books. Making my way through various issues selected for a specific story/character arc. I have a weakness for the wounded male trope, and the progression from boy scout to tough guy/badass. I think that's what appealed to me about Spike. Or one of the many many things, rather. I also like strong, take charge characters. I don't know, don't quite understand the craving myself. It's a story binge. I do that.

At any rate --- I wished I picked something that was easier to follow. The X-men like all long=running serials with multiple artists/creators who keep changing, tends to be unevenly written and plotted all over the place. To say the story is convoluted is an understatement. It sort of shoots out in fifteen different directions and has a cast of thousands. It would be easier just to follow Jamie Lannister's arc in Game of Thrones.

This isn't helped by the fact that each new group of writers has a tendency to ignore what happened before, just so they can tell their own plot. Often twisting the characters and continuity to serve well whatever idea they have in their heads at the moment. IF they, for instance, have a story in mind that requires a currently dead character -- they'll bring the character back to life to serve that story. (Characters don't tend to stay dead in long-running serials.) So if continuity, logic or consistency are important to you -- comic books will drive you crazy.

It's best not to try to read all of it. And just read a few specific writers. And enough of the character's arc to see where it's going.

I've picked a controversial character to follow: Cyclops. Who half the fandom hates, because like all fandoms, it's rather judgemental of controversial, darkly conflicted, ass-hole characters. While I tend to find them rather fascinating to read about.

Anyhow so far, I've read the following:

* The Wedding of Cyclops and Phoenix - which was told via Professor Xavier's point of view, and rather well done. No action, just a nice character piece.

* Mixed Blessings - a Thanksgiving issue set around the X-men playing football, having dinner, and Jean proposing to Cyclops (Scott Summers) after years of fighting side by side. It's also rather well-done and more of a character piece.

* Operation Zero Tolerance - this collects various issues that crossed-over, X-Force, Cable, Wolverine, X-Man, Uncanny X-men, X-men, and Generation X. Like most cross-overs, it's uneven. Some issues are better than others, some writers and artists better than others. And of course all of it is in the eye of the beholder. I found X-force issues hard to follow and with one too many frustrating subplots that had zip to do with the story. Generation X - also had too many subplots, but interesting art, I like Chris Bacchalau's style. The best by far and most evenly written were the X-men and Wolverine issues - which stuck to the main plot, did not go off on absurd tangents, and developed the characters while introducing interesting new ones that added to the theme and story. At any rate, I rather enjoyed it, with some quibbles.

* Uncanny X-men - Ages of Apocalypse - the issue where Cyclops disappears after merging with Apocalypse and Aftermath. Both of theses issues were rather weak and all over the place. Too much going on, too many characters, too busy. A problem with team comics - often you end up with too many people in the book. Sort of like the Avengers movies - too busy.

* First and Last issue of the Search for Cyclops - good, gets across quite well, the emotions of each character involved, focused, and theme/plot well done. The first one - depicts a grieving and frustrated Jean Grey and Nathan Summers, grieving Scott's presumed death and not quite believing he's gone. While Scott wanders in the desert, with his nemesis taunting him in his head and overwhelming him with dreams and nightmares of the nemesis' past. Imagine being possessed by an ancient demon. Who shows you how small your life is, and how inconsequential. And trying to hold it in, not letting it get out, so it can destroy everything. Nice metaphor for demons - we all have them. That critical, nasty voice in our heads that sheds a dark light on everything in our lives and exaggerates our failings. Scott Summers - is a fairly insecure character, who has held everything inside. Prior to merging with Apocalypse - he shared a psychic rapport with his wife, that was forged in life. The merger severed that rapport. He did it to save the world. The last issue, shows Nathan (Scott's son, who he sent to the future to save the boy's life, and has returned older than Scott) and Jean finding Scott, and with team-work managing to release the disembodied spirit of the evil demon (Apocalypse - an ageless entity who lives for warfare and destruction. Believing true change comes from total destruction) from him and killing it. Except, Scott has been tainted by it. Changed. As Apocalypse henchmen tell his son, "You know that anyone touched by Apocalypse, can never be pure again. They are tainted and changed."

It's a nifty way for the writers to change a major character and shake up the story a bit. Also in this issue, the plot is character driven and continuity is maintained.

* Uncanny X-men - the issue that comes after this, involves Cyclops traveling to see his dad Christopher Summers, Corsair, a space-pirate. They have a father-son chat on a camping trip. Also pretty good, highlighting some of the changes in Scott's personality.

* Then there's the Genosha arc with Magneto - which is quite horrible and skippable. Bad art. And the story is all over the place. I only sampled three issues - but bad, and repetitive. Does however get across, Cyclops anger at how it never ends, and his obsession with stopping it.

