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A prose poem about a prim reaper

Jaci: Well, if you’re following the bookclub at all, it’s probably obvious that Dead Souls took a toll on our timeliness.  First he reads ahead, then he falls behind…just kidding, dear.  It was a confluence of events that delayed us in finishing the rather slim novel.  First I got an unexpected two weeks ashore, then I started (and finished) The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova…

Ben: I had predicted that Gogol would be the potential downfall of the book club. At the time of my prediction, I thought it was because it was going to be a difficult read, full of nineteenth century Russian references that I wouldn’t understand, and because I felt that this was Jaci’s idea of “books as medicine”. I was wrong- instead the difficulty was caused by travel, new jobs, moving, and the fact that our being together while apart book club didn’t work so well while we were actually together!

Jaci: …and then, it turns out that the second half of this book is really just an incomplete fragment that sent its author mad, so it is more a literary curiosity than a complete “Part II.”  And hard going.

Ben: I kind of felt Gogol going mad across the course of the book. I’m not sure that I didn’t just project this on him, but since the author did a lot of communicating to the reader directly (and as the author, not just as an abstract narrator) it was very easy for me to imagine him slowly slipping into crazy. I’m not sure that matches the historical timeline of the writing, but hey- it gave me added interest!

Jaci: The first half of the novel, Part I, was actually quite funny.  I found myself making notes on the funny bits.  He’s scathing on female education (“French, piano-playing and knitting”) and Germans, for example, and the tone of the novel is very modern (it was first published in 1842).  I had expected something much more windswept and bleak and devastating, and what I got was a sort of Russian tragicomedy of manners.  I found myself asking: is Gogol modern, or are we moderns Gogolian?

Ben: And I will admit, I was amused. Perhaps I’ve travelled enough to get the jokes, or perhaps nineteenth century Russian references and inside jokes are universal, but it was funny. The whole idea of this man going around trying to purchase the tax burden of dead serfs really made zero sense to me, and I think that was what created the amusement. In fact, I did not really understand the reason for a long time. My initial assumption was that he wanted to claim he had so many serfs, and therefore was entitled to a higher social position (which is the actual reason as far as I could tell at the end)- but I soon pushed this off as unlikely. In fact, in the course of his business interactions with widows, landowners, and dandies – he seems to have a more nefarious goal, and I’m not sure that this was unintended, but the incompleteness of the second half makes this speculation difficult to prove.

Jaci: It was also interesting to read another translated work; I again found myself wondering how much of the tone of the book to ascribe to the translator.  Gogol has been translated by several authors, but we were confined to what I think is one of the earliest translations, and one that I could not find many opinions on.  In any case I don’t think it was a bad translation, but my knowledge of Russian and Russian literature is confined to four semesters in college (only two of them of real educational value) and three weeks in the land itself.

Ben: I do enjoy translated work as well- but I’ve had better luck with modern translated work. Classic literature loses something in translation, even to read Greek literature, I often have to accompany it with history and philosophy in order to really understand. I’m excited to move to non-fiction. Heaven was my idea, and once again we’ll be getting an interesting new perspective!

Jaci: Next up is Heaven.  (I did that on purpose.)  If you’re reading along, your new dates are 30 Sep-6 Oct (for those of you east of the international date line) and 1 Oct-7 Oct (for those of us west of the international date line) to complete the introduction and the first five chapters.

Jaci: Book number two, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is complete!  And early, RIGHT BEN??

Ben: Stieg is an exciting writer–I couldn’t put it down because I kept wanting to see what happened next, so I kind of tore through it in way less than the allotted 3 weeks. Really, three weeks was a lot for this book, but I did pace myself somewhat, because I managed to stretch it to two weeks.

Jaci: I learned from my Kindle complaints during the last book–remembering that it was hard to flip back, the first thing I did was draw out the family tree from the early pages.  The notebook really came in handy.  And I found that I appreciate the anonymity the Kindle provides–when reading a book both wildly popular and gruesomely violent, I was happier not to converse about it with random strangers at the airport during my many hours waiting to board a red-eye to Maryland.

Ben: Jaci had a surprise visit home! But she discovered that my notebook was unused. My excuse is that I’m a reader, not an English major! Speaking of gruesomely violent (like when Jaci discovered the unused notebook…), towards the end of the book, I became less thrilled with the violence. Jaci mentioned that the original title was “Men who Hate Women”, and this is probably an apt description of the book, and while I’m desensitized to a lot of different kinds of violence thanks to TV, Stieg manages to properly shock you, and gives you an apprehension and disgust that takes talent to describe. The book attempts to take the edge off with humor and romance, but some sections were still tough on me.

Jaci: I didn’t make nearly as many notes for this book as I did for the last.  But I did use it as a meditation on translation.  The book isn’t exactly what most people would call “literary,” but I am a professed reading snob (and read like one–can’t help it), and it’s hard to know who to blame for, say, more than one cruise missile metaphor in a single chapter.  (Because someone must be blamed, sayeth the word nerd!)  And I also tended to wonder about cultural references.  The translator seems to have done a good job keeping the book as firmly grounded in Sweden as possible, and yet, at times I ask–when a reference to the Addams Family appears, is it because the Addams Family is culturally significant in Sweden or because the translator translated a cultural reference?  Considering my entire knowledge of Sweden is based on this book (which made Swedish prison sound like a writers’ colony retreat), a photograph of a farmstead at the local Noodles & Company (looks a lot like North Dakota), and some gifts Ben brought me after his Adobe Air Tour trip (tasty jam!  tiny painted horses!) I can honestly say I may be not just a bad but the worst person to judge.

Ben: I have actually been to Sweden! So I was amused at many references; in fact, I would argue that the translation was better than normal, simply because of the things that remained untranslated. For instance, holiday names were all untranslated, and the translator felt no burden with assisting English speakers with place names and Swedish proper names. It almost assumed a familiarity with Sweden that was very enjoyable, and also gave non-Swedish readers an education about Sweden without being overly pretentious about it. Jaci’s right, though, it is no literary masterpiece, but it is a good, quick, entertaining read. Jaci prefers to come out of a book being a better person for having read the book–which I suppose is a good thing. However, I like to be entertained by books more than anything else.

Jaci: I would classify this book as amusing, and I can understand why it was popular.  The real question: will we be reading the entire Millennium series?

Ben: Well, I’m interested and not interested in the rest of the Millennium series; interested because I want to find out more about the main character who is a hacker. She didn’t seem to be developed as well as she could have been in the first book, even though she was the girl with the dragon tattoo. Uninterested, because I don’t really want to put myself through the discomfort of reading descriptions of sexual violence.

Jaci: Next up: Ben’s most dreaded book on the list, Dead Souls by Gogol.  Lucky for him it is short (and we’ll actually be together when we’re reading it due to some scheduling vagaries that worked out in our favor).  It will be interesting to read another translated work, especially since the translation I chose wasn’t really a choice at all–only the Hogarth translation was available for Kindle at the time I put the list together.  Russian absurdist literature?  Given Ben’s affinity for French existential literature, I think he may enjoy it more than he expects.

A table set for tea

As a family (and with a few select friends) we recently celebrated the many good things in our lives with an afternoon tea.

It was a smashing success.

The table was set with a white tablecloth, pale yellow napkins, and delicate tea things (including china cups from Britain, blush roses, and a two-tier plate of petite palmier and hand-dipped chocolate-covered strawberries).  Ben, with the assistance of many sous chefs, produced three kinds of cucumber sandwiches–mint, vinegar, and salmon mousse–as well as delightful scones and the aforementioned strawberries.  Two kinds of caviar were served.  We even indulged in two varieties of English tea and great quantities of sparkling wine.

With an all-star guest list featuring Randy and Lily, the recently returned Devi and Bethany, Lindsay, Ben, and friends Lala (a recent transplant from Seattle to Baltimore) and Adam (in D.C. for the summer before his return to New Haven), conversation was spirited.  The background music was a mix of classical, instrumental, French and eastern European, along with a few select poems.

I’ll leave it to Ben to post his favourite recipes of the day, which truly elevated the occasion–as I had planned merely to slather some cream cheese on rye with a slab of cucumber and call it elegant (which would of fooled none).  I will however leave you with a few photos of the grand affair, and highly encourage you to try such a party for yourself!  Bow ties not required…but encouraged.

The Lazarus Project (Cover)

Jaci: As the first of the thirteen books on the bookclub list gathers up its threads and ties them in tidy bows, I find myself very satisfied with both the novel and the bookclub’s success so far. The best part about it is that Ben and I have things to talk about that aren’t his thesis or my work, each of which take up such a large portion of the hours of our many days spent apart.

Ben: Jaci mentioned to me that there is actual science behind the book club–psychology says that couples that share mental space like this can span long distance relationships and become closer. It was a bit of a surprise, how important this was to me; instead of feeling helpless or separated, I can go grab the book of the week and keep my sanity. It’s more than just something extra to talk about, it’s a replacement for all the little things a person has to do on a daily basis to maintain a relationship.

Jaci: In order to fully occupy the psychic space we’ve set aside for each other, I find myself reading more deeply than I have since I left behind the fortress of academia for my floating fortress. The Lazarus Project was a good choice for book one–both literary and very readable (it’s one of the few on the list we chose without much debate or any sort of trade-off, which was why I placed it where I did).

Ben: It’s also helped my personal discipline! I’m not exactly a morning person, and with my busy days, I find it hard to get up before 6:15, which is the latest I can get up to do my morning routine and get to work by 8. Reading every morning gives me a reason to get up at 5, have some coffee, and get my day off on the right foot. The Lazarus Project was a good start because it’s not putting me to sleep when I’m reading so early and half awake! (Thank goodness we didn’t start with Gogol…)

Jaci: In some ways, it’s as though we are together, in 1908 Chicago or in eastern Europe circa today, or at least in Aleksandar Hemon’s versions of these places. This means, of course, that over the next several months we’ll be traveling to some very strange lands together, including (if memory serves) a few brief trips to Mars towards the end of the journey.

Ben: I’m really feeling connected to Brik (the main character). He has me in stitches, and he constantly says out loud what I’m thinking. His perspective on his marriage with an American, white, Catholic neurosurgeon really reminds me of the things I’m thinking in my own marriage. I wonder if the married life commentary has the same resonance with Jaci. Knowing that we’re reading the same things and at least getting the same input makes me read the book in a whole new way. I’m even embarrassed about the time in brothels because it’s weird to be there with your wife!

Jaci: I also like looking at the notebook I decorated for a few minutes before and after I start reading. The first few pages are already filled with notes, questions, observations. To be frank, however, I live in a paranoic haze, worried that my Kindle will somehow be broken in my semi-rough living conditions.

Ben: Ah, Jaci is going to get a little English teacher resistance from me here. Jaci isn’t in a place where she is reading and taking notes every day… but I am. I’ve been reading for enjoyment rather than taking notes or making observations. I feel like Jaci is going to make me pay eventually when she starts bringing up specifics, but I have a hard copy, so I can always flip through the book, whereas Jaci can’t with the Kindle!

Jaci: Ah, the Kindle. I love the dictionary feature, but I miss being able to flip back and review previously read pages with ease! Especially in a book like this, a book which is constructed as an echo chamber with two stories interlacing in subtle but significant ways, it would be nice to flip back to the third page of the second chapter where I remember seeing something (instead of finding location ####, which I will not remember when I get to it’s twin in a later passage). But it’s compact, it’s simple, and it’s working. Like the bookclub.

Ben: It’s kind of sad that Jaci has better electronics kit than I do, especially in a place without too much network connections. Meanwhile I’m back in the seventeenth century with mine! Someone get me an iPad!

It’s what you have all (all two or three of you) been waiting for…it’s the syllabus!  Click the hyperlink to download a PDF version, or see below for Ben’s shiny HTML rendition.

Driving home with the six books we had to purchase in actual (as opposed to virtual) copy, Ben called me a kid in a candy store.

Hers-and-His notebooks.

The notebook backs

After heated discussions at home and over email, much searching, and proposal after counterproposal, I unveil The Reading List.

• The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
• Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogal (trans. C.J. Hogarth)
• Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, Lisa Miller
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
• A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
• Blue Angel, Francine Prose
• The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir
• Daemon, Daniel Saurez
• A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
• Spies of the Balkans, Alan Furst
• Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein

Thirteen books in all: a loose baggy monster* of nonfiction, literary fiction, suspense, science fiction/fantasy, and classics.  By my rough estimate, we have about 5000 pages to read, or, given thirty-five weeks, about 150 pages per week.

I also found the perfect notebooks for the bookclub today on my lunch break: two Mead spiral assignment notebooks, seven-and-one-half by five inches, with forty sheets each.  I’ve dated each sheet for a single week, and to make them more special, I’ll be doing some of my famous collaging.

Next: the syllabus!  And (ouch) the purchase.

*My professors used to refer to English I and II as “loose baggy monsters” because they were intended to cover…well, everything, with a reading list meant to satisfy everyone a little bit.  I have no idea if this phrase is in wider use.

When one is forced to face down the possibility–the inbound reality–of months apart from a loved one, one seeks ways to stay connected.  Letters long ruled as the king of connection; email is today’s parchment and plume, but we lose something in the transition from penmanship to pixels.  (Stay with me, I can alliterate all day.)  Care packages, while welcome, are a one-way communique.  (Rhyme!)  At pre-deployment briefs, would-be helpers offer discounted “flat daddies” that can be placed at the meal table to take the place of the missing three-dimensional version.

Mail at sea can be greatly delayed, along with care packages of hopefully well-preserved goodies; email can be shut down or lost for a variety of reasons; and I somehow think Ben would find a “flat daddy” more discomfiting than not.

My solution?

Ben and I are creating a bookclub for two.

I filled out this idea yesterday, while reading about “common reading” programs on college campuses, though some version of it has been percolating in my egghead for months.  The idea at university is that inbound freshman have at least one book in common–something to unite them and serve as a source of conversation.  My idea is that Ben and I, by reading the same books at the same time, will be carrying on a sort of psychic conversation through the nexus of the words we’re experiencing together.  Even if email goes down and it’s a month or more between mail deliveries, even if I can’t make an outgoing phone call or tweet a single word, in some way, we’ll be joined.

Of course, our very different tastes in reading makes picking books a fraught operation.  We want anywhere from eight to fifteen books; right now, we’ve agreed on four (E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project, Daniel Saurez’s Daemon, and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land).  One of our “rules”–that anything we pick must be available on the Kindle due to my space limitations–has only compounded the problem.  We dropped the rule that all books must be new reads for both of us (which allowed two of our choices).  Most likely, it will take a few trips to the bookstore in the end, since we’ve pretty effectively shopped our own shelves at this point.

What else remains to make the bookclub a success?

-More books (obviously).

-A syllabus…I’ll take care of that!

-Notebooks.  We’ll each jot down a few thoughts on the books we read together, especially when our communication lines fail, so that we don’t forget the things we each want to discuss.

-A reining in of my book snobbishness, and a slowing down to savoring speed in Ben’s reading habits.  We’ll meet in the middle.

I plan to post the full list of books and syllabus as a guide for others who want to try this gambit to close the miles during long times apart.  Take that, sword.

April is Poetry Month, and 2010 marks my first celebration.

My relationship with poetry has evolved over time.  When I was a child, I would take out books of poems from the library and eat–I mean, read–them whole.  I would also leap from my bed on fire with rhymes and scribble verses (mostly about kings and queens, and perhaps animals, if memory serves).  At some point, I entered poems in a couple of those scam contests you run across in newspaper classifieds and ended up begging my parents to purchase the mammoth, expensive, worthless anthologies that are the inevitable result of a contest where everyone wins.  (In a related note, learn about flarfing here.)  In high school, I wrote papers about T.S. Eliot and performed Sylvia Plath at speech competitions.  In college, I memorized Pushkin in the original Russian and wrote spectacularly poor free verse.

In its newest incarnation, my poetry life includes working in fits and starts through The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry, thinking about the structure of the poetry class I would like to teach (hypothetically, if given the chance), and copying out poems longhand to decorate the walls at work.  (Currently, four poems adorn my “office”: “Routine,” by Arthur Guiterman; “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay; “Musee de Beaux Arts,” by W.H. Auden; and “Politics,” by W.B. Yeats.  There’s also a bit of Doris Lessing’s prose from The Golden Notebook, but that’s another post.)

For Poetry Month, I expanded.  I’ve been wanting to find a path into reading more contemporary poetry, so I signed up for a month-long Poem-A-Day email from the Academy of American Poets.  I also stumbled on the Seattle Times Twitter poetry contest and submitted (to date) four poems.  You can read them on my Twitter page, posted April 2 and April 24, and check out the competition by clicking on #STpoem while you’re there.  Finally, I started listening to Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac as a podcast, since my local public radio station doesn’t play it.  To be honest, I’d been downloading it for a while…but Poetry Month gave me the push I needed to press play.

With only one fleeting week left to celebrate, I’m on the prowl for a few more ways to insert poetry in my life–not just in April, but every month.  There are some strong contenders.  Poetry Speaks is one, a website where you can listen to poems and even download poetry ala iTunes for a small fee.  I’m also considering convincing my parents to become “vectors” for Broadsided, as North Dakota is one of the few states that hasn’t yet experienced guerilla-style public poetry sharing.  If anyone has any other suggestions, please comment!

And may the poets be with you.

A Pinups for Pitbulls Story

Winston- A Staffordshire Bull Terrier

As some of you already know, last fall we had quite a different family project from the beer that recently stopped bubbling under the kitchen table–our 2009 project was a photo shoot for Pinups for Pitbulls.  While a combination of contractual obligations prior to the calendar’s release and pure laziness ever since has allowed us to put off publishing the pictures until now, my goal this evening is to correct this discrepancy!

It all started a year or two ago, when we were first taking flak for Winston being an adorable Staffordshire bull terrier and my mom found an article about a pitbull-themed calendar in the Fargo Forum.  The calendar was called Pinups for Pitbulls, and it was produced by an organization of the same name, dedicated to rehabilitation of the pitbull image and the protection of abandoned pitbulls.

Soon, I had the calendar on my wall and was a regular visitor to the website, www.pinupsforpitbulls.com.  Being incredibly vain, and thinking modeling couldn’t possibly be hard (even after several cycles of America’s Next Top Model), I watched carefully to find out how I could get involved…

…and soon had an answer.  As luck would have it, last year was the first year that Pinups for Pitbulls went nationwide, accepting photo submissions for the 2010 calendar from women and dogs everywhere.  I excitedly ran into the next room and quickly talked Ben into busting out his fancy camera and photography skills.

Within a week, we were putting together a portfolio of photos.

And selecting a Gil Elvgren classic pinup to emulate, from a selection provided by the ladies at PFPB.

In short, we were off to the races…

NOTICE: No one believes modeling and photography are hard.  They hold this belief because they’ve never tried either on any serious scale.  We thought we’d spend a few hundred bucks and bust out a hundred fabulous shots.  About a thousand bucks later (yes), we ended up with only a handful of usable snaps, even with the much-needed assistance of my mom and a work friend I’d conned into helping!  There’s costuming, make-up and hair, props, equipment…and other variables, like a model who spent the hours between 2 AM and 7 AM standing watch with a 9mm pistol, a surprisingly hot sun and its attendant semi-naked sunbathers, and a dog who turns out to be a diva.  Not to mention that, this being Seattle, we had to plan for rain: Ben and my mom worked throughout the night to create an indoor studio in what had previously been our garage.

For all the difficulties, we did get a few nice shots, before both model and dog model were spent and melting.

Jaci’s favorite:

Ben’s favorite:

PFPB’s favorite and our final entry:

Ben used his mad Photoshop skills to sharpen the already bright and shiny images, we signed the contracts, and we sent off the pictures a few days before the final deadline.

The end result: we didn’t make the final cut.  But we had a great time, and felt like at the very least we were supporting a cause that we became believers in thanks to our “accidental pitbull.”  Pinups for Pitbulls, by the way, has achieved official nonprofit charity status and has frequent events in Pennsylvania and across the eastern seaboard.

Would we do it again?  I don’t know.  Compared to brewing beer, modeling/photography is considerably more expensive and frustrating as a family activity.  Maybe not this year…but watch out, 2012, you might see a return of the Tipsy Bear Studios!

I have (what hardly qualifies as) a confession: I never wanted to live so far north.  When one moves to the Pacific Northwest, and one has certain Bohemian tendencies and a poetic fondness for weirdos and antiques, one wants to live in Portland if possible, and Seattle if necessary, but never in the suburbs.  Never, say, in a place where the only peaceful feature (say, a walking trail around the neighborhood) is being spoiled by the construction of an impossibly massive Walmart.  Or where, say, the president of the evil Homeowners’ Association (say, the one that hates your ever-so-well-behaved dog based on the fact that certain persons would want to turn his sweetness to aggression and set him upon other dogs) turns out to live next door.

However, every once in a while, there are nice things about living where we do.  I may be developing an ulcer from the stress of just walking Winston around this neighborhood while enduring the sometimes hostile stares of neighbors and watching the earth-movers dig up wetland in favor of low prices, but occasionally I find gems, like the produce place down the road that sells a large variety of competitively-priced fruits and veg, as well as hard-to-find items like tamarind pods and coconut juice.

Or like the beach that Ben found, just ten minutes away.

When I got home on a Saturday morning after duty and my first-ever stop at the produce place to pick up strawberries for a surprise pancake breakfast I wanted to make for Ben, I found him with a haircut and a tip from his barber: there are dog-friendly public beaches all along the Puget Sound.  And he had found one, just minutes away.  Over our breakfast of fruity flapjacks and varicolored hashbrowns (made with the last of the Ballard potatoes, including the oddball purple ones) we made plans to make like explorers and head West.  After all, I would be gone out to sea for the next week, and he would be traveling to set his small-business plans in motion, and Winston would be spending part of the week in the kennel.  We had to make the two short days of brilliant February sunshine that we would have together count.

And I have to give him credit: this is one of the best ideas Ben has ever had for how to spend a weekend.  We had wanted to try to head to Vancouver on Sunday to watch some curling, but the ticket prices were prohibitively high; the beach cost only five dollars to park, and we could stay as long as it was light.  And so, we did.

One of the advantages of the Puget Sound area is that it is both wooded and watery.  We got to hike some short but lovely trails that looked like they belonged in an Olympic Peninsula temperate rainforest, but we also got to watch the water lap the rocks along the Sound and hop from log to log of stranded driftwood.  Winston had never been to the beach before and ran along excitedly taking in the new smells, sights, and sensations.

After a few hours, in mid-afternoon, we decided that we had to obey our stomachs and head out in search of food; we batted around the idea of returning that same day, but February sun is fickle and sets quickly, so we decided to come back the next day instead.

Sunday found us still attached to the plan, so we packed our picnic basket and books (Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke for me, Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age by Kurt Beyer for Ben) and spent another afternoon basking in the warm, if wan, winter sunshine.  We stayed until the sun was nearly ready to set, walking along the shell-strewn beach, enjoying the sights of families out playing or sitting around fires talking.  It was another perfect Pacific Northwest day.  On some days, the sadness of suburbia is soul-crushing; but once in a while, we escape and find blissful beaches on which to rest, frolic, and dream.