’ve joined—even started—a few book clubs. Like an orphan or the misfit swan among ducks, I’m looking for my people. I want to get a conversation started, even better a heated one, about the books that I love.

Last summer I paid to join a monthly book club. Okay, it was a sort of continuing education class about books from an east coast liberal arts college. I was glad to pay several hundred for a curated booklist from educated people who were supposed to know and hopefully even have opinions. Last week was the final session.

We discussed Mark Twain’s story of theCelebrated Jumping frog.

That story!read it for yourself.

Twain tells the story as himself, and sets up a contrast right away. He introduces himself to the bartender of Angels’s Camp—a California depleted mining town–this way:

“I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood Leonidas W. Smiley…”

Simon Wheeler answered in this way: “ ‘Rev. Leonidas W. H’m, Reverend Le — well, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ’49 — or may be it was the spring of ’50 — I don’t recollect exactly..”

Listen to those sentences! Twain inquires about a firend’s cherished boyhood companion, and Wheeler recollects a feller.

This is the start of Twain’s trademark writing in the colloquial speech patterns of his characters. He is formal and proper, but the bartender Wheeler tells it with all the little details and distractions it deserves.

Twain is a storyteller too, definitively as the author of this celebrated tale. In the story he deprecates the tale and it’s teller from the beginning:

“…he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me.”

Twain knows this is a good story, but he wants to pshaw it to seem humble.

As he found in his life, and I know in mine, stories are valuable. The mining camp had run out of gold, but the stories are still fresh and flowing.

Now the other side is the class issue. The storyteller is not sophisticated, and Twain positions himself as superior. I am the not sophisticated one, and I agree with Wheeler that this story is important. Twain says it this way:
“all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, ·so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius”

Twain said it’s an interminable narrative, placing himself as the rightful judge

And I am in my zoom room, talking to the fancy east coast college people realizing I’m sitting in Wheeler’s seat again.

And I see that Twain’s with me and has been the whole time. Neither of us are a high class college person.

We both love stories. I guess we both know that not everyone does. I tried to point out the class issue to the zoom group, and no one saw it

Twain was right to be ambiguous about his opinion of the story.

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

Learning to play piano as a teenager, my friends would come up to me and try to talk to me while I was playing. I would be thinking of replies so clearly that I was surprised my friend didn’t answer.

She would smack my arm and say, “Answer me!”

Didn’t I? I was thinking it.

I love words, I love reading and writing. Words and music are how I understand myself. They are not the same, though. I wouldn’t know how to make a diagram of it, but words and music don’t completely overlap. Music lives in a different plane of communication.

Music can express things and heal me in places that words cannot touch.

Many years past in the destruction of my first marriage, I played my antique piano to find my way through. I didn’t know who I was anymore. The meter of the music I created were the railroad ties measuring a path through.

Measure by measure, I was able to sort the chaos from formless and void into my first days. Those dark days in my cinderblock apartment were safe after many years. Protected and trembling from the escape.

Music moves and carries me as I find myself in a new safe place. My hands on the keys, little finger movements probe the tangles. Little strokes finding knots, lining up what allows the harmony.

The beat goes on, relentless but merciful too. No breaks to go make it perfect. And it doesn’t matter because this part can be better than the last. Sweet sounds now forgive the ones I broke before.

Words can be too heavy for the task. I only see darkly what I’m aiming for.

Music walks with me, pushes me along. My long companion and partner. Time might lie on my hands painfully but music raises it up.

I’ve been fighting for a long time. I started training to fight, and then some serious opponents came up

I stayed in the training and got my black belt

I didn’t give up on my serious cancer opponents and they are vanquished and quiet

I think about the boys

Men

Boys

Who stormed normandy beach.THey didn’t get to stop. They training. I don’t know if they volunteered, but the events landed in their lap and they had to walk through them

Up that beach

They didn’t invite the war in

I didn’t ask for cancer

but the fight was upon us

When they went home to their old rooms and their old clothes

Their shirts didn’t fit the same, I’m sure

Mine didn’t either

I don’t know how to fit into the life I previously occuppied. A lot has burned down and i carry scars

The beach

the poisons

I did not dare to stop and feel the seriousness of what I was facing

Eyes on the goal

I did it. I made it.

What do I do now? can I look around now or have I forgotten how?
I have to gently probe the spots to see if I can feel.

Twelve years after I finished high school, I earned a bachelor’s degree. Every day of those twelve years, I felt it’s lack. I wanted that BA. I deserved that BA. I should have it ALREADY!

Until I did.

The wind that pushed me my whole adult life vanished. While I was proud of the accomplishment, I looked over my shoulders for something. I didn’t know this world anymore.

This was a change I’d chased and once achieved everything went quiet.

What now?

Thomas Kuhn noticed a pattern for this “everything changed” situation. The Structure of Scientific Revolution, published in 1962, tracks how the provable and reliable shifts.

