Remnant #8: My Wild Year in Books, Part Two

Books...cathedrals of the mind.

My ongoing effort to record what I am reading for My Wild Year in Books 2015 continues...

• Book 3/2015: I didn't know much about Amanda Palmer, except what I'd heard I was supposed to think of her. She was greedy, asked for money from her fans all the time. She wasn't talented. She was rough. These were the stories others told me--but I heard other stories in her music. And, I was drawn to The Art of Asking--I'm so glad I was. The book showed me Palmer's generous spirit and wildfire heart. I was humbled and inspired. When a book can make you rethink your own experiences with art, community, and asking--it is a worthwhile read. "This is how a creative human works. Collecting, connecting, sharing."
• Book 4/2015: Then, right after I read this sweet, kind book about crowd-sourcing and connection and creativity--I stumbled across Evie Wyld's All the Birds, Singing and I was blown away by the opposite side of humanity. Wyld's protagonist, Jake, is a woman I will not forget. But, beyond just the memorable character, Wyld's book managed to perfectly marry narrative and lyricism. I was dazzled by her writing--the imagery, the visceral ache of the words on the page--but, also the plot kept me completely hooked. If you read All the Birds, be ready and be brave...from sheep slaughter to red sunsets, Wyld will not spare any detail. "The light is out and Greg has his large thumbs in the dips of my pelvis, and the shed is hot and dry. I feel out of myself tonight, like my bones have become too heavy for my flesh. The heat gets itself under the metal roof during the day and it stays there at night, making the spiders sleepy. I loop my fingers in Greg's hair, to let him know I'm still paying attention and to try and remind myself to keep focused."
• Book 5/2015: When I got my MFA from Goddard College, one of my faculty advisors was Jeanne Mackin.  So when I saw that her book, The Beautiful American, was out in paperback, I picked it up to support her and her craft. The book was about a woman, Nora, and her unlikely friendship with Lee, a famous model-photographer. Each of the women has secrets and old grudges against the other and the book explores their history and Nora's quest to find her daughter, who has run away. The book is set from 1920s Europe to their lives two decades later. It was a harder book for me to connect with--and this may have just been because it came after the intense, hardcore writing of Evie Wyld. But, if you are looking for a compelling story about the lives of women in that era, this book will absolutely meet your needs. Jeanne is an amazing woman herself--an amazing teacher--so no surprise that her female characters are intriguing and strong. It was not my favorite book of hers, but I'm glad I gave it a shot. “I was happy, and nothing in the world can make you oblivious to your surroundings like happiness.”
• Book 6/2015: I don't even know what word to use to describe Ali Smith's How to Be Both, other than brilliant. The conceptual intricacies, the characters, the storyline, the way the book is (un)structured. It may go down as the most important book I read this year. (Check back in December!) In part, this is because I've never read Ali Smith before. I've heard her buzzed about, seen all of the infinite awards, but that typically puts me off of a writer--when he/she is so thoroughly lauded. I always want the outlier, the renegade, the unknown writer who knocks me out, clear out of left field. But, for me, I'm happy to say that Ali Smith deserves all of the acclaim she's getting. She is innovating in the narrative form in exciting ways and her work is radiant. I also am also deeply inspired by her for "cultivating privacy in a world now unused to it." No Twitter or Facebook or "platform" or author homepage. Smith cultivates privacy and mind-blowing, magnificent prose. "There was a lot more world : cause roads that look set to take you in one direction will sometimes twist back on themselves without ever seeming anything other than straight...many things get forgiven in the course of a life : nothing is finished or unchangeable except death and even death will bend a little if what you tell of it is told right."
• Book 7/2015: Any book after my revelatory experience with Smith was going to have it rough...and Jenni Fagan's Panopticon, was the lucky one to follow. But, I came to Fagan's work after reading an interview with Smith, where she recommended this novel--and it was a great book in its own right. The main character, Anais, was compelling enough that I was willing to follow her anywhere, even into the post-apocalyptic experimental "home" she found herself in. It reminded me of Girl, Interrupted in some moments, and of 1984 Orwell in others. A wholly satisfying read I can highly recommend, too. "The watching feeling is getting worse. I am not an experiment. I am not a stupid joke, or a trippy game, or an experiment. I will not go insane. Something bad is gonnae happen, though. I can feel it...If I keep saying it, I’ll start believing it. I have to try. I am not an experiment."
    

