Category Archives: bookworthy

Gathering Impressions

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Tamara Kobilkina, a dear friend from Mirnyy, had that certain turn of phrase. She spoke English very well, but there are ragged edges in the overlap of languages. One idea can be expressed beautifully in one language, perhaps because it is a concept widely understood by the culture. But that same idea is awkward in another language.

Tamara liked to ask me what my impressions of Russia were, what I thought of different things and places that I have seen.

I had forgotten about her “Impressions” question until I went to Germany with Chris. I was full of ideas and new sites, sounds and tastes. I turned to Chris, to ask him what he thought of everything.

I had to grope for the right phrase. “So what do you think?” did not adequately cover the ground.

“What are your impressions of this place?” is just right.

If I ever see Tamara again, I will thank her for that beautifully fitting question.

I have so many many many many impresssions.

I loved the trip. I have been LONGING to go to a foriegn country. I have been to the UK and to Ireland in the past decade. But they did not feel foriegn.

Because, you see, we speak the same language. How foriegn can we be?

And I remember the HIGHLY foriegn country that I spent a year and a half in.

Anyone that knows my family, not just one or two individuals, but my whole family, knows that some part of us is frozen, like Han Solo, around the impressions we got in Russia.

So, I wanted to try a new flavor of foriegn country. Russia was so tremendously exciting.

Tamara told me that I understood the Russian soul.

I don’t think so. Maybe just being impressionable is the Russian soul.

Right now, I am full to the brim of impressions of my trip to Germany. I am very sad to have left.

Yet, here I am talking about everything but Germany!

well, there is a lot to tell.

One of my huge impressions is of the contrast, how INCREDIBLY TERRIFYING my stay in Russia was.

and how incredibly ignorant I was. I did not even know enough to be afraid.

My mother told me that she was really scared to be in Russia.

To her, she said, Russia was the bad guys.

In school, she said, we were taught to drop under the desks to be safe if Russia dropped the bomb on us.

Well, I didn’t go to school. I had VERY little TV, or Movies to tell me who the bad guys were.

Because, you know, you have to be told.

It has been ten years since I lived in Russia. That’s pretty much the span of my adult life.

I’ve seen a lot of TV and Movies since then.

And most of those TV and movies pointed to the Germans as being the bad guys.

When I was in Germany there were a few moments of feeling illogically afraid.
I have more sympathy for my mom’s fears, now.

Speak up!

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I’ve been kinda quiet here lately.

That’s a shame. I like to write on my blog. But my life has been somewhat exciting, and that doesn’t always leave time for writing.

Isn’t that funny? When life is most interesting, you don’t have time to stop and tell about it.

I remember I kept a diary as a teenager. I would oh-so-faithfully write down everything that happened or occurred to me. Volumes, pages and pages of my life would be documented.

I soon grew incredibly sick of writing down all the nothing that occurred in my life. I thought to myself “I am spending so much time writing down what I’m doing that I am not doing anything.”

I was young and had no basis for comparison. It did not occur to me that I had no life. I just had directionless ambition for a life.

Anyway, I am blessed to have a life now. And that life has been getting in the way of my art–the art of this blog.

You know, I’d love to fill this blog with delightful bits of interesting, useful and enlightening paragraphs. Some of the bits are those things.

Some of them aren’t.

I suppose that anything i write is useful to me. It is useful to write, it is useful to express my thoughts, for my own edification, even if no one else really cares.

So, I do write.

But I would really like to be better at expressing my thoughts and impressions in such a way that others can benefit. Sure, I don’t mind being self-centered. That’s fine. But it is more fun when you can bring others along on the trip.

Sometimes, though, when I am at my most creative and original, when I am most inspired, I seem to lose connection with others.

I am in love with originality. I reach for it whenever I can. I am thrilled when I find a new perspective, or a new way to express something difficult to grok.

It is HARD! We struggle, I struggle to understand more about how people workd and how the world works. WHY are things the way they are? WHY do things turn out the way they do?

Once in a while, I catch a glimpse. A flash of what I know to be the bigger picture hits the retinas of my understanding.

Hallelujah! Tell everyone and throw a party! I just got a little bit more of what it’s all about!

Except…not everyone wants to come to the party. I want to share the gift I recieved, but it turns out that people are not ready to listen.

What?! I thought we were all doing this together. I thought that this was we were all working on. Understanding, enlightenment, all of that.

So why don’t you want it when it comes available? I want to share, and you don’t want any?

Why not?

Maybe other people really aren’t looking for enlightenment. Maybe they prefer dim light and stupefied complacency.

