Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
It’s Endless Until It’s Over
Comments (9)Summer. I keep wanting to photograph it, but my camera disappeared into teen world, where it’s being used to document gravity-defying skateboard tricks. Surely, the looks told me when I asked for it back, a mere peach cannot compete with anti-gravity.
Maybe not. But they are everywhere, these peaches. And even though I know that one day in a month or so from now they’ll be gone, they feel permanent. That’s what the deep middle of summer feels like.
It’s a Toss-Up
Depending on what I plug in, I write like Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, or Douglas Adams. You might want to check it out.
Why I Love the French
far better to have a silver bee land on your tea pot than the real thing
Happy Bastille Day. Bastille Day is not, actually, why I love France and the French. I love France and the French because of our friends P and M, who I met when I was in my twenties. I spent a lot of time in M’s kitchen, drinking un-English tea (it was fruit scented black tea, and I loved it almost as much as I loved her) out of an old silver teapot that had a bee on its lid. I adored that teapot, the way the lid lifted back on a hinge and the bee seemed to be looking around and approving the whole set up. I spent years trying to find one like it, and I never did. I did find the tea, however, on a trip to Paris. You can buy it in the supermarket, as it turns out.
It was a long time ago, but I can still remember how shocked I was to meet someone my age who owned objects with patina. By the time I was twenty-four, this is what I had left from my childhood: my high school yearbooks, a button from a pink robe my grandmother gave me one year for Christmas, the copy of Wuthering Heights the librarian at Hof Army Base in Bavaria gave me when I was in the fourth grade, and a small tin with a silver lid that was engraved with Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which I found on the window sill of the house we rented in Bavaria when my dad was stationed there.
M had, in addition to the aforementioned tea pot, what seemed like hundreds of family pictures, some in very nice frames. She also had marble obelisks on her coffee table along with big wooden balls, whose only function was to be large and interesting, as far as I could see. She had a little bar cart and nice glasses. She was not afraid to have a large purple couch, which was actually more than a little shabby. The pillows on it were made out of something that looked to me a lot like a rug. I imagine these possessions were the tip of the iceberg, given that most of what she owned was back in Paris. She also had a château and a title, both courtesy of her husband, which was news to me because I hadn’t been aware that titles even existed anymore, not after all the heads were chopped off. So, I loved her, because she was One Hundred Percent Not Me. And she was One Hundred Percent Her French Self.
I also loved the way she looked at things. In her dining room, she hung twenty four botanical prints she’d found in a book at a used book store ($1) and framed with frames from the Big Longs Drug Store, where you could buy anything. Those botanical prints looked as good as everything else in her house.
The funny thing is that they loved us too. In their eyes, we had nothing weighing us down. We were “mellow,” we did not worry, we were spontaneous, we weren’t in a hurry. They liked the way we dressed, particularly my husband in his uniform of levi 501s and t-shirts.
But mostly, we loved each other because we had so much in common. M and I were readers. Serious ones. She, of course, had twice as many books available to her for reading purposes than I did because she could read in both English and French. We were also talkers. We liked to discuss why the French see things the way they do and the Americans, well, the Americans don’t see them that way. We talked about taxes, and child rearing and medicine. We talked about our husbands, who were obviously not ever going to talk about us to each other, being so similar themselves. P and my husband were windsurfers, and skiiers and cyclists. Neither of them liked to delve into the emotional. They mostly just liked conquering water, snow, and roads, which they did together for a long time.
Now they live in Belgium, and we see each other sometimes, but not very often. I miss them. I miss seeing myself through their eyes, and I miss that teapot. Happy Bastille Day, P&M.
David Mitchell’s Thousand Autumns of the Dutch Accountant Whose Name I Can’t Remember
Here follows a demonstration of what happens when you write a book review after you’ve both finished the book and managed to misplace it, which is what has happened to me in the last 48 hours with David Mitchell’s Thousand Autumns of Jacob Somebody or Other. Also, this is what happens when you write a book review without even once using the internets to verify your facts. (Why am I not using the internets? I don’t know. I thought it would be fun is the closest I could come to an answer.)
But most likely you, dear reader, have been hearing about this book and don’t need me for facts. It’s certainly easy enough to find the book — just google the phrase “thousand autumns” and bob’s your uncle. (I just now realized that I have no uncles left. It is the one year anniversary of my Uncle Martin’s death. My Uncle Marin was a classic: a basque from Susanville. I have his thermos, the heavy duty one he took to the many construction jobs he worked on, and it reminds me that it’s good to have caffeine when you labor. But goodness, how I digress.)
