Ezekiel's Daughter

Today:  I think that I’ve finally caught up on my sleep.  I had already washed clothes, therefore today is
•    Listening to those CDs that I purchased
•    Cleaning up
•    Paying bills that came in while I was out.  Thank goodness, nothing important is overdue.  Important stuff is on auto pay since Katrina. 

I don’t think that I will be able to host Passover this year.  There just isn’t time.  Cleaning up isn’t the same as removing the leaven from the house, but you certainly have to have a reasonably clean house before you invite people in.   Maybe I can join the Krewe du Jieux celebration this year.  I have to check my email for their date.

I took lots of reading matter with me to Israel.  Long flight, you know.  I took the current Locus, the current New York Review of SF, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.  I bought the graphic novel version of Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman while I was there.  I finished the graphic novel on the day that I returned.  It’s very effective. I missed the movie. It was here during the Mardi Gras season and I try to stay away from Canal Street during Mardi Gras. (That was the only venue.)  It was only here for a week, so it’s been added to my Netflix queue.   “Oscar Wao” was also good.  I  was nervous about taking it  since it was described as a family story, and I usually don’t like family epics.  This one is good.  I have no Spanish at all—I took French in high school and college—so much of the Spanglish eluded me.  It was still fascinating.  Interesting to see SF tropes used metaphorically.  I wonder how many mainstream folks got the references.  

Taking books on trips is always problematic.  Choosing the wrong book can leave you with nothing to read.  While a hardback book lasts longer and is more “collectible”, it weighs more and is more difficult to pack and handle.   Choosing an epic book makes sense for a long trip unless it’s the wrong book.  I’ve been lucky: for example, choosing  Aegypt to carry to a Worldcon.  It rained and I didn’t feel like going out to that night’s events.  I sat up and read instead.  Suddenly that dense and magical book got to me.   I usually take anthologies, which always seem safe.  I have plenty around here because I used to buy every “Best Fantasy” and “Best SF” that came out.   I’m glad that I took a chance on Diaz’s book.

I wrote nothing yesterday. 

Instead, I went to Torah study at Touro, dallied over coffee with two of the students after it was over and ran errands until 5 pm.

I forced myself to rest a bit and then my eyes fell on Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe.  I purchased it a year ago and never read it.  So, 7 pm to 2 am found me in bed reading.  I got up this morning before the news to read more and I’ve just finished the book. 

Loved it, even as it confused me.  It’s one of those books that make you want to look up the references, but only after you finish.  One chapter flows into the next with delightful surprises.  

Actually, I was composing a post for yesterday before I dove into Sidon.  I'll type it up and if it makes any sense, I'll post it.

Well, I have another book to rave about: Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation.  A member of the Carl Brandon Society recommended it in the yahoo forum.  It’s just become another one of those books that I wish that I could convince others to read.  It’s the first of a pair, so I have to make a journey to the youth section of the library to find the second book.  Yes—the kids’ section.  I would argue that the adult section of the library needs its own copy, but I am too glad to find it anywhere. 

It’s such a marvelously subversive historical fiction.  The summary on the copyright page reads:  “Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.”  The only thing that the summary does not mention is that Octavian is an enslaved African child.

Next up (and already checked out) is Generation Kill.  I was curious to find out how the book differed from the TV show.  

The Thanksgiving holiday winds it way to an end.  I did a little reading and a little writing.  Not a lot of either because I wanted to send time with family.  I see them so rarely.  And, I had this great fatigue after so many hours of overtime.  I had a lot of trouble reading at all, even when I wanted to. 

 

Today, I woke up and dug right into John Le Carre’s latest: A Most Wanted Man.  Wonderful, taunt, without “Bourne Conspiracy” chases, but with plenty of tension.  I haven’t finished it, but it occurs to me that I have gotten to page 272 of a 322 page book and Le Carre’s prose is never overblown but is always precisely descriptive.  And his books have remained around the same length.  Some writers, as they age, go on and on, making the books fatter and fatter.  This book has embraced a difficult and layered situation and emerged as a novel under 400 pages.  There are lessons to be learned here.

The weather has changed again.  80 degrees yesterday.  50’s today and bring out the fleece!  I’m a true Southerner.

Well, now the freezer and fridge have been completely scrubbed.  I can start making a restocking grocery list.  Not too much because another storm is out there.