Or

Maybe I’m just kidding myself. Maybe the revelation I think i have recieved is not amazing. Maybe I am stupid, and this insight that I astonishes me is as ordinary as a rock.

Or

Maybe I’ve been walking on a slow incline. As I work towards understanding more and more, my atennae are picking up bits and pieces and gathering and re-forming the information that I get. Maybe the accumulation of knowledge has been a slow process, one requiring diligence and time.

Therefore, my flash of brilliance took place at a mountaintop. I’ve been working towards it harder than I realized.

When I go to share it, I find that I am already being a geek and using advanced examples that others don’t understand.

It’s like I’ve been following a train of thought pretty far down the tracks, and I’m way down the line.

Sometimes, when I’m trying to explain something, I get frustrated. I feel like snapping my fingers and saying “Hey! Keep up! Pay attention, we haven’t even gotten to the main point yet.”

But then, who am I to demand that kind of attention? If others don’t want to know, they won’t pay attention.

I know some nerdy people who know a hell of a lot about certain rather narrow subjects. They dove deep to get to what they wanted to know. About the inner workings of physics, or the inner workings of a computer, or the relationships in telecommunications networks.

And that means they get to a point where they can only talk to each other about those particular subjects. No one else understands them.

I often feel like that. Like I’ve jumped into a body of knowledge, and I’ve gotten far enough that it’s hard to talk to others about it without a LOT of background explanation.

Except…where are my colleagues?

Poets and philosophers are not honored in this computer age.

Original thought is not prized. Not unless you can patent it.

And you know what? I understand that. I am a deeply practical person. I understand the value of a good meal. “Good” meaning reliably recurring.

But I also understand the value of an original thought; it is at the same time the most selfish and altruistic act.

For what is more personally gratifying than discovery?

And by what means will humanity and the world improve itself other than through the adoption of new ideas?

I wrestle with my creativity. I am electrified and frustrated by turns. And sometimes at the same time.

Perhaps it would be easier if my talents lay in more tangible directions. If I were inspired to be a plumber, for example.

But that is not the case. Here I am, striving with Ideas.

“How I learned to drive” by Paula Vogel

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What is it about sexual abuse stories? They are such a strange combination of feelings. One part is the seduction, the sexiness of talking about sex. But at the same time there is the alarm bells, ringing “Danger! This is wrong!” There is the pushing-away feeling of disgust at the molester, that is part of the alarm-bell feeling.

There is also the hypnotic sensation of watching a car accident happen in slow motion. This horrible thing is happening; is the bad man going to get caught? Is the poor child going to be okay? and you are not sure of either.

And while I am wondering if the kid in the story is going to be okay, I also wonder if I am a sick person to be seduced into the sexy side of the story.

It makes me feel sick to my stomach, while being slightly turned on, which makes me feel even sicker.

That is what this story did. I guess that means Vogel did a good job of making me feel the same sort of thing that Li’l Bit felt. Surely she must have felt those feelings and more.

This play was better than just a “How I recovered from my Molesting Uncle” article in a woman’s magazine. There was a stronger pull of power between the girl and her Uncle Peck.

It reminded me a whole lot of Lolita, the way Li’l Bit turned the situation to have more power. Lolita had a pull of power over Humbert too.

The influence of Li’l Bit’s family on how she dealt with issues of femininity were quite funny-a horrifying combination of frankness and misinformation, high expectations and hypocrisy.

The characters are all sympathetic, Vogel made everyone come alive.

Mind your nouns and tenses

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Yesterday, as i was riding the bus home early because I was coming home sick, a young man got on the bus. He handed the bus driver a ticket, and then made some gestures like he needed to say more.

After trying to understand him for a moment, the bus driver said, “I speak six languages, but I do not speak American Sign Language.”

The young man gave up and sat down.

He had been motioning that he wanted to write something down. But he didn’t have any paper. I happened to have a pad on me.

I took it out, and wrote down:

What do you need?

I handed him the pad and pen:

I told him that I did paid ticket at the metro rail transfer to bus should give me ticket is some

You want another transfer?

I gave him my ticket need to change a bus ticket. also i paid ticket at the metro rail machines

You need another tranfer or what? a ‘transfer’ is a ticket that lets you get on the next bus.

I need a ticket because my grammar isn’t good. but most of time I using on american sign laguage.

Well, if you need another bus pass, you need to pay for it. He will give you one.

