book quote

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. -- Franz Kafka

The Joy of Books

After reading a recent post by AC, I started thinking about a couple of other things, and this post came from it. I'm not blog-plagiarizing, I swear....

I have a friend who is the single father of a precious little three-year-old boy who's just learning to read. This dear sweet man is having the joy of watching the little one discover Dr. Seuss; their current favorite is There's a Wocket in My Pocket, a venerable classic I remember enjoying as a child. Every time I listen to my friend talking about his little boy and their reading adventures, I have to smile both at the pride and wonder in his voice and at my own memories of reading as a child.

So much of who I am now comes from being read to as a child. The love I have of books was given to me by my parents and my grandparents. Every night, my father would read me a story. I have no idea how many times he read me The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (also Dr. Seuss), O See Can You Say, or the story of Joseph from my children's picture Bible, but he never complained. He always tucked me in, sat beside me or in the rocking chair, and read me whatever I brought him.

I always had books. My parents took me to the library during the summers, and I ripped through large stacks of them. I also don't ever remember going into our town's one tiny bookstore and ever coming out without at least one book in hand. I might not have gotten a toy every trip into town, but they never told me no about books. The things that were important were afforded.

I am the person I am today because of that philosophy. My love of language, of literature, of knowledge is a direct product of those bedtime stories, those summer expeditions to the public library, those indulgences in the bookstore. I just can't be grateful enough. I hope my friend will keep reveling in his little one's newfound reading. I hope someday I'll have little ones of my own whom I can read to, buy books for, and take to the library to get their library cards.

Easter Dinner

Mom, Dad, and I had an Easter Picnic at the Red Field today. It was a little too chilly to stay as long as we had planned, but it was really nice. We reclaimed one of the huge old cable spools my grandmother had long ago converted into a table, and, with the addition of some plastic lawn chairs, we had a dining set. I fried chicken in one of my heritage cast iron skillets and took it, and Mom made the rest of the meal: macaroni salad, baked beans, a salad tray with deviled eggs and veggies, and cornmeal muffins. I took one of my vintage 1940's cotton print luncheonette cloths to cover the table, and it was great. We had pecan pie for desert.

It wasn't a baked ham, fresh flowers, and bone china, but then again, we're not really that type of family. We can do that, and we have the stuff for it, but somehow, paper plates and the wide, hand-planed oak boards of the Red Field porch seemed to fit us better today. After we ate, we watched Mom and Dad's dog race around the field chasing birds, we talked, and we read until the wind just got too cold to bear. We left with a since of having made a good family memory.

The whole time we were there, I kept thinking about my grandmother. She would have loved it. Our eating there reminds me so much of summer meals when we used to have hay hauling dinners out in the pasture with big boilers of baked beans, huge baking dishes of macaroni and cheese, and sandwiches for the hay hands. I am looking forward to a long summer of picnicking up there and making new memories. If my friends can overlook the absence of indoor plumbing (it is a hayfield, after all), I want to share it with them, too. It's just a wonderful place.

Stupid Wednesdays

I hate Wednesdays. They are always rushed, off-kilter, and absurd. This past week was no exception. It started with a torrential downpour just as I was starting to leave and my big umbrella out in the car, safely furled and totally useless on the back seat. It was also garbage day, so I dashed out with the garbage bag and an old "emergency" umbrella I dug up that had been patched with duct tape, loaded up the car, and tried to start my day.

When I got to the bottom of the hill, I quickly got out of the car, pulled the trash off the roof of the PT Cruiser, and shut the car door to keep the rain out while I put the trash bag out for collection. When I came back to the car and pulled on the handle, the car was locked up tight, lights on, engine running, windshield wipers complacently sweeping back and forth in the heavy rain. I won't go into what I said at that point, but let's just say it wasn't very grammatically correct nor was it very elevated language.

Since daylight saving time has kicked in, I had to hike back up my driveway in the dark to retrieve a spare key from the house. Fortunately, I had a spare house key if not a spare car key, but by the time I could get back up to the house for the key and back down to the car with it, I was completely soaked since the patched umbrella had only shielded my upper body from the rain. I drove the car back up the hill shaking and dripping.

