The Woman in White

I just finished reading The Woman in White and all I can say is: Wilkie Collins, where have you been all my life? This book is a huge, bulging confection of florid phrasing, melodrama, suspense, delicate Victorian sensibilities and plot twists to make the mind boggle. I loved it.
Would I have loved it quite as much if I’d read the whole honking huge thing, rather than listening to it performed by the incomparable Simon Prebble? I don’t know. He mesmerized me with his performance of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, as well–another weighty volume of fantastic stuff that made me regret getting out of the car at the end of my commute. I have a subscription to one audio book per month and, wanting to get the most bang for my buck, gravitate toward the long novels that will keep me entertained until the next month’s credit kicks in. While my January listen to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment felt undeservedly–well–punishing, Collins delivers a real treat.

Thirty years ago I had my first encounter with a novel like this. Great Expectations was assigned for 9th-grade English and most of my classmates trudged through it and waited for better days. I submerged myself and came out a different reader. Great Expectations was the watershed moment that turned me from the early adolescent devourer of literature–indiscriminate, fast, un-reflective–to a Reader. And the plot twists, the archaic language, the enitre world Dicken’s held together with his skill and words is what did that for me. The way the myriad narrative threads were tied up in a bow, explained and accounted for, at the end of the novel set a kind of bar in my mind that affected (for good or ill) the way I read novels for years.

The Woman in White is generally regarded as the first  “suspense novel” or work of “suspense fiction.” There is the  mystery of the woman in white herself, who appears to haunt two families (at least) while she is alive, suggests that some wrong has been done to her or by her and sets the tone for the treatment of women in the novel–as potentially both threatened and threatening creatures. This is compounded by the sinister schemes of Lord Glyde and Count Fosco and the selfish indifference of Mr. Fairlie toward the fate of his niece and her half sister. Typical of nineteenth-century novels, this one revolves around questions of agency for women–is it possible?–and questions of class and rank–what is true nobility? And then there is Collin’s pacing: his narrative proceeds at a steady pace until–GASP–he stops to minutely describe a feeling, a sensation, a worry. At this point his observance of the characters and the plot fades into the background while he devotes all his time, energy, and verbiage to exploring the inner territory of someone’s “sentiments.” The pacing masterfully manipulates the reader–in spite of myself, I was anxious for the fact-finding mission of the main plot to continue; I was worried about what would befall the three central female characters.

I’m not much of a re-reader. In part because there is so much out there left for me to read and I’m greedy for those new experiences; in part because I know that loving a piece of literature is sometimes tied to time and place in a way that makes the re-reading of it necessarily diminished. So, I’m unlikely to go back to Great Expectations (although I do go back again and again to the German novels and novellas I teach). The Woman in White served, however, as an excellent reminder of why I love nineteenth-century novels so very very much.

Come, Sit, Stay!

So the Dog and I are playing a little game. The game goes like this:

Scene 1: evening. Jennifer sits on the sofa, knitting, with the Dog curled up beside her. The Dog snoozes peacefully. Occasionally, the working yarn on Jennifer’s project brushes a sensitive part of the Dog’s body (ear, snout, paw) and Dog twitches and snuffles to make it go away. The Dog is uninterested in yarn, in knitting. The Dog likes sleep.

 

Scene 2: daytime. Jennifer leaves the Dog alone in the house for the day. There are peanut-butter-filled Kongs and other delights to keep her occupied. Evidence has shown that Dog likes peanut butter and kongs. Evidence (see: above) has not shown that the dog has a personal affinity for knitted items. Dog eschews Kongs and peanut butter to find that one skein of yarn, that one unguarded wooden knitting needle, and drag it all over the house, chew it to bits, and slobber all over it. 

Scene 1 repeats itself that evening, with the added bonus of Jennifer winding up dog-slobber yarn. 

Scene 2 repeats itself the next day. 

Obviously, the Dog is training me to keep all of my yarn bits in well-sealed plastic bins. Good job, Dog! Good job, Jennifer!