* New X-men by Grant Morrison - I started with Vol 4 - or the end of the arc. Having already read the beginning back in 2001-2002. It's better than remembered. Does tend to go off on tangents. But what is interesting about this arc and rather innovative --is Morrison and the artists go for a hyper-reality feel. The kids are ugly. Their mutant abilities make them look like monsters or side-show freaks. They obviously can't fit in. They aren't pretty or in great shape like the main team. They also look like kids and act like kids. The adults are struggling, in their 20s, having seen far too much death and destruction -- and while they are supportive of Xavier's vision that humans and mutants can co-exist, they are questioning it a bit. Cyclops is distant, forming tentative friendships with darker, edgier, and more wounded team-mates/teachers, Wolverine, Emma, and Xorn. Unable to confide in or talk to either Xavier or Jean, who previously had been the two people that he was closest to. The story is darker and some respects more character focused. Beak, a truly gross character (featherless chicken head and a man's body) and Angel (an African-American girl with butterfly or Fly wings) have a romance and she ends up pregnant. It's awkward and the sex is clumsy. I've never seen anyone do this in a superhero comic book before - only the more prestigious graphic novels.

There is a sort of dumb sub-plot about a drug named Kick, which reminds me of meth. But other than that, good stuff.

The story comes to a head -- when the kids, high on Kick, riot, and two kids die as a result of using the Kick drug. Angry, four of the female telepaths who were under tutelage of Emma Frost - get vengeance by telling Jean Grey that Emma has been having a telepathic affair with her husband. This is a rather interesting sub-plot. Scott asks Emma for help regarding his marriage and issues, and she takes it a step too far, engaging him in what amounts to a telepathic love affair. He never actually kisses her physically. He cheats on his wife in his head or his thoughts. Considering Jean and him used to have a psychic rapport and shared thoughts, feelings and did it in their heads -- you can see why this would be viewed as a major betrayal in Jean's head. It's also ironic, because Mastermind seduced Jean in more or less the same manner in the past - seducing her in her head. Emma however has fallen for Cyclops/Scott, and sees his dark thoughts as normal, natural, nothing to be ashamed of, ordinary. He doesn't fell safe at the Xaveri's or with Jean since Apocalypse. He feels guilty. She tells him he's okay, and not worry. Meanwhile Jean is manifesting the Phoenix energy and ...for a while it looks like that is going to cause her to go all dark and die again, except that's not what happens. In a nice twist, it's Xorn who ends up killing her. Xorn who Cyclops prevented from committing suicide and who has become Cyclops friend.

The arc unfortunately unravels and goes off the rails with a silly AU story, that occurs when Cyclops decides to leave the X-men, and Emma. We see a horrible future, where Phoenix resurfaces and saves it by going back in time and getting across to Cyclops, telepathically, to live and not give up and continue with the X-men. It doesn't quite work and could have been handled better.

Next - "House of M" - which changes everything yet again and results in an even edgier and tougher Cyclops. I've already read Whedon's Astonishing X-men, don't feel a need to rebuy or re-read it. Got rid of most of it. And skipped Warren Ellis take on it.


Reading and watching serials with a critical eye can teach you a great deal about character development, plotting and story arcs. What works and what doesn't and how important it is to stick in character and not write yourself into a corner. Serial writers are notorious for writing themselves into corners - because hey shiny cool plot-twist! Then, whoops, now what do I do? Joss Whedon did it on Buffy, and GRR Martin did it with his Game of Thrones series (that's why he's stuck and can't get this latest book out). Whedon, in contrast, just plowed through and said screw continuity, I'll do what I want, which you can sort of get away with in the supernatural soap opera comic book genre/medium, not so much in the fantasy novel genre.

2) What I'm reading now?

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - a good example of a writer putting style, plot, theme, and an time period over her characters. The author clearly doesn't care all that much about developing the characters...I'm about a third of the way through, and I still have no idea who these people are nor care all that much what happens to any of them. Most of the action happens off stage.
( spoilers )
3.) What I'm reading next?

For the other book club, my friend's book club, the non-fiction book, Boy's in the Boat - about the working class male rowing team that won the 1939 Olympics.

And of course, "House of M by Brian Bendes".

In between maybe a romance novel or mystery novel.

I read on average six books a month, often two at a time. One at night, one on my commute. And I read fast, when I want to.