I did gave him of my ticket. I was paid a ticket machine at the metro rail, can rail transfer to bus don’t need I another to pay a ticket just I gave him give me one a ticket. if I not paid only metro rail it mean i can’t get another a ticket

Do you need something else? You are riding the bus now

Just forgot about that I’ll pay other but I knew depend on the people force to the people to pay but i knew about rule MTA

Then it was time for him to get off the bus. He blew me a kiss and held his hands to his heart, mouthing the words ‘thank you.’

He was very nice, I thought. A nice deaf young man.
I really wish I could have understood what he meant.

All this, I write, to illustrate the
IMPORTANCE OF GRAMMAR

There are times when it is very important to be understood. Constructing sentences with subjects, objects, verbs and prepositions really helps out with being understood.

I wish that boy luck, but man, he needs to study his grammar.

What does it MEAN?

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I went to visit a hospital for a checkup, but they put me in a gown and gave me a bed. The bed was in this huge open room with tons of other beds and no walls.I didn’t know why I was there, or what was wrong with me, other than that they were going to operate. There were going to open up my stomach and cut me.

I was so upset, I didn’t want to have this operation. No one would tell me what was going on, no one would talk to me. I felt fine! I thought that if there was something wrong with me, surgery should be the last, rather than the first, effort to solve the problem.

I was crying and pleading with people as they passed, asking what was happening, demanding to see a doctor, but no one would pay any attention to me.

Finally a nurse stopped, and explained that I had little growths, like plantar’s warts, on my intestine, and that they were going to remove those parts of my intestine.

“But, That sounds very risky! what if they grow back? Or my intestine doesn’t heal properly!”

“That’s ridiculous! This procedure has a 100% success rate”

I didn’t believe her. I begged to see a doctor, and she left, exasperated that I was so silly about this perfectly safe procedure.
I just lay down on the bed and cried.

Then I woke up. Freaky. Dreams can be so interesting.

Fortunately, I have a marvelous book.

10,000 Dreams Interpreted

I will admit, this dream is kind of baffling, but I have found Dream dictionaries (which is what this book really is) to be quite useful for understanding what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

This book is a good resource.

writing or writing?

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I have not been writing so much on my blog lately. I feel dully guilty about this.

But not too guilty, because I have been trying to write a lot in other places. Places like my hard drive, which are not published.

I like publishing my writing, and I like my blog. Before I had my blog, I spent a huge amount of time writing emails. Emails are at least read by ONE person, I hope. I enjoy the attention, I have to say.

My email style tends to the ponderous, however. I think what I say is generally interesting, but it can get really long.

I guess I’m an e-conversation hog.

A few years ago, I noticed myself getting embroiled in long and involved, complicated e-conversations. I found myself composing the emails in my head as i went about my life: “…and this illustrates my previous point…”

This began to worry me. How much of one (or two or three or four) people’s attention could I monopolize? I thought that my emails were no longer really working well in the medium I was using.

But I was impressed by what I had written, I felt that I had reached some new understanding through the discourse. I didn’t throw them away.

But I realized that the effort I was putting into these writings was inefficient. I should put my creative energy into something a little more universal than a RE: subject line could encompass.

I thought I should spend time writing for real, not emails.

But I missed the audience. I missed knowing that it would be read.

It seemed empty, words not read like a tree falling alone in the forest. Did they really matter?

I was very pleased with the arrival of blogs. I have tremendously enjoyed my blog. Recently, I have been pushing really hard to write and post and post. I enjoy posting. And I really like posting on Blogcritics, because the readership is even larger there.

But I am brought up once again. I have the same problem with the blog that I had in email. My blogposts are somewhat ponderous. The popular blogs, it seems to me, are not as wordy as mine. People don’t want to spend a half and hour reading something on a computer monitor.

Well, it depends what it is. Maybe if it’s REALLY GOOD, then they might.

So. Then I have to be REALLY GOOD if I want to follow my inclination to ramble on and on.

Or maybe ( and here we are at the same place again) the blog is not the proper medium for some of the things I feel like I need to write.

Blogs seem to be an Extrospective kind of writing. People are commenting on politics, on popular culture, movies, TV, music, whatever. Toss off an opinion, a fact, a perspective, this seems to be what blogs are good for.

I can do that. I throw out my take on various subjects, books and movies especially. I think I do it reasonably well, although one commentor recently gave me the distinction of writing the worst movie review ever (it was for Waiting for Guffman).

But what about introspective? This particular posting is introspective. I’m not apologetic about it, but I realize that it invites a different readership with a different mindset than the extrospective stuff.

And maybe that mindset is not engaged by the computer screen.

AND

maybe the type of writing that I am trying to do needs a little more room than a blogpost can comfortably give me.

