“Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.”
I’m ending the week on a hopeful note with a quote from legendary actress Bette Davis. I like her word choice of “space” rather than “gap” since it makes far flung dreams seem more within reach. My immediate dream is a fun weekend trip with the family including swimming, Ikea, a tram ride and (hopefully!) relaxing dining experiences. Make it so!
On a walk through the Missouri Ozarks, writer Sue Hubbell hopes her dogs don’t discover the small fawn she has just seen.
“At last we whistled up our dogs and walked back up to the cabin. We stopped by the fence where the fawn had been, but there was no sign of the youngster or his mother. The bent grasses where he had lain had sprung back, and even his scent must have been gone, for the dogs waiting near us, quiet and tired, took no notice.”
I’ve read Hubbell’s non-fiction book titled A Country Year twice. Hubbell chronicles nature through the seasons when this ex-librarian moves to a cabin in the wilderness and becomes a beekeeper. Her observations are thoughtful and she presents them simply. One reviewer said her book was “beautiful as honey poured from a jar…” If you don’t live in nature, this is the “arm chair” way to experience it.
“He took a swig of the friand, tasted fruit and freshness, a flavor that turned briefly and looked back over its shoulder at the summer before last, but didn’t pause, even to shade its eyes.”
At wine tastings, the language can get a bit thick! But I like the descriptions in The Vintner’s Luck by Elizabeth Knox. Here she adds an element of season to how the wine tastes. The novel turns unusual when an angel appears. Read this one with a glass of burgundy.
“This is a book about how writers of all kinds may honor the filaments of wisdom spoken by friends and strangers nearby, our local prophets who need our voices to report what they have half-discovered.”
So begins The Muses Among Us; Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft written by Oregon writer Kim Stafford. It is a gem of a book and I had to share it even though I’ve only just begun. This sentence is about an approach to writing I refer to as collecting “kernels” from people around me which I can weave together later in a story. He explains it poetically which is why this book is a pleasure to read while providing practical insight for writers. This book is sure to spark your creative muse.
Thanks to artist Paul for recommending Muses to me.
Do you remember the part in Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach when a rain cloud burts open over the flying peach?
“It was a great solid mass of water that might have been a lake or a whole ocean dropping out of the sky on top of them, and down it came, down and down and down, crashing into the seagulls and then onto the peach itself, while the poor travelers shrieked with fear and groped around frantically for something to catch hold of — the peach stem, the silk strings, anything they could find — and all the time the water came pouring and roaring down upon them, bouncing and smashing and sloshing and slashing and swashing and swirling and surging and whirling and gurgling and gushing and rushing and rushing, and it was like being pinned down underneath the biggest waterfall in the world and not being able to get out.”
Are you out of breath? That’s probably the longest sentence in Dahl’s classic children’s book. The rolling style of this “run on” sentence gets the turbulent mood across. I love the string of adjectives he rolls out at the end. And the next sentence after that wild ride is simply, “They couldn’t speak” which provides the perfect punctuation. Dahl’s book is a fun adventure at any age.
What do your reading choices say about you? Do you judge your friends, romantic or platonic, by what they read or don’t read? I have been pondering this as I read one of the most emailed articles on The New York Times site recently; it is Rachael Donadio’s essay It’s Not You, It’s Your Books. The essay begins with the writer getting a call from a friend who had just broken up with her boyfriend exclaiming, “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”
Well, I don’t require a friend to read Pushkin but I think it is a good indicator of compatibility.
Funny comments follow the essay, one person saying anyone who loved Da Vinci Code would get the boot, another saying any book by Ayn Rand would be a turn-off and another saying the whole notion is too elite. Another commenter added there are now “literary speed dating” events at libraries where people bring a favorite book and find new like-minded friends. Years ago, my own “speed dating” question was to find out if the guy read at all; if not, how boring! What does your book shelf say about you?
“Oh but I do remember when I was scared. Everything was so wrong like somebody had knocked something loose and my family was shaking itself to death.”
The young girl in Kaye Gibbons first novel Ellen Foster describes the wild ride of her family in a distinct voice. Ellen describes the death of her parents and other horrors in simple, powerful language true to a young girl. There’s also humor in the story. I heard Gibbons lecture years ago and could hear the voice of her characters in her own drawling voice. She talked about trying to write with her three daughters in the house. In one interview she said, “My life is equally divided between literature and laundry…” She went on to say, “…as writing and mothering are the only two enterprises I’ve ever been fully confident at, two similar tasks, working toward the same end, seeing to it that blank slates are filled with life and love.”
“The rattle of her wagon was lost in the howling of the wind, but her lantern, held firmly between her feet, made a moving point of light along the highway, going deeper and deeper into the dark country.”
If you assume from this sentence that Alexandra is a strong young woman, then you’d be right. In Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, she writes of the immigrant farming experience in the plains states. The wind may be howling but Alexandra remains a bright light in the dark.
Cather is known for her novels depicting this unique period in American history. I think she’s a must-read to understand the frontier life. After all, she was honored on a postage stamp!
“The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard – a “swept” yard that was never swept – where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.”
Can’t you see that old crooked fence half standing around the unkempt yard? Boo Radley’s house says a lot about him as written by Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird. Her word choice in these sentences of darkened, drooped, drunkenly all add to the mystery the neighboring children feel about this house and its inhabitant. This classic American novel from 1960 is a good re-read.
I had another entry last Wednesday (Zadie Smith’s On Beauty) about a house described almost as if it were a character. What other books feature houses as a “character”?
“I’m looking forward to campaigning in Oregon where I can ditch the suits and wear a comfy pair of Keen’s.”
It’s true that Hillary Clinton is heading to Oregon to campaign. And it’s true that hip shoe maker http://www.keenefootwear.com/ is headquartered here. But, as to this sentence — April Fools !
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