I ran in, frantically dug through my closet for something dry that would match the top I had on, and wound up with a pair of black pants that are about a size and a half too big. Since I was running very late, I didn't have time to be creative, so I just toweled off and dove into them, praying they wouldn't fall off me at some crucial point during the day. I got in the car, found that the car seat was still wet and needed to have been dried first, and finally headed off to school.

I won't go into the rest of the day, but it pretty much went like that, only I was inside and didn't get rained on for the rest of it. As I said before, Wednesdays really ought to be illegal.

Like There Never Was a Holiday At All

Tomorrow, I'm officially supposed to be in three places at the same time, 2:45. Apparently, that is the magic hour for Wednesday afternoon academic meetings. Not 2:30. Not 2:00. Two freaking forty-five. Emails kept coming in today telling me that one committee after another in the never-ending assortment I'm a part of was going to meet, and I kept thinking, "Well, isn't tomorrow going to be grand?"

I've done practically nothing but grade since Sunday afternoon, and I feel like my eyes are burning. I've completed two sets of essays, a set of largely essay tests, and half another set. I have two more sets of essay tests and two full sets of essays still waiting along with several lesser types of grading that just came in over the last two days, and every time I look at the pile of papers on top of my filing cabinet, I just want to run away. I think longingly of the Red Field and my Adirondack, sigh, pull another red pen out of the drawer, and push on. Sometimes it feels like I never even had a Spring Break at all. At least this is a short week....

Big Ten Loss

Being a Hoosier alumnus, I am a bit rabid about basketball. Thanks to the wonders of DirecTV, I get the Big Ten Network, one of those things that ranks up there with sliced bread for me during basketball season. I don't really care about any other team very much. I'll back Duke if IU is out and support them moderately, but put me in front of a Hoosier basketball game and you'll see a very loud person come flailing out.

Tonight was no different. The game against Minnesota was a heart-breaker on many levels. This season has been hard, and tonight more than any other game I've watched them play, they just looked like they were out of steam. Nevertheless, I whooped and hollered from my courtside couch right up until that lucky kid from Minnesota tossed that buzzer beater in. I just knew that they were going to win it.

We're headed to the NCAA tourney anyway, and maybe this way the team will have a chance to rest up some and get their heads together a little. I sure hope so, anyway. I am looking forward to more IU wins. I figure the Illini will take care of those yellow rodents tomorrow night, anyway.

Wondering Who

This is mostly an exercise in clearing my mind of the cobwebs that develop. If you go right back to the first posts that I wrote, you can tell that. However, I've been aware of a subtle shift as these three years of my blogging have elapsed, a shift toward a conversational style. I don't think it's possible to write a blog in a vacuum, to be unaware of the fact that it is sitting out there like a book left open on the kitchen counter, waiting for somebody to come by and read a page or two.

I can't imagine who might be interested in thumbing through the pages, to tell you the truth. I know I have some family and friends who read this as sort of a newsletter to find out what absurdities I'm up to in the long intervals between our face-to-face or voice-to-voice contacts, and I have a couple of blog friends that I've made, but other than that, I wonder.... I certainly don't have a rock-star life, no high drama, no romance to speak of, just little fragments of the daily life, like pieces of sea glass worn smooth along their edges by the constant friction along the water's edge. Well, whoever you are and for whatever reasons you come here, I hope there's some satisfaction for you.

Reading Day

Today, I didn't go to the Red Field. I stayed home and read instead. I got my lawn chair cushion from its cat-proof storage spot next to my washing machine and sat in the glorious sunny beauty of my yard with a pile of books. There were certainly other things I should have been doing, but I resolutely ignored them all.

I finished up the Bill Bryson biography of Shakespeare. It was really good. I like Bryson anyway; his A Walk in the Woods is still one of the funniest books I've ever read, and even though I am not a big camper/hiker, it always makes me want to go try the Appalachian Trail. This bio of Shakespeare was good because it was clean. He stuck to the facts, more or less, and presented anything that couldn't be backed up with a document as an opinion. I learned a lot, including some really bizarre stuff.

I also woke up to the sound of Roux and Yelldo exuberantly chasing the UPS truck down the driveway this morning, so I knew that my Spring Break treat, some chick lit, had also arrived. I just got through with it. I probably should have doled it out over the next few days, but I did it cover-to-cover today after lunch and Shakespeare. Sort of a nice symmetry to the day, no? Shakespeare in the morning, chick-lit in the afternoon....