Anyway, back to David Mitchell. First, I’ll say that without question the most tedious (both to write and to read) part of a book review is the plot summary. For years, I’ve been trying to get away with not doing these in the reviews I write on this blog. I know, I hardly ever write reviews. And the ones I do write are so slim on plot details as to be maybe useless. Which is why it is a constant source of amusement to me that publicists send me emails every week or so asking me to review what look to me like very, very good books. Every once in a while I ask for them to send me one, but then I don’t review it because, well, there’s the plot summary hurdle. I can’t get over it. That’s why I’ve been yammering on about my uncle and the people who want to send me free books. I’m procrastinating. (I would like to add, however, that I would review those books, except I’ve never received one I really loved.)
In a few words, David Mitchell’s book is about a red haired Dutch accountant who finds himself in a Dutch trading outpost, a little no man’s land of an outpost, outside of Nagasaki, which the Dutch aren’t allowed to enter. Not much anyway. It is set in the 18th century. Naturally, the red haired Dutch accountant falls in love with a Japanese woman. In a Shogun-like plot development, he woos her, and in a further Shogun-like plot development, this wooing leads him to a greater understanding of Asian culture. Also, things go wrong, as they do in novels. Is that enough plot description? I hope so because it’s all I have the strength for.
Did I like it? I did indeed. I wasn’t so crazy about the bad guy, whose badness credibility is established by (a) his ability to kill people with mysterious hand waving and (b) his leadership of a weird (shinto, it is said) cult, which spirits women away to be brood mares, and worse. Really, I could have gone all summer without weird sexual rituals popping up in the books I read.
Other than that, and the occasional overwrought writing you kind of expect in books about Europeans going to Japan in the 18th century and falling in love with women who’re midwives, and scarred but still beautiful, it’s a totally captivating book. I will not go on and on about how Mitchell is an up and coming literary writer, because I did not read Cloud Atlas (not liking to have to handle six different narrative voices at once) and because I don’t think it’s necessary. Worse than plot summary is too much yammering on about the author’s (a) age, (b) book jacket picture, and (c) fights with Oprah, which, I’m fairly certain, Mitchell has never had, being English, and looking quite young and sort of sweet in his book jacket picture.
It’s a good summer book.
And that’s what a review that skimps on plot summary and is written without internet assistance looks like.
Carless in Seattle
ferry! light rail! bus! feet!
I’m aware that most of the world gets around without a car and it’s not news to anyone that we should be driving way less, but we seem to have gotten around to this realization only recently in any kind of serious way. I can see how ingrained the car culture is by the fact that I assumed I’d rent a car to get around this weekend when I’m up in Seattle for my brother’s wedding party.
But, really, why do that? Oil is gushing into the Gulf. The least I can do is print out some transit schedules and figure out how to get from SeaTac to downtown Seattle, to Vashon Island to see my friend Karen, and then to the airport. We have everything we need: a lot of transit schedules, small wheeled suitcases and something to read while we’re waiting for the light rail/ferry/bus.
Oh, and the other things we need we already have: plenty of time and our own two feet.
Mazel tov!
Ill Fares the Land
Today’s post has no picture, because I couldn’t bear to look again at the images of the oil spill in the Gulf. Today’s post is also a book review — of sorts — because, although it might appear my interests are confined to bicycles and lighting, I am actually still interested in words and books.
The best thing I’ve read this year (well, I did love Parrot and Olivier too)was a book by the historian Tony Judt called Ill Fares the Land.
One of Judt’s significant points – that we’re in a bad way because we have abandoned our belief in the idea that the government can actually perform functions that private enterprise cannot — is tragically and aptly illustrated by the BP oil spill. Every answer to the question how did this happen? leads to this answer: because we thought a private company like BP, acting with little public oversight, would keep our coastline safe. Paul Krugman is good on this subject too. (“We need politicians who believe in good government, because there are some jobs only the government can do.”)
It’s a short book, one that reviewers have pointed out reads like a great commencement speech. That’s not a criticism though. The book is rousing, intelligent, and uses the past to illuminate the present, which happens all too seldom. And, for me, it turned out to be just what was needed to fend off the despair that comes with tragedies like this oil spill.