Came home today to an interesting and rather profound article in Newsweek forwarded to my attention by Wales. Or at least I found it interesting and profound. It was one of those pieces that managed to somehow put into words how I have been feeling lately. And express why I write - which more often than not is to get out of my own head. My political rants posts such as they are - are my way of dealing with the noise that has accumulated inside my head. Writing for me at least is a means of achieving some aspect of silence. And reading, an ability to pull myself outside of my own head into someone elses at least for a minute, doesn't last long and it may well be an illusion.

Feeling rather humble and vulnerable today, uncertain about myself and the world around me. And this article about the late David Foster Wallace, who I knew of, but alas never found the time or interest in actually reading, touched me in a way, I'm not quite sure how to express but will attempt to anyhow:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/158935
( Read more... )

[Difficult week. So not worth going into. Work is making me crazy again, enough said.

If you don't happen to read Harry Potter - please skip the following message}

As anyone who has read Harry Potter probably already knows, unless you happen to live beneath a rock, the last book in the Harry Potter series is due to come out on July 20th or thereabouts. When it does - there will no doubt be a race amongst everyone on the net to see who can finish and post on the thing first. Last round someone did it in under two hours - which was a record for a book that is close to 900 pages in length.

I don't understand this. What's so great about being able to read and comprehend an 800 and some page book in 2 hours flat? Who cares? IT can't be that enjoyable. It's over. Then what? Sure you can go back and re-read it - but it's not the same. Don't you want to savor it - the experience of reading it for the first time, seeing the story unfold?? Re-read paragraphs as they cross your eyes, laugh at the inside jokes and sly wit? (Which would be missed on a scan, one would think). Fall into the world? How can you if you sped through the thing? No wonder people re-read the books - they barely read the things the first round. And assuming you did get every nit and cranny, not just the general gist - it couldn't have been that good if you want to rip through the thing, scanning the words? Sorry, I just can't wrap my brain around the appeal of doing that. My Granny does or rather used to do the same thing - she read Gone With the Wind in 13 hours flat - it was over 1000 pages. She timed it. Uh. Okkkay. But couldn't for the life of her remember the details, just the gist. I mean - why does everything have to be a race? Or for that matter a competitive sport? Even reading a book? A book you claim to love no less? It's not like anyone is keeping score...

Personally? I prefer to read books at my own rather sluggish pace, devouring each word, re-reading the bits that make me laugh, pausing over them, maybe even reading them aloud to hear the words echo outside my brain, and letting myself escape if just for snippets of time into the world Rowlings or some other author creates. I might even pause and jump back a few pages, re-read a passage to see how it relates to the one I'm one. Ponder it.

Harry Potter - for me at least - recaptures the nostalgia of my childhood, when teachers read Ronald Dahl to me or I created my own fantasy stories. Rowlings reminds me a great deal of Dahl, except she's lighter in tone, and not as cruel. She seems somehow to like people more - which is odd considering she had a tougher time of it - a welfare mom struggling, while Dahl if I remember correctly was pretty well off and had married a fairly famous film actress - Patricia O'Neal. At any rate - I like to make the experience last as long as possible. I do not want to inhale the book in two hours or twenty four hours or a weekend or two days. I WANT TO TAKE MY TIME! Soo...while it may take some people two hours to read these books, it will take me a week or more.

Reading a good book, a book you love, is no different than eating a really good meal, drinking a lovely glass of wine or for that matter listening to a great piece of music - you don't speed through it - it gives you heartburn, you don't taste it. You sip. You fall back and listen, you chew and taste each morsel. If you speed through it, you barely experience it. It has no time to resonate. If you speed up a music track it becomes white noise. The notes are lost. It's like that old Simon and Garfunkle song - slow down, you move too fast, feeling groovy...

Sometimes I feel as if the world wants to move at the speed of light. Racing each other to the finish line. And I wonder what the rush is about? Is it the rush against mortality? Time? Probably. Everyone says the same thing over and over again - I don't have any time.
Truth is you do. You make time.

I love to while away a few hours in a book. To escape for snippets. To get away from the noise in my brain and in the world. Nothing compares to it.

So why would anyone want to sped up that experience?

To read more books? Is that it? Does it really matter how many you've read? Especially if you don't remember them that well? If you haven't taken the time to savor and enjoy them? If they don't satisfy? I mean, I get speed-reading for knowledge - I do that. I can read a ten page contract in about fifteen minutes. And flist? Very quickly. But a book? A novel?
For enjoyment?

Impatience?

Don't know... only word I can think of is well, shrug.

Long ago accepted the fact that not everyone experiences the world the same way. Once you accept that I think, it's easier to shrug off things people do that you just can't wrap your mind around.

Anywho - you are hereby on notice, flist - if you spoil me - by accident or intent, I will defriend you. No excuses. Got it? Good. Because I'll be damned if I have to stay off the net and lj until I finish reading the bloody thing.