Remnant #7: Stitchcraft-Witchcraft

"What do you like to do?”
She scuffed a toe amongst the rushes. “Needlework.”
“Very restful, isn’t it?”
“Well,” she said, “not the way I do it.”

~George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones~ 

Today, I am a guide over at the Inner Alchemy Circle: Air Coven HERE, offering my writing and a card I created for the archetype of the Witch.  The card was from one of my embroidery art pieces I have been making out of old porn magazines from the 1970s.  I've created both witches and saints for this project and it has fed my creativity in ways I never anticipated.  The embroidery I used for the witch card is part of a larger piece, called "The Water Witch," and she has a saint counterpart, which sold at a local arts show. 

The show is over and, now, the witch has been shared for the group and the saint has gone to her new home--but, I haven't stopped making them.  I never expected any of these pieces to sell or to have them shared in any public way.  I'm thankful to one key person (you know who you are) for encouraging me to move my private practice into a public forum.  It meant the world to me that one did sell--and to a woman who is creative and talented and kindhearted.  And that the other has been seen by local artists and creative women via the online course, all around the world?  It blows my mind, in all honesty.  I am a writer, not an artist.  But, the line blurs and I find myself tangled up in a visual narrative I have no plans to stop working on. 

I have since made progress on more of these women.  The interesting part for me is that writing led me to needlecraft in the first place--and now, I am coming full-circle.  Eight years ago, I asked my mother to teach me to knit because a character in a story I was writing was a textile artist and I wanted to get the sensation of working with yarn exactly so in my words.  Then, it turned out that knitting became an outlet for me.  I still knit--most recently a tarot bag for a new deck of mine.  A few years after knitting, embroidery showed up.  I have been intrigued ever since.  Recently, my writing process has been difficult.  But, with the magic of this stitchcraft, I have found a way to remain connected to the thread of story running through my life.  Instead of words on a page, I've been creating the narratives of these women with thousands of stitches.   They are as real to me as any of my written characters.  I will welcome the story, however it comes to me...every pass of the needle, a new form of conjuring...every lustrous strand, another creative incantation.       
 

Remnant #6: My Wild Year in Books

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.  They are the destination, and the journey.  They are home."

~Anna Quindlen~ 

In the last six years, I have lived in six different places.  My family home, my brother's home, a dear friend's basement bedroom suite, a sundrenched apartment in a subdivided house that was once a clockmaker's shop, a little white cottage on a lot of green land, and my current home--a funky cape cod full of candles, curious-collections, and books.  Ohhhhh, so many books.

As I planned for my last move in May, my brother's only request was, "Can you maybe have some of the books moved beforehand?  Please?"  I laughed, but I knew what he meant.  As it turned out, I got the keys a month before move-day and the very first thing I did (after smudging the whole house and working a few other small rituals) was to move my books in.  With the April light pouring in the windows and the smell of palo santo heavy in the air, I sat in the middle of the dining room floor, surrounded by my first stacks of books.   

The battered blue Yale Shakespeare set caught my eye and I pulled As You Like It from the stack.  "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it."  And a wild yes in me.  Every book that was hauled into the house over the next few weeks brought me one step closer to home.  I think this is the gift of books for me--they make me feel HOME, no matter where I am.  Books hold memories...possibilities...magic.  They have always been my safe haven.

