Reading Hemingway Aloud

The Sun Also Rises has been on my shelf for almost two years now, ever since one of my camino friends declared it the best book of all time, and then took us to the Iruna, Hemingway's Pamplona pub, and the favourite haunt of Jake Barnes in the aforementioned novel.

I usually read books with an excess of words, superfluous adjectives, and a wealth of semi-colons - and that's the way I write, as well. Hemingway was a startling change: as the dust jacket explains, he "revolutionized American writing with his short, declarative sentences and terse prose." I found his style shockingly choppy, but clearly he made that into a style all its own. The only problem with his writing, then, is that I tend to read aloud a lot - at school I am constantly reading out loud, whether it be poetry, short stories, or even novels (Animal Farm being my favourite read-aloud). Hemingway, especially in his dialogue, sounds completely ridiculous out loud. Here is one of the best passages I read aloud to my roommate (because I just had to share it with someone, and if I read this aloud to my kids they would hate me). So, give it a try and read it out loud to anyone who will listen. Context is irrelevant: just look at these sentences.

"Bill," Edna looked at me. "Please don't go in again, Bill. They're so stupid."
"That's it," Mike said. "They're stupid. I knew that was what it was."
"They can't say things like that about Mike," Bill said.
"Do you know them?" I asked Mike.
"No. I never saw them. They say they know me."
"I won't stand it," Bill said.
"Come on. Let's go over to the Suizo," I said.
"They're a bunch of Edna's friends from Biarritz," Bill said.
"They're simply stupid," Edna said.
"One of them's Charley Blackman, from Chicago," Bill said.
"I was never in Chicago," Mike said.

To enhance this Hemingway experience, now watch Midnight in Paris, and imagine the great man himself reading this aloud to his friends...

A Searching Sonnet

I found my journal from 2010, and I got a lovely surprise in the form of a number of sonnets that I had written - now almost two years ago - and had completely forgotten. So many questions...

Is wisdom found just in the fear of God?
In learned obedience? In what is heard?
In small moments of grace when we are awed?
In what we read in life: the Living Word?

Can it be found without action or sound,
When life takes a quick second to be still?
When I have shut my eyes to all around,
Is that when I with wisdom will be filled?

Or should I leave the stillness far behind?
To not just be, but now also to do?
To act with love along the paths that wind,
And thus to search and learn all that is true?

But as these questions through my mind do flow
A message comes from God:"I'm here to know."

I am Vertical

This month for book club we wanted to try something new, so we challenged ourselves to each memorize a poem or two to present to the group, along with some prepared discussion of these poems. Although I have a good number of poems memorized that I teach again and again (especially Emily Dickinson), I thought I should rather challenge myself by memorizing a poem that does not have a rhythm/rhyme structure, so I can't just rely on that. Thus, here it is, my poem recitation, by Sylvia Plath:

I am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing that I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them -
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once,
And the flowers have time for me.

Translating Nostalgia

I just finished reading I'm Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago, by Hans Peter Kerkeling, a German comic. When I walked the camino - now two full years ago - I again and again met Germans who were doing the pilgrimage because of this book, so when it was recently translated into English, I had to add it to my Camino Library.

I read many books that are not originally in English: I love Umberto Eco, Jose Saramago, and I just finished Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As I am reading these, I seldom think about the fact that they were translated, yet with Kerkeling's book I couldn't think about anything else. If I hadn't felt so incredibly personally connected to his topic I wouldn't have made it past page 10, since the translation is so awful (I felt like I was reading the simple sentences of an elementary student). By the second half of the memoir, though, I was so engrossed in his story - he was so often telling my story - that I was able to mostly ignore his sudden stops and awkward phrases. The story worked in spite of the language, rather than through the language.

Tomorrow marks two years exactly that I walked into Santiago de Compostela, thus finishing my 800-kilometre pilgrimage. It's hard to let that experience go: I feel this strange tension between wanting to hold on to this nostalgia and wanting to move on. I guess in essence, though, the camino is about holding on, letting go, and moving forward all at the same time, so I'm okay for now.

(Next camino-text adventure = going to see Martin Sheen's The Way, which he was filming alongside of us as we walked.)