Sigh.

Who am I kidding? I'll probably get spoiled by New York 1 or the little news tv in the elevator at work. Avoiding spoilers for Harry Potter or any pop culture phenomena is akin to attempting to avoid getting wet in the streets of NYC - it rains horizontally here, you can't avoid it. Might as well just shrug your shoulders and accept it.

Hmmm..there's something to be said for not liking the same thing everyone else does. Like the book I'm reading now, for instance - the fourth in the Kim Harrison Rachel Morgan Bounty Hunter series. Fantastic read. And no fears of being spoilt on future entries.
Sure there are people who like it, but not that many and they don't really talk about it.

While reading part of another one of Jonathan Franzen's essays about the relationship between reading and writing novels, I thought about how people relate to culture, individual taste, and this constant need to connect with others who share the same tastes, interests, what-not that we do.
Franzen in an essay entitled "Mr Difficult" discusses how there are two models: the Contract model and the Status model. The Contract model - is when the novelist provides the reader with a pleasurable reading experience, the reader relates to what is inside the novel and the words are easy to digest, they are relateable. The Status model -the best novels are great works of art which more often than not cannot be read or appreciated by the average reader, who will most likely discard them. After tearing these two models apart for several pages, Franzen says something really interesting about reading a good novel:

Think of the novel as a lover: Let's stay home tonight and have a great time;just because you're touched where you want to be touched, it doesn't mean you are cheap;before a book can change you, you have to love it.

I think this is true about more than just books. And what we love, I think is individual to us. Unique to our experience.

When I think about the TV shows, films, fictional characters, and books that I fell in love with, to an extent that I've tucked them close to my heart and won't forget them, I realize that they changed me. What I liked, how I perceived things, people I've interacted with, how I see the world. But it did not happen until I fell in love with them. So much in love in some cases that I've defended them to the death. Don't you diss my favorite characters - or I'll diss yours. And trust me, I'm good at it. There's nothing funnier or more pathetic I think than watching people defend their favorite books or characters or tv shows on a discussion board, particularly people who can write and not just use net-speak. Nor is it as crazy as it looks. People defend what they love. Regardless of what it is. It may not seem important to an outsider but it is important to them. It is also I think private. We protect that which we love.

The aspiration, I think, of all writers, if they are honest, is to have the reader fall in love with their words and work. To fall in love with the narrative and experience that moment of connection.
For the reader to be changed in some small way. For a communication to occur that is beyond just reading a bunch of letters on a page. It doesn't really matter how many readers you accomplish it with, I think, just one, for me, would be enough - unless I get greedy and want two.

I also think regarding books, tv shows, movies - the more you sample, the more aware you are of what you like and what you don't. What works and what doesn't. The more likely you are to find that book, tv show, movie that you fall in love with and changes you. I think this is particularly true with books. And the difficult to read books, the ones that are just undigestible, feel like you are tryling to eat lima beans or boiled cabbage when you are craving steak or chocolate mousse or chickpea hummus, sit on your shelf, unread, as you peer guiltily at them like a neglectful spouse whose married for all the right reasons but love. While you partake of a quickie with that fun and sneaky pulp novel no one has ever heard of, yet is pleasurable, and makes you happy, touching you in the right places. You become a better reader reading the more difficult ones, and eventually, like any long engagement, may grow to adore and even love them beyond reason, but if you deprive yourself of the fun ones...well, the difficult ones may never get read or loved. I'm a strong believer in diversity - read whatever fits my fancy, because if I do that, the more likely I am to hit that magical moment of connection.

Tonight, my hands are cold. The cold air wraps itself around my fingers chilling my knuckles, making it difficult to type, I keep rubbing them. My legs and arms and feet feel cozy, wrapped in a blanket, but exposed, my fingers and nose ache for mittens or a warm heater. Yet I write anyways. The cold outside almost makes me forget to breathe, the breath frozen the moment it leaves my throat.
[Yes, the heat in my building is fluctuating again, warm when I got home, getting cooler now, while last night it was more regulated.]

Just finished The Samuari's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama, which I seriously doubt anyone reading this journal has read, although I could be wrong about that. Wouldn't be the first time. I'm wrong about a lot of things, more things than I'm right about, I suspect. I admit that. "The Samuari's Garden" is a small book. A guiet one. Without much fanfair. The words seem simple, effortless, yet precise. They aren't long sentences struggling to climb mountaintops of verbage like Dorothy Dunnet writes or a flood of precisely chosen words streaming across the page like Joyce. Nor the simultaneously witty and detached perfected prose of Austen. Breathing without thinking comes to mind when I read Tsukiyama's words. Yes, she writes like one who breaths without thinking. I sometimes think, no strike that, I do "think" too much. They say that when you learn how to walk - you have to allow your body to move without the mind telling it to. Same goes with breathing - when you think about it too much, you throw things out of wack. I think writing is like this too. Sometimes my writing resembles words flooding unbidden across the page, faster than my fingers can form them, yet at the same time miraculously making sense and others, they require much work, much articulation, to the point that I feel as if I am pulling them out of my brain by their roots, each one more painful than the last. No writing experience is the same, no sentence. I cannot reproduce them. Any more than I can go back in time and return to the person who created them at that moment. I am not the person I was yesterday. Yet, I hold her memories, ever so slightly alterred with time.

Towards the end of Ms. Tsukiyama's novel there's a lovely passage that I'd like to share, which I do not believe gives anything away, but touched me deeply tonight - perhaps because tonight I was in one of those moods. The type of mood that you can't quite find a word for, it lingers in the air like an indrawn breath, caught. Tense is not quite the word. So much as frozen. Caught. Disconnect. Uncertain. No, none quite work. So instead I share a passage from a book that touched my heart. As an aside, it's a rare thing for a passage in a book to touch my heart and no I don't mean in the way a Hallmark card would or a fantastic and memorable read. But something that just, changes you ever so slightly once you've read it, so that the person you are now is not quite the same person you were before you read the book. I think, at least for me, or the proverbial I, that books change people. Anything we interact with does. It changes us. How it changes us, cannot be determined until after the fact, which makes choosing so difficult. But I digress and it is growing late and I don't know about you, but have a long rigorous day ahead of me, which I won't bore you with the details of.

I share this passage with a bit of trepidation, aware that you will most likely not reacte to it the same way I did. (Does anyone?) But here it is, whatever you may think of it, and perhaps it reads better within the context of the story, which bears a little consideration.

"We aren't so different, humans beings and plants. We are all a part of one nature and from each other we learn how to live. "

"Even as one person destroys another?"

Matsu slowly got up from the ground. He stood back and looked approvingly at the black pine. "I won't say we human beings still don't have much to learn. Sometimes we love and hate without thought. We expect too much from one another, and often we are wrong. Take that flower," he said, pointing to the crepe myrtle. "It has a short life span, but you know just what to expect of it. The leaves are turning yellow-orange, so you know within a week they'll fall. Fortunately - or unfortunately- we human beings have much longer lives. And that makes for many more complications. But in the end, Stephen-san, you can only look back, hoping everything that happens in your life is for a purpose. Whether you see [this person] or not anymore won't take away from your having known [them]. If [they] are important, [they] will stay with you."

(I modified three minor pronouns to remove any possible spoilers.) After I read this passage the first thing that popped into my head was, how does one learn how to breath without thinking? Because that was what it sort of says, learning how to just be. To be quiet, still. Never was very good at stillness. Too busy inside. Constantly jumping. How to relax, not be so intense. How not to yearn for too much. To accept. And to love as if you were merely taking one breath and then exhaling, not gulping air frantically like a drowning man. And not fight constantly, breathless, the encroachment of time and other things limitless things, lurking in the shadows. Which would most likely include opinions and thoughts and choices not my own. So little I control yet so much, the contradictions overwhelm. I feel at times as if I'm fighting some forcefield that surrounds me. Fighting to be something or get on some path that remains out of reach. To hold on to breaths that have escaped. All the while trying to just breath without thinking. (When I do my art, am intellectually focused on something, doing pottery, writing a story, this occurs..)

Matsu goes on to tell us shortly after the passage written above, that there will be others, many others...to love. I worry sometimes if that is true. I've dated few and far between. The last serious one was ages ago. Yet, by the same token, I know love comes in different shapes and sizes and moods. It's like the flowers. It is never the same. Which makes sense actually, for how can it be, neither am I. When I focus on the breaths I take, I can't breathe, yet when I don't I barely notice how each one is different than the last. There's something to be said, I think, for the unconsciousness of living, of breathing. Not being too self-aware. That doesn't really convey how I felt while reading this passage, nor the book for that matter - which opened my eyes on a few things and switched my pov on others as a book, written poorly or well, will do, but it touches on a piece of it.

The Samauri's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama is published by St. Martin's Griffin. 1994. Paperback sells for 12.75 (although you could probably find a cheaper copy - I borrowed mine from my mother's bookshelf). Her first novel was Women of the Silk. The author was born to a Japanese father and a Chinese mother , she lives in California. If you are in the mood for a gentle story about kindness with gardening as a metaphor, I heartily recommend.