Let There Be Better Light
it's landed -- well, more like it's hovering
Who knew I’d spend so much time considering lights while on my little break? Stuff like that matters, though. The way I feel at home is all about my physical surroundings. That is why I’m certain the old light in the dining room was 50% of the reason for all the shouting at dinner. Once we’ve put a proper bulb in the spaceship, I’ll let you know if it fills us with a mid-century sense that anything is possible in this world, even a peaceful dinner.
Can you see why there was so much uneasiness at the table?
would you like some mead with your unhappy meal?
Fifty Things
so far anyway
1. teach the boys to make brownies
2. eat dinner in the Mission
3. sell a book
4. rescue mother in law’s books, the ones in boxes in the garage
5. use my sewing machine
6. read the Three Musketeers
7. great retro green cloth binders – use them
8. run out of pencils
9. make a table from reclaimed wood
10. get the perfect tattoo
11. recover those chairs, the 1950s chairs from the Kaiser Building I got for free
12. re-read Pudd’nhead Wilson
13. sell something on craigslist; maybe more than one
14. spend an afternoon in North Beach
15. commute by ferry and bike — in July, September, or October, when that would be beautiful
16. figure out what to do with all that great flannel fabric
17. grow some herbs
18. attach the pencil sharpener and use it (see 8 above)
19. write a short story
20. thank David Marshall for being such a great professor in college
21. ditto Drew Clark
22. have another Little House on the Prairie month
23. use that doctor’s bag Jack carried in the Wizard of Oz
24. honor Helen, our neighbor who died last year, by planting a rose bush
25. write an episode of a television show
26. plant a fruit tree
27. send a postcard to my parents; maybe more than one
28. make a series of drawings of family life
29. spend a month out of the car
30. walk the Berkeley Pathways
31. have a picnic
32. put up a canopy
33. make margaritas
34. play board games under the canopy
35. make sweetbreads
36. take the boys to the café at Chez Panisse
37. learn how to change a bike tire
38. play mini golf
39. use a grommet
40. help an orchid come back to life
41. watch It Happened One Night
42. ditto Easy Living
43. have a 30s screwball comedy film festival under the canopy
44. wear more hats
45. use a staple gun
46. paint some furniture
47. figure out how many pairs of shoes I really need
48. eat in Oakland’s Chinatown
49. have one of those huge mission burritos
50. thank my parents
A Picture and a Couple of Paragraphs
the photo part
This isn’t actually going to be about Archie, but it’s never bad to put a dog in your post, right? (There’s a Billy Collins poem where he advises poets who are stuck to put a dog in the poem.) It’s just to say that I like my blog more when I don’t feel compelled to write really long posts. A photo and two or three paragraphs. Sometimes I want to read more from other people, but honestly? I don’t want to write more than that.
This happened to me today: While riding through Berkeley to get to my train into San Francisco, I thought deeply about helmet wearing. I myself was not wearing a helmet. These thoughts, more or less, passed through my head: it’s a beautiful day, helmets are so sweaty and I have to go in and talk to the judges when I arrive, I’m going, like, 2.5 miles an hour, the biggest danger I’m going to encounter this morning on the bike boulevard through Berkeley is from a bug flying into my mouth, so I’ll keep my mouth closed, European bike commuters don’t wear helmets, sheesh, I’m not Lance Armstrong, biking like this isn’t dangerous, what kind of weird conspiracy is going on that tries to make people feel like they HAVE to wear a helmet or they’ll die? And then I saw him, a guy in a helmet riding no hands down the street. He took his helmet off, still no hands, adjusted it and then put it back on.
Something about that made me laugh and I decided to lighten up.
What’s Been Going on Around Here?
in the morning, this is archie's spot. also, check out the curtains. they do not have birds on them. they are simple, pretty, washable and cost a total of $50 at IKEA. Plus, no birds.
Children have grown, as they do. I wrote a screenplay. More on that later.
A few weeks ago, some guys came over and painted our living room, dining room and hallway. It took them five hours. I was stunned by their industry. For thirteen years every wall in our house has been realtor white. In other words, we have never painted the interior of our house. It always seemed too complicated. In fact, it is not complicated at all to other people. Like the woman who came over and told me the name of the sort of color I like. And the guys who painted. For them, the walls of houses are made to be painted. For me, apparently, they were made to sigh over, cringe at, and complain about. Maybe there is a metaphor here.