Interesting tangent:
I wonder how large MT allows posts to be? Hmm…

Blogposts have to achieve some kind of completion at the end. But writing, the kind that you get up and do for 2 hours every morning, does not need completion before you stop. The point is, it’s bigger than you can accomplish at one sitting.

And maybe that’s the next rung.

I admit, it is very satisfying to write a blogpost and finish it. It takes more discipline and organization to work on a long story and finish it.

I’d like to write longer stories though.

And I’ve been trying to work on it. Which is why my posting has slowed a bit.

It’s a shift of focus.

_Wuthering Heights_

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I mean the movie, with Laurence Olivier and all, not the book.

I confess, I’ve tried to read the book three times, and found it emotionally exhausting. This is the first book I had not been able to conquer, and it surprised me. I had loved Jane Eyre. But Emily is not Charlotte, as I discovered.

The next book that conquered me was the Silmarillion. I don’t imagine that anyone is surprised by that.

I tried to read Wuthering Heights again later, and it had the same effect. It was just too much! I needed a break, and afterwards, I didn’t feel like hanging out with those people again.

But I knew there was a movie, and I figured that I could make it through a movie. I did want to know how the end turned out.

The movie was on TCM this weekend, and I had my chance.

You know, it was less exhausting to see Cathy beating her brother with the riding crop than it was to read about it. Imagining it made it seem more cruel than seeing a little sister whapping at her brother.

Of course, Heathcliff as Laurence Olivier made it easy to believe that Cathy would be in love with him. Oh, Olivier is beautiful!

It was all gothic, love beyond death and stony castles and craggy rocks and a smoldering young hero. These elements have been used to good effect in many other places.

I guess what made the book so hard to read is how unlikeable Heathcliff and Cathy both are. When Cathy says “I am Heathcliff!” it is easy to believe, since they are both so mean to each other.

It really could be one of those “They deserve each other” situations. One overriding message of the story is that true love conquers all.

But equally apparent is the idea that one does not need to be virtuous to have true love. Of course, the victorian idea of virtuous was mostly keeping up appearances. And staying in your given social place.

Heathcliff wouldn’t do that. Cathy wished she didn’t have to, but still wanted all that her priviledged position could give her.

I think she wished she could run away with Heathcliff, and didn’t. In the end it killed her.

It’s convenient, how heroines are so fatally unhealthy. Makes for dramatic death scenes.

This one was nice, I have to say.

I remember believing in a love that tempestuous. I’m a little older now, and I am mostly glad that I am not afflicted with it.
Mostly.

McMansions are popping up

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In this new place I life, LA, appearances seem to be pretty important.

Homes are a part of that. Here’s an article for the LA times about the zeitgeist:

Keeping Up With the Jonesing

“Having the time and money to build your own home used to be one of the perks of wealth. McMansion buyers, by contrast, are the working wealthy. Many of them labor long hours to pay the massive mortgages on their massive houses. For them, it’s more practical to buy a previously designed place that projects an aura of wealth, prestige and personal achievement—off-the-rack opulence, if you will—rather than create a unique architectural symbol of high culture and refinement. If you want individuality, you can always sink some bucks into unique landscaping or remodel that useless formal dining room into a private pool hall.”

This makes me sad. Individuality is important. It’s one of the things that makes a neighborhood charming. Heck, it’s what makes people charming.

It seems wasteful to have a huge rattley home that doesn’t suit your family’s needs. You shouldn’t live your life for other people, and you shouldn’t buy a house just because other people will be impressed by it.

Especially the cost is so high, it takes you away from your family.

It’s important to pop your head up for air once in a while.

I remember a friend saying that people will spend a lot of time reducing discomfort, but don’t spend very much time increasing comfort.

Spring

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It is warm, and the breeze blows fresh sunshine-smells over my face. I dance across the campus pathway, my first college spring at home in Northest America. I hum a spontaneous melody, so full of newness and joy:
Do you ever feel like singing
Right out loud to the sky above?
Is it the same spring? I am feeling that joy in spring.

It is spring, and the seeds of the past are coming back. Those wishes, fears and hopes that fall from me in actions, thoughts, and sacrifices do not cease to be with my forgetting. With seasons come change. I change every year and every day.

The detritus of a squished population surrounds me. There are scraps of clothing, boards and machinery. Buildings need a coat of paint; the melting snow runs tracks through the grime of the old and peeling surface. Water pools in ruts on the ground, forming long ponds across the passageways. No municipal services are left in Yakutia after the death of communism. Pedestrians, and we are all pedestrians, lay long, thin boards over the seasonal moats. We become brave balancing acrobats to get to school and work. It is up to us to find a way through. Look, what is that flattened thing? The freeze-dried carcass of a cat, fatal participant in the sub-arctic changes of season.
Is it that spring? The warning to build my own path is the same.