Home

The city is becoming repopulated.  It gives me a chance to rethink why New Orleans is home.  I grew up in Shreveport and many of the people-to-people relationships still feel easier up there.  I didn’t grow up with the cursing and casual vulgarity of New Orleans.  But I also grew up in a city where my mother didn’t give her first name to whites because she didn’t want them calling her by her first name.  And they would.  I still remember calling the bank on her behalf and having them tell me that they had talked to Annie and had worked everything out.  This from someone who sounded half her age.  Shreveport has changed a lot; but since I was not there to experience the change, I don’t trust it.  It’s a pity because my distant-behavior may offend some good people.  That’s one of the hidden charges of racism.  

Why is New Orleans “home” now?  It’s always described as a more Caribbean and more African city.  It’s also called a more European city.  All probably true.  It’s probably more comfortable for some to describe it as a European city than an African city.  I can see friends shifting in their seats when I describe New Orleans traditions as African traditions.  None of them would describe Africa as bad, but somehow they don’t want it said that they are living their life in an African manner.  Ok—we’ll call it a southern Europe or Mediterranean manner.  So what is a Mediterranean manner?  

When I moved to this neighborhood, it was predominately white.  All family activities were celebrated in the back yard…around a patio, around a pool, around a BBQ pit.   During most days, you could not tell if anyone was home.  The front door was an empty face that told you nothing.  When the neighborhood changed, family activities suddenly began to be celebrated in the front yard.   In the public square, let’s say.  I still recall calling my sister in shock to say that someone was boiling crawfish on Easter in the front yard.   Firstly, my surprise was the association of crawfish with Easter—which even my white co-workers informed me was “normal”.  And then there was the front yard business—which did surprise my co-workers.   Kids now play in the front yard or in the street.  The village that the axiom talked about has surfaced.  And that is New Orleans culture to a large extent.  People live in the public square, not behind closed doors.  An Israeli told me once that he felt more at home in New Orleans than any other city that he had visited, because Israel was the same way.  Home is where you sleep, but not where you live.  It was critical for restaurants to open after the storm not only because people had no food in the fridge, but also because New Orleanians eat out a lot.  

Because I grew up elsewhere, I am somewhere in-between.  I eat out a lot.  I’m single and cooking for one is a bore.  It’s interesting to sit in an outside restaurant and watch the world go by.  It makes me feel a part of New Orleans when the waiter sits down and tells me his life story.  (Nevertheless, it makes me anxious at times to see how people trust me with their life.)  I have a patio in back that I hardly ever use, but I don’t have a swing out front like some do.  You can’t tell whether I’m home.  I enjoy the changes, but seeing a crawfish boil in the front yard still feels weird.  

On another note:  Yesterday, I complained about people who were irritable about power loss after they returned.  This morning on NPR, I heard one man say that even with the power loss, he wanted to return as soon as possible.  After a week, he said, you would not only have a tree on your house; there would be squirrels living in the tree.  I laughed and acknowledged his words.  Great image.  I only ask that you don’t call up the radio station and complain that you don’t have power.

Books read over the storm

I got a lot of reading done.  The Republican convention was going on and I was not going to watch that.  (Fair play—I only watched Obama’s speech during the Democratic convention.)  The convention is for the party faithful and the candidate often ignores the platform anyway.  

I knocked out
“The Secret History of Moscow” by Ekaterina Sedia.  A nice way to see Russian folklore pulled into the modern state.  I am always interested in seeing the way other cultures handle folklore , fantasy, and science fiction.   A friend and I read as much Andrew Lang as we could find during our childhood.  (I just went online and discovered that the Yellow Fairy book and the Blue fairy book are available for download.)  Later, of course, I read all of the Terri Windling /Ellen Datlow’s books that did the same for the fairy stories that I grew up with.  Watching “Night Watch” proved to me that I didn’t know the mythical underpinning of the story.  I still want to understand all of the images in that movie—which are no doubt based on stories that Russians learn in their childhood.  Just as an adult here would know what a glass slipper meant without any explanation.

“Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow.  A fun read while the convention was on.  I finished it in a day.   I wish that I could find someone else around here to read it so that I could have a real discussion about it.  

