Once Upon a Time.

Lately it seems the only things I post are reviews. Actually it gives you a fair idea of what I'm spending my time doing - lots of reading, lots of watching, lots of listening. This all - all but the reading - happens while I knit.

Showing the knitting will have to wait - the light is so bad here in January that you'd not be too impressed with what I'm making if I took a picture of it during these dark days. In the meantime, let me tell you about Pan's Labyrinth.

The complications of life in the information age have divorced most of us from our folklore. Early humans resorted to invention in order to understand the mysteries of daily life - go back far enough, you will find stories to explain why the sun rises, why the moon's appearance changes every day. Guillermo del Toro thinks that, as the "external" mysteries are mysterious no longer, storytelling has turned inward - has focussed on the internal mysteries. Pan's Labyrinth explores the internal mysteries carefully - builds them into layers of significance. Only a few of them are apparent to the casual watcher - the most important threads are the invisible little strands, hidden behind the curtain, that hold the whole structure up.

Visually, the movie is gorgeous. Evocative in its use of colour and light, there is a whole story to be found just in the shadows, in the shades. The cinematography perfectly represents the paradox of the parallel universe, the realm of faery that is only a step removed from the daytime world: the two contained in one.

It's a truly excellent piece of work. It's a beautiful, razor-sharp story with all the things that are most important to us humans: longing, fear, loss, cruelty, redemption, hope and dismay.

I loved it.

It was so complicated and yet so simple. The characters are immediately recognisable, though sometimes reinvented. The princess. The servant girl. The spirit guide. The woodsmen. The dictator. There is a wicked stepfather. Other elements: the quest, the trinity, the sacrifice, the terrifying tasks. The violence.

I hated it.

I mean, I hated it. It freaked me out so deeply, I don't know what to do about it. I am not sure whether I can watch it again...because my BluRay player hasn't got a viewing option labelled "Never Show Me This Scene Again". The fairytale part was not the problem. The problem was the aforementioned wicked stepfather, who is a sadistic abomination straight from the pits of hell.

I can handle implied violence - an axe descending towards a shrinking captive, then the scene cuts away and you don't see the moment of contact - but I can't handle the kind of relentless, inhuman brutality in this movie. It all gets screentime. Less than a half hour in, I had my eyes tightly shut and my hands over my ears because I hadn't got to the scan-forward button fast enough to prevent my seeing and hearing a man being bludgeoned to death with a wine bottle, directly on his face.

I had to stop it and go do something else for an hour, during which time I debated whether I would even finish the thing.

I did finish it, but made damn sure I had both hands on the remote - left thumb on "mute" and right thumb on "skip". Also, during my intermission I had checked online reviews to see exactly what other scenes I had to watch out for - a good thing, as it allowed me to scan past the "man who gets tortured with hammer in face" and the "Pale Man monster with eyeballs in his hands, who eats babies" and the "man whose leg is amputated with a handsaw".

Obviously I'm still sorting out my feelings on Pan's Labyrinth. I really do not know which one I mean more: "I loved it" or "I hated it". As far as its intention goes, it's a smashing success. It's truly a fairytale, with all the archetypes which that genre contains. (And for an excellent discussion on that, see this post.)

Modern childrearing shuns the old tales, deeming them too violent for children - and in fact if we saw the fairytales we knew as a child "in living colour", as it were, we'd be horrified: imagine being a fly on the cottage wall while the wolf is eating Granny. Yerch.

But when Little Red and the Woodcutter arrive to save the day, Granny is exhumed from the wolf's belly not as mince, but in one piece - nightcap firmly in place. It's the bizarre appeal of folk tales - the cheerful lacquer we have painted over the dripping gore, hopefully leaving the moral of the stories intact, for the next generation of children to learn from and thrill over.

So I've decided what to do. I'm going to go brush my teeth (had to have cocoa to comfort myself after finishing El Labyrinto del Fauno) and while I'm doing that, I'm going to lacquer over the evil stepfather, firmly closing the shutters before the bottle comes out. I'm going to paint a rosette of fresh crocus on the princess' nightgown, and pretend it protects her from harm. I'm going to wash all the blood off and tell myself that the girl was not afraid, that the faithful maidservant arrived in time, that the doctor wasn't dead after all.

Because I have to go to bed now, and I've just heard a scary story.

I think I loved it.

Recalled To Life

Erudite Mondays at HalfSoled Boots

Volume 11, Number 1

A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

My quest for self-improvement, and the list of books I hadn't read, led me to this Dickens classic. Written in 1859, it deals with the French Revolution - specifically, with the Terror.

Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the cook.
Book I, Chapter 7

Dickens can be a tricky author to read. Some of his works tend towards the grandiose, in language as well as in plot ambition. Two Cities, though, is beautifully stripped down - has an urgent tone that matches its setting, and events in the plot. It seems incongruous to call it "refreshing", but that's how I felt afterwards - as if I had been plunged into something and brought back out again.

It's a pretty scary book. For me, the French Revolution is almost a theory rather than an actual event: so far removed as to be more "a force in European history" than anything else - an event that led to other events, and a thing that I viewed as part of a whole. Two Cities brought this remote past back to life - clamourous and sweeping, crying, gasping, and bleeding. It was awful.

Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the street to slake her devouring thirst.
Book III, Chapter 5

I suppose if I had thought much about this book before reading it, I would have given a list of words such as "classic", "literature", and "grand". Maybe "prosy". Definitely "wordy". I knew vaguely that it was about the French Revolution (thanks, I'm ashamed to say, to a game of Trivial Pursuit I played when I was about 19 years old), but was not interested in finding out more about it. I, like everybody in creation, knew the first part of the first line: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..., and that was more or less enough for me.

But when I finished A Tale of Two Cities I sat there, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mum with a Bachelor's degree in European History on the wall behind me, Googling "causes of the French Revolution" for two hours.

And, really, that's what this whole exercise is for: to push my boundaries outward, and find out what it is that I've been missing all these years.

The National Razor shaves close.

I've been thinking about my reading schedule, and I've decided that I should have a "classic" on the bedside table at all times. There's something different about reading literature - there's a reason these books are still in print one (or two) hundred years later. In a word, they're good. I also have a theory that reading classics broadens my mind and improves my English.

As a side note, I used a different edition than I normally would - the Penguin or Signet style. I am a fan of annotated works, with footnotes that expand on the text, and help place antiquated phrases or vocabulary in their context. This time, I read the "Collector's Library" edition, a small format, which contained gilt pages, the original set of illustrations (by "Phiz"), no modern introduction and no footnotes. I LOVED it - it felt wonderfully current, not in the least as though I was studying something 'old'.

I think next I might try "The Scarlet Pimpernell" - may as well carry on with the French Revolution while I'm thinking of it.

I wholeheartedly recommend that you read A Tale of Two Cities. The first couple of chapters are a bit bewildering - you are introduced to a complete stranger and immediately asked to care a lot about what he's thinking during a long night drive - but if you can get to page 120 you're all set. The rest of the book will go by all too quickly.

Vive le Boz!

Curiouser and Curiouser.

A few years ago I found out about this 100 pushups thing, and posted about my initial test. You do as many pushups as you can, in a row with proper form, and then you work towards a goal of 100 consecutive pushups...it's quite good for you, apparently. Good for your core strength. And I guess a 'cold' test is supposed to be a reliable indicator of your fitness level. In September 2008, I did twenty.

My fitness level is way down at the moment, due mostly to me not having time to exercise during the past....oh, long time. I can tell this by the way I am puffing and panting just going up a couple of flights of stairs.

But this is weird - I just tried the initial test again, and I did thirty pushups. Thirty. What the hell? Remember that WKRP episode "Fish Story" where Johnny Fever is doing an on-air test involving the effects of alcohol consumption on drivers? And the more shots he does, the faster his reflexes get? Well, apparently I, like him, get better and better as I am getting worse and worse.

And no, I am not going to carry on towards the 100. My wrists are already burning. I will go have some Mayan chili chocolate instead. (Also excellent for your heart.)

There Sure Are A Lot Of Words.

I had a weird experience a few days ago - I got to the evening of Boxing Day and was conscious of a falling-into-an-armchair feeling, accompanied by an inward sigh of relief. Imagine my amazement when I realised I am "glad It's over". Never before have I been, and hopefully never again will I be, pleased to see the back end of Christmas while the calendar still showed December.

A low-key Christmas, of course, with bits of melancholia mixed in to relieve the near-total apathy. But, all in all, I believe it was no worse than expected, and maybe even a little better.

I was reading an old post the other day - the one about the 106 most unread books. I wanted to assess my progress through my self-imposed program of Improvement. And I've done okay - I have added five to my "Have Read" list, and I have added three to my "Have Started" list. (The library wanted them back.)

Have read:

Vanity Fair
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
Watership Down

Have started:

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Tale of Two Cities
The Once and Future King

Initially I was disappointed to see only five pins down, but two of them are Ayn Rand meisterwerke, so I shouldn't feel badly about that. I nearly went blind reading Atlas Shrugged in particular. It was during our June visit to Ontario, and I read that sucker in eleven days. About 1100 pages, in teeny print.

I had a lot to say about Atlas Shrugged after I read it, but that was six months ago and now I'm not nearly so motivated to talk about it. Plus, it's really long and preachy. But on the up-side, the sexual tension is handled brilliantly. If there's one thing Ayn Rand knows, it's timing. (Except "when to quit" - that part she struggled with.)

The Fountainhead made me tired.

Vanity Fair, it turns out, is a page-turner. It's one of my friend Bethro's favourites, and I can see why. I didn't LOVE it, but it's a good one for discussion. I personally think Thackeray likes Becky better than Amelia, but that's despite himself. Or maybe he's just being ironic - giving Amelia the rewards of virtue in the end although he, himself, values Becky's acerbity over Amelia's insipidity. Hm.

Anyway, a word on style: Vanity Fair is like a really long and rather slower-paced Georgette Heyer novel. If you have managed more than a handful of Heyers and enjoyed them, you will probably like VF. I did find, though, that VF is hard to read when spread over a long period. You have to concentrate on it, and that's easier when you read it in, say, two weeks rather than six.

Watership Down, on the other hand, is one of my desert island books now. I always thought vaguely that it was a gentle, pastoral children's book, on the lines of "Wind in the Willows" for a slightly older reader. I certainly wouldn't have called it "edgy", or anything.

Boy, was I wrong.

It's about animals, sure, but it's totally serious, not in the least tongue-in-cheek, not at all wry about the fact that these bunnies have their own myth tradition and none of them can count past five. The world they live in is masterfully set up. I can't say anymore, except that you should read it. If you find it a slow start (there is some background to get through), just at least finish off the first three chapters. If you're not hooked, you probably never will be and you can go on to something else.

Lastly, the self-effacingly titled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And my only comment on that is: neither. It was good enough - certainly had its poignant moments. Lots of gratuitous bad language, which got annoying in a surprisingly short amount of time. So maybe I'd amend the title to "A Slightly Emotive Work of Mediocre Talent".

What am I reading next? I was thinking that maybe you should give me some recommendations. Pick something from the list, and leave a comment saying which book I should tackle next, and I'll read and review it.

If nobody expresses a preference, I'll go on to Anna Karenina, which has just been lent to me by a friend. I've ordered The Once and Future King from Chapters with Christmas money (thanks Mom!), for the #2 spot, and I believe after that will be Catch-22.

Here's the list of what remains unread. I have just counted, and there are 60 titles here, which means I've read 46. I'd like to get half done this list, which is seven more books, by the spring. Just for bragging rights, nothing important.

Tell me what to get from the library, and I'll get started. (Just please, please don't make me read non-fiction. I don't care much about Guns, Germs, OR Steel. And not that true crime one either. I don't like crime.)

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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Tale of Two Cities
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (I do not want to read this.)
War and Peace
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books (I don't really want to read this either.)
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Foucault’s Pendulum
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
Angels & Demons
The Satanic Verses
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present (No. I don't want to read it.)
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything (It better be.)
Dubliners
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (Uh uh.)
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
On the Road
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (Nothing by an economist, please.)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
Gravity’s Rainbow
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (Yuck. No.)
White Teeth
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
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Solstice

There is a mile of heavy rain and grey cloud between me and tonight's full moon, but I know it's there. In the fullness of time all things will pass away, but in the meanwhile I am going to light a few candles, brew up a potion (hot buttered YUM!) and enjoy the longest night. Cuddle up, everyone...winter is for sleeping!

XO

Pacific

That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been.
-Ecclesiastes 3:15

I had a lot of time to think, while we were on the ferry back to the island. We embarked on our 31-hour journey from Prince Rupert in the afternoon, under a cloudless sky. We sailed south past barge terminals, docks, and canneries. Then those dropped back to the stern, and it was tugs and seiners and buoys. Then those dropped astern and we moved on into isolated channels, past narrow coves and innumerable waterfalls. As the sun set, dropping smudgy and red through the clear winter sky behind the western mountains of Grenville Channel, the full moon rose pale and chilly in the east.

It was too cold to be much on the outer decks, but I spent as long as I could tolerate outside, thinking, staring at the steep sides of the channel we were navigating.

Darkness crept up on us while we were still in Grenville Channel. I put the children to bed, and stayed curled on the porthole sill, watching the moon.

I was hundreds of kilometres from the nearest electric light. The ship was barely lit. The passage we traveled was waveless – protected from the open sea. The black ocean slid underneath in a heavy liquid ink that felt bottomless. Above me was the round and silent moon, sailing in her own black unending sea.

For hours I watched it – saw it above, saw it below. I gazed at the coastline, an otherworldly, blurred slash of distant paleness, the only proof that we were divided: sea and sky. If it weren’t for that shoreline, we – the moon and the sleeping children and I – could have been on the continuous inside of a dark liquescent ball.

Bathed in the moon and the remoteness of the night, my communion with the dark Pacific brought a sudden realisation.

Sandy died hours after September’s full moon, in the early morning following the autumnal equinox. The high tide had begun to ebb one hour before - and not long before that, she had sat up in bed and said her last words. I have to go.

Four Fridays later, I had watched October’s full moon rise and thought of how she had left - intentionally, it seemed - on the turning of the tide, the turning of the moon, the turning of a season – her favourite season.

And now eight weeks had passed, and on my journey home from retreat, I saw a third full moon rise.

I know when the next one will come: a rarity – a full moon on winter solstice, the longest night of the year. Solstice marks the time when earth’s life forces are at their lowest ebb. Everything is dead or sleeping. But every day afterwards will be a little longer...our faces are turned towards the sun for a few extra minutes of warmth every day, until finally it will be enough to awaken the plants, and rouse the animals, and break open the seeds lying under the melting snow.

The wheel of the year will turn again.

It has been a hard time. Nearly a full year has passed since Dad came to tell me of his diagnosis, and since Sandy came to me and told me her cancer was back. Now he is cancer-free – healthy – and she is dead.

And we have suffered.

So there is one more moon to come: a full moon to light the longest night – the moon that will close this season of mourning.

The morning after, light will begin to return to the sleeping earth.

Light will begin to return to me.

Last spring, I wrote “I’m lost. I don’t know how to lose a friend. I think the handbook for that might turn out to be short: muddle through as best you can.” Now I’ve lived the end of our story, hers and mine, and I can look back on the last twelve months and say, with peace: I have done well. This job I had to do, this task given me to accomplish, was painful and difficult and it broke my heart...but all I could, I did.

And it was enough, and more than enough.

Now I find, at the end, that one of the most important things is to let go of a thing that is over. To know the job is done, to have experienced it fully, to let it become a part of who I am, and to go in peace towards something new.

There are times in your life that grow you up – push you up a steep and rocky slope, which you have to scramble to stay on top of, and when you reach the summit your hands are bleeding and your fingers ache from holding on, but you’re changed, and stronger, and the view is incredible.

Life is a beautiful thing. Death can be a beautiful thing.

The time for weeping is nearly over. I can feel the season of mourning passing away. I’m ready for the wheel to turn, ready for the next season to begin. It’s an everlasting cycle, and I am a part of it.

A Milestone

We're not quite finished yet, but my sister has had a major breakthrough in her adoption process.

I feel like putting on a floaty dress and heels.*


And now, for your admiration, I'd like to introduce my beautiful niece and nephew:
Brother and sister, they have been in care at Addis Ababa for about 7 months. Gwen hopes to bring them home in the spring - once the rest of the paperwork is done. (It's agonising.)

My nephew is probably 8 or 9 years old (though his paperwork says 7), and my newest niece is 3.

For now my sister is referring to him (online) as Weundem, which is Amharic for "brother".

And this is "Ehet" (sister).

I'm so happy...so excited...want to charge over to Ethiopia and clasp them to my bosom!

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*I don't remember it being this racist!