Many women were sheltered beneath his shade.

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Ah, The Tale of Genji, what is it about? It is about a man named Genji, a wealthy commoner born of an emperor, living in eleventh century Japan. It is also about his many (many) (many) women. It is also about his progeny, and his putative progeny. It is a love story, a telenovela, a word of warning. It is simultaneously deeply misogynistic and beautifully feminist. It is the first 'novel' we have in our hands in the present, and it is the work of a woman. It is lyrical, poetic, poignant, and disturbing. For every beautiful moment there is an equally painful moment where a woman is in distress, and a distress of man's making. It is a study in contrasts, it is a work of art, and it is, above all, many things. Genji is not easily contained or blurbed, and anyone who would wish to make you think so is simply not telling you the truth.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear readers, 

  You may have noticed that it has been some time since I have blobbed. The reasons are threefold: 

(1) Genji is very long. As in, 1,319 pages. So it took even this fast reader quite some time. 
(2) I am engaged in book bingos (of my own making, #pressed) - one is a "Spooktober" book bingo, and the other is a "feminist resistance" book bingo (it's so intersectional, it's Spoooky!) so I have been reading several other books and cheating, as it were, on this blob list. 
(3) Life. It can be busy!

 Without further ado, allow me to welcome you to the world of Genji. Or Genji-bear as I like to call him. Not because he's so endearing, per se, but because I spent so much time with him. A few quick notes if you are considering undertaking this task: 

• It is widely believed that Genji is unfinished. While Shikibu *may* have intended to leave the book unresolved, it seems more likely that she either died before she could finish, or that we simply have lost some of the later chapters in the last 900 years since it was written. You know, sometimes you lose your library card, sometimes you lose the last few chapters of an epic novel. It happens. Personally, I found the lack of resolution very unsatisfying. But that's just me. Maybe you like a jazz ending.

• Genji is not an easy book to read as a 21st century woman. Maybe it wasn't easy to read as an eleventh century woman, either. I won't get into the details too much here, but suffice to say that it read a little (or a lot) "rapey" for my taste. I'm all for telling all our stories, but I can't condone the behavior of Genji or MOST of the men in the novel.

Favorite chapters
Since the first ten chapters of the book read as a laundry list of Genji's lovers (willing and not so willing) my favorite chapter initially was when Genji was exiled for bad behavior. Basically, he slept with the wrong woman, and got sent away from court for what everyone THOUGHT was going to be eternity. But which turned out to be like a couple of months. Genji being Genji, of course he ended up seducing a lady in exile and getting her pregnant (surprising no one) but at least we got to spend like half a chapter not chasing a lady. 

If you're interested in reading a taste of Genji, I'd recommend that chapter, or the one where a lady basically goes Grey Gardens and refuses to leave her home even though it is crumbling to pieces around her. I found it delightful. 

• Exile chapter - Exile to Suma (no callers except for the wind and the waves)

• Grey Gardens chapter - Ruined Villa of Tangled Gardens

Genji snapshot
Okay, so I've been painting around the edges of who Genji was, but let me give you a chance to get to know him yourself. Here are some lines I have carefully selected to give you a flavor of our titular character:

• How will I ever find out which sister I slept with? (#playerproblems)

• His disposition always drew him toward relationships that were unusual and problematic. One could also substitute "pedophilic" for unusual and the sentence would still be true.

• Genji seemed to be always suffering pangs of longing for every woman he knew.

• His radiant splendor was a never-ending reminder of her own insignificance. Ah, yes. In addition to constantly hunting down women, Genji was apparently SO GORGEOUS he basically sparkled, à la Twilight. I don't know if this made me like him more or less. Less, I think. Maybe I wouldn't have minded him so much if he was hideous? No, I'd probably still hate him.

• All of my women, each in her way, have qualities that make it impossible for me to abandon them. It makes my life very trying. OH SO TRYING. #hoesindifferentareacodes

• I sometimes neglect to take care of things...but perhaps that's natural, given that I have so many competing responsibilities that keep me busy. IS IT THO?

• Despite his troubling perversity, he himself cut a magnificent figure. see above comments.

• Genji's son, on Genji - You're being unreasonable. Do you mean to say that he should give all of his attention to only one of his wives? LOL. What a preposterous idea!

Defilement, demonic possession, and directional taboos
One of the things that I genuinely loved about this book was that it was all kinds of bizarre. I don't know much about Japanese culture from that period, so I think quite a bit of it was not weird for the time period, but reading it now, it was positively wild. Here's the rundown:

defilement - apparently, you could be defiled by birth, death, washing your hair at an inauspicious time. basically there were tons of way to be defiled. so you had to be careful! (To be clear, I'm not making fun of religious or spiritual beliefs, just saying that it had a lot of rules, some of which felt practically challenging.)

demonic/spiritual possession - this happened more often than you might think. often, Genji's ladies from the past would inhabit one of his ladies from the present to mess with his head. admittedly, I found this FANTASTIC. 

directional taboos - at several points in the novel, there were directional taboos, so people couldn't travel west, or couldn't travel north, or sometimes couldn't travel at all. I feel like this would be a very convenient excuse to not do something I didn't want to. Oh, so sorry, I can't come to your event, since there's a directional taboo on traveling south today. 

Kaoru, the original mansplainer
Spoiler alert - Genji dies WAYYYYYYY before the end of this story. The last four hundred pages are about his grandson and his putative son (as in, was actually the product of a rape, but mostly everyone thinks he's Genji's son. Except Genji.) The putative son, Kaoru, is, imho, fairly obnoxious, and even less likable than Genji (which is hard). This line he says to some ladies made me dub him the original mansplainer: 

• Being a man, I have many things to tell you that you might not otherwise learn."

Koto and the game of Go

Since it was the eleventh century and all, the main characters do a lot of playing music, like on the koto (see right) and playing a game called "Go" (see left). Aside from eating (and courting lovers) this is really the main activity. Oh, and they play backgammon - who knew it was that old? While I feel like this might have gotten old after a while, I really loved the scenes where they just gathered together and had extravagant parties to play music. Granted, the people in the story were mostly super wealthy, so they had the luxury of doing that, but still. It sounded fairly magical. Here's a sample:

Singers were summoned to the steps of the main entrance on the south side, and they accompanied the instruments by intoning the syllables of the musical scale in extraordinarily fine voices until the night deepened and the modes were changed, with the performers shifting to intimate minor keys. 

Themes
Here is a collection of themes I compiled as I was reading: 
- Love
- Beauty
- Evanescence of life (this one comes up A LOT)
- Rape
- Seasons/nature
- Balancing your affairs
- Crying (about anything - the weather, a pretty song, a lovely poem)
- Poetry
- Pedophilia
- Taking vows (this seemed like a very common activity - both for older folks, and for women as a kind of 'last resort')
- Hyperbole
- Incest
- Music and nature

• When music is performed during the melancholy of autumn, the notes weave together with the chirring of crickets to produce indescribably moving overtones. Isn't that lovely?

Kaoru's special smell

• He couldn't remain hidden for long before his fragrance gave him away. I found this hilarious. There's a lot of scenting of robes and contests to see who makes the best incense, but apparently Kaoru had an innate smell that was intoxicating, but also made it very difficult for him to try to play hide and seek when he was trying to surprise the ladies. (Who mostly didn't want to be surprised.)

Lines about ladies
It was kind of trippy reading a book that had so much misogyny and troubling rules for female behavior, but I felt like Murasaki Shikibu came out more and more as the tale went on, which I enjoyed. Still, here's an example for cognitive dissonance:

In all cases a woman should pretend to be ignorant, even if she has a little learning. And when she has something to say, she should just focus on a couple of points and skip the rest.

Lines I want to steal
Ok, so I obviously read this work in translation, since I'm not fluent in Japanese, but I loved the translation I read, and would highly recommend it. Washburn was the translator, and while I haven't read other versions, I really enjoyed the way the words came across to me. Here are some lines I would like to bring into present vernacular: 

• An ascetic's response to Genji when he tries to summon him - I am getting much too old to leave my cave anymore. lololololz.

• Murasaki, who becomes Genji's favorite woman, before he goes into exile and abandons her, responds his comment about not behaving in a way that is untoward - Is there anything more untoward than what's happening now?

• The Hitachi princess, aka Ms. Grey Gardens - Though what you have said makes me glad, I am not like other people, so how could I possibly leave my home? I shall remain here always until it crumbles around me and disappears. ah, yes. great plan.

• Tō No Chujo, to his daughter - It's undignified to just lie about looking disheveled.

• The expression on your face could easily pulverize boulders. I love this one so much.

• I have caught a cold and am indisposed. Sorry, directional taboo on traveling south, and I have caught a cold and am indisposed!

• You should consider my love a deep abyss, and throw yourself into it. Tempting... but no.

• Your playing is getting less intolerable all the time. Wow. What an overwhelming compliment. 

Shikibu-isms
Like I said, we get more and more peeks at Shikibu throughout the book. Here are some of my favorites:

• Unfortunately, I have a terrible headache, and it is simply too much to go on with the story. 

• I have heard that he acquired a reputation as a pompous fool who meddled in things that were none of his business. 

• In the old romances they deemed the enumeration of treasured possessions a wonderful thing, but I find such lists annoying, and, in any case, I could not possibly count up the gifts and rewards bestowed at that banquet. 

On women
Just as we see more of the author, I also felt like we got to see more of her perspective and commentary on the female experience. Some snippets...

• Is there any life as restricted and miserable as a woman's?

• No matter how proud and brave you are, can any woman really manage to look after her affairs solely on her own?

• The longer a woman lives in this world, the more likely it is that unpleasant surprises will befall her.

• Men may exude an air of kindness and sagacity, but they are cruelly fickle.

Referents/Reverberations
This line - She was compliant by nature, but in forcing herself to be resolute, she resembled supple bamboo, which, though it looks fragile, will not easily break.

Reminded me of this line from Gone With the Wind - We're not wheat, we're buckwheat!

This line from Genji - I waited all day yesterday for you. Apparently I am not in your thoughts as much as you are in mine.

Reminded me of this line of YBN's, to Gilberte, from Swann's Way - "I had so many things to ask you,' I said to her. 'I thought that today was going to mean so much in our friendship. And no sooner have you come than you go away! Try to come early tomorrow, so that I can talk to you.'"

And finally this line: I realize that it's customary for a woman to pretend that she knows nothing of the aching sorrow in a man's heart, even when she is all too aware of his feelings. But it's especially disappointing that you in particular should feign complete ignorance about me.

Reminded me of this line from Pride and Prejudice, when Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzy - I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.”

Title Possibilities
I opted for the one I chose because I felt it most accurately captured both Genji's extensive collection of women but also the fact that many of the women genuinely benefitted from his benevolence, given the patriarchal structure of society.

• Who first taught you the world was a place of woe?

• Feeling forlorn, she looked with envy at the returning waves.

• No doubt I shall suffer painful regrets even in the world to come.

• A twentieth-night moon shone exceptionally clear, the surface of the sea was sublimely beautiful, heavy frost settled, turning the fields of pine white, and a penetrating chill created a profoundly moving aura of elegance and melancholy.

• There are so many things past and present that I regret about my impulsive heart.

New Words
arhat - (in Buddhism and Jainism) someone who has attained the goal of the religious life

cresset - a metal container of oil, grease, wood, or coal burned as a torch and typically mounted on a pole

lambent - (of light or fire) glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance

moonflower - tropical American morning glory with fragrant flowers

pampas grass - a tall South American grass with silky flowering plumes, widely cultivated as an ornamental plant

paulownia trees -  any of a genus of Chinese trees of the snapdragon family especially one widely cultivated for its panicles of fragrant violet flowers

sutra - a rule or aphorism in Sanskrit literature, or a set of these on grammar or Hindu law or philosophy

uxorial - relating to a wife

Well, if you made it through this blob, you have a TEENSY taste of what it was like to read Genji! ;) I'll leave you with a few of my favorite lines: 

In the poetry of our land, the poignant beauty of autumn seems to be favored.

A lot of things have changed in a thousand years, but it's oddly comforting to me to know that they loved fall as much as I did. 

There are moments when one wants to pass on to later generations the appearance and condition of people living in the present - both the good and the bad. These are the subjects that people never tire of, no matter how many times you read about them. Shall we make a story unlike any other that has ever been told and pass it on to later generations?

Shall we? Do let's. 

I'm off to The Gorgeous and the Cursed, or was it The Stunning and the Haunted? Or maybe it's just a retelling of Genji. ;) 

Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.

You must not stop because you can't go on, but you must go on because you can't stop.

Jubilee by Margaret Walker

Spoiler Alert: Plot Poem

First Vyry is born and brought into this world, child of slave and master.
Dregs of childhood hurled away, she's meant for plantation disaster.
Her own mother dies, her surrogate next, third suddenly sold down South.
Vyry's connection to the Big House complex, a teen now who cooks to fill mouths.
Master tries to be kind; wife Salina hates hard, furious Vyry's mistaken for her Lillian's twin.
Randall Ware, a free black, plays the marriage card, but Vyry's not sure Master will release his kin.
She's right, of course, but they try anyway, bringing two children in, Minna and Jim.
Soon comes the day to run away, Randall wants only Vyry to come with him.
But she can't leave her little ones, so she brings them along. The overseer catches her in his trap.
Randall is off, unaware what went wrong, leaving Vyry alone to face Grimes's strap.

Family deaths follow quickly, karma perhaps? First Master, then son, then Lillian's husband.
Civil War upon them, their world in collapse, the South defeated, Salina dead, Lillian bludgeoned.
Vyry stays to care for her mistress(/sister) and wait for Randall Ware to return
But he never comes and there's this new mister, Innis Brown, unknown, but willing to learn.
Some time passes and our de facto family make home number one by the river's bed.
They're flooded out, so much for happy and free, so they try home number two, make a spread.
But their new home is too good to be true, and they're trapped in a sharecropper scam.
Now four, not three, they don't know what to do; once again they're forced out, on the lam.
Home number three seems like it will stick, a haven on a hill, a forever home.
But their presence makes the local KKK simply sick, so they burn to the ground, force them to roam.

Now a home seems like a white person's wish, so they float and don't bother to let themselves hope.
One day, Vyry hears a woman in labor and swish, with a flick of her wand, they think she's the Pope.
They don't realize she's black, till she tells at the end, and unveils their ignorant hate.
They rise up, and offer as a token to mend, a house-raising with protection to give it some weight.
Finally our quartet has a semblance of peace, till Randall re-enters the scene.
Hears Innis whipped his boy, tells him it must cease, and claims Vyry as his most rightful queen.
They fight talk and suss, and after a time, Randall must admit it's simply too late.
Jim gets his schooling, an uphill climb, and Vyry, at long last, has a happy-filled fate.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear readers, 

  I hope you all enjoyed my plot poem. As you know if you're a repeat reader, I'll likely spoil the plot below anyway, but I still like to keep up the pretense. ;) 

This was a spectacular book. I don't know about you, but I had never heard of Margaret Walker, which is probably not surprising considering she was a black woman writing in the 60s and we tend to have a way of not making books by certain communities and people known in the same way that we do for white folks and even white women. Which is also kind of the whole point of this second list of books for my blog. Suffice it to say that I'm really glad it's out there, I think it's a seminal work on the Civil War era and Reconstruction and I'm really glad I read it. In the same way that I would recommend March as a companion to Little Women, I'd recommend this book as a read-along with Gone With the Wind. I don't think one negates the other; rather, I think they illustrate disparate perspectives on a national experience, and a time that has impacts and reverberations even today. Oh, and did I mention it's based on Margaret's great-grandmother? It is. Margaret is Vyry's descendant.

All right, without further ado, my thoughts!

My commentary
Again, you may know if you've read my blob before that I write in my books. I think I started doing it to copy my friend and neighbor Anna, because I thought she was super cool (and she is), but I have really come to love it. Some people find this habit endearing, others a bit trying, but since reading is, at its heart, a personal and intimate experience, I think the only thing that matters is it works for me. :)

Here are some of my notes from this book (which should give you a sense pretty quickly of how I was feeling as I read it): 

Barf
Ick
Ugh [re: The Bible is a witness to the benefits of slavery.]
Ack!
Uh oh!
How many unmarked graves? [After several slaves die from a plague and brutal mistreatment at the hands of the overseer, I started writing this, wondering how many unmarked graves lie under our feet for every named one we see, from blacks to indigenous folks to even rural deaths that went unmarked or uncommented on, or, I suppose battle deaths as well from various wars and skirmishes. I know, kind of a dark thought, but I like cemeteries, so I guess this got me thinking about unmarked cemeteries, and how the world is kind of one big cemetery, if you think about it. Which is both cool and bizarre.]
How sick - to have to preserve food you'll never eat [Vyry becomes the cook for the Big House, and one of her jobs is to help preserve jams and jellies. I had never thought about what it would be like to preserve food that not only I wasn't planning to eat, but I was not permitted to consume. What a disturbing and traumatic thing to make someone do.]
Hell yes [Humph! I ain't cooking nothing I can't eat myself.] - when Aunt Sally, Vyry's predecessor, starts pilfering foods and cooked items from the kitchen and she and Vyry eat them in secret.
Seriously? [Re: The sermon at the hanging for the slaves who 'poisoned' their master]
F***ing monster [on Salina feeding Lucy ipecac every day to make sure she wasn't 'stealing' jams and jellies and consuming them]
Vyry is such a badass superhero [on keeping her family clothed and fed and also delivering all the town's babies at all hours after slavery is "over"]

Miscegenation on the mind
Do you know this word, blobbists? It means "the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, or procreation, particularly mixing that is perceived to negatively impact the purity of a particular race or culture". Vyry is the product of miscegenation, in that she's the product of her master raping her mother, a slave, which was extremely common. This line: 

Miscegenation was no sin to Marse John. It was an accepted fact of his world.

Resonated with me because I just read Born a Crime, Trevor Noah's autobiography, which is about him and his life and the fact that he, as the product of a white Swiss man and a black South African woman, was literally, born a crime under apartheid. It echoed for me personally because my nephew is bi-racial, and the product of a white parent and a black African parent, and while neither of those stories is representative of his, or the love that both his parents share for him, race and interracial relations have a deeply complex history both in this continent and the African one (and ostensibly the rest of the world). 

What you want with them weeds?
There are so many unfair and disturbing and despicable things done in the name of preserving slavery and keeping white masters safe, I couldn't possibly list them here, nor would the list ever be comprehensive even if we tried to capture them all now looking back. That said, what's spectacular about this book is that it not only shines a light on the injustices, but also the badassness of Vyry's response to these moments. Here's my favorite one - this is a conversation between Mr. Grimes, the overseer, and Vyry. He's asking her what she's picking, since local slaves supposedly poisoned their masters by feeding them poisonous plants with their dinner. He also clearly knows nothing about plants. 

"'Them ain't no weeds, Mister Grimes. Them is greens to cook to eat, and yerbs and roots to cure all kinds of miseries what ails you.
  'Tell us what you may call 'em and what you makes from them.'
 'Well sir, this here is my greens. I got some creasy and some pusley, and some poke sallet...Now that there is mullein. Mullein is good for the feets and legs to stop swelling and heart dropsy. This here is barefoot root. I cooks it down and adds pyo lard and salt and makes a salve for the rheumatiz. Mayapple root is good to work the bowels and black halls and cherry root makes a good tea to strengthen the appetite. Tansy tea, and red shank, and hazel roots, them is all good for womanhood troubles. Penny-royal make a good tea just like peppermint do, and Samson snake root is mighty good for cramps and pains in the belly. I reckon, being you is mens, you knows about John the Conqueror. I uses Jimson weeds and red-oak bark like I do my salt and mustard poultices. Now gentlemen, that's what I does with my weeds!" Stadium of seats of applauding. Hell yes. Note that she also knows what all of these things do because slaves generally didn't have access to 'modern' medicine of the time and were largely left to their own medical care. She's like, OK, dummies, I'll tell you what I do with my little old weeds!

On grinning and joy
This, like many books that get 'real' about slavery, was hard to read, in part because I knew how hard it would be to live in that space with Vyry. But I always learn something new and reading these lines made me think about how I always smile at people, and how I generally expect them to smile back, and how I really have no idea what's driving the state of their face. 

Vyry, to Lucy, after she's been slapped for smiling: Don't never grin in that white woman's face. She don't know what you mean. I was borned here, and I been here all my life, and you don't see me grinning bout nothing, now does you? Well they ain't nothing here to grin about, that's how come I ain't grinning.

There was no joy in her life. There never had been, and she wondered if there ever would be.

On ignorance and bliss
One of the things this book does so beautifully is really articulate not only the moments of slavery and reconstruction and post-war years, but also the practical factors that we often overlook. Things like, what knowledge would you have of the outside world if you were legally required to be illiterate and you lived on a rural farm in Georgia? How would you discern truth from lies, when people who clothed and fed you (and tortured you and broke your spirit) told you one thing, and other people (strangers) told you they were fighting to make your life better and 'free' you? This book articulates that deep-rooted Southern pride in the Confederacy, in that Master's son, Johnny, and his son-in-law, Kevin, both go off to fight and die 'bravely' for 'the cause'. I kept breaking out of my reading to remember things like, in addition to being the master's son, Johnny was actually Vyry's brother. But she was a slave so that was not real or legal or meaningful in any way. And when the slaves are expected to care for their masters, and in some cases, do genuinely love them in some complicated ways like a family, they have experiences like this that open their eyes to new truths:

They say he was mighty brave on the battlefield and I know his Maw is that proud of him, but I seen what they was fighting for and I knows he fought against me and you and all us colored peoples.

On matters of the heart
Vyry, like many slaves, does not have the luxury of loving freely. She falls for Randall Ware, a free man, but her master is not interested in setting her free. In a super messed up, you're my bastard child kind of way, the master has an even deeper-rooted investment in keeping her at all costs. She is only 'free'-ish to love after manumission, which is when Randall is missing and Innis is there. I loved this line when Vyry meets Innis Brown and he introduces himself.

Vyry did not want to get familiar with this man's name. She had another man's name written in her heart.

Make work your new favorite
One of the other beautiful complexities of this book is that it really plays with nuance. I think it's easy to think "oh, after slavery everything was so great, because slavery was so terrible", and not really put too much thought into the aftereffects on not only that generation but every generation after. This is beautifully played out in Jim's relationship with his mother and Innis, who are used to a backbreaking amount of work having both been slaves. Jim feels like once he's free, he shouldn't have to work so much, which is a fair concern, but one his mother and Innis can do very little about. This exchange was sad, but also cracked me up, because it reminded me of the scene in Elf where his boss tells him, after he says that "Smiling is his favorite" that he should "Make work your new favorite". 

'What you wanta do?'
Jim: 'I wants to play sometime.'
'Play when you gits through working.'
Jim: 'That's just the trouble, I don't never git through.' I felt so bad for him! But I also totally got where his parents were coming from, which is the sign of a beautifully written complexity, I think. 

Barn-raising's and quilting bees
One of the best moments in this book, both because it FINALLY allows Vyry and her family some peace and true, non-KKK burned-out roof over their heads, and because it invokes some lovely fond country memories for me of both quilting bees and Amish barn-raisings, was the scene where the white neighbors offer to help build a house for Vyry and family in the course of a day. 

Every man brought his own tools, his hammer and saw, his plane and lever, his mitering box and his trowel. Some of the women brought small children with them, and every family brought a quilt ready for the frames.

It was hard to say who had had a more satisfying day, the neighbors, who had built a house fo good will with their good deeds, or Vyry and Innis in their humble gratitude for this fine gesture of friendship and understanding from their new neighbors.

When whuppins won't do.
Another beautifully nuanced scene takes place when Jim screws up a chore that has real consequences for the family, and Innis's response is that he gives him a beating. From a social reproduction standpoint, one can hardly be surprised that someone who was taught wrongdoing by beating would then beat someone else for wrongdoing, but understandably, Vyry was not interested in watching her children continue to undergo violence post-slavery, especially at the hands of her husband. Their interactions were one of my favorite scenes in the book, because they made it clear that Vyry was such. a. bad. ass. Here are some excerpts: 

Innis: 'Where is that good for nothing trifling low-down boy? I ain't begun to beat him. I feels like skinning his hide!'

Vyry: 'Do it, Innis Brown, and I'll brain you with this here skillet!'
Deeply shocked, Innis stepped back, completely inarticulate before her rage.

Vyry: 'If you hits him one more time, I ain't gwine be 'sponsible. Don't you hit him nary nother lick or I'll send your soul to Kingdom Come."

Innis: 'You ain't all that much trouble you is kicking up now.'
 'I ain't no trouble at all long as you behaves yourself, but when you comes in here talking bout skinning Jim's hide and slapping the fire outa Minna, you is gwine find out you is done run into me, and that's just the same as meeting you granddaddy drunk. I ain't gwine stand for it. That's what I means.'
 'What you gwine do about it?'
 'Try me and see." Another stadium of seats applauding for Vyry. 

Simply Spectacular Lines

• It was not a night for people to sleep easy.

• Her bare feet moved swiftly across Baptist Hill while her heart clamored after the morning.

• It was dusk-dark when they first gathered and this, in itself, was a crime.

• And she went on singing her mad-mood song.

• Talk had feet and could walk and gossip had wings and could fly.

• Freedom is a secret word I dare not say.

• Around her there was a chapel-hush.

Referents and Reverberations
Caline - "I ain't got no where to go, but I'm gwine. I'm free, and I ain't staying here no more."
Mr. Jacobson 'Do you know where you're going?'
 Vyry 'No sir. We dunno nothing but we got to go."

This interchange reminded me of this exchange from On the Road

Dean: "Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there."
Sal:    "Where we going, man?"
Dean:  "I don't know but we gotta go."

Things/Words New to Me:
batiste - a fine, light linen or cotton fabric 

biddy - a young bird, especially of domestic fowl

clabber - milk that has naturally clotted on souring


fichu - a small triangular shawl, worn around a woman's shoulders and neck

goober peas - peanuts

pellagra - a deficiency disease caused by a lack of nicotinic acid or its precursor tryptophan in the diet; characterized by dermatitis, diarrhea, and mental disturbance, and often linked to overdependence on corn as a staple food.

penny royal - either of two small-leaved plants of the mint family, used in herbal medicine

I'll leave you with a few favorite passages. The introduction to my copy (a 50th anniversary edition) was written by Nikki Giovanni, and I loved this line she drew between a slave woman during the middle passage and present day black culture: 

They had a different language and different ways of looking at things. But they all knew they were defeated. She had to find a way to lift them together. The only thing she had was a moan. And she moaned. That moan would become a Spiritual; that Spiritual would become Jazz; which would become Blues then Rhythm and Blues then Rap. That moan would define not only a people but the nation to which they were sailing. That moan would make those people decide that they should, that they could, live.

And I'll close out with a few bits on Vyry that made me just absolutely love and respect the hell out of her: 

Randall - "Average white man hates a negro, always did, and always will."
Vyry - "I don't believe the world is full of peoples what hates everybody. I just doesn't believe it. I knows lots of times folks doesn't know other folks and they they gits to thinking crazy things, but when you gits up to peoples and gits to know them, you find out they's got kind hearts and tender feelings just like everybody else. Only ways you can keep folks hating is to keep them apart and separated from each other.

I honestly believes that if airy one of them peoples what treated me like dirt when I was a slave would come to my door in the morning hungry, I would feed em. God knows I ain't got no hate in my heart for nobody. I ain't got no time to be hating.

And this last one: 
Peasant and slave, unlettered and untutored, she was nevertheless the best true example of the motherhood of her race, an ever present assurance that nothing could destroy a people whose sons had come from her loins.

Endless applause for the power and resilience and strength of black women, and their beauty, brains, brawn, and depth. I'm off to The Tale of Genji - it's only 1300 pages, so it should be a quick read. ;0)

Keep each other safe, keep faith, and get to know each other. No time to hate, friends. Good night!

You will not regret the time passed on board my vessel. You are going to visit the land of marvels.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Spoiler Alert: Plot Poem

We begin with Professor Aronnax
Who is told of an epic monster.
And so he begins at once to make tracks
With Conseil, servant to le Monsieur.

The monster is famous, powerful, huge
Wreaking havoc across the earth
On a ship they follow it, until a deluge
Plunges them into its berth.

An animal with a berth you say?
Not a sea-unicorn after all you see,
But a submarine making its merry way
Across the great and marvelous sea.

Nemo is Captain, in self exile
Offering a place on the sub for their lives
His condition is only they must stay a while
Just for a few hundred thousand dives.

So Conseil, Aronnax, and a harpooner Ned Land
Are politely held hostage on Nemo's Nautilus.
They have adventures, some ever so grand
But they're slightly put off by the lawlessness.

Nemo's unchanging, his offer remains
Stay here or die, what could be more plain?
In the end, they risk it and make their escape
Leaving Nemo his lonely subaqueous landscape.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear readers, I hope you enjoyed my latest plot poem. Allow me to share my experiences from under the sea with Monsieur Verne. 

On the whole, I think this is a book much like Moby Dick - epic in its own right, but perhaps most stunning in its ability to portray things in advance of its time. As with Moby Dick (which is less about science fiction and more about whaling), the book really thrives on an almost textbook-like energy, sharing pieces of the world that are very real through a lens of slightly magical fiction. I definitely enjoyed reading this, and I think what I enjoyed most was that it made me very envious of the journey, with all its ups and downs. I am in awe of the world and experiences that Jules Verne was able to present, and I almost feel after reading it as if I, too, have made a complete trip around the world's oceans. So read it it if you like, it's not terribly long. It only took me a few days, and you could probably read it in a day if you felt like it. It's a fun ride. 

Here is an incomplete list of some of the things they come across during their 'imprisonment':
- The actual South Pole - they actually burrow through the ice with the pointy end of the Nautilus until they burst through. It's pretty darn cool. The pointy end is why everyone thought it was a narwhal at first, btws.
- Atlantis - yep. Because why not? It's every bit as magical as it sounds like it would be.
- Underwater volcanos - also extremely cool. Nemo has all kinds of cool suits so they can walk around on the bottom of the ocean like astronauts on the moon. Or, I guess, like men at the bottom of the ocean.
- The bottom of the ocean - as in, like, the lowest point of the Earth. Pretty badass, right?
- Sunken pirate ships - also known as Captain Nemo's secret bank. Gotta pay for all his materials somehow, right?

Now a brief portrait of the main characters, of whom there are really just four. 

Professor Aronnax - Lifelong explorer, romantic, not that unhappy about being on the Nautilus, at least until the end when Nemo starts murdering ships and acting extra crazy.

• Either we do know all the varieties of beings which people our planet, or we do not. Isn't this a fascinating statement? So many layers. 

• I passed the evening reading, writing, and thinking. Sounds like a perfect evening to me!

• I wished in no way to shackle the liberty of my companions, but I certainly felt no desire to leave Captain Nemo. Yeah, he's like, Nemo and I are BFFLs! He's not so crazy. 

Conseil - Dedicated manservant to Professor Aronnax, comic relief, deliverer of witty lines. Not super jazzed about the Nautilus, but willing to go anywhere that Professor A goes. 

We now began to climb the blackish rocks, amid unforeseen stumbles, and over stones which made the ice slippery. More than once I rolled over at the expense of my loins. Conseil, more prudent or more steady, did not stumble, and helped me up, saying:
  'If, sir, you would have the kindness to take wider steps, you would preserve your equilibrium better.' lololololzzz. this reminded me of when I snowshoed downhill for the first time and somehow was the only one in my group who faceplanted every other step. 

Conseil: Is what you are reading very interesting, sir?
Aronnax: Very interesting!
Conseil: I should think so, sir. It is your own book you are reading. haghaghaghahgah.

If you, sir, mean to face the sharks, I do not see why your faithful servant should not face them with you.  This line was really adorable. I know that we don't really have dedicated servants in the same way that they did in other times, and maybe that's for the best, what with class equality and all, but there's something so charming about these relationships sometimes. The relationship between Conseil and Aronnax reminded me of Sam and Mr. Pickwick, and when Sam is so devoted to Pickwick that he gets himself thrown in debtor's prison, too, so he can be with Mr. Pickwick. 

Ned Land - Master harpooner, not thrilled about being stuck under the water, mostly wishes he could be out on the sea hunting something. 

• Here are people who come up to the Scotch for hospitality. They only just miss being cannibals. I should not be surprised at it, but I declare that they shall not eat me without my protesting. hagh

• Never will I give my word of honor not to try to escape. Yeah, he's pretty up front from jump that he's not planning to stay. 

• Confound it, why am I bound to these steel plates? 

• Can a whale-fisher ever forget his old trade? Can he ever tire of the emotions caused by such a chase? Answer: no. 

Captain Nemo - Underwater organist, rage-against-the-machiner, this man is an island who is totally over the rest of the world. 

Professor Aronnax: 'You like the sea, Captain?'
Captain Nemo: 'Yes; I love it! The sea is everything.'

• I owe it all to the ocean; it produces electricity, and electricity gives heat, light, motion, and in a word, life to the Nautilus.

• The earth does not want new continents, but new men. So good. So true. 

• Sometimes I heard the melancholy tones of his organ; but only at night, in the midst of the deepest obscurity, when the Nautilus slept upon the deserted ocean. I love this whole Phantom of the Opera vibe I got from Nemo. Like, not only do I live in this tricked out submarine that everyone thinks is a narwhal, but we dine formally at night and when I'm bored I play my organ. Like you do at the bottom of the ocean.

• It was no common misanthropy which had shut Captain Nemo and his companions within the Nautilus, but a hatred, either monstrous or sublime, which time could never weaken. Alas, if only we were to know what this was! I was a little bummed we never got the whole backstory here. 

A word on hunting
There's a lot of it in the book, and while some of it is kind of exciting (and obviously necessary, when one is floating around and needs sources of food) it bummed me out that often they came across these really exotic species and their first instinct was all, great! Let's kill it and eat it! I wanted them to be able to, you know, more like observe the animals, see their beauty, share the earth, etc. etc. 

Speaking of exotic species, now for a special round of... 
I Spy from the Nautilus! 
birds of paradise - a tropical Australasian bird, the male of which is noted for the beauty and brilliance of its plumage and its spectacular courtship display. Most kinds are found in New Guinea, where their feathers are used in ornamental dress.

cachalot - the sperm whale, or cachalot, is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator.


cuttlefish - marine molluscs of the order Sepiida. They belong to the class Cephalopoda, which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. Cuttlefish have a unique internal shell, the cuttlebone.

euphorbias -  any of a large genus of herbs, shrubs, and trees of the spurge family that have a milky juice and flowers lacking a calyx and included in an involucre which surrounds a group of several staminate flowers and a central pistillate flower with 3-lobed pistils

hecatomb - (in ancient Greece or Rome) a great public sacrifice, originally of a hundred oxen. an extensive loss of life for some cause; alt., an extensive loss of life for some cause

infusoria - a collective term for minute aquatic creatures such as ciliates, euglenoids, protozoa, unicellular algae and small invertebrates that exist in freshwater ponds

milk sea -  luminous phenomenon in the ocean in which large areas of seawater appear to glow brightly enough at night to be seen by satellites orbiting Earth. Modern science tentatively attributes this effect to bioluminescent bacteria or dinoflagellates.

morse - French term for walrus

sago-trees - any of various large pinnate-leaved palms of tropical southeastern Asia and especially one that is the main source of commerically-produced sago

zostera - a species of seagrass known by the common names common eelgrass and seawrack

Last but not least, a few lovely turns of phrase

• Everything was frozen - even the noise.

• Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.

With that, I leave you, dear readers! I'm off to Jubilee, Georgia, and back to the Civil War. And IRL, I'll be making my way down the eastern seaboard to visit an affiliate for work and see some kiddos learning and teachers teaching. Keep each other safe, keep faith, good night!

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

And so we begin with Mary Lennox,
Brought from India to the English moor.
Contrary,
Detached,
Emancipated from her parents by cholera.
Friendless,
Grumpy,
Her world starts to expand.
Into the gardens of Misselthwaite Manor she frolics,
Jumping rope,
Kneading weeds right out of the earth.
Left to her devices, she starts to flourish,
Much to Martha and brother Dickon's great delight.
No one knows when she finds the secret garden,
Omitted from Mary's original tour.
Private haven of the Cravens, till the missus died,
Quiet for a decade since their son was born.
Reclaim it she does, with just Dickon at first,
Suddenly Colin is convinced to join in.
The trio joyously heals and grows,
Under the eye of grumpy gardener Ben Weatherstaff.
Violently brilliant the garden becomes,
Where Colin realizes he can walk just fine.
X marks the spot where their secret lives,
Yearning to surprise Mr. Craven.
Zestful, they show him, all is joy, family, friends, a garden again.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear readers, 

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to share that plot summary in alphabet form. Something about the book and its place in the children's genre, perhaps. In any case, there you have it! On the off chance that you have never heard of the Secret Garden (book, film, remaking, etc.) there's a summary for you.

Now, if you haven't read the book, I suggest you go do so. (Right now is just fine, yes. You can always come back and read this later. It's really quite a short book.) I have to say it really stood up for me, and it was, in a word, charming. Let me tell you about the bits I liked.

Love in the time of cholera
When we start the book, Mary is a rather forgotten child, growing up in India with fairly absent wealthy British parents. One of the her first lines is this, after the entire encampment (including her parents and all their servants) has been wiped out from a cholera epidemic, unbeknownst to Mary: 

'Why was I forgotten?' Mary said, stamping her foot. 'Why does nobody come?'

Narrator as moral caretaker
One of the things I like best about reading is getting to know the narrator. It feels very British (but could simply be something I've noticed often in British works) for the narrator to have opinions about the characters, and to act as a sort of moral high ground. I very much enjoyed seeing Mary grow throughout the novel through the eyes of the narrator. Here are some snippets: 

• She began to feel a slight interest in Dickon, and as she had never been interested in anyone but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment.

• She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her first blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone. She was getting on.

Ben Weatherstaff shade
This book isn't swimming in characters, but each character really packs a punch. Ben Weatherstaff is the aged P, the gardener to Misselthwaite Manor, and Mary's first pseudo-friend. He's quite a shady old man, which I loved. Some choice lines:

• Don't be a meddlesome wench an' poke your nose where it's no cause to go.

• P'rpas tha' art a young u'un, after all, an' p'raps tha's got child's blood in they veins instead of sour buttermilk. lololololzzzz. I died. 

• Tha's a bit fatter than tha' was an' tha's not quite so yeller. Tha' looked like a young plucked crow when tha' first came into this garden. Thinks I to myself I never set eyes on an uglier, sourer-faced young 'un. OUCH, right? Luckily Mary knows that she was pretty sour when she came, so this is more of a compliment than anything.

The moor
Misselthwaite Manor is a large estate deep in the English moor, and the descriptions of it reminded me very romantically of several other books that featured the moor (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre).

Nor it isn't fields nor mountains, it's just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.

Mary did not know what 'wutherin' meant until she listened, and then she understood. It must mean that hollow, shuddering sort of roar which rushed round and round the house, as if the giant no one could see were buffeting it and beating at the walls and windows to try to break in. doesn't this make you want to be tucked under a blanket at the fire with a cozy book and a cup of cocoa?

The garden
One of the other things I loved about this book is that it's not about anything huge or fantastic - it's literally about a garden that hasn't been visited in a decade. That's it. And it's So. Delightfully. Magical! 

• It was because it had been shut up so long that she wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten years.

• There were other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains, and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges of themselves.

• The garden had reached the time when every day and every night it seemed as if Magicians were passing through it drawing loveliness out of the earth and the boughs with wands.

A good skipping rope
Martha, a servant in Misselthwaite Manor, knocks some sense into Mary pretty soon after she arrives, and eventually she tells her mother about this strange girl from India she's been caring for. Her mom spends some of her small salary to buy Mary a jump rope, and says the following:

"That's what Mother said. She says, 'Nothin will do her more good than skippin'-rope. It's th' sensiblest toy a child can have. Let her play out in th' fresh air skippin' an' it'll stretch her legs an' arms an' give her some strength in 'em."

So true! Jump ropes are such a sensible and useful toy for children.  

The robin
One of Mary's early friends is of the avian persuasion. He's actually the guide who helps her locate both the secret garden and its key. 

The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature who was not half Ben's size and yet had the sense to come into his garden and begin at once. ahghaghaghahg. I love this.

Dickon, aka Martha's younger brother and animal/flora/fauna lover
I distinctly remember having a crush on Dickon when I first came across this story, and in reading it again, I can tell why. He's such a warm and lovely person. Here are some of my favorite Dickon lines:

• To Mary, when she first shows him the garden and her work on it: Tha' has done a lot o' work for such a little wench.

• I'll come every day if tha' wants me, rain or shine. It's th' best fun I ever had in my life - shut in here an' wakening' up a garden.

Colin
Colin is the son of Mr. Archibald Craven (aka Mary's uncle, and head of Misselthwaite Manor). Mary has no idea he exists, but she hears him crying in the house, Mrs. Rochester-style. When she does meet him, she brooks no nonsense, which cracks me up.

'Go on the moor! How could I? I am going to die.'

'How do you know?' said Mary unsympathetically. She didn't like the way he had of talking about dying. She did not feel very sympathetic. She felt rather as if he almost boasted about it.

Later, when she yells at him: Mary was not used to anyone's temper but her own.

And Colin, speaking haughtily about Dickon coming to visit him: 'A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels, and a newborn lamb, are coming to see me this morning. I want them brought upstairs as soon as they come. You are not to begin playing with the animals in the servants' hall and keep them there. I want them here.' hear that! No Playing with them in the servants hall! MINE TO play with! ;)

Food, glorious food.
The food in this book sounds lovely, and I want to eat all of it. One of my favorite parts is toward the end of the story, when Colin and Mary are both really growing healthy and have excellent appetites. They don't want to admit that this is the case, because Colin wants to be in mint condition before his father comes back from abroad, and he knows his doctors will be alarmed if he seems to be getting too much better too quickly, so they try to not eat their meals and sneak snacks and roast potatoes outside with Dickon. They have a difficult time, though. ;)

He made up his mind to eat less, but unfortunately it was not possible to carry out this brilliant idea when he wakened each morning with an amazing appetite and the table near his sofa was set with a breakfast of home-made bread and fresh butter, snow-white eggs, raspberry jam, and clotted cream.

Lines I Particularly liked

• She was inside the wonderful garden, and she could come through the door under the ivy any time, and she felt as if she had found a world all her own.

• She must be careful if she meant to keep her secret kingdom.

• Don't let us make it tidy. It wouldn't seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.

• When th' sun did jump up, th' moor went mad for joy.

• And then the moment came, the uncontrollable moment when the sounds forgot to hush themselves.

Well then. I've rambled on a fair bit, so I'll leave you with just a few of my favorite passages. This first one is a reference to Colin, who spends so much of his youth thinking he's dying any minute, that it rather catches him by surprise when he realizes he's a young boy and has his whole life ahead of him.

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live for ever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender, solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvellous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange, unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun - which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

Isn't that lovely? I hope when you look at the sun tomorrow it makes you feel like that. 

The next one is a reference to Colin trying to unlock the secrets behind Magic. I love that the book references capital "M" magic many times, and that's it's sort of an intangible, stunning idea. 

Of course, there must be lots of Magic in the world, but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen.

And I'll leave you with this, Colin's final realization: 

Being alive is the Magic - being strong is the Magic.

I hope you all have a most magical evening and a marvelous weekend, and that you have the kind of day that makes you sure that you will live for ever and ever and ever. I'm headed into the deep blue sea with Monsieur Verne. Cheerio!

He is not well! Why else would Gregor miss a train?

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Spoiler Alert: Plot Poem

Gregor wakes up and he's not himself,

But how could he possibly be anyone else?

He waits for a bit - could it go away?

He simply doesn't feel right today.

He's late for work, but how can he go?

You can't ride the train as a vermin, you know.

His boss is displeased, this simply won't do,

Surely now Gregor must know this is true.

Out of your room, come now, chop chop!

Sometimes we're sick, but the work doesn't stop!

Gregor comes out but it doesn't go well,

His bedroom transforms to a prison cell.

At first, his sister is still a friend,

But even she resents him, too, in the end.

His father blames him for scaring the mother,

Throws apples at Gregor one after another.

One sticks and Gregor is suddenly lame,

His father, alas, has impeccable aim.

After this happens, things only get worse,

Gregor is seen as a family curse.

He doesn't eat, starts to just fade away,

Till finally, there's no more Gregor one day.

His family delights, their trial is done,

Poor Gregor, forgotten by everyone.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear Readers, 

Well, what did you think? Did you like my plot poem? I've really come to enjoy writing them, so I don't particularly care if you liked reading it. ;) But it would be a win-win if you did. 

I liked this story so very much! It surprised me, since I knew the very basic outlines, and I didn't think I would like reading about a man who woke up and was suddenly a bug. But it was simply charming. It's exceedingly short (only about 50 pages) so if you haven't read it, I highly encourage you to find a copy and read it. 

I've given you the broad brush outlines in the poem, but I thought it would be fun to do a 'digested' version of the story. Here you go!

It begins...

• As Gregor Samsa awoke from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. Isn't this a fantastic first line? I mean, SO. Many. Questions.

Gregor's response: 

• What if I went back to sleep for a while and forgot all this foolishness. lololololz. 

Gregor in denial: 

• He recalled how he had often felt slight pains in bed, perhaps due to lying in an awkward position, pains that proved imaginary when he got up, and he was eager to see how today's illusion would gradually resolve. that's the spirit, Gregor, this will just SOLVE ITSELF.

Gregor decides he should really get up.

• And now he began rocking the whole length of his body in a steady rhythm in order to pitch it out of the bed. this is image is just so fantastically amusing to me. 

Gregor's family, to his supervisor from work who shows up at their house:

• Mother - "He is not well! Why else would Gregor miss a train?" Why else, indeed? Certainly not because he's been turned into a vermin. Certainly not that. 

Gregor's sister, and how he responds to her (brief) kindness:

• Would she notice that he had left the milk untouched not from any lack of hunger and bring something he liked better? If she did not do so on her own, he would rather starve than bring it to her attention, although he was was extremely hard-pressed not to dart out from under the sofa and throw himself at her feet to beg for something good to eat.

Gregor's sister does him a solid and does try to bring something he'll like better: 

• To find out his likes and dislikes, she brought him a wide selection all spread out on an old newspaper. adorable. I won't list the foods here, because they might turn your stomach, but suffice it to say it reminded me of Gollum's list of what he had got in his pocketses when Bilbo asks.

Things begin to sour with the fam: 

• In accordance with family duty they were required to quell their aversion and tolerate him, but only tolerate. poor Gregor! Only to be tolerated! Probably doesn't help that when he speaks he makes horrible screeching noises. 

On the fam trying to 'keep up with the Joneses':

• What truly hindered them was an utter hopelessness and the belief that a plight had befallen them unlike any other that had been visited upon their friends or relatives.

On Gregor's love for his sister's violin playing: 

• The sister played so beautifully. Was he a beast if music could move him so? He felt as though the path to his unknown hungers was being cleared. Isn't that a great line? Was he a beast if music could move him so? 

The fam, on why they shouldn't be sad that Gregor is dead:

• You have to try to stop thinking that this is Gregor. Our true misfortune is that we've believed it so long. But how can it be Gregor? Sure, sure. No one likes to think their kid is a vermin. 

 I'll leave you with one tidbit, which is that Daniel-ay shared with me that a modified version of this story has been created, wherein Gregor is transformed not into a vermin, but into an adorable KITTEN. I know. Fantastic stuff. Sharing the book cover here. 

I've reached the halfway mark of this second list, and I'm off to the land of secret gardens. Join me if you want a little of your childhood back. ;)

Keep each other safe, keep faith, and happy summer!

I counted Rikki's storms just like I counted God's.

A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
A Quiet Storm is the story of the Moore sisters, two African-American women growing up in Los Angeles in the 70s/80s. Stacy (short for Anastasia) Moore is a de facto caretaker and off-and-on babysitter to her sister, Rikki (short for Arika) as they try to navigate from their teenage years to adulthood. Rikki struggles with mental illness, though the exact nature of her trouble is not clear, since her parents (her mother, in particular) is averse to seeking help. They try other methods (like that good old tried and true exorcism, for example) and eventually Rikki seeks help in her college years behind her mother's back. There are good spells and bad spells for Rikki, who seems to suffer from manic depression, bipolar, or a bit of both. She is prescribed lithium, among other drugs, but she has a variety of challenging side effects from many of the drugs, so she frequently stops taking them. Stacy is caught in the middle: largely invisible to her parents and completely beholden to Rikki's needs. As the two women mature, and even marry, Rikki's issues in trying to navigate her life fade, then reappear, and Stacy's life is generally the one to suffer, in addition to Rikki's herself. Stacy's husband, Eric, tires of coming second to Rikki, and they separate. Rikki's husband, Matt, eventually disappears, after she's heard rumors of him cheating on her. At first, we think perhaps he has actually disappeared, but it soon becomes apparent that Rikki was involved. Stacy defends Rikki for some time, thinking her capable of many things, but not murder. But when Rikki's suicide note comes in the mail, Stacy realizes that Rikki poisoned Matt and hid his body. It's all revealed when Matt's body is found, and the world reels from this news which is surprising to everyone but Stacy. In the end, Stacy is grieved by the loss of her sister, but also relieved by the release of caring for her. 
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

This book was good. It wasn't quite all the way to the 'best books I've read list', but it definitely carved out a place for itself in my heart, and I'm really glad that it exists. A few brief thoughts:  

I do not believe in snow!
I knew I would like Stacy when she says early on in the book that even though she lives in L.A., 

"I was a child who believed in snow." 

I love a good snow girl, myself. 

Things Stacy and I have in common
Though in some ways I have more in common with Rikki than with Stacy, I enjoyed the various points of alignment that I had with the protagonist. 

• Miss Mary Mack - Stacy plays 'Miss Mary Mack' with her sister in the closet during thunderstorms, and it reminded me of playing the game with my friends in elementary school. 

• Nanas and lithium - Stacy and Rikki have a Nana who they know is not totally mentally sound, and who is eventually institutionalized. From that point on, she's overmedicated and essentially disconnected from the world. While my grandmother was able to function and navigate the world outside of an institution, she had rough patches and her own mental particularities, and I wonder to what extent our privilege, our whiteness, our relative wealth, or our family's protectiveness all acted to keep her from a different life, one more like Stacy's Nana. I'm deeply grateful that I was able to love my grandma and she was able to live her life the way she did, and I hope that everyone can have that same right as we move forward as a society.

• Comparative literature - Stacy is a Comp Lit major in school, because obviously it's the best major. (#notbiased)

• Omnivores - Stacy is constantly dealing with and reeling from Rikki's latest swing in attitude and mood, and at one point, Rikki is living with her but decides she no longer wants to eat any meat. Stacy plays along for a little while, but eventually decides she has no desire to be a vegetarian, and she cooks herself and her mom a nice juicy burger. I respect vegetarians and vegans everywhere, but I have to say I loved this moment. 

POC at private schools
When Rikki's on her upswings, she's a star student, and she gets accepted to private school. Hearing about her experience there reminded me of the complexities of navigating Breakthrough students toward private/independent institutions, which tend to be largely white: 

Rikki fit in and stood out in her new environment. She was black. She was pretty. She was sassy like Nell Carter or Florida Evans, but not disrespectful like Florence the Maid or Wilona the Neighbor. Smart, but not Harriet Tubman/Oprah Winfrey start-a-race-war smart. She was black, but not too...black. So they liked her.

What a challenging line to straddle. 

We're getting there. 
While I am always glad to see more works of fiction dealing with mental health and raising awareness for the full personhood of people with any number of afflictions, reading this book made me feel a little like this, the SEPTA motto for Philly's public transit system. In some ways, it's just a reflection of the book being a little dated already (published in the early 2000s, referencing decades prior). In any case, I would love for us to be able to just speed up the timeline and raise awareness for all populations around mental health like yesterday. Here are a few bones I'd like to pick: 

Psychiatrist ≠ Therapist
Some psychiatrists do talk therapy with their patients, but in today's society (and in my experience) this is rare, and is very much not the norm. In general, psychiatrists deal with medication management and are the actual prescribers (and medical doctors) in the mental health field. Therapists can have a variety of different backgrounds (social work, PhD in psych, etc.) and cannot prescribe medication. There is a marvelous collection of supports that each brings to the table, but it bugs me to no end when people use the terms interchangeably as if the two are synonymous. It's a lot of work to find people to help you navigate your own brain, and I guess I just want people to see how hard you have to work to find your team. It's not a once and done kind of thing, generally.

"You can't inherit something like that."
At one point, Rikki's trying to get pregnant (and sort of not telling her husband, which is a separate issue) and she tells Stacy that maybe she shouldn't get pregnant, because what if she passed her brain on to her children. Stacy comforts her and says 'you can't inherit something like that', and I wanted to throw my hands in the air and raise alarm bells, because you most definitely can. I'm not saying that Rikki shouldn't be empowered to make whatever decision she likes around procreating, but it's SO important, especially in this day and age, that we as women make thoughtful decisions with full information as we attempt to reproduce. 

Title Possibilities

• Stacy: I counted Rikki's storms just like I counted God's.

• On Rikki and Stacy: You two are always keeping secrets from the rest of the world. 

• Stacy, on Rikki: Nothing she does really shocks me anymore. 

Lines I liked

• A draft lifted the curtain's hem the way the wind lifts a lady's dress: innocent, but voyeuristic.

• I added that comment to the other bones of contention that I had collected over the years. There were so many, I almost had a skeleton. 

New Words or References
buppies - a young, upwardly mobile black professional. [1980–85, Amer.; b(lack) u(rban) p(rofessional), on the model of yuppie

Porcelana - skin lightening cream

Well, this has been a short and perhaps not so sweet post, but a good addition to the collection, methinks. I'm off to metamorphose and see what it is that I become. Join me if you dare.

Keep each other safe! Keep faith. Good night.

As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.

Watchmen by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Watchmen is about a group of erstwhile superheroes who are targeted in a conspiracy by an unknown foe. We pick up the trail of a murdered superhero with Rorschach, the only one in the superhero crew who seems to still be out and about. He tries to rally the rest of the group and make them aware of the imminent danger, but he's mostly ignored or ridiculed by his former peers. The Comedian is the one who was murdered in the opening scene. Other superheroes in the group include Doctor Manhattan (aka Jon Osterman), Dan Dreiberg (formerly Nite Owl, version 2.0), Laurie Juspeczyk (second Silk Spectre), and Adrian Veidt (formerly Ozymandias). Only Doctor Manhattan has actual superpowers (garnered, of course, like all good super powers, from a lab accident). Some people love each other (Jon and Laurie, Laurie and Dan, Jon and Laurie again), some people are deeply ostracized and low-key brutalized (Rorschach) and some people turn out to be not so much super heros as super villains (ahem, looking at you Adrian). According to the interwebs, I was supposed to realize this was an alternate reality where we won the Vietnam War and Watergate never happened (I noticed one weird comment about 'winning the war' that I thought was odd but I did not feel this was clear). In the end, the rest of the crew finally wises up and listens to Rorschach, but they are too late to stop Adrian's evil/sort of not evil plan where he blows up like a gazillion people to distract the US and Russia from fighting and thereby "avoids" World War III.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

I wanted to like this book. 

I did not like this book. 

Again, I don't feel like I got a lot of what I was supposed to get. Some of that may have been temporal distance from when it was published (1986-1987) but I feel like some of it was just classic smart white guy "I'm gonna talk in this weird esoteric space and expect you to follow my line of thinking" nonsense. You know, Joyce-ian. Pynchon-ian. Vomitorious. 

Anyway, it was fun and a new experience for me to read a full-length graphic novel. Here's a list of things I liked (and ones I didn't): 

Liked
- That at least some (one) of the superheroes were ladies
- Rorschach's super cool and scary face (see right)
- The nuance of the storyline

Did not like
- That while it read as subversive or irreverent in places, it didn't stand up for things I think have clear moral 'right' and 'wrong'. (Ex - The Comedian tried to rape Laurie's mom back in the day, but eventually the storyline comes down in this place that's like, oh, but it's okay, it was a really long time ago, and maybe she wanted him to do it, a little bit. WHICH IS SO COMPLETELY NOT OKAY. Blame the victim narrative is never acceptable.)
- Graphic, depressing violence - it was just kind of brutal and hard to read. And it didn't feel like it was grounded in reason - I didn't see the necessity for it, it just felt arbitrary and extreme.
- Weird, "the world is awful and morally bankrupt" vibe from Rorschach, which felt like it was also what the author(s) felt. It had a real 'holier-than-thou' (and slightly racist) feel to me. (Ex: 

The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. charming, right? ;)

- The only female superhero still has a ridiculous body shape and preposterously sexified costume. 

Sooooo yeah. By all means, feel free to read and generate your own opinion - it would appear I am deeply in the minority in not having been wowed by this book TIME called "one of the best English language novels published since 1923". 

I'll leave you with one of the lines I did like, which is apparently a common translation of a quote from Juvenal - "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" or...

Who watches the watchmen? 

Moving on to more wonderful words! Here's hoping the next one resonates a bit more with me. 

He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
This is a story about people looking for connection. We follow a variety of different characters over the course of the novel, all inhabitants of a smallish town in the American South. They range in age from adolescent to elderly, they span both sexes, they represent different racial backgrounds, and they have strikingly different lived experiences despite living in the same place. Each of our narrators finds a point of connection in John Singer, a deaf man who has become increasingly lonely after his only friend, Antonapoulos, another deaf man, was sent away to an institution. Singer still visits Antonapoulos, and while he seems to enjoy the company of his motley crew of companions, his visits to Antonapoulos seem to be the only thing that bring him real joy. On his last visit to the institution, Antonapoulos has died after a liver illness, and Singer is bereft. He returns to the town only to kill himself, and his 'friends' are left at loose ends.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well. 

This book was a bit of a downer, though it had pleasurable moments here and there. I love this idea of an American Gothic South, but I just didn't quite get all the way there with this book. I didn't see a lot of Carson in the book (maybe in Mick?) and honestly, I didn't care that much when things happened to the characters. The whole book felt a bit like it was looking at people under a microscope from a distance, which I guess is an achievement in its own right, but it didn't leave me feeling wowed. In reading descriptions of how the book was received (voice to the oppressed, revolutionary) I guess it's just not ringing those bells for me. Maybe it's not the right temporal context. Anyway, here are my thoughts...

Athelstane + Antonapoulos = BFFLs
If you read my last post on Ivanhoe, you may remember Athelstane, the man who adored his meals. In reading the first descriptions of Antonapolous, I think he would have gotten along very well with Athelstane: 

For, excepting drinking and a certain solitary secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything else in the world.

One of the issues I had with the book was that I just didn't get the connection between Antonapoulos and Singer. Singer says "Nothing seemed real except the ten years with Antonapoulos." And I thought, really? Hunh.

I thought I got it at first, in that they were the only deaf people in town, so of course signing and having someone to communicate with on that level would be profound in ways I can't imagine. But then later Singer meets some other folks who sign and it's exciting at first, but then he just doesn't really connect with them. So I guess it left me wondering what was so great about Antonapoulos, since he seems like kind of a doofus. Was Singer in love with him? Was I missing some big other level to their relationship? 

Nothing gold can stay
One of my favorite scenes is when Mick, a tomboyish girl is playing with her little brothers at a house under construction. 

The house was almost finished. The carpenters would leave and the kids would have to find another place to play.

It reminded me of playing on the dirt piles and sledding on the dirt hills behind my house before the development was built there. I guess kids and construction sites just go hand in hand, no matter the decade ;)

HP isn't the only one who listens to the radio under people's bushes...
This was my other favorite scene, also with Mick:

When she walked out in the rich parts of town every house had a radio. All the windows were open and she could hear the music very marvelous. After a while she knew which houses tuned in for the programs she wanted to hear. There was one special house that got all the good orchestras. And at night she would go to this house and sneak into the dark yard to listen. There was beautiful shrubbery around this house, and she would sit under a bush near the window. And after it was all over she would stand in the dark yard with her hands in her pockets and think for a long time.

Doesn't that just make you want to go into nice neighborhoods and sneak under a bush and listen to the radio? 

Toys that sing songs
One of the characters, Biff, sings a song at one point, and it cracked me up, because I'm 100% positive that one of my nephew's toys sings this song. I had never heard it anywhere else, and there it was! Apparently it dates back to the late 1800s. 

I went to the animal fair.
The birds and the beasts were there,
And the old baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.

Lol. I love the image of a baboon combing his auburn hair. 

Next, since the book really revolves around this quintet, I'd like to give you snippets to paint a portrait of each one. 

Jake Blount, revolutionary, proselytizer, "Red"
Jake enters the scene super duper drunk, and while he cares a whole lot about the 'common man', he can't quite get his head around the fact that black folks are also having a lot of challenges in that day and time. He spends most of the book drunk, shouting, or both.

• Biff, the bartender, on Jake: Never had he seen a man change so many times in twelve days. Never had he seen a fellow drink so much, stay drunk so long.

• It was hard to tell what kind of folks he had or what part of the country he was from.

• He was like a man thrown off his track by something. 

• Jake, to others: I'm one who knows. I'm a stranger in a strange land.

• Always he felt someone was laughing at him. 

Mick Kelly, tomboy, responsible for several younger siblings, likes listening to music under bushes and playing the piano, from a pretty poor family
Mick was probably my favorite, though I honestly didn't even care that much about what happened to her. It's not that she wasn't well written, I just kind of felt that observational distance from all the characters, which made me far less invested in them as individuals.

• She wanted to think for a long time about two or three certain people, to sing to herself, and to make plans. doesn't this sound like a lovely list of things to do? 

• To her older sisters - "I don't want to be like either of you and I don't want to look like either of you. And I won't. That's why I wear shorts. I'd rather be a boy any day." you do you, Mick!

• Portia: Mick has something going on in her all the time.

• Sometimes she hummed to herself as she walked, and other times she listened quietly to the songs inside her. There were all kinds of music in her thoughts. 

• She wasn't a member of any bunch.

Singer, deaf, magnet for outcasts, friendly, inscrutable, super into Antonapoulos (for reasons unknown)
Singer was interesting, but I thought it was odd for a hearing author to choose a deaf protagonist, especially because it felt like Mick was the actual star of the book. It also raised my feminist hackles that even though she was a phenom and she got published as a lady in her 20s in the 30s, she still had a MALE LEAD CHARACTER. What is it with women and writing stories with leading men? Where are our leading ladies? EH?! I'm all for representation here, and we certainly need more spaces for deaf folks in literature, but I'm still looking for the ladies.

• Jake, on Singer: It was like the face of a friend he had known for a long time. 

• He was never busy or in a hurry.

• This man was different from any person of the white race whom Doctor Copeland had ever encountered. 

• His hands were a torment to him. They would not rest. They twitched in his sleep, and sometimes he awoke to find them shaping the words in his dreams before his face.

• On Jake: He thinks he and I have a secret together but I do not know what it is.

• He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know.

Dr. Benedict Copeland, an elderly black man, father to a daughter and two sons, tireless proponent of moving forward the black race, doctor to the town's black folk
Dr. Copeland was oozing nuance, but he also felt like such a sad character. I mean, for sure, being a black man in the South in the 30s can't have been anything resembling easy, but his sadness was like, fathoms deep. Like a personal kind of 'everyone lets me down' vibe, from his family to his country. It made him a pretty hard character to like. Maybe I wasn't supposed to like him? Idk. 

• Of all I have put in nothing has remained. All has been taken away from me. 

• The hopeless suffering of his people made in him a madness, a wild and evil feeling of destruction. 

• All that we own is our bodies.

• We spend our lives doing thousands of jobs that are of no real use to anybody. We labor and all of our labor is wasted. Is that service? No, that is slavery.

• He could think of no white person of power in all the town who was both brave and just.

• If I were a man who felt it worth my while to laugh I would surely laugh at that. Dr. Copeland says this to Jake about Jake's idea about how to inform people about inequity and such, and I thought it was such a fantastically wry burn. 

Biff Brannon, bartender, uncle to a young girl named Baby, self-appointed investigator, possible pervert?
I honestly didn't know what I was supposed to think about Biff. He seems to be into Mick, but Mick is not that old, and later on, he's like, oh, and then that passed, and I'm like, what passed? Your pedophilic feelings? It was creepy, and made it strange to know where I was supposed to stand with him. Which I guess is kind of the point? Once again, hands in the air. Idk.

• To his wife, Alice: You never watch and think and figure anything out.

Title Possibilities

• When us people who know run into each other that's an event.

• It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.

• The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.

• Of all the places he had been this was the loneliest town of all. 

Referents and Reverberations
Books always make me think of other books, and this one was no exception.

Even though he was also sometimes creepy, Biff had a line about androgyny that I liked that reminded me of The Left Hand of Darkness:

By nature all people are of both sexes. Often old men's voices grow high and reedy and they take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and they grow dark little mustaches. And he even proved it himself - the part of him that sometimes almost wished he was a mother and that Mick and Baby were his kids.

This line: 

One night soon after Christmas all four of the people chanced to visit him at the same time. This had never happened before. Singer moved about the room with smiles and refreshments and did his best in the way of politeness to make his guests comfortable. But something was wrong.

Reminded me of this line from Swann's Way - "I hear that things worked out badly again today, Léonie; you had all your friends here at once."

And yet again, my books make unexpected connections with each other! Came across this line:

At Vocational when they read about the jew in 'Ivanhoe' the other kids would look around at Harry and he would come home and cry.

about Harry Minowitz, a friend and one-time lover of Mick's, who happens to be Jewish and is a neighbor of the Kelly family. 

Words that were new for me:

flying-jinny - a simple, usually homemade carousel

hard-boiled eggs (already stuffed) - I thought it was funny that they kept referencing bringing 'already stuffed' hard-boiled eggs to picnics and such. I think they mean devilled eggs, or maybe they were stuffed with something else, but it never said what they were stuffed with, and it made me very curious!

isinglass - a kind of gelatin obtained from fish, especially sturgeon, and used in making jellies, glue, etc., and for clarifying ale

miry - very muddy or boggy

I'll leave you with one final line, from an exchange between Jake and Dr. Copeland: 

We have talked of everything now except the most vital subject of all - the way out. What must be done.

I often feel like we're looking for a way out, especially in this America in this day and age. We (or at least some of us) know that something is very wrong, and now we must come to agreement on what must be done. So I suppose that even though lots of things have changed since 1930, this - this need to find a way out and agree on what's to be done - hasn't gone away. 

So ponder the way out, dear readers, on this breezy, sunny, warm Friday evening. I'm off to the world of Watchmen. Join me if you dare! Read my blob if you care! Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.