Science is definitely repeatable, and therefore reliable. It happens again and again in the same way. The sun rises, and that apple falls when I drop it. Water is wet.

Most of the time.

Don’t get too comfortable. Things are rock solid reliable until people –scientists—start to notice where it isn’t.

Once an aberration is seen, they multiply. Why? Maybe I don’t understand the rules. Maybe I need another rule that bring it all into a working system again.

Then it seems like the system is broken, and a whole new one is needed.

I’d spent time on that broken system. There is good stuff in it! Surely if I jiggle the handle and…

It’s clear it is used up. I’m going to have to learn a new map. Kuhn calls it a paradigm shift.

After my college degree, I found something else to push for. It took some time. It was a long time ago. The pattern is repeating again.

This is the part where I know I don’t know.

Yet.

Eerie silence fills the space.

I’m going to have to look around for a system to use. I know I’m going to have to figure out what is next for me, after the last several years. I was really good at a lot of things that don’t appeal to me anymore.

I’d like to fill that silence by laughing at myself. Here it is again. I’ll look in the forgotten places and make something new.

I am thinking of a wish.

This Sunday is Mother’s day, and as a mother, I am supposed to have a wish. Or maybe a demand.

Like the knights who say “Ni!” from Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie, I could demand a shrubbery. And it totally fits for me to add, “but not too expensive.”

Now that I think of it, I can do better than the knights of Ni! As the matriarch of my little family I have done the work to be granted this wish. I am reminded of The Fault in Our Stars, the John Green novel with a pair of cancer teenagers who fall in love. The cancer is horrible luck, but these kids are aware that it comes with a good choice: how will they use their Make-a-wish foundation wish.

What should I do with my with? The knights if Ni! Were thinking of themselves. Maybe I should uplevel my wish strategically. I could use this chance to turn the gift back onto the giver.

Should I ask my husband to go on a hike with me? I’d like him to do more exercise activities. We would all enjoy nature and it could remind him how much he loves it.

Or what if I chose to make our whole environment better. I could ask everyone to wash the windows and do yard work to make our house beautiful. Maybe the Knights of Ni! had a point about the shrubbery.

I’m balancing the possibilities for the pros and cons. As I think about the day, an important part of the decision comes to me.I am the mother or my family, but I still have to spend part of that day on the other mothers in the chain.

I have to share mother’s Day with the mothers that came before and are still with us. The Mother’s Make-a-Wish day is a pie that we have to slice up. I am not going to be greedy and demand the whole pie.

I think I do want to do some work around the house and go hiking with my husband, but I think I’ll have to plan that to be later.

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I am thinking of myself and how i wish I were, how I wish I coul think of myself

“It’s good to be able to name the pooch.”

I’d just shared a situation with my friend. Rambling on, trying to explain how I’d been caught—alone and afraid—in a circumstance and I could find a way out.

She is brilliant. It was a military saying: to screw the pooch. It’s a way to describe things gone wrong—disgraceful and mortifying—maybe even with good intentions but seriously wrong.

I am wrestling with a new circumstance—the hits keep on coming—and I’m working through the layers.

SOMETHING is wrong. I am getting the clues and forming suspicions but it’s foggy and not in my control.

I can feel the wrongness, and I’m not sure if I can stop it. Am I screwing up? Or if I flip it over, am I witnessing something being screwed?

Feeling gross and uncomfortable, I am not sure.

I find comfort in being the one to blame. Yes, the mortification would land on me. But if I’m the problem, I can start on the solution right now. I am in control and my actions could fix the problem., I can shift and get things moving the way I want.

I wrote about the trouble I was having with math last week. Last week’s pooch was math. I wrestled that one into control and another pooch showed up.

I am working through the layers of figuring things out. I know it’s not right and I’m still not sure how to get through to the core of the issue. I am trying, and I am not sure the problem is me. I’ve been playing with that idea and it doesn’t seem to fit.

Once I decide the trouble isn’t me, I could release the idea that I have to grapple it into submission. If the problem isn’t for me to fight, it could be something that will change without as much effort. It could change like the weather, The wind could die down and the sun come shining through.

That happens. And if I were still stuck trying to understand the nature of the pooch I might miss that the struggle—the pooch—had moved on. What exactly would be screwed then?

Me, probably.

Things do change. The sooner I figure out what call that pooch and how to stop the screwing the better for me.

“It’s good to be able to name the pooch.”

I’d just shared a situation with my friend. Rambling on, trying to explain how I’d been caught—alone and afraid—in a circumstance and I could find a way out.

She is brilliant. It was a military saying: to screw the pooch. It’s a way to describe things gone wrong—disgraceful and mortifying—maybe even with good intentions but seriously wrong.

I am wrestling with a new circumstance—the hits keep on coming—and I’m working through the layers.