What I do know is that the walls of our living room, dining room and hallway are now actual colors. Pewter, and pewter’s even mellower cousin. It’s calming. Oh, and those curtains that were here for thirteen years? The ones with the birds on them? They’re gone too.
Hiatus
I suppose it’s already obvious that I’ve been taking a break from blogging — but I thought I’d say that I’ll be back in June. Until then, happy spring, and see you all soon. xo, Lily
Young Men and Books
It was amazing really, the combined brainpower that went into choosing books for 14 year old boys — and very little of it was actually mine. Okay, truth: the only book I chose was Jim the Boy, and I’m quite uncertain about how that will go over. I also chose the movies. I loved Gran Tornio, although I think Clint Eastwood could have exercised a little discretion about posing himself as a crucified Christ in the last scene and I’m sorry if that spoils anything for you, but it had to be said.
We’re in San Diego tonight, and tomorrow we head across the border to Baja, where some of us will be windsurfing, and others will be writing, and all of us will be reading.
More from Paradise in a few days.
Bookstacks 2009: H-E-L-P
In book-related news, I’d like to anounce that I’m about to make a bunch of bookstacks, something I’ve done for the last couple of years, and am doing early this year because we are celebrating Christmas on December 17 and leaving the country for sunny Baja the next day. (We did that last year too. We are becoming traditionalists, sort of, in the bloglily household.)
Anyway, the challenge this year is to find good things for a 14 year old boy to read. Biographies of insane rock musicians, stories of horrendous crimes and disasters, entertaining accounts of stuff that happened in the past (aka history), graphic novels (aka comic books), and the novel that you read when you were 14 that you really loved are all possibilities. Trouble is that I don’t know the names of ANY of these books and am hoping that you, dear readers, just might.
And if you have any movie suggestions for 14 and 10 year old boys, well, throw that in too while you’re at it, okay?
xo
Bring That Woman a Steak!
Last November, I gave up all the things I don’t really like to do anyway, including eating meat. Unfortunately, my decision to replace meat with cookies turns out to have been somewhat unwise.
I could have guessed that I’d made an unwise nutritional decision, but in fact the extent of my unwisdom was brought to my attention by my doctor, who called the other night to tell me I am severely anemic. (I thought she was calling to tell me that they’d finally voted on a new health care bill and it required all doctors to actually follow up on blood test results that they’ve had since June, but in fact, she managed to stumble on my results without any kind of government mandate. Whether that gives you solace in your concerns about health care legislation I cannot say. All I know is that I’ve been about the same degree of tired for 14 years, and that hasn’t gotten worse since I stopped eating steak.)
When I heard about the severe anemia, my first thought was how I could use THAT news to my advantage. I am here to tell you that in my family it counts for nothing. My husband first checked, of course, as husbands will, to be sure that the chances are zero that the anemia is related to something that will trigger the need to cash in my life insurance policy. After that, well, you still have to do the dishes.
Soon, though, maybe I will be given something that will make me feel totally fired up. And then look out. For one thing, I will beging posting at a rate of greater than .7 blog posts a week. And I will be organizing my bureau drawers and then coming over to your house and alphabetizing your spice rack.
And this is also to say to the fourteen lovely, lovely blog readers who left comments cheering me on in the quicksand also known as revising-your-novel-yet again: I ADORE YOU. And my husband, who really just wants to be sure I am well, I adore him too. And those who read and don’t comment, like the lovely Mari (and her lovely soon to be baby?) but hope for the best in the quicksand? Yup. I ADORE YOU also!
The Neverending Story
You know the novel I’ve been writing for as long as I’ve been writing this blog? The one with forty-four (44) chapters? The one I’m revising for my agent? I am just beginning chapter 11.
God.
I have a deadline: October 7. Wish me luck. And know that I am never, ever, ever going to revise this book again. Well, that’s not true. If someone buys it, you’d better believe I’ll revise it again for them.
I don’t know if this much effort goes into every book you pick up at a bookstore or if I am just a slow, sucky writer. But this is one big thing I’ve learned about writing a book: that effortless sentence, that flowing paragraph, that interesting, quick aside? If it’s in my book, you can be certain it took me a really long time to get right.
I suppose that’s one of the great pleasures of your first book, though. I mean, if you get lucky and someone wants the next one, usually they want it faster than forever. But I’m hoping with the second one I won’t need forever to get it right.