The Best Thing I Ever Read

A link to a story about the best sentences ever crossed my FB feed this morning. There are some good sentences there and they run the gamut from Hemmingway-esque pith to Dickensian clause-tastic and some are obviously there because of the sentiment they impart, others because they are simply monuments to what a craftsperson can do with the raw material of the language. 

When I think about what has stuck with me as a reader, I can’t really zero in on the perfect sentence. I know which authors have left an impression on me because of their style, though. One of the single sentences that has stuck with me the longest, perhaps, is MFK Fisher’s opening line from The Gastronomical Me: “The first thing I cooked was pure poison.” This is a confession that the things we most love, are most committed to, are dangerous, perhaps even fatal, to those around us. Is this a Freudian suggestion that killing her mother–or her grandmother, who lived with them and terrorized their kitchen–was the goal of her taking over the stove? The cook who taught her how to do these things did just that, after all, and in quite bloody and dramatic fashion. Cooking is feeding and sustenance but it can be poison and death, as well. 

I don’t have the book in front of me at the moment but I recall that several chapters in her memoir are titled something like “The Extent of my Powers,” which indicates that she might have revelled just a bit in the prospect of being able to kill off her family, metaphorically speaking anyway. She left them for France, betrayed home for love and adventure. Later, she left her husband for a different love and a different adventure. Did she have to push away from her family, “kill them,” in order to develop her powers (literary, culinary, passionate) to their full extent? For a woman of her generation and background, this seems a pretty safe conclusion to draw. (And draw it I did, and from one measly sentence. Thank you, graduate school.)

Fisher approached her typewriter much as she approached her stove: with a straightforward confidence in her skill and ability. Her skill at writing was surely just as hard won as her skill in cooking and it probably goes without saying that the first thing she wrote was probably total shit–pure poison–as well. That’s worth keeping in mind for anyone who sits down to write anything. Your first attempt out of the gate–your brilliant idea to decorate your plain custard prose with poisonous berries from the alley of your heart–is likely going to suck for both you and any unfortunate reader who comes along. Don’t let that stop you. Try it again, maybe without the berries, or maybe with a different reader. The fact that you want to be there writing and that you want to dish up something that at least someone will find nourishing or sustaining or interesting or funny or whatever means that you likely have enough commitment to the task to stay there and work on it and get it right. 

Cancelling the Gym Membership

I just went out looking for an image (available for my use under Creative Commons licensing, natch) to accompany my musings on why I just cancelled my gym membership and. . . just. . . gah! Wanting to attribute the image properly means that I want images that have some sort of attribution/license and those are either hard to come by or hard to decipher (because I’m a moron?). Also, if you google “image woman gym” or something along those lines, the results returned to you will contain scads of images that I don’t want to put on my blog or, really, even look at. (read: soft core porn alert)

So, no pretty pictures for you, my sweets. 

But I did cancel my membership. One reason was that (duh) I wasn’t using it and nobody likes paying something for nothing. This winter (I don’t know if you’ve noticed or heard) has been brutally cold and nasty and my love of sleep and general avoidance of getting up before dawn to run to the gym in sub-freezing temps meant that there were a thousand other things (sleeeeeep) I’d rather do than go to the gym. Of course I felt guilty–guilty for my bank account (look, there’s the charge for the gym membership, the one I’m not using. What a bad financial move that is!) And guilty for my body (you’re over 40 you know; you should really lift some more.) And a bit of relationship guilt in there, too (look at Dale. The man is creeping up on 50 and has six-pack abs and can run a sub 3:15 marathon. Why am I not that dedicated?)

My ultimate response to this guilt, though, is why I went through with the cancellation instead of just hoping against hope that I’d guilt myself back to the squat cage. I realized that my guilt at not going to the gym is part and parcel of a punitive attitude I take toward my body and exercise: Make the body hurt, work it out to mold it and sculpt it, don’t let it be soft. I’m not sure this is a new realization. Years ago I told my yoga teacher that I ran to stay fit (read: thin) but that I did yoga to be good to my body. 