In spite of the countless pages I've read, though, I've never kept any sort of record of any of it, except for when I was in school.  But, if there is any resolution for me in 2015 it is to keep track of the books I have read--offering a brief note or two if it makes sense to, just keeping the title if not.  And, I plan to do a lot of that recording here.  This isn't becoming a "book blog," I have too many other competing fascinations to stick to one...but, there will be sometimes-snippets of My Wild Year in Books here.  Beginning right now:

• Book 1/2015: a reread of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston.  This is a book I originally read for a Women's Studies class many years ago and have reread several times.  It speaks to me...it matters...Moon Orchid, No Name Woman, language, loss, survival.  "I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. Petals are bone marrow; pearls come from oysters. The dragon lives in the sky, ocean, marshes, and mountains; and the mountains are also its cranium. Its voice thunders and jingles like copper pans. It breathes fire and water; and sometimes the dragon is one, sometimes many."
• Book 2/2015: I wanted a lighter read for my second book, after sinking into Kingston.  The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister was just right for this.  I liked it for the feminist-slant to the world of magicians and illusionists and the fact that it was the story of an entire life told in one dark, uncertain night.  I read it over a cold winter weekend with lots of tea. "Tonight, I will do the impossible.  The impossible is nothing new to me.  As I do every night, I will make people believe things that aren't true.  I will show them worlds that never existed, events that never happened.  I will weave a web of beautiful illusion to snare them, a glittering trap that drags them willingly with me into the magical, false, spellbinding world."           

Relic/Remnant #5: My Father, August 1962

A deep, wild current runs between father & daughter.  Through her, he sees the evolution of a woman--the dazzling progression from infancy to willowy childhood to adolescence.  It can change a man, witnessing this transformation.  Through her father, a daughter learns how to love or how to lose.

In this photo, he is in the Navy--still unmarried, still childless, still trying to find his way out into the world.  He is already in love with my mother.  Their passionate correspondence burns across page after page of their letters.  His hasn't been an easy childhood, & in my mother, he sees home for the first time.  He sees the first thing worth waiting for, worth becoming a better man for.  This is what he tells her.  He begs her to wait for him.  He spins elaborate stories of what their life together will be like.  He mentions the children he sees in their future.  Two, a boy and a girl.  Theirs.  Perfect.

I am something my father never saw coming.  The fifth born, but only the third to be born alive.  My father got his perfect two babies and then two stillborn sons.  Loss can also change a man.  By the time I was born, I was already a reminder of all that wasn't.  No fault of my own, but I was the baby born carrying the weight of the bones of the dead who came before me. 

This quiet heartbreak of my father's may have been what started us down the path to all that came after.  When I look at this photo of him: August, 1962, I feel a confused wash of maternal love.  He is so young here.  So many trials & sufferings still coming.  I want to reach out & stop him for what he will do.

The story is ours...is mine...is still being written.  It is dark & sad & full of thickets, bramble-wild.  I have "Mom" tattooed over my heart--but, "Dad" may be the deepest scar I carry on it.  A week & a half ago he was in the ICU, my beautiful, adrift, complicated Irish father.  He has come through another trial & it has stirred up in me old vestiges of our fractured past.  What I know:

mending...

fragility...

hope...

possibility...

that I may yet get to learn forgiveness.       

Remnant #4: Cassiopeia

"Cassiopeia, the Queen, can be seen in the northern hemisphere all year long. Cassiopeia was the wife of Cepheus and mother of Andromeda. She is represented chained to her throne in the heavens as punishment for her boast of being more beautiful than all the Nereids. As the skies rotate, she can sometimes be seen suffering as she hangs upside down."
 

Secrets under skin. Secret miracles hung around my neck. Secret sentences lodged in the base of my throat, unspoken. Lately, I have been sitting with the secrets and the silences. It has become my practice. Life keeps erupting all around me. Solar flares blaze and encircle my brain. A halo. And I don't have my words the way I used to, though I've inked them into my body. What is a writer when she isn't writing? The identity slips and so does the mask. Joan Didion said, "I don't know what I think until I write it down." Neither do I, but my words hold their reverent hush.

And so I pick up the needle and the thread again--back to the stitchcraft my mother showed me when I was a little girl. Needles singing through paper like my words can't. Needles telling women's stories--what they reveal and what they do not. My witches and saints, haunting at night.

I think what I mean to tell you is that one form is as good as another.  When one part of life doesn't work, let it sit there--stubborn and beautiful and unyielding--and pick up what does.  What I mean to tell you is that I will trade my words for your strands of patterned lace. I will kiss you back, if you kiss me first. Just don't ask me to tell you a story today. I don't know you. I love you already.  It is cold here, where I live. My heart, dissected in dim light, would glow with a million secret constellations.