But the seasons remain the same. I sing the song I began at the beginning. Its refrain returns in the spring of my step and drops with my footfalls. Beginning and end, life and death—spring brings to life and feeds on death.

In a beautiful mansion donated by a man passed on, different people take turns to stand on their feet and read. Such a collection of interesting noses! They read in their own languages of an empty tomb. It is past midnight, the first time I have heard this kind of service. Christos voskres! Christos Anesti! El Messieh kahm! Christ is risen! He has conquered death by death! Joyful faces tell of a stone rolled away and new life brought from dying. The priest, the leader of the church welcomes me to the pre-dawn table. We eat, and he tells me of his faith, drinking wine. I have never seen a pastor drunk before.
Is it the spring once more? The story is the same.

The melted snow water is being soaked into the wakened tree-roots that make up the Alaskan forest of my memory. Barren branches have waited all winter for the sun-sweet nectar to reach them. Hard buds swell and surge into sticky chartreuse baby-wrinkled leaves. They grow a shocking green, almost painful to the eye when the slanted Northern sun shines right through them. After months of landscape in black and white, eyes must grow accustomed. If I forget to look for just one day, I would think it was an explosion. I do not forget to look. I know it happens quickly, but it is still a progression.
Is it spring again? I feel the expectation.

My will-volition swells with the season. I strain against the hull of old boundaries. Tight-packed growth against well-known walls. I am quivering for my freedom.

Quivering with fear. New life means new death. Chances and risks taken are the straightest path to disappointment. Is not my life now entwined, rooted and fed in the sweat, sorrow and tears of all that came before?

Put another ring around this tree. Either die now or die later. It is spring again, every spring that ever was or will be. I am here to take my place in the season. I am the Resurrection and the Life.

this one’s for me

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As a kid, nothing seemed out of my reach.

There weren’t any challenges.
Well, there was one. I wanted to be able to run 5 miles. My legs didn’t carry me that far. But I wished they did.

Everything else was not a matter of “Am I able?” but a matter of “Am I allowed?”

So little was allowed. Music was suspect, Movies were suspect. Books were kind of suspect. Education, friends, people I might meet, life goals, all these things were suspect.

They might get in the way of “God’s will for my life.”

God didn’t want me to learn at a secular school. God didn’t want me to watch movies that Jesus wouldn’t watch. God’s will was not for me to saturate myself with “worldly” music or expose myself to the influence of non-christian friends.

Eating, talking on the phone, what clothes i wore and where I visited were all to be weighed in the scale of “What would be the Christian thing to do?”

The christian thing to do seemed to be to always be telling my non-christian friends to become christian.

But, as it happened, I wasn’t supposed to have non-christian friends.

This situation left me with a lot of time on my hands.

I read a lot. I had no guidance, really, so I just galloped after whatever caught my interest. Lots of austen, dickens. The entire shelf labeled “Young Adult” at the library. I discovered I liked those best.

But I had no one to talk to about what I read.

There was no challenge, really.

When I moved to Russia, I knew nothing. NO one expected me to know anything. I learned Russian when I was there, but that was the extent of the challenge.

THe trip was an exercise in gathering impressions.

It wasn’t until I moved back to the states, and got married that I started to really try to challenge myself.

I finally ran 5 miles. It wasn’t that hard. I just kept at it.

Then we moved to California. The bay area.

HERE, at last, the bar was raised.

People knew things. There was a challenge in the air. People my age had jobs, and careers. they had interests and specialties. Intellectual pursuits.

whoa. What the heck is this? I felt incredibly inadequate. My little bits of stuff, my little interests and areas of knowledge were pathetic!

it took me quite a while to rise to the challenge. I felt so frustrated, because I knew that i was capable, I just hadn’t actually DONE any of these things yet.

My self-evaluation left me really lacking. I had to compensate.

I started to. I got some stuff happening. I wasn’t at the top, but I got in the game. I got some self-respect, I got going.

By the time I left, I felt pretty good about myself. I felt like I was making progress. I had something to show.

Now i live in LA.
I feel back at the bottom. Whoa. There is so much going on here. I have so much I want to be doing, want to have DONE already. There is a rushing torrent of creativity going through this town, I want to be swimming in the middle of it.

I am not there yet. The bar just took a big jump.

I want to be part of it. But I don’t want to lose myself, either.

I have to take it slow, but I have some serious ground to cover.

I guess I just have to keep at it. A little every day.