bell hooks was especially prolific in the early part of this century, publishing sometimes two books a year. This book, published in 2001, has two epibell hooks was especially prolific in the early part of this century, publishing sometimes two books a year. This book, published in 2001, has two epigraphs to set the tone.
“Salvation is being on the right road, not having reached a destination.” —MLK, Jr.
“…to be aware of who we are, what we are, what we are doing, what we are thinking, seems to be a very easy thing to do—and yet it is the most important thing; to remember—the starting point of the salvation of oneself.” —Thich Nhat Hanh in The Raft is Not the Shore
This is another of hooks' conversational books, not so academic that we stumble on the words or the concepts, but with clear sentences. Perhaps one day, with all the struggle for fairness, justice, and rights, black people will lead the nation and show the world how to resist domination. She quotes Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright who died so tragically young and who will nonetheless never be forgotten for her timeless play, Raisin in the Sun:
‘Perhaps we shall be the teachers when it is done. Out of the depths of pain we have thought to be our sole heritage for this world—O we know about love’
hooks points out that “Baldwin and Hansberry believed that black identity was forged in triumphant struggle to resist dehumanization, that the choice to love was a necessary dimension of liberation.”
In Chapter One, hooks lays out a spiritual crisis—an emotional and material crisis—in the black community, members of which are experiencing lovelessness. hooks wrote this is 2001, but it is something we can see clear as day in our society right now.
“As long as black folks normalize loss and abandonment, acting as though is an easy feat to overcome the psychological wounds this pain inflicts, we will not lay the groundwork for emotional well being that makes love possible.”
That just makes so much sense to me, and it is clear that some white and black folks don’t expect love from anyone, and they don’t know how to share it, either. Love does not play a part in their lives at all. hooks’ chapter headings in this book give us some idea of where she is going with the thinking in this book:
The Issue of Self-Love Valuing Ourselves Rightly Moving Beyond Shame Mama Love Cherishing Single Mothers Loving Black Masculinity Heterosexual Love Union & Reunion Embracing Gayness Unbroken Circles Loving Justice
On this 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, it is appropriate for bell hooks to praise what MLK got entirely right: that his love ethic is central to any meaningful challenge to domination. But what he missed, hooks says, is that although MLK addressed the need for black folk to love their enemies and oppressors, but he did not address enough the need for black folk to love themselves.
hooks tells us that MLK and Malcom X were both assassinated just when they’d begun to hone a truly revolutionary vision of liberation, one rooted both in a love ethic and a willingness to resist domination in all its forms. But we’re still here, and we need that vision more than ever in this world of haves and have-nots. We are all foot soldiers in this battle for right....more
It could be the thing I like best about Boyle’s stories are the changes made to one word of common phrases so that the meanings come up again, fresh aIt could be the thing I like best about Boyle’s stories are the changes made to one word of common phrases so that the meanings come up again, fresh and clear and relatable, like “wash your iniquities,” or “I hear your cancer’s in intermission.”
The other thing I enjoy Father Boyle’s work for is to hear how he takes the thoughts and work of others to meditate on. In this book he quotes the poet Mary Oliver many times, Rumi, Mother Teresa, Pema Chödrön, among others. There is always something interesting in what those leaders of thought say, and also in how Father Boyle chooses to apply their lessons to his daily life and ministry.
And let’s put this in perspective. I am not a religious person, having become inured to such teachings in Catholic schools—how did they manage to strip the joy and beauty out of love, for cripes’ sake? And then, of course, the scandal that enveloped the Catholic Church, revealing even ordained ministers to be hypocrites…
Since then I just try to pay attention. When goodness appears in our daily life, what happens? When evil appears, what happens? How to deal with evil? How to consider at the bad things people do? How to look at the people who do these bad things? Father Boyle gives us his answers to these questions. He’s interesting, and he seems to be able to transform bad attitudes into good ones.
He has written only two books, both of which are wonderful to read, but are also good texts for meditation, since his writing style are short…parables, really. Boyle has a M.A. in English, and his ability to write may reflect his interest in reading. But take for example, his paraphrase of Mother Teresa:
“We’ve just forgotten that we belong to each other.”