Shostakovich & Svengali

I have been lucky enough to go to the Concert Hall twice recently: once to see the RWB's new production of Svengali, and then once to hear the WSO do an evening of Shostakovich. I had high expectations for both, and I was not disappointed. (Aside: Sometimes I wonder about this "cultured" side of me. Can I really love the classical world while also thinking the Joss Whedon is the best thing that has ever happened to television?)

Mark Godden's Svengali was a new ballet, and although it was based on Georges du Maurier's novel Trilby, it didn't really follow the story, and wasn't really a story ballet at all. Though some were disappointed by that, I, personally, was thrilled. I don't care if a ballet tells me a story, as long as it takes me on a physical and emotional and visual and musical roller coaster - that's what makes the ballet my favourite thing in the world. I got to see amazingly creative movement set to everything from Rachmaninoff to a Klezmer band, and my eyes and heart followed everything, even when I didn't know what I was supposed to be following.

Although I have loved Shostakovich - both his music and his story - since taking Russian history in university, I was not anticipating the symphony to be as amazing as the ballet. But it was. It was more than amazing; it was like hearing a language I'd never heard before but instantly understanding every word. (That may be a lame simile, but I like lame, just like Joss Whedon.) Although we got to hear his music for Hamlet and his symphony in response to the end of World War II, it was Shostakovich's violin concerto which really enthralled us, since it featured a violin soloist who seemed to know his music instinctively. He didn't follow a score, and instead moved through his music/through his violin as though this was also a dance. Like the ballet, it was mesmerizing.

I have been to many great shows over the last fifteen years, including everyone from Arcade Fire to Arlo Guthrie to Alanis Morrisette and Justin Timberlake, but nothing compares to what I get to experience when I go to the Concert Hall.

Franny and Zooey and Seymour and Jesus

I have just finished reading Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger, for the umpteenth time. Lukas led me to this book about 10 years ago, and although I no longer feel as connected to Franny as I felt in my early 20s, she is still one of the most relatable and empathetic characters I have ever read. I feel her.

Somehow, every time I come back to this book I have forgotten how heavily Jesus-themed it is. I remember Franny's feelings of disillusion and confusion with the world, yet somehow Zooey's beautiful Jesus rant comes as a surprise every time - a wonderful, joyful, Jesus-surprise. So, I thought that I should more permanently take this rant into myself, the way I have consumed Franny, and thus I am sharing it with you. As Zooey Glass says,
       "My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls - but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that - but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God.... Oh, my God, what a mind!"

Thanks for that, Zooey. And thank-you, Franny, for introducing the Russian pilgrim's prayer book to me - I just ordered it off Amazon, and am looking forward to my upcoming existential crisis.

Nuit Blanche @ the WAG

The first nuit blanche I ever went to was in Paris - i.e. the real nuit blanche. Julia and I were spending a few days there together before we took the train down to Spain for the camino, and our time happened to overlap with Paris' all-night party. We took this as an opportunity to visit the Orangerie Gallerie (for free, of course), which houses 4 of Monet's wall-sized waterlilies. Because we were starting to save up on sleep for the camino we didn't stay out all night, but did enjoy walking the Champs de l'Elysee with so many other Parisians way past our bed time. There was such an ado about the whole night, and I felt so alive.

Yesterday I participated in Winnipeg's version of nuit blanche for the first time. Julia and I went to the WAG quite early, so we got in without having to line up. We spent a good while in the galleries, enjoying the lone Chagall, the 2 Emily Carrs, and all the William Kureleks, before it started filling up so much that we could hardly see the art. By the time it was dark outside, our twosome had grown to a dozen hippie/hipster/art-lover/west-enders just hanging out together at the WAG. The art bled into the music, which bled into the movies, which bled into the dance - all taking place in this strange, triangular building.

As I walked home from the gallery, through Osborne, and then down Corydon - and past many, many people on their way to partake in their own nuit blanche activities - I realized how much an experience like this makes me love everything. I love my friends. I love art. I love finding joy in expected and unexpected places. I love the city of Winnipeg.

John K. Samson: I think you need to rewrite your song. The colours of this city are painting over the shades of gray.

A Musical Memoir

Right now I'm having my grade 12 students each write a memoir, taking an important memory/event from their lives and telling me about themselves through that memory. For exemplars, I wrote one about my tattoos and one about Jack Layton's funeral, to tell them about myself and to show two very different ways of writing memoir.  Tomorrow, though, I'm going to challenge them to go a bit further, and to tell me about themselves through three songs, so I thought I'd better first challenge myself with the same assignment.

To say who I am through three songs is no easy task. I know what my three favourite songs are right now quite easily: Prison Girls, by Neko Case; Rococo, by Arcade Fire; and Dog Days are Over, by Florence and the Machine. Yet, these songs have nothing to do with me, besides the fact that I love repetitive, unrelenting songs that make me want to sing along at the top of my lungs. So, what are my three songs?

As lame as it may be, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, by U2, has to be one of my choices. I have found a lot of things in my life - I've reached goals, I've explored the world, I have a full life - yet existentially I always feel as if there is more out there. An appropriate metaphor for my life would not be me walking down a path, but instead, me avidly, passionately, and sometimes frantically searching for something more, something greater, or maybe just something else.

For my second lame entry I'll choose All You Need is Love, by the Beatles. This is my motto, as simple and childish and black and white as it is, though I usually think of myself as a complex, mature, and gray-area person. I believe in love, compassion, agape above all else, and I hope that's what I'm trying to live. Sometimes it feels like no matter how much I keep learning and questioning and exploring, everything really boils down to love, whether it be "Jesus loves me, this I know," or "All you need is love."

I feel like to counter-balance these lame songs I should choose something darker, like Radiohead's Where I am and You begin, yet as much as that song seems to haunt my soul, it does not add to who I am. Neko Case, on the other hand, seems to not just visit my soul, but has perhaps moved in and taken residence within my being. I do not go a day without listening to her or singing her, and the song that speaks to me most is Vengeance is Sleeping, which includes the line "I'm not the man you thought I was." However tame I may have become on the outside over the last decade (and that just means tamer than before, and not tamer as compared to others), is not reflected on how passionately I feel things inside, including my feminism.

So that's me, I guess. At least for now.

Buffy / not Buffy

This week Sarah Michelle Gellar's new television show, The Ringer, previewed on the CW. In general I choose not to watch CW shows - I like to think of myself as too mature for all that ridiculous fluff - but I just couldn't ignore a show that stars Buffy, my friend.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon's beloved tv series, and not that disastrous movie) began when I was in grade 10, and I got hooked right away. Buffy, herself, was in grade 10, so throughout the years I began dating when she began dating, graduated when she graduated, started university when she started university, and saved the world from an apocalypse when she saved the world from an apocalypse. (That last part may just have been in my head...)  But Buffy was meant to be a metaphor for anything and everything that can and does happen to young people growing up in our world today. No matter how realistic, I have never connected with a character as much as I did with Buffy.

Although Sarah Michelle Gellar has aged and changed appropriately over the last eight years (crazy to realize that Buffy ended eight years ago!), she is still Buffy to me. I know how she walks and talks. I know how her hair moves, what her fingers look like, and how jeans look on her compared to slacks. There are 144 episodes of Buffy that I have seen at least four times each. I know her well.

Thus, the opening segment to The Ringer was incredibly exciting - I got to see my friend Buffy again! - but also incredibly jarring. This wasn't Buffy. This wasn't how Buffy was supposed to think, react, or act in this situation. Buffy is strong. Buffy faces struggles head on. Although Buffy may be afraid, she does not show fear in the face of danger. Buffy is my hero. The differences I see in Bridget (her new character) immediately feel like flaws, rather than just different characteristics. While Buffy was sometimes broken as well, it was not the kind of brokenness I saw in Bridget. That brokenness broke me a bit.

I think I'll give The Ringer a chance. Actually, I don't think I really have an option, since there's no way I could ignore Sarah Michelle Gellar if she's on my tv once a week. I just hope that as I get to know Bridget better, I won't forget Buffy, and all she was for me.

Atwood's Apocalypse

I had not read Margaret Atwood - besides her wonderfully quirky short stories - for many years, after feeling her arrogance roll off her books like The Robber Bride and The Handmaid's Tale. These were powerful books, yet there was such a strong sense that she knew how powerful they were, that she was saying, "Look how amazing I am." Recently, though, my camp book club chose Oryx and Crake for our summer novel, and I challenged myself to give Atwood another chance.

Oryx and Crake is a gut-wrenching, mind-blowing look at the future. Although it has many obvious connections to The Road by Cormac McCarthy, one main difference was that while McCarthy's father and son were on the periphery of whatever disaster had changed the world, Atwood's characters are at the heart of the apocalypse. I seldom read books where I am driven towards the climax in such an intense state of curiosity: with this one I couldn't stop devouring this book. I got a front row seat to the end of the world.

A novel that I was reminded of regularly as I read was Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. In that story a talking gorilla is warning us about the state of world, and how we are driving it towards catastrophe. He explains it by saying that many, many years ago humanity jumped off a cliff, and since then has been assuming that we are flying, when in fact we are falling - we have been falling for a long time. Oryx and Crake shows us what it might look like when we hit the bottom, and it is a picture that I will not soon forget.

Within a week of finishing it, I bought The Year of the Flood - the sequel to Oryx and Crake - and I ate that up even faster than Part 1.

A Summer of Novels

For the first time since I've started keeping track of my reading, I hit the "20 novels" mark over the summer. It's certainly tempting to brag about this, until I look at my list and realize just how many books I read for school (1, 4, 18, 19) and how many shouldn't really count for their simplicity (5, 13):

1) The Battle of the Labyrinth - Rick Riordan
2) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
3) 39 Steps - John Buchanan
4) The Last Olympian - Rick Riordan
5) The Clocks - Agatha Christie
6) Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
7) The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
8) The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
9) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
10) The Lyre of Orpheus - Robertson Davies
11) Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
12) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
13) A Year in the Scheisse - Roger Boyles
14) Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
15) The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood
16) Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
17) Tender is the Night - F.Scott Fitzgerald
18) The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
19) Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson
20) The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

Looking back at this list, I guess I can say a few summarizing statements about my reading this summer:
- I fell in love with Margaret Atwood (more to come on that).
- I challenged myself with some classics I had long ignored (Brave New World, Jane Eyre, Fahrenheit 451, Cranford, and Tender is the Night), and while I enjoyed some, others I found overrated.
- I am quite a varied reader: girl books, boy books, old books, new books, plot books, character books - am I too malleable, or is this a good thing?
- I am lucky to be part of 2 excellent book clubs, since my book club books of the summer were Catch-22 and Oryx and Crake. Good stuff.

The End of Harry Potter

Yesterday I saw the final Harry Potter movie for the second time in a week. I find with movies such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings - where I am so completely invested in the story and the characters - it takes two watchings to really see the movie. The first time I am too busy feeling it all to be thinking, and then the second time I can analyze and synthesize what I'm seeing. For some I have even enjoyed it more the second time, as I can truly appreciate what the director did with this beloved text.

So Harry Potter is over, and though I do feel as though this is a time of mourning, I am mostly overjoyed with the ending provided. Since Peter Jackson left out the Scouring of the Shire from the final movie, thus hacking off a major Tolkien-Christian theme, I was worried that the HP writers and directors might do the same, either editing out the "heaven" scene with Dumbledore or the "19 years later" scene. I've heard some people argue that this final scene takes away from the story arch - that there is too much denoument beyond the triumphant climax - yet this scene is nearly as important as Tolkien's Scouring. After triumph - after resurrection and truth and light and love - real life continues, and we must continue within it, like Sam and like Harry, maybe even becoming adjusted and normal people, whatever that may mean. And so that is the challenge: real life continues, but have I changed because Harry Potter existed?

Catch-22 vs. Kurt Vonnegut

I made the mistake of following my reading of Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, with The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. I am usually quite conscious of the order in which I read my books - I like to follow heavy with light, fantasy with drama, character-focused with plot-driven - but this time I wasn't paying attention, and I followed a tongue-in-cheek war satire, with a tongue-in-cheek science fiction war satire, both about life and death and the men who control us along the way.
It took me a good while to really appreciate Catch-22. I loved the wit and the tone at the beginning, but only because I thought he would eventually settle into the story. When that just never happened, I got frustrated for a good chunk of it, and it wasn't until the last fifty pages or so that I could truly appreciate what he was trying to do with this novel. I was supposed to be that frustrated, and if that's the case, then I can see how this novel has become the success that so many say it is.
Unfortunately, my appreciation didn't last long, since within ten pages of the Vonnegut, he had made me think and feel almost everything it took Heller 450 pages to do (with over twice as many words per page!). Even when later in The Sirens of Titan Vonnegut borrowed material from one of his own short stories, I couldn't quite knock him for that, since he kept blowing my mind every few pages.
So, if you love M*A*S*H, and you want to read a novel version of it, go ahead and take the time to read Catch-22, but otherwise, go with The Sirens of Titan or Slaughter-House-Five. Vonnegut always wins.

My picnic table, & The Picture of Dorian Gray

Yesterday, in the hot afternoon sun, my dad and I demolished my rotten, round, six-seater picnic table. At first we could easily rip off sections: seats, planks, whole arms. The heart of the table, however, was screwed together with approximately 2000 rusty screws, so for that part of the demolition my dad ripped it apart with his axe, violently tearing away at the wood while I prayed that the axe would not go flying from his hand.

I have recently finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, and while we were working on my picnic table a scene from the story popped into my head: after Dorian has murdered Basil, he blackmails his friend Alan into disposing of the body. Alan, after only 5 hours using chemicals and a fire place, manages to get rid of any evidence that the body ever existed. There is literally nothing left of Basil. He was methodically and even scientifically demolished until he was nothing. Just like my picnic table. Where once a carefully put-together object existed, now there is nothing. (Though the remnants of my picnic table will receive a proper burial in the Altona dump, Basil never gets the obsequies he deserves.)

Altogether a powerfully pervasive connection, and now that scene haunts me even more.

Paris, Je T'Aime

This morning I realized that a month from now I will be in Paris once again. Wonderful, wonderful Paris. It feels almost too good to be true, like if I think about it too much I can't catch my breath; I'm light-headed and giddy. Yes, I love Paris that much.

On Sunday I rewatched Paris, Je T'Aime, which is this lovely movie filled with shorts - directed by a crazy range directors - where each one is an ode to a different section of the city: the Latin Quarter, Montmartre, Tuilleries, etc. The tone, story, and even cinematography changes so drastically from episode to episode that it's impossible to not watch it with rapt attention. It probably helps that half my heart lives in that city, in that I literally feel a pull in my chest cavity when I think about being there (and when I'm in Paris, I feel that way about Altona).  Although the stereotypical image of Paris is love, Paris is my favourite place in the world to be alone, solitary, a passive observer in this vast and overwhelming sea of people and history and art. Yet passive is not quite the right word: though I may not be interacting with the people of Paris, I am certainly interacting with the city itself. It is a living, breathing organism, telling me its story, and in how I live within it, I am telling it my story as well. The final episode of the movie shows an American woman touring Paris, and she comes to the conclusion that not only has she fallen in love with Paris, but that Paris has fallen in love with her, too. She, like myself, becomes one of Paris's many mistresses. Paris, je t'aime.

Shad @ the Pyramid

So on Friday night Julia and I, among others, went to see Shad as part of Jazz Fest. I first fell in love with rap when I worked at Camp Assiniboia, and we would listen to Jay-Z and Danger Mouse in the staff office. I felt so bad-ass doing that, and it certainly was quite the jump from the Backstreet Boys. Although my love for Jay-Z has never died, I have both expanded and honed my tastes (can you do both of those at once, or do they contradict each other?), and now my love of rap has much more to do with awesome wordplay and wit than the angry feelings that I once embraced. As an English teacher, watching Shad rap was almost life-changing. One of my favourite devices to teach and use within poetry is Allusion, and his mastery of allusion was overwhelming. While listening to most music may be about feelings and maybe even physiological responses (especially as I'm singing along so blissfully to Neko Case), listening to good rap makes me want to be able to press pause, rewind a bit, and hear those words again, just to make sure I really caught it all. Unfortunately, while people sing bad music (Nickelback, country music, etc.) so slowly - yet less deliberately than in rap, I think - so you have to hear every awkward lyric, rap lyrics fly past you at an impossible speed. The allusions then exist not only to show one's ability to make connections and be witty, but also as a call out to the audience, saying, "Here's something you can recognize," and we all cheer. And cheer we definitely did! My ears were ringing as I fell asleep.

Blogging for Beginners

Welcome to my blog!
I spend most of my time / most of my life taking in texts. I read, watch, listen, and read some more. Although I am constantly reflecting internally, I spend little time reflecting outwardly, unless I am doing it in my classroom. So, I've decided to be more deliberate in my responses to my journey of textual - and thus life - exploration. Stay tuned...