Goodbye, guilt; goodbye, attitude that equates exercise with punishment. (I’m sure these long-term-resident guests will be back for a visit but I’ve at least shown them the door!) I like yoga; I like the way it makes my body and my mind feel. Therefore I will do it. I also am currently fond of the 7-minute exercise routine, in part because it only takes 7 minutes and works out all sorts of muscle groups and in part because I can do it on my yoga mat with the piano bench alongside. Monday and Tuesday I added 5 minutes of kettle bells to the 7-minute workout because I felt like doing it and wanted to see how it would feel. Today my thighs are in agony so I might or might not do those five minutes tomorrow. I have some persistent pain issues in my piriformis and hip and those kettle bell swings, like too much running, aggravate it in a way that isn’t productive. I don’t need constant pain in my life. 

So, add the kettle bells or leave them off, both options are ok. I’ll move my body around, do some things that make me feel strong and capable, and then stop when the timer goes off or when I’ve rested enough in corpse pose. When it is no longer so freaking cold, I’ll leash up Bella the Boodle Dog and let her take me out for a drag. 

For years I’ve preached the gospel that working out regularly gives you more energy and makes you feel better. This is true–until it isn’t. If working out is a chore and doing it is fuelled only by guilt or regret, then even if your body benefits, your mind doesn’t. I (we all) exist in my body; it is my permanent home. No, I don’t want it to collapse in shambles and get condemned by the city or anything, but I want to be happy spending time in it. For me, right now, that means no gyms. 

Srsly, dog??

The new mattress, while decompressing in the attic, evidently obstructed Bella’s access to one of her favorite chewy toys.
She responded by finding things on the nearby shelves to chew.

Happily, Bella appears to prefer destroying low-cost items. Miraculously, all the playing cards and concentration cards strewn across the mattress survived! Their boxes were damaged; she chewed the spine off a library book (not pictured); and that Nerf ball never had a chance.

Plot Lines

I’m reading Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. (This passes as pleasure reading when compared to the stacks of Holocaust-themed YA books in my “to-read” list.) In her chapter titled “The Origins of the Novel,” she discusses Don Quixote as the first example of an authorial consciousness revealing itself to the reader. Of DQ she also writes: “As with many great works, the original stroke of genius by the author was coming up with a good, simple idea (a middle-aged gentleman who has read so many accounts of knightly courage that he decides to try it himself).”

Today’s equivalent? I mean, I could perhaps dream up a narrative in which a middle-aged man, inspired by the zeitgeist of, say, “do what you love” abandons his secure job and pension and launches his dream business of freelancing as a copywriter for the packaging of OTC pharmaceuticals. But this would be tragic and sad and pathetic. (Or is that my cynicism showing?)

Or, if we see the plot as an exploration of the confrontation between what the protagonist believes the world to be and what the world actually is, we could have, say a member of the 1% live on $30K/year and see what that offers up in the way of hilarity. 

OR–middle-aged gentleperson, inspired by No Child Left Behind and the cottage industry of writing about What is Wrong With Education in America–goes to teach in a public school and ends every day curled up in a wee ball of tears under the desk, without the energy to get home. Oh, the funny is just there waiting to be written.

 

And the penny drops

I realize there is absolutely nothing unique about me starting a blog, writing a bit on a blog, casting about for the central theme or premise of my blog–a message or tone to hold things together–failing at that and then failing at regularly writing on the blog. The tubes of the internet are littered with abandoned blogs, faded podcasts, and stranded cats. I feel guilty about it, though.

You started this writing project and now you’re not sticking to it. 

That is the sound of the little voice in my head chastising me for not keeping up with the blog. 

This little voice sounds a great deal like the other little voice in my head, which, upon further consideration, isn’t little at all. It’s my academic superego voice telling me: You haven’t finished that article draft yet. You need to get working on that. If you were only more dedicated to your career, you’d publish more frequently.  

And suddenly this morning it occurred to me that (a) these are the same voice. This voice assumes that my diligence and dedication are called upon each time I sit down to write; that writing is a chore; and that this chore is something I might acquire a type of facility in only after honing it over the equivalent (at least) of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. Realization (b), occurring simultaneously, was that it doesn’t have to be like this. Writing pulls at me. yet when I sit down to do it, I feel confronted with a wall of shoulds, rules, considerations, fears, and doubts about the what, the how, and even the why of writing–especially for a blog. I know well and it’s been asserted elsewhere repeatedly that informal writing begets more formal writing–or that more of one likely feeds into more of the other. I know that free writing as a practice can yield interesting results for the writer and for his/her self-awareness and creative abilities. Yet I’ve always approached writing as a field of activity to which I owe some debt of suffering and time. I’ve internalized Hemmingway’s bon mot along the lines of “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” which means that, on those days when I don’t particularly feel like opening a vein, or that my veins have nothing much to offer up, I’d better avoid the keyboard and the damage I might inflict on the written word if I sat at it. 

But–and here’s where the shock to my system occurred–what if I write because it’s fun, because I find it enjoyable? What if I pick silly things to put out there and just don’t worry so damn much? What if I give myself permission to play around with writing, to look inside or around me and allow myself to reflect and comment with no worries about audience or tone or perfection? Consistency be damned–just have fun. 

Nests

Dale and I have owned four houses (and sold three) since 2001. How does that compare to national averages? I sure feel like a nomad sometimes, even though statistics show that we’re not particularly unique. But, frequent moving and house hunting have honed my sense of what I want in home–the features that appeal to me and make me feel “homey.” And, since I’m one of the chief decision makers around here, we’ve worked steadily toward realizing something like an affordable version of our shared vision of a cozy domestic space.

But what would the kids have chosen, I wonder? I sometimes miss a garage (like yesterday, when 20cm of snow fell on our long, unsheltered driveway. With a garage I would spend less time scraping off my car. A snowblower would also fit in a garage!) but would the kids care one way or the other if we had one? Because of the way homes in our neighborhood were built, our basement has a rather low ceiling. Dale and I feel like the basement is sort of cramped and a bit damp. The kids don’t seem to mind at all and would like us to turn it into a lair for them.

Ingrid’s ideal home, I think, would feature walls constructed entirely out of cubby spaces. Something like this yarn shop’s display walls, only with tinier cubbies:

The Loopy Ewe

Ingrid is a fan of all things small and collectible. Unchecked, this fandom would lead her to gather piles of beer bottle caps and wine corks, postage stamps and mailing labels, fake credit cards that come in the mail, used up gift cards, shiny bits of wrapping and cloth. Maybe she channels some kind of paper-obsessed magpie. I don’t think Ingrid needs a ton of space. She likes tight quarters and being surrounded by her stuff. A small, cluttered, colorful full home. That’s Ingrid.

Greta, on the other hand, needs space. To judge by her bedroom, she doesn’t need wee cubbies to hold wee collections of wee things, like her sister. She needs real estate that will accommodate her desire to build piles of things, pyramids of clothing (clean & dirty), books and notebooks, school bags and ballet paraphernalia.  Given that she also opts to keep her curtains forever closed, I picture Greta’s ideal home as some sort of far-reaching, undulating hobbit hole (of which I shall provide no picture, because copyright and such).

And you–what does your current living space say about your ideal home?

Sourdough evangelism

sourdough bread

We kicked up a sourdough starter a couple of years ago and have managed to keep it alive through some skill and a bit of reliance on the biology of bacterial and yeast cultures. It took some CPR after this year’s summer vacation to bring it back from the brink of death, but we pulled it off and now it’s as vital as ever.

Lots of people want to make sourdough bread, but run into two basic problems. One, initiating a starter can be hit or mess. A new starter always goes through a ‘stinky’ phase, where the flour/water mush smells like vomit, a landfill, or even worse. If you’re lucky, it turns the corner (aka your bacterial culture wipes out the bad stuff). If not, you start over. Much easier is to get a bit of a friend’s starter, which is a service I’ve now provided many, many times, with mixed results.

This leads to the second problem: once you have a bit of starter, what do you do to keep it happy and actually make bread? There are myriad cookbooks and Web pages out there with all kinds of advice, but to my mind, many of them overcomplicate the process and sort of ignore the basic and elegant biology of a viable sourdough starter. Rather than pass on my hard-won wisdom piecemeal, I thought I’d take a few moments to record the process.

A prefatory note: this process should be fun. Much like homebrewing, the mantra of which is Papazian’s “relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew,” breadbaking is about making bread. The stakes here are low. After all, the main ingredients are flour, water, and salt, not exactly truffles and saffron on the financial scale. If you botch some bread, feed it to the ducks, use it as a doorstop, etc. If your starter dies, do not weep. Just chuck it and start again.

starter not yet bubbly

If you get some sourdough starter from me, you likely got it in one of two forms: dried flakes or about a quarter cup of starter in all its sticky and sour glory. Here’s what to do with both:

Flakes – Do this within a week of getting them from me. They supposedly have a fairly long shelf life, but why wait? Dump the flakes in a medium-sized glass, ceramic, porcelain, or stoneware bowl. Plastic is fine, too, but not optimal. Put in about a tablespoon of flour–rye, AP, or whole wheat are all fine, preferably organic–and then enough water to make the flour and flakes into a paste about the consistency of oatmeal. Cover the bowl with a cloth and leave it on the counter. Within a day or day and a half (ambient temperature and humidity matter), it should begin bubbling a bit. If not, wait another day. Once it bubbles, feed it daily, doubling its bulk, more or less, with each feeding. Once you’ve got a couple of cups worth of starter, you’re in business.

Starter – Do this within a day or two of getting it from me, and until you can do this keep the baggie in the fridge. Scrape the goo out of the bag with a spoon into a bowl as described above and feed it a few tablespoons of flour and enough water to maintain about the same consistency. It should start bubbling within 6-8 hours at most, depending on conditions. Simply feed daily as above, bulking it up.

When you have a starter on the counter for days on end like this, it’s normal for it to form a dry skin on top between feedings. Just stir it in during the next feeding. Feed every day, or at least every other day, and the skin will not be a problem. I suppose one could avoid this by using a plastic lid or plastic wrap instead of a cloth, but I like the cloth since it breathes and lets a bit of the starter aroma into the air. It’s a pleasant sour smell.

Once you’ve got enough starter with which to bake (about 300 g for a kilo loaf, or about half a cup), leaving about a couple of cups to continue the starter, you’re ready to bake. There are myriad recipes out there, but I can describe here my go-to loaf and then you can riff on that process with just about recipe. The loaf I make takes 1000g of ingredients: 300g of starter, 300g AP flour, 100g WW flour, 300g water, some salt, and sometimes flaxseed, sunflower seeds, etc. If your starter is warm and active–i.e.-it’s been sitting on the counter bubbling away–you’re ready to use it. Make your dough, let it rise (sourdough is slower than yeast, but oh so superior in every way), and bake as you would pretty much any yeast bread.

I strongly recommend getting a kitchen scale to do this by weight rather than measurements. Starter is stickier than most known substances, so the thought of having to measure it in a cup fills me with dread. Besides, if you put a stainless steel baking bowl on a scale and zero it, you can weight out the ingredients in about a minute, no muss, no fuss.

starter storage

So know you’ve got bread rising and are about to enjoy the fruits of your labour. What to do with the rest of the bowl of starter? I put mine in an airtight plastic container, feed it a wee bit (maybe a teaspoon and enough water to keep the consistency), and then put it in the fridge. I know from experience this will last in the fridge in this state for at least three weeks. Beyond that, you can ostensibly freeze it, although to be honest that hasn’t worked well for me in the past.  Sometimes if the starter is overly excited–who knows, maybe the yeast are having a party–it will pop the lid, but this is rare, and if you use a large enough container, not a big deal.

Next time you want to bake, take this out of the fridge, scoop out enough to make a sufficient ‘production’ starter batch. For the example above, this is would be at least 300g, so I’ll put about 150-200g or so (I eyeball this, really) in a glass or ceramic bowl, feed it with flour and water until there’s about 400g in the bowl. It sits for 6-8 hours (sometimes more, sometimes less) on the counter until it is bubbly and airy, then I bake. Overnight is fine, too. Measure out what you need, and put the remainder back with the “mother” culture in the fridge, stirring this ‘new’ starter in well to mix it up. I typically toss in some flour when doing this to feed the whole mass.

I’ve probably left out all sorts of details, so if anyone has questions, please ask them below and I’ll improve these instructions accordingly.

Happy baking!

Meditation, Inner Dialogue, and Ambition

I’ve finished listening to Pema Chödrön’s Start Where You Are, which, title notwithstanding, is not a book for beginners to Tibetan Buddhism or meditation. It assumes you’ve already set off on this path of self-compassion and mindfulness and its lessons are there to supplement what you learn at your meditation centre or from your teacher. In meditation, evidently (for I am neither expert nor practitioner), you start with what you’ve got, where you are, and work with that stuff (suffering, pain, embarrassment, discomfort, pride, joy, whatever) as the raw material for “waking up” to your own life. 

The system Chödrön describes is a complex one: there are slogans and principles and teachings and vows. Sometimes one teaching or one principle is broken down into a short list of its constituent parts, and these presented in abstracted language–or language that has become abstracted in the translator’s attempt to keep it accurate and true to the original meaning. While there are people out there, like Jon Kabat-Zinn at the UMAss Med Center’s Center for Mindfulness, who incorporate Buddhist teachings and principles into stress-reduction techniques, Buddhism is a religion and has an inherent system to which one must, ideally, be faithful in the whole and not just in the parts you find attractive for your current purposes.

Like most Westerners, though, I’m reading about Buddhism because it seems to hold the promise of experiencing less pain, or dealing better with pain, or not freaking out because things feel difficult or uncertain. So, if I follow the letter, if not the spirit of Pema Chödrön’s title and start with me right here and now, I’ve learned a thing or two:

• even serious meditators don’t actually blank out while meditating. Your thoughts are always going to come and engage your brain in its endless internal conversation loop.
• what is important is what you do with those thoughts. Do you use them to construct the narrative that is/becomes your self or ego? Or do you acknowledge that you’re sitting there, making a huge deal out of yourself and your internal life and you should just Let. It. Go.?

Buddhism and meditation have some good vocabulary to get at the root of the adage to know thyself and love yourself for who you are.  The goal of meditation and mindfulness is not to zone out of your life in order to smooth over the rough spots. (Though let’s confess that this option sounds pretty attractive at times.) Instead, the goal is to really know what you fear, what prompts your anger or indignation, what makes you uneasy–and make friends with that emotion in yourself. See it, know it, feel compassion toward it. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then, share that compassion outward, recognizing that all the nastiness and fear in you is in others, as well. Send compassion outward, but start with yourself. 

My inner dialogue often involves if . . . . then . . . . /or when . . . . then . . . . scenarios that I construct for myself. These scenarios help me come to terms with what I think my true values are, what is totally essential in my life, and where I want to wind up. A Buddhist teacher would likely tell me, or let me find out for myself, that I am not going to wind up anywhere–I am somewhere and will be somewhere tomorrow and somewhere the day after that. NOW is not a moment to flee or plan my way out of. Now is it and will be it and always has been it. 

I know this. We all do. Pop psychology and self-help books are full of this advice and I’ve read it before. But living in the now–and really appreciating it and having compassion for it, warts and all–doesn’t fit well with that part of me that wants to have a plan for my family’s financial and material and educational future. I don’t think Buddhism would reject the notion of saving for the kids’ education, but I do think it rejects my own internal dialogue about what life has to look like in order for me to finally heave that heavy sigh of relief and say, “whew, we made it.” In part because I assume that I will have to overcome parts of myself in order to get to wherever “there” is. Those parts aren’t there to be overcome. They are there because they are there and instead of pitching some sort of adversarial war against them, I need to get to know them, feel love and compassion for them, and then choose to not do them if that is what I need to be happy. 

So, it’s not quite “I’m smart enough, I’m good enough, and doggone it, people like me.” It’s more like, “yep, I am annoying and neurotic, just like everyone else. I’m going to make friends with my annoying behaviours and neurosis. You wanna do the same? Then maybe we’ll stop inflicting them on others, mmmkay?”