SOMETHING is wrong. I am getting the clues and forming suspicions but it’s foggy and not in my control.

I can feel the wrongness, and I’m not sure if I can stop it. Am I screwing up? Or if I flip it over, am I witnessing something being screwed?

Feeling gross and uncomfortable, I am not sure.

I find comfort in being the one to blame. Yes, the mortification would land on me. But if I’m the problem, I can start on the solution right now. I am in control and my actions could fix the problem., I can shift and get things moving the way I want.

I wrote about the trouble I was having with math last week. Last week’s pooch was math. I wrestled that one into control and another pooch showed up.

I am working through the layers of figuring things out. I know it’s not right and I’m still not sure how to get through to the core of the issue. I am trying, and I am not sure the problem is me. I’ve been playing with that idea and it doesn’t seem to fit.

Once I decide the trouble isn’t me, I could release the idea that I have to grapple it into submission. If the problem isn’t for me to fight, it could be something that will change without as much effort. It could change like the weather, The wind could die down and the sun come shining through.

That happens. And if I were still stuck trying to understand the nature of the pooch I might miss that the struggle—the pooch—had moved on. What exactly would be screwed then?

Me, probably.

Things do change. The sooner I figure out what call that pooch and how to stop the screwing the better for me.

I started this test for the third time. By the second question the panic was bigger than me. This new industry I am working in is different and I am trying to get this certification so I can follow along with the action.

I’m used to picking up certifications–it’s fun learning new things. When the manager suggested it, of course I said I would give it a try. Water math, they called it.

The first part seemed easy.

I was wrong. This math is impossible.

I’d invested in the online class, and the team I’d joined told me that it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Now the unit conversions between gallons pounds, acres, liters and milligrams were a cliff I couldn’t scale.

I tried to go back to the beginning and try again. Write it down, do it slow.

But the storm of thoughts made the facts slippery. Maybe I wasn’t capable of this kind of learning anymore. It would become clear to everyone else that I was in the wrong place, not the right person and would be asked to leave. My presence would be an insult to the other people, best swept away and not spoken of again—at least not publicly.

With those terrifying monstrous ideas whirling through my head, it was impossible to convert pounds of chlorine to the correct dose into quantities of million gallons per day.

I knew better than to start the test for the third time. It was a desperate move, apparent the moment I started again. As if magic would suddenly happen, and I would know the answers without making the effort.

I thought I knew better. My panic was picking up new evidence for how impossible this was, and how everything else in my life was impossible and I was doomed to failure at everything I attempted.

Carrying the momentum I went to my martial arts class, and was able to teach my class a new move. It wasn’t new to me at this time, but it had been a while since I’d done it. It came back to me. I remembered how impossible it was the first few months when I’d tried to learn it.

And this night, I had forgotten that I’d learned it. Until I did it again. Almost as easy as walking.

I had done the impossible once. I had another story to calm the panic. The next morning I picked up the homework again. I re-read, wrote it all out again, and spent another set of hours. The panic came with, but I was able to quiet it enough to keep going.

I did not need magic after all. I found a way to keep trying and that let me stop the free fall. It’s going to take longer than I first thought, but it lost the impossible part.

I’ve talked about books here an embarrassing amount. I love reading, and I’m always looking for another book to savor. I seek out recommendations for the best book possible.

The literary canon has many enduring beautiful books to choose from. Experts have anointed certain books as worthy of attention.

I could name the books I’ve read and recommend. But for a change, I am going to talk about one I can’t stand.

I’ve read The Great Gatsby at least three times. It’s a book professors love to lecture on.

I tried. I don’t like any of the characters and I don’t understand people who do. I tried it again to see if I was missing something.

No. I still hate it. Who are these wretched people and why should I care? The parties in the book sounded glamorous, but that was it.

What lifted this to literature? What did thes professors see that I didn’t?

My husband found an article that gave me a new perspective. Not on the prose, but on the author and how he got attention.

Fitzgerald’s work were not that popular during his lifetime. His high life booze-soaked novels lost appeal during the 1930s prohibition and depression economics. But then an aspiring professor at Princeton named Mizener had gotten hold of Fitzgerald’s papers after he died.

And he produced paper after paper about this author, eventually getting his own faculty position. The article goes on to explain how a number of Princeton people influenced Great Gatsby’s rise to being a classic.

Gatsby himself is doomed to never be good enough to get what he wants. And the darkest side of the Ivy league Princeton snobbery is so vindicated by his exclusion.

It confused me to hear one of my professors call it the great American story. I’ve lived in America my whole life, and I don’t know anybody like those people and I wouldn’t want to.

I’m not saying these kinds of characters don’t’ exist, but they are not common. And I don’t have to like it. Nope, that’s not the America I know and I’m willing to see these lit teachers as unreliable narrators.