“Inside Straight” by George R.R. Martin and the other Wild Card bunch.  Yes, I enjoyed it.  It’s popcorn but good popcorn.  It has some odd turns but it is fun.  It leaves room for further adventures.  Readers of Martin’s other series are probably having apoplexy that he stopped to write this.  Since I’m not reading that series, I was glad to have this.

I also read loads of National Geographic that I had started and not finished.  I read the current Tikkun.   And a couple of UTNE magazines.  I am bad about reading a few articles and leaving other articles for “later”.

The "last modified date" on that story is April 7th, so I am trying to get back to it.   Jazz Fest is over.  I had fun.  Now to work.

I went to see "Red Belt" yesterday, by the way.  I enjoyed it.  It reminds me of the best and the worst of my time taking Tae Kwan Do.

I was reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States: 1492-present".  I had it checked out of the library for over a month.  I finally turned it back--not because I didn't like it.  It made me furious, and I could only read so much at a time.  A lot of this I have read before, but having it chapter after chapter!  Actually, I had the impression that I had read this book earlier, but the copyright is after my high school years and after my college years.  I would read a couple of chapters and stop with my heart full of lead and thinking that this country is going to burn... And yes, I know that there are no innocent countries.  And yes, the crimes of the first few chapters are British crimes, Spanish crimes, and French crimes.  When he gets to slavery, I don't think that he even presses the fact that Africans were selling their tribal enemies into slavery.  The focus is on this county; the country who's blindness he wants to correct.  Anyway, I would read and feel genuine hatred for the leaders and so-called heroes of this county.  It was making me cynical.  So the book went back to the library.  I will pick it up again later.

I've tried to get some of the Netflix movies out of the door also.  "La Vie en Rose" and  "Turn Left at the End of the World" were completed this weekend.

•   "La Vie en Rose" took forever.  I still don't know a thing about Piaf.  I need a genuine biography.  This movie was meant for people who knew her life story already.  It makes me wonder what the French may have made of Richard Pryor's semi-biopic "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling".  No doubt there were shortcuts in that film because an African-American audience knew something of his life.

• "Turn Left..." was better than I expected.  A little better than the standard American coming of age movie.  This was an Israeli movie set in a community of new Moroccan-Israelis and Indian-Israelis right after the 6-day war.  The movie is quite honest about the prejudices that each group has about the other.

I finished a few books in the past few weeks that I should mention.  That’s how this blog got started after all.

Debbie Gallagher’s “The Spider’s Bride” was one.  There was a preview booklet that I picked up at last year’s convention in Chicago and the chapters were intriguing enough that I put it on my Amazon wish list.  And lo and behold, my family bought it for me.  Either my niece or my sister. 

The other was “Salt River” by James Sallis.  I read the other two books about the protagonist earlier, so of course I had to read this one.  I found it in the library.  The bookstores are horrible about carrying his books.  I could order it, but the library is faster.

What have I written in my journal?  These books engaged me in different ways.  James Sallis is the literary writer, but let me start with “The Spider’s Bride”.

Debbie Gallagher’s book is a fantasy, so you would think that it engaged my heart.  Instead, it engaged my mind and memory.  I had to read carefully to determine who the many characters represented.  At least once during the week you would have heard my delighted cry “so the Red Duke is a red ant!”  Or I reminded myself what the Latin names given to various animals, insects, etc. were.  Or I looked up the difference between the seelie and the unseelie.  I looked up whether there was actually such a thing as a wolf spider.  It was fun.  She reminded me of reading “The Flying Sorcerers” or “SilverLock” in college and figuring out who everyone was.  And she reminded me of reading the old descriptions of Fairie.  Not the pretty elves and fairies of childhood but more the stories that made travelers wary in old England.   Even though the title is “The Spider’s Bride”, I found her wedding abductor, the Hunter, more interesting.  A friend threw me for a loop when she asked if this bride ate her husband, like some spiders do.  I hadn’t even considered that, so I read the last third of the book with a more open mind than the text actually demanded.  I enjoyed the book.  I will probably read it again.  Books that stretch my mind are fun in a way that I think some people don’t get. 

“Salt River” is on the surface, a mystery.  So it should have engaged my mind.  Instead, it engaged my heart and spirit.  The protagonist spends a lot of time thinking about the shape of his life and the lives of his neighbors.  James Sallis used to live in New Orleans and I wish that I could hear him read.  He was one of Effinger’s friends, I think.  I still remember that George left us packing his things (for his move to Los Angeles) to go hear James Sallis at a book signing.  The poetic prose of the book is stunning.  And it is so short.  Not because the author has the short clipped sentences that people expect of film noir, but because the character is introspective and says no more than he has to.  But his thoughts!   It’s difficult for me to analyze this book the way that I am told that a writer-in-training should.  It doesn’t have the narrative drive that a mystery usually has.  There is no promise that the mystery will be solved, even though it is.  There is no promise that evil will be punished.  Despite P.D. James’ definition of mystery, there is no promise that order will be restored.  I want to buy a box of Sallis’ mysteries and hand them out to my workshop and tell them that this is my goal.  Stop forcing Elmore Leonard down my throat.  This is the gold standard as far as I am concerned.  Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to find a box of these books if I could afford them.  The big box book stores do not carry him; you have to order the books.  Or if I do find them, they are on the shelf one week and gone the next.   

I am finishing up “Footprints in the Snow: Tales of Haunted Russia”.  It was on the new bookshelf at the library and I picked it up because I have enjoyed ghost stories in the past.  It has successfully creeped me out at times.  And it is the simplest stories that do it.  

Leading to several thoughts.

Why does such a simple one-page story leave me looking over my shoulder?  

And what is this feeling exactly?  

Ok—I will be more specific on the second question.  I periodically go through periods of reading popular mind science books by V. S. Ramachandran and Olivier Saacks.  I think one of them had a patient who was certain that his parents had been substituted by exact duplicates.  There was discussion on what defined that belief.  So what is the belief that I have after reading a ghost story that if I look up from my bed (if I am reading in bed) that someone will be standing in the doorway?  Or if I am sitting on the sofa—that someone is around the corner watching?  It’s broad daylight and I look behind myself at writing this.  We’ve all had that feeling that someone is watching.  Sometimes the feeling is correct.  When it is correct, is it fed by subtle sounds that we cannot consciously detect?  If so, the sounds of the house as it settles may be fooling my senses as I read a ghost story.  Those sounds that I ignore all the time suddenly feed my sense that someone IS there.  

Why is the sense fed by the simplest story?  Umm…the more complicated story is more obviously someone else’s story.  I can be drawn in, but I don’t imagine that the creator of the KGB is behind my shower curtain.  I still recall a movie ghost story staring George C. Scott that had a creepy beginning.  The protagonist buys a house in which the faucets drip.  He is constantly turning off faucets.  Until finally he goes to turn off the faucet in an upstairs tub and sees the image of drowned child in the tub.  Simple and effective.  Especially for a new homeowner.  Please don’t give me dripping faucets in several rooms on a quiet December or January night.

The week of Blogging Positively has not not started. However, a line from a TV show (of all things) struck me recently. The character says "we don't read stories about dragons to children to tell them that dragons exist. We read them to tell them that dragons can be killed." That charmed me and rang all sorts of bells within me.

Then the Akedah came up this weekend. And I realized again why I have this interior protest against the fact that some synagogues don't read the Akedah during the High Holidays. 'It would frighten the children', they say. Well, kids know that their lives are in their parents hands already. They need to know that ultimately, their parents will not sacrifice them to their god. To not read the story leaves that question unanswered.

My two cents, anyway.

Back to washing clothes and behaving responsibly.

P.S.
Actually, there is something else.  I am still keeping track to what I read.  It tells me where my mind is going and what influences me and when it influenced me.
This week:

In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
       Shorter than I expected.  The image of the burning towers was exquisite  throughout the book.  And the feeling of  anger against the perpetuators and anger against the administration that directed the fear for their own use was wonderful.  He was kind enough to provide the historical background of his imagery for those of us not into comics.

Halting State by Charles Stross
    A fun thriller that taxed my knowledge of games.  Well to be honest, I don't know a thing about reality gaming.  I've only played with the Sims.  He approached a fear of technology and its entanglement in our lives from the inside.  The characters don't want to go backward.  But they are forced to become super aware of what price they are paying as they go forward.  The book races forward and you have to hang on!  The book is new enough that I should log on to Amazon and post my good review.  (I am usually reading library books a year or two after the publication date.  As you can see, my bookshelf is stuffed!)