You can put that at the beginning of a tale or at the end. It says it all....more
This book radiates such loving-kindness, one wishes everyone could share in the bounty. I had not heard of Boyle’s 2009 No. 1 bestseller, called TattoThis book radiates such loving-kindness, one wishes everyone could share in the bounty. I had not heard of Boyle’s 2009 No. 1 bestseller, called Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, before I heard Krista Tippett interview Father Boyle for her podcast On Being. This second book is a series of true stories about the gang members, former convicts, drug dealers and addicts Father Boyle knows from his ministry, Homeboy Industries, in Los Angeles. Each anecdote carries with it a reminder of what burdens people carry, a prod to do better in our lives, and something small (or big) to meditate on.
A highlight of this book are Boyle’s pointing to and holding up some of the homies’ mangling of common phrases—phrases so ordinary to many of us that we rush by them, never stopping to think them through carefully. By misunderstanding phrases only heard and never read, the homies sometimes hit upon a better, deeper meaning that speaks to their experiences, e.g., “I’m at a pitchfork in my life.”
Father Boyle is following the teaching of the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis, Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa, and every other effective practitioner of faith and loving-kindness on earth by going with the exhortation to “Stay Close to the Poor.” He discusses this in his usual discursive style near the end of this book, asking
“Is God inclusive or exclusive?…In the end, though, the measure of our compassion with what Martin Luther King calls ‘the last, the least, and the lost’ lies less in our service to those on the margins, and more in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.”
Radical kinship. If you’ve ever experienced a blast of radical kinship—an openhearted, limitless generosity—you will know it is transformative. And that is where Father Boyle is going.
There are no bad people, only bad actions. We’re all in a stage of becoming. We all are equally able to find grace and create the kind of environment we seek, if given a place to rest and to experience love without expectation of return.
“We are charged not with obliterating our diversity and difference but instead with heightening our connection to each other.”
This is his answer to reconciling diversity and connectedness. It is often thought that the more diverse we are, the less we have in common, the less we can come together over shared goals. This book tells a different story.
Father Boyle’s book about gang members in L.A. finding a place of peace to gather their thoughts together is the antidote to a political world in which power and money are operative goals. We’d all like a little more power, to live as we like without anybody else’s say so, but sometimes the lack of power is the key to humility, and thus to a wide and deep world of loving-kindness. But as Boyle tells Terry Gross in a Fresh Air interview: “Prayer is not going to fix our healthcare system. Stop it. Don’t think that. You actually have to do something about guns, you can’t just pray.”
This is powerful stuff, folks, and will be my gift to family and friends at this year-end. When you get your own copy, look carefully at the author photo on the inside back jacket. Have you ever seen a group of people more radiant in your lives?...more
Those of us who have looked at the precepts of religions from around the world are often intrigued at how similar they can be across religions. There Those of us who have looked at the precepts of religions from around the world are often intrigued at how similar they can be across religions. There is something ultimately freeing in realizing that the roots of goodness, happiness, and wealth are not based, as is imagined by some unenlightened and unlucky sods, in what we can accumulate but in what we can utilize.
Some things about Buddhism are so attractive in their attention to simplicity that one cannot help but be drawn to understanding a little more. Warner does a wonderful job of sharing his realizations with us, in several steps. He paraphrases the first twenty-one chapters of Shōbōgenzō: The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, written by the Japanese monk Eihei Dōgen, who explains the philosophical basis for one of the largest and influential sects of Zen Buddhism. Warner tells us it’s a classic of philosophical literature, revered the world over, but that few have actually read it due to density, complexity of concepts, language and length.
Warner does not translate the work, but speaks in language common to modern Americans about how he comes to understand the work. In each chapter he gives us a sense of what the chapter header means, then paraphrases generally those pieces of the work that will aid our understanding of the precepts. Finally he gives us once again a few lines in colloquial English which aid absorption of the notions into our daily life.
I skimmed this work, and feel richer for it. Warmer tells us that one of the things about Dōgen’s writing that stumps modern readers is his use of contradictions. He’ll say one thing and a short while later will say an opposite thing. This is explained by Nishijima Roshi, a recognized acolyte of Dōgen, by understanding that Dōgen adopted four points of view when considering any particular subject: Idealism/subjectivism, materialism/objectivism, action, and realism. Depending on the lens one uses to look at something, the object will have a different appearance. Westerners generally are confined to two lenses: idealism/spiritualism and materialism.
One of the first chapters is entitled “How to Sit Down and Shut Up” which tries to explain the concept of zazen. One of the most important takeaways from this chapter is that the practice is as physical as it is mental, a process Dōgen calls “getting the body out.” Warner compares it to one yoga position held for a very long time. Zazen is not meditation or concentration but instead is ‘thinking not-thinking’ with your eyes and mind open, goal-less. Anyone can do this, “it doesn’t matter if you are smart or dumb.” Warner writes: “Since the entire book is ultimately about practicing zazen, you really need to know what he is talking about right from the outset or you’ll be lost later on.”
One of my favorite chapters is “Note to Self: There is No Self.” Warner talks about how we might have a notion of self kind of like a house with things in it. All the things in the house are what we believe, what we've learned and kept. One well-respected Buddhist practitioner, Shunryu Suzuki, who wrote Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, said you should have a general house cleaning of your mind when you study Buddhism. Warner tells us this tradition is like that of osoji, a once-a-year house cleaning during which everything is taken out of the house, cleaned, and considered. If it is not necessary, it does not go back into the house. The notion is terrifying, but if you allow yourself to contemplate it, completely freeing.
There is more. Much more. I like the chapter called ��List of Rules.” In it Warner paraphrases the Dōgen
“People who have a will to the truth and who throw away fame and profit may enter the zazen hall. Don’t let insincere people in. If you let somebody in by mistake then, after consideration, kick them out. Nicely.”
The rest of the list of rules teach consideration and concern for one’s cohort. “Work on your behavior as if you were a fish in a stream that was drying out.” That sentence will require some contemplation.
In the chapter “Don’t be A Jerk,” we get the feel of the Netflix series Sense8 and perhaps even an explanation of it. Don’t-be-a-jerk is comparable to do-the-right-thing, which Warner tells us is the universe itself.
“When you yourself are in balance, you know right from wrong absolutely. The state of enlightenment is immense and includes everything…
When jerk-type actions are not done by someone, jerk-type actions do not exist. Even if you live in a place where you could act like a jerk, even if you face circumstances in which you could be a jerk, even if you hang out with nothing but a bunch of jerks, the power of not doing jerk-type things conquers all…
At every moment, no matter what we’re doing, we need to understand that not being a jerk is how someone becomes enlightened. This state has always belonged to us. Cause and effect make us act. By not being a jerk now, you create the cause of not being a jerk in the future. Our action is not predestined, nor does it spontaneously occur…
Doing the right thing isn’t something you can understand intellectually. It’s beyond that. Doing the right thing is beyond existence and nonexistence, beyond form and emptiness. It’s nothing other than doing-the-right-thing being done…
Wherever and whenever doing the right thing happens, it is, without exception, doing the right thing. The actual doing of the right thing is the universe itself. It doesn’t arise or cease. All individual examples of doing the right thing are like this.
When we are actually doing the right thing, the entire universe is involved in doing the right thing. The cause and effect of this right thing is the universe as the realization of doing the right thing.”
And so forth and so on. You just have to go with him on that one.
If you want to know more about the author, David Guy's review here is beautifully written and explains why Brad Warner is such an unusual interpreter of the Dōgen....more
The form of this novel is what readers will notice first. It begins as a series of quotes from reporters’ notebooks, eyewitness accounts, historians uThe form of this novel is what readers will notice first. It begins as a series of quotes from reporters’ notebooks, eyewitness accounts, historians using original sources, and we must assume, Civil War-era gossip rags, describing an 1862 White House party which a thousand or more people attended. To say the affair was elaborate understates the case. Apparently when a thousand hungry guests descended on the tables of food, the quantity was such that it looked untouched after the assault.
Some of the reports mention that this lavish dinner party was going on during the war between the states (1862), and while Lincoln’s favorite son, Willie, lay dying upstairs, probably of typhoid. Some accounts criticize rather than report. Some are clearly inaccurate: “There was a large moon”; or “there was no moon.” Surely there can be no argument about these truths; one of the accounts must be untrue.
As the novel progresses, it changes form. The reportage becomes a chorus, as voices of the bardo—that state of existence between death and rebirth—declaim and consider the suffering of Lincoln as he contemplates his son’s death. Father and son (who’d been but a child!) had been intimates, together at every opportunity, heads often canted towards one another in deep conversation. The voices of the bardo are bawdy, rowdy, yet weirdly profound in their discussion of how fleeting life and how final death and what we learn in the course of a life and what we learn only when we’ve lost it all.
A bardo implies rebirth, but these characters appear to be looking only to escape everlasting nothingness, and enjoy discussing and dissecting the lives of others. Occasionally one of the dead will enjoy a peek at their future (best) selves, which they hadn’t the time or the opportunity to attain. It can be quite moving as each considers his or her life. And here, amidst the humor and tragedy and regret and outright joy—the stuff of life—resides the talent of George Saunders, as he tries to reach his best self, whether in love, work, or understanding.
It’s difficult to believe this is Saunders’ first published novel, and yet that is its designation. It doesn’t even seem like a novel, but immediately brings to mind a radio show, something meant to be spoken aloud, in its many and varied voices. The thread of the novel is not difficult to follow like some avant-garde works, though one may wonder if Lincoln’s sorrow at the death of Willie is all Saunders meant to convey. I think not.
I think there is another step that Saunders wants us to take: that the spirits of the bardo (how it begins to sound like bordello, the more we know of it!) influenced Lincoln when his son died, giving him insight, empathy, and the strength to carry on with his responsibilities, and to bear his personal sorrow, but also the sorrows of a nation at war. We have yet to meet the man who could have stood it alone.
"His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact…We must try to see one another in this way…As suffering, limited beings…Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces…And yet…Our grief must be defeated; it must not become our master, and make us ineffective…We must, to do the maximum good, bring the thing to its swiftest halt and…Kill more efficiently…Must end suffering by causing more suffering…His heart dropped at the thought of the killing…"
So, we must fight, if fighting is required, to defeat wherever oppression exists. We must work together, and we’ll need all the help we can get from those who have glimpsed truth, and the value of kindness.
In a radio podcast with David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, Saunders tells us that in his research he discovers that Lincoln could have negotiated an end to the war in 1862 when the casualty levels were terrifically high. He must have wanted to end the slaughter so desperately, but one requirement of the agreement would have been to return the slaves to the South, and Lincoln simply refused. The black people who make an appearance in this novel live cruelly unfair and insecure lives.
One could make the case that a novel of this kind is not unprecedented. Think of the ancient Greeks with their choruses of wise and not-so-wise men; Italy’s Dante with his examination of the good or bad we do in life affecting our placement in the afterlife; England’s Shakespeare with his oft-found articulate spirits remarking on the action; Ireland’s Beckett (and his influence Joyce) for language and the insight wrapped in foolishness; America’s Barth and Mamet for exactitude and a deep, abiding humor when rationality might suggest despair.
The rich variety of voices in this novel are captured in the audio production of this book. In an interview published in time.com, Saunders explains how the Penguin Random House team worked with him (kudos, everyone) to get the requisite 166 voices, including famous stage and screen actors like David Sedaris, Ben Stiller, Lena Dunham, among others, to speak the parts so that it sounds like the “American chorale” Saunders was trying to convey.
At the same time, I found it helpful to have a written text to clarify Saunders’ experimental form which uses footnotes interspersed with conversation among ghosts. I adored what Saunders was able to tell us from his advanced age of 58 years—the stuff about not doing anything you can’t adequately explain to heaven’s gatekeepers, and how “it wasn’t my fault” actually isn’t much of a defense when one has been lingering in the afterworld for more than fifty years, unable to convince even a bleeding-heart saint that one wasn’t a douche that time.
Atkinson returns to her theme of “What If” in this companion volume to Life After Life in which we met Ursula Todd and many possible iterations of herAtkinson returns to her theme of “What If” in this companion volume to Life After Life in which we met Ursula Todd and many possible iterations of her life. Ursula’s brother Teddy and his family take center stage in this novel and the generation gap is caught beautifully as Atkinson articulates the view from Ted and that of his only daughter, Viola. Viola’s son and daughter, Sunny and Bertie, exhibit an equal distance from understanding their own mother’s life choices and personality.
Kate Atkinson adds an Author’s Note at the end of this story which tells us much of what she was communicating in this novel. “It is about fiction,” she tells us. “We must imagine what we cannot know.” Atkinson chose to look at the Second World War, and makes her central character an RAF airman. Teddy, we wonder at the end, does he even exist? That’s the thing about fiction. All that attention, care, and love lavished, and in the end, they are only characters on paper. But Atkinson caught enough truth in her writing that we know these characters, Ted, Viola, Sunny, are real enough within each of us.
What I like best about Atkinson’s work is her sense of humor about the tragedies of human life. She is a wonderful storyteller on the order of a Bruegel painting: large canvas, detailed figures not all doing the good and great thing. She gives us history, and we see the now, but we also get potential for the future. She does not leave us feeling that the thoughtful or erudite must be gloomy or humorless. With this two-book fiction, she gives us enough distance to see possible outcomes of decisions made now, and we always have the sense that we can change the outcomes if we don’t like where we’re headed. Her characters are complex enough to exhibit the petty and the grand. Once again, we always have a sense of possibility: character is malleable! We can change.
Atkinson tells us that this novel is “about fiction…and the Fall of Man from grace.” She indicates many references in the novel to Utopia, the Garden, the Way and then the falling, rising pattern of the characters, birds, planes correspond to what she is trying to convey. War is a fall from grace. And no matter how we frame the argument, innocents become victims. Atkinson reiterates that she is not a polemicist so wants her characters instead to express doubt and insecurity about the notion of the efficacy of war.
The thing about Atkinson’s fiction is that it is capacious enough to include the traditions of the past with the irresistible freshness and piquancy and social criticism of now. She does a marvelous job of telling a rip-snorting story at the same time she is urging caution. She was always a wonderful writer of fiction. She is in the process of becoming a great one.
A word about the audio production of this title: Hachette Audio did a brilliant job of producing this audio, read with terrific understanding by Alex Jennings. It is highly recommended. However, if one is familiar with Kate Atkinson's work, one will note that Atkinson has a tendency to move easily and quickly forward and back in time and between outlooks of various characters. One shift that was particularly difficult for me to catch in the audio was the story of Augustus. At the end, when I realized the importance of Augustus, I had to admit I didn't understand where he fit in. One glance at the paper copy set things straight for me since Augustus' story is set in different type in paper. ...more
This collection of poems by Charles Wright reminded me so much of Chinese poetry, and in his Acknowledgements he does credit the poetry of Du Fu and tThis collection of poems by Charles Wright reminded me so much of Chinese poetry, and in his Acknowledgements he does credit the poetry of Du Fu and the poetry of ancient China. Consider this:
The deer walk out the last ledge of sunlight, one by one. –fm “Cake Walk”
Or this:
Moon soft-full just over the tips of the white pine trees. –-fm “Life Lines”
In this collection Wright speaks much of death, the transitory nature of things, of seeing things for perhaps the last time. He will be 80 years old this year, so he is deservedly feeling his years.
When is it we come to the realization That things are wandering away? -- “Waterfalls”
There is so much here that captured me, though he and I are divided by years. Would that we learned his lessons earlier, but
Contentment comes in little steps, like old age --fm “Chinoiserie VI”
So many of his phrases I yearn to post but he warns us
Musician says, beauty is the enemy of expression. I say, expression is the enemy of beauty. God says, who gives a damn anyway, Bon mots, you see, are not art or sublimity. --fm “Chinoiserie VI”
But much of what he writes in this book is distilled to its essence. So few words, so much meaning. He gets right to the heart of things.
There’s an old Buddhist saying I think I read one time: Before Enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After Enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.--fm “Ducks”
Wright, immersed as he is in the end of things, shares his wisdom:
Beware of prosperity, friend, and seek affection.--fm “Heaven’s Eel”
Looked this over to see if it would be a good book for a relative and was disappointed it had so many words. They are only short essays but I sort of Looked this over to see if it would be a good book for a relative and was disappointed it had so many words. They are only short essays but I sort of was hoping for pithy on-page insights and I found several page essays on really depressing aspects of getting old...falling down, not begin able to open jars, etc. We don't even like to think about those things, let alone read about them. Another reