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Reads

  • Sigmund Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents

    Sigmund Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents
    What you notice first – before the modest gardens outside the bay window, and before the rows of books and drawings spread along the back wall just behind the couch – is the forest of antiquities that cover his desk and spill out onto the surrounding shelves. The idols and figurines of a Godless Jew – as he once described himself, more reminiscent of an excavated past than a troubled present. But archeology was always one of his favorite metaphors, and he used the comparison often. His belief that what was hidden, what was outside of everyday perception, was the key to understanding our lives. Even from the comfort of the couch, draped in the thick, earthy browns of an oriental fabric throw, you could not directly see him. You saw his possessions – objects that had once been buried and long forgotten but were now part of a seemingly foreign present. You could hear him scribble in his notebook while you talked, and sometimes he asked you a question for clarification. But you could not see him. Like his objects he was there, and he was not there. (*****)

  • Rudolf Flesch: The Art of Readable Writing

    Rudolf Flesch: The Art of Readable Writing
    Rudolph Flesch writes for himself. He is clear, concise, and his ideas on writing have influenced all writers, whether they know his name or not. First published in 1945, The Art of Readable Writing is the companion book to his earlier The Art of Plain Talk. Flesch doesn't mess around with words. He gets to the point, illustrates his point, tells you why its important, then moves on. He talks to you. But his works are not dry. He doesn't try to be funny, or cute, but his writing advice reads like a good talk. He is witty. He invites you into his conversation. In one chapter entitled The Importance of Being Trivial, Flesch uses anecdotes to explain what it is that people remember about a story. Hint: it's not the cleverness of the writer. And it's not the fact that this book was published in 1945, and is still available today. Writing books come and go. This one is a going to stay. (*****)

  • Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar

    Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
    Her face never gave it away. American blond, pretty, 32 white teeth all in a row. Born in Boston she liked the sea, and would often go to it for comfort, for images. The first time they found her she was already gone, pumped full of sleeping pills. She was 28 then, so they brought her back, and stuck her together with glue for another 2 years. But you couldn’t see what made her tick from the pictures of her face. You had to read her poems for that. There she was confessional in a way that her face never was. Not like a diary – more personal, a sharing of images and thoughts that made you a witness, made you intimate without the presence of a pretty American blond. But they always left you sad and stripped bare, left you reading her words again and often, to see if maybe you misunderstood, that what she wrote were just words and somehow not real. You wanted to call her and ask her if she was all right. Ask if maybe you could drop over and just see her for a bit. But you never could, because at the age of 30 she turned up the gas stove on a cold, February morning, and never shut it off. (****)

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein (Edited by Anthony Kenny): The Wittgenstein Reader (Blackwell Readers)

    Ludwig Wittgenstein (Edited by Anthony Kenny): The Wittgenstein Reader (Blackwell Readers)
    After writing a philosophical bestseller in 1922 called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein stopped writing because he believed he had solved all the problems of philosophy. Life was good. He taught children to read and write, and built a house for his sister Gretl. Did some gardening. Seven years later he was back to writing, admittedly, because philosophers were too dumb to take him at his word. He thought. He wrote about language and how we say things. He wrote about whether there is a private language at work in us, or if a picture theory of meaning is the key to all our communications. Story, in a philosophical way. Propositions (logic) are pictures. Language draws them for us. When he drew his last breath in 1951, Wittgenstein said: “Tell them, I’ve had a wonderful life.” Who can say he didn’t? (****)

  • Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking

    Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
    No one told Joan Didion that death would hurt so much. That her feelings for her husband, John Dunne, after his sudden death, do not pass through simple emotional states. She knows he has died, but she wants him back. She doesn’t believe what she knows to be final, is final. She struggles with the idea of time. She wants to take time back, to bend it over and over again to stop the hurting. Times passes through The Year of Magical Thinking as a physical thing, as something that can be talked about, reasoned about. Always after the fact. Didion dissects the the events of her husband’s death, trying to understand the time when he actually died. The cause of his actual death. Medical terms. The many ways to understand what happened. She knows this is a helpless task. And she knows this knowledge changes nothing. But it’s something she needs to do. A part of her acceptance. A way for her to balance the feelings she has for her critically ill daughter with the sudden death of her husband. Didion takes us through the sickness of her daughter, and the re-examing of her life with her husband, through her memories of things past. The little things. In the end she misses him. The comfort of him. The life they had become together. And how unapologetically it ended. (****)

  • Oscar Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol

    Oscar Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol
    Wilde had some issues and most of them involved younger men. In a time when you did hard time for things like this, Wilde did two years in Reading prison. Three years later, before his death, he wrote this poem, remembering his time in prison and a hanging - which he witnessed. But this is no chronicle of facts. No allusions to Greek gods or goddesses. Oscar is no longer Oscar. Prison changed him. This work is emotional, heartfelt and humble. You can read it in one sitting (the chapbook with Frans Maserell’s woodcuts is best). Wilde is both himself (prisoner C.3.3) and the condemned man. I wouldn’t call this poem an apology, but it is an admission, in one sense of past actions, in another sense of the social beliefs of the time. Religious, Catholic guilt reconciled on his deathbed when he formally converted. Read it. Still carries a lot of feeling today. The condemned man “had killed the thing he loves, And so he had to die”. Oscar to the end. (****)

Me Too

« Snow Day | Main

March 06, 2008

Vicky

Vic is my brother’s five year-old daughter. Cute kid, small and thin, dark black hair that frames her face and rolls just over her shoulders. She walks with a purpose, like an old woman, hands clasped in front of her and back slightly bent with worry. Eyebrows as dark as her eyes, as dark as her hair. She will be a real looker when she gets older. Funny kid. Once she said to my other brother Mike, “Uncle Harpo,” (that’s what we call him because his hair is curly like Harpo Marx), she said, “Uncle Harpo, you make no sense.” Harpo thanked her, told her she wasn’t the first one to notice this, and then continued talking about the latest hockey trade. Vic continued playing with her Barbies. She calls them Marys.

Another time Vic walked up to a biker guy in a Blockbuster video store. He was leather clad, sun glasses, long hair in a pony-tail, mid-thirties. She stood at this guy’s feet, staring up at him. When my brother Kevin noticed where she was, it was already too late.

“Nice hair,” Vic said to the biker guy in a cute voice. He looked down and smiled at her. Then she added, “Not!”

Kevin swooped her up and left the store without looking back.

Vic calls people who get in her way ‘stupid fucking idiots’. Kevin doesn’t know where she got this from. Neither does Beth, her mom. But she’s got it, and she uses it with precision. Each one of us has been a stupid fucking idiot in Vic’s eyes, at one time or another. Even Grandpa Ronnie, but that didn’t go over as well with him as it does with the rest of us. She likes the word ass too, but this is used for objects. “This game is being an ass,” she said after playing monopoly by herself and loosing. Crayons are often asses too, when they break. Allie’s foot was an ass once because it was touching Vic.

Vic loves animals, and so does Beth, so there are pets in their home. A dog, a couple cats, a cockatiel, and Vic has a hamster. She named the hamster John. Every morning she asks John how his night was. Did he have a good sleep? Is there anything special he would like to do today? She confides in John. She takes John out of his cage for walks.

John made a break for freedom once and was missing for over a week. This upset Vic a lot, but it interested Fester, their glued-together cat who survived a hit and run in his early days. Fester stalked a chair in the living room for days. Something clicked with Kevin. The back of the chair came off and there was John, a little thinner, but probably thankful not to have been reduced to one of Fester’s hair-balls.

Vic made John promise never to do that again. She made him pinky swear. She used his stubby tail as the pinky. Everything seems all right now.

When they come over for a visit, Vic calls me Uncle Moe Joe. She likes to ask for things. “Uncle Moe Joe,” she asks, “Do you have any balloons in your house?” I tell her no, sorry Vic, But I think I’m out of balloons. Then she asks about peanut butter. About tissue. About three coloured ice-cream. About shoes, black pants, Allison’s mom’s name, my real name, milk, why I have so many books, pink carpet, and McDonalds for dinner.

Last time she asked me where Allison was. I told her, “At her mom’s Vic. She won’t be home until tomorrow.”

“You miss her a lot, don’t you?” she said. I laughed a little, and said that yes I do. She’s my little girl, like you are your dad’s little girl. I bet he misses you if you’re away too.

“Not Allison,” she said, “I mean her mom.”

Vic had my attention. “What do you mean Vic?” I asked, “Why would you say that?”

“You have pictures of her on the wall,” she said.

“I thought it was good to leave up some pictures for the kids,” I said.

She looked at me. “Do you have any candy in this house?” she asked.

I told her to go find Jackie. She would help her. And away she walked, like an old woman, hands clasped in front of her and back slightly bent with worry.

March 06, 2008 at 12:01 PM in Parenting |

Comments

Dick Duplessie

An old soul in a young body. What a treat!

Posted by: Dick Duplessie | April 01, 2008 at 04:28 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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Music

  • Eric Dolphy Quintet with Booker Little -

    Eric Dolphy Quintet with Booker Little: Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot, Vol. 1
    Dolphy makes you wonder about life. Talented beyond belief. Anecdotes about a musician who would wander off alone during a party and practice. Serious guy, but not unapproachable. Died from insulin shock given while he was in a diabetic coma. He was thirty-six. Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot, Vol.1 is a good work. Not a great work. Not Live at the Village Vanguard with Coltrane. Nevertheless, a good session. Dolphy seems to have been a perennial tinkerer. Always stretching - not in Coltrane’s arching method, but with crafted sound. And craft is what you hear with this quintet. Jazz bands are not rock bands. Their loyalties are not endless. But here there is good, tight playing here. Strong rhythms. Dolphy stretching. Experimenting live. I like the opener Fire Waltz. The horns progress the sound, the bass, drums and piano keep it anchored. And I like the clapping following each piece. Very authentic, as was Dolphy. (****)

  • Kronos Quartet -

    Kronos Quartet: Alban Berg: Lyric Suite
    If Berg's Lyric Suite is about love, then it is expressed in cold, wintry sections. Kronos plays it well - tight and to the point. Unrequited love? Maybe. The voice of Dawn Upshaw in the Largo fits in naturally with the work. Non-sentimental. Adult love that is a book of moods and stringed conversation. Don't look for resolution here. There was none for Berg, and Kronos seems to understand that. Highs and lows are a part of all relationships, even those expreseed in music. But this is not a love song. Like all great loves, Kronos gives us Berg's pain in this one. All we can do is listen. (*****)

  • Philip Glass -

    Philip Glass: Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass
    Thre is a lot to hear in the Glass String Quartets. These are weather pieces. Seasonal, natural, sounds full of a pulse of water and of growth. Old steam trains. Brushes with the present and the past. To No. 5, you listen with others. Company, you hear alone. Both quartets always moving, if only to return you to where you have already been - a common Glass motif. Kronos plays the desperation in these works with precision. The notes are cut, and splinter loud and soft in contrasts. Silence where it stresses a point. These pieces are meant to be heard in more than one sitting. Buczak is longing, understated, a short story full of regret. But still with that pulse. Mishima is familiar Glass. Arpeggios rolling through a work of constant motion. Glass wants to tell us something. Even if it is only a reflection of ourselves, and Kronos takes on the challange. Just be prepared. You won't want to talk much after these. (****)