Also in with the chick lit was another of the Everyman Pocket Library collections of poetry, this time under the topic heading of Solitude. It has a much different feel to it that did the Love Poems collection, but it's equally as good. It's not quite what I expected, as Solitude and Loneliness seem to be interchangeable for the editors of the collection (I don't really see them as the same thing), but I have put several little flags in the collection all the same. I like these thematic collections. It's a nice way to see a broad spectrum of writers from different time periods and schools viewing different things.

Well, I think I'm just about worn out with reading. I do have one other book about halfway done, and there's a book I need to read for my classes, so I might read some more tomorrow, but I think I want to vegetate in front of the TV now. Ah the luxury of Spring Break, when all sorts of indulgences are possible!

Another Good Day in the Country

I spent the majority of the day back at the Red Field. I read most of a biography about Shakespeare by Bill Bryson, hiked around some more, and generally enjoyed not having any other responsibilities. When school starts back and I'm no longer able to pack my bag and hike out to my refuge every day, I don't know what I'm going to do.

While I was out for one of my walks, I took some time to hike near the creek that runs through part of the property. I fought my way through some of the Katrina-downed trees to get over to a particularly pretty bend of it, and as I was looking down at the water and rocks, I became aware of the HUGE freakin' water moccasin sunning itself on one of the dry stones in the stream about the same time he became aware of me. I'm not quite sure which one of us was more appalled or which of us moved sideways faster. Despite the fact that I was about five feet above him on the bank, I still decided that discretion was the better part of valor, especially since I didn't have snake leggings, a bill hook, or a gun, and I got away from the creek. He was a very healthy specimen, probably about five feet long. I completely understand Emily Dickinson's quote about feeling a "zero at the bone." I have a "live and let live" philosophy with almost all God's creatures, including rattlesnakes, but cottonmouths and copperheads don't make that list.

Despite close encounters with the reptilian kind, the rest of my trek was nothing less than peaceful. I startled two beautiful deer out of a pine thicket where they were grazing. I don't think they were all that afraid, actually, but they were lovely to watch in motion sliding through the pine shadows. All the little blooming trees are budding. In a week or two, the woods should be veiled in green mist. It will be even more beautiful then and even harder to leave at the end of the day.

I have that quiet, calm feeling of being agreeably exercised and appropriately sunned. I will probably go back again tomorrow, even though there are other things that I need to be doing as I approach the end of my week. I think I'll take a bill hook, though, and maybe some stouter boots....

Birds

The yard to the south of my house is pretty much dedicated to the birds. It didn't start out that way. I think I brought one bird feeder home from Indiana with me, and I hung it in a tree. It got mobbed, and that response and the beauty of all the little feathery gems pleased me, so I bought another one. Any of you who feed birds know how this story goes....

Currently, I go through about forty pounds of seed a week, and that's just because I'm adamant about only filling the feeders once a week and making the little jewel-tone slobs clean up after themselves before I put any more out. I have suet-baskets and bird baths. At last count I was up to six feeders, only one of which is "squirrel proof" (yes, they too, love the big buffet).

I love to watch them from my various windows and doors. I have some really bright and exotic ones, bluebirds, cardinals, goldfinches, and the occasional oriole, but I enjoy the wrens, sparrows, and chickadees just as much. They aren't as flashy, but their songs are sweet, and just watching them and hearing the flutter of their wings when the windows are open is a peaceful thing.

In a way, I like the simple birds more sometimes. I am a simple, plain bird myself, after all, and maybe I feel a kinship with them. They are not gleaming blue or red, but there is a loveliness in their brown shadings. After all, the winter wren was the King of Birds for the Druids. God tells us, too, that he takes care of these little birds just like he takes care of me. One of my favorite hymns has always been, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow."

I have a statue of St. Francis that I bought at a place locally that has a menagerie of concrete yard art. He has a bird in his cupped hand. I'm not Catholic, but I've always admired St. Francis. I have a copy of one of his prayers up in my classroom, and I respect him as the patron protector of animals, as well. I put the statue at the entrance to that part of the yard. I thought it was appropriate. We're all getting something in the south yard, the birds and I, a little bit of seed or suet, a little bit of refreshment of some kind. I don't think St. Francis would disapprove.

Quotes on Thinking

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
- CS Lewis
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Red Field

I spent today at the Red Field, a pasture my family owns where we've built a structure from wood from an old barn. There is no sound there but the sound of wind through the trees. It was perfectly peaceful. I opened all the windows and doors of the building and sat in my chair on the porch reading for hours. I hiked around in the woods when I felt like it, down to the creek that runs through the property and around through various paths that animals or generations of people have cleared. I took a bottle of bubbles and enjoyed the simple childhood pleasure of blowing soap bubbles and watching them dance in the breeze. Sometimes solitude can be oppressive, but sometimes it can be a healing balm. Today, it was exactly what I needed. I may go back tomorrow, too. It's nice to be in a place where I know all the complicated and ridiculous nonsense of the day-to-day world can't find me.

Complications

I like things very streamlined. Maybe it's the Aquarius in me. I have a very logical and structured life, and I can turn most things over in my mind until I understand them, until I can separate them into their component pieces, digest them and break them down. Things that don't follow that pattern, that don't allow me to resolve them in this way, frustrate me to no end.

Yesterday, I found a wrinkle in the fabric of my tidy little life. Someone I thought I knew, I found I may not know at all. I suppose this happens all the time. I could wax philosophical, I guess. "Do we ever really know anyone? Blah, blah, blah..." The thing is, I really did think that I did know this person, at least somewhat. I'm not claiming a soul-deep bond, but I felt that I had a basic understanding of a personality, of the core values and appreciations, I guess. All of that was jerked out from under me yesterday like a tablecloth from under a place setting by an amateur magician. You've all seen the results of that. Broken china everywhere....

My mind has been grinding on this since it happened, turning the shards over again and again, but I can't resolve the issue. I thought this person and I had so much in common. Do we? I can't tell anymore. What's the truth? Is the person I knew before the real one? Was yesterday a misreading? If the image I saw yesterday was the true one, then I have been so wrong about so much. I'm simply going to have to pick up those broken pieces and make a decision, I guess, about whether the relationship in question is still worth gluing together and putting back on a shelf or whether it's time to put all those pieces in the trash for good. I'm confused, and there's really nothing I hate more.

Robert Graves' "The Portrait"

I added this poem to my blog as a permanent addition today just under my "About Me" section. When I read it, it struck me as though it were written about me. At least, I wish some man had written it about me; I feel this way so often. I feel like I stick out by not sticking out, if that makes any sense. I know for a fact I'm looking for the man who is different, too. I don't know if he's out there. I keep hoping, sort of in fits and starts, that he is.

Poetry Collections

I just ordered two books of poetry from amazon.com, and I have to say that they were money well-spent. The first one was a Penguin collection of 500 years of the sonnet, and just going through it makes me wish I could write them better. I've never had the discipline to try my hand at them. Just thinking of trying to write in iambic pentameter makes my head hurt. I love to read them, though. Well-written ones are that much more lovely to me because of the extra rigor involved in keeping the form. Claude McKay's sonnets amaze me. A collection of his stuff is next on my "to buy list."

The other book of poetry I bought was, and don't laugh, an Everyman Library Pocket Book of Love Poems. The Hopeless Romantic (not Hopeful, that's my friend) just couldn't resist it when it came up as a "Customers who bought this book also liked...." as I was putting the sonnet collection into my cart. It's fabulous. I spent time I should have been sleeping last night going through it and marking poems that moved me. About half the book has little post-it flags on it now. All I need now is somebody who enjoys them to talk to about them. HA!!!!!! Yeah, they're lining up around the corner for THAT...more like fleeing at top speed.

In all seriousness, it's one of the nicest collections of love poems I've seen. Some of the expected ones are there, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, "She Walks in Beauty like the Night", and so forth, but there are also translations of things I've never heard of from ancient texts and other languages that are powerful. Combined with incipient Spring, they have my stupid, sappy heart sighing. Ah well, at least I can enjoy the poems....

BLEAARRGHHH!!!

That's the noise I make right before my head explodes....

Tonight I stayed after my night class to talk with my professor about my upcoming paper. I needed to run my topic by him to get the imperial thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Yes, it's something I should have done long ago, I admit. Sue me. I'm am frantically treading water right now just to stay afloat.

Along with the royal nod of permission to pursue my humble little paper topic, I also got The Lecture about how I Should Have Started This Paper When the Semester Began. I just wanted to throw my Riverside at him and run away. Perhaps he's right. Certainly, it's a huge paper. Definitely, I will have to burn the midnight oil to get it done. However, I am wearing so many hats and doing so many things right now, that I'm sorry, but that paper isn't even on my horizon yet.

I am proud, though. I managed still and smiling pique. All I said was, "Don't worry. I'll get to it. I promise," and I gracefully swept off to my car.

Geez, I'm tired....

Longing for Balance

When I'm tired like this, what I want more than anything is someone to lean on. It's hard to have to be strong all the time. I do it. Everybody does. It's what life is made of. You get up in the morning, and no matter how hard it is, you do what you have to do. I just wish, though, that there was someone to help me hold it all up. I feel like a caryatid who is unable to support the architecture. I need the telamon that is made to balance on the other side of the door frame. Surely even a woman of stone wasn't intended to bear that weight alone. I don't want to be cosseted and petted. I don't want to be sheltered. I just need my mate to help me keep it all in balance.

New Style

I succumbed to the temptation to add a template to my blog. I hope I haven't gaudied it up too much. I just wanted some color. Of course, that means my hit counter at the bottom has completely reset, and also that I had to totally redo all my little widgets, but overall, I like the bit of color. Maybe it's not too tacky. It's amazing how long it took me to pick this one. Of course, nobody but me even cares what it looks like, and you, gentle reader, will simply glance, nod, and go on about your merry business. For me, though, it was a bit like picking out wallpaper or paint for the living room....what will company think? You know all the time that no one will say a word unless you've chosen some horrible shade, but still....

Man, I need to go to bed....

One Week Left

...until Spring Break. I can't wait. Not that I have profound or exciting plans, mind you. It's just that I can't wait to sleep late and do nothing. I plan to take a bottle of bubbles and some good books up to the Red Field pasture watch clouds for at least half the week.

I feel good, generally speaking, about life, no dark clouds overhead, but I'm bone weary. I have a lot of work to do before this week is over by way of grading and so forth, so I'm sure by the time I actually make it to Friday, I'll be even more tired.

I ordered two new collections of poetry for a payday treat that I'm excited to get, though, so I'll have those to look forward to when they come in, and I've got a pile of stuff on the shelf to keep me busy.

The only potential dark spot on Spring Break is a party that I've been asked to. I want to go; the party itself is not the problem. The problem is that I suspect there's a fix-up lurking just under the surface. I'm hopeless with men, and to be sort of thrown at one I don't know in a social setting is a little like my idea of hell. I am usually very quiet around people I don't know well, anyway, and just let me have the first hint of "this is supposed to be a fix-up" and I will automatically become the most gauche, mute, and pitiable person within four counties. This is just one of the many, many reasons I am still single.

This poor, unsuspecting soul probably has no idea that my dear, sweet friend is about to foist me, the Amazon queen, off on him, either, and I think that's not a good thing to do to someone without some preparation. I am almost positive that I require advanced preparation. Maybe I should type up a card or brochure or something. Let's see how would that go? "So you want to date an English teacher! Tips and strategies for survival." Maybe a nice 1950's image on the front.....(Ha!)

The whole thing makes me queasy. Why does it have to work this way? Why couldn't I just be friends with somebody, and then, bang, suddenly the two of us figure out that we were crazy about each other? It would be so much easier that way. I could be myself that way. That's the way I have always dreamed that it would work.

Whenever I have to think about "dating", I'm never myself. Maybe that's a good thing, but realistically, at some point, all the various shades of me are going to come out, and whatever particular variety you may think you know may not be the whole picture. A friend would know that because I don't have to reign in the me who likes stuff like old disco, Johnny Cash, or the Rolling Stones played really, really loudly while I drive. With somebody I don't know well, and basically, anybody that I'm "dating" is going to fall into that category for a long time, I'm not going to feel comfortable with any choice I make. It's excruciating.

Well, all this is just a tempest in a teapot. I'll go to the party. Maybe I'm wrong about the fix-up. If not, I just won't let it turn into a big deal. Maybe the guy will be a wonderful person. I need to meet some nice guys, God knows. I just keep thinking back to some of my last ventures in dating and what those were like, and I can't help but shudder....

Hmmm.....

The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable. ~John Cheever