Monday, December 28, 2015

Blood-Red and Complicit



Those are the books I'm currently reading, simultaneously. Well, I'm not actually reading them all at once, like scanning them from left to right, etc. -- but I dip into each one and read a bit, then lay that one down and dip into another one. I'm almost finished with the lyrical Ade by Rebecca Walker (she's Alice Walker's daughter, and I actually met her at a friend's house the other day!) and just loved it. Percival Everett's short stories are like no other that I've read, and I delved into the Flannery O'Connor because I read about The Displaced Person, didn't remember it from earlier reading and was just gobsmacked -- again -- by her brilliance. It's about a Polish refugee who finds work on a farm in Georgia, shortly after World War II, and -- well -- let's just say that it's prescient and that we haven't evolved too much since then, especially given much of the country's response to allowing Syrian refugees inside and the fact that a whole lot of people support contenders for the throne of the plutocracy who want to keep them out. There's also my own complicity to contend with (I learned at Tomales Bay from the great writer Steve Almond that we are ALL complicit in one way or another with just about every travesty) as part Syrian and all American. But hey, my last rant on that SIT U A Cee On landed me in a heap of trouble, including being asked to get my head out of my poetry ass, so I'll just leave you this passage from the story. (The Gobblehooks is what the woman, a white sharecropper, calls the Poles because she can't understand their name):

Mrs. Shortley recalled a newsreel she had seen once of a small room piled high with bodies of dead naked people all in a heap, their arms and legs tangled together, a head thrust in here, a head there, a foot, a knee, a part that should have been covered up sticking out, a hand raised clutching nothing. Before you could realize that it was real and take it into your head, the picture changed and a hollow-sounding voice was saying "Time marches on!" This was the kind of thing that was happening every day in Europe where they had not advanced as in this country, and watching from her vantage point, Mrs. Shortley had the sudden intuition that the Gobblehooks, like rats with typhoid fleas, could have carried all those murderous ways over the water with them directly to this place. If they had come from where that kind of thing was done to them, who was to say they were not the kind that would also do it to others.

That story was written in the 1950s, folks.

The Sy Montgomery book is an astounding one about an octopus and human consciousness. I can hardly stand how good it is and can only read in bits. I'll report back on it next year, which is just around the corner. My other Leisure Activity, done largely at night when the children are safely in their rooms either sleeping or playing horrific video games, is watching the second season of The Affair. It's on Showtime, and I don't subscribe to Showtime, but I signed up for a trial membership, and I'm in. I know there are probably better quality shows right now on the TV, but I can't stand a crime thriller or anything with lots of lawyers or intrigue on The Hill or spies and Strong Women Who Never Smile but are CIA operatives in the middle east. Give me a cheesy drama with lots of graphic sex, good acting and unbelievable story lines that revolve around marriages and child-rearing and New York City and Long Island over self-conscious Claire Danes combatting terrorists or fake southern accented Kevin Spacey sliming Washington D.C. Don't watch The Affair with your children (just allow them to steal cars and shoot up people in foreign lands with fancy guns and that all-American camo wear) or your parents (if your parents are like mine) because I repeat: the sex is graphic and there's lots of language and pretty much every single person is despicable, but it's a good soap opera for the likes of me.

I got my nails painted bright red today -- just in time, I told my friend -- for my drive up to snowy Yosemite tomorrow morning and my phantom lover. Just kidding on the lover -- phantom or not. I am leaving with the boys for the rest of the week and meeting my parents and two of my nieces at my favorite place on earth. Yosemite is a holy place, in winter or summer, and while I did just read a disturbing article about the thousands of Native Americans who were killed and otherwise displaced from their native lands, including Yosemite, I will approach it with reverence and humility and full acceptance of my own complicity as a white woman, reaping benefits hundreds of years later, my nails blood-red.

12 comments:

  1. I'm reading a book about the history of autism right now, "Neurotribes" by Steve Silberman. Quite interesting. I see echoes of both Katie and myself in some of the stuff. I just finished reading "A Man Called Ove" by Fredrik Backman and it was fantastic. By fantastic I mean I had a good cry at the end.

    Have a lovely time at Yosemite. And Happy New Year!

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  2. Have a beautiful time. I'm still reading my stack of New Yorkers.

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  3. Have a great time Elizabeth. You're not the first person who has sung the praises of The Affair to me. As for the books----I'll have to check at least one of them out. Enjoy, enjoy and careful driving!

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  4. Happy travels Elizabeth! I'm reading Elena Ferrante - and it's the first time in ages and ages that I can't put a book down (so, no, I don't mind my horrible Christmas cold at all: a good excuse to spend more time taking it easy and reading!)

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  5. I loved reading this. Your writing is so scrumptious. Love that last line. I'll have to give The Affair another chance. It lost me in season 1 but I hear season 2 is better. Did you start with season 2 or do I have to go back and finish season 1 first? Great book recommendations!

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  6. May your time in that holy place, feed your soul.

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  7. I binge watched The Affair (illegally streaming) and came away utterly confused, not by the story line (or should I say narrative, sounds better, no?) but by the fact that women in tv series nowadays all wear low cut no-sleeve outfits while - at the same time! - the men are dressed up in triple layers. I am really worried as to who as catching a cold plus UTI and who sweats too much during the filming. And so the story line (or narrative) is more or less lost on me. Maybe it's just me but bewildering nevertheless.

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  8. I'm headed into town today, will hit the library as usual - two books embarrassingly overdue - and search the shelves for Percival Everett (love that name, Percival).

    Enjoy Yosemite, somehow red nails seem appropriate for honor to Native Americans, a sacred color for them.

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  9. Hope you're having a great time in Yosemite. I am impressed you can read so many books at once. I can only manage one at a time, and even then they seem to take forever. (Especially now when there's so much going on!) Your reading selections are always so intriguing. I've never even heard of most of these books!

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  10. Have been thinking about you a ton dear friend. We have so much to catch up on. I hope your trip to Yosemite is refreshing, inspiring and the respite you deserve. Best wishes and love to you all, for a happy, healthy and exciting New Year. xo

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  11. I think that the only remedy for the slam of complicity to our hearts is knowing that we are able to be complicit in the good by simply opening with compassion. Every time I start to worry about driving my SUV or consuming, consuming, consuming, I remember that it all starts with me. When I do good, listen with an open heart, and act out of compassion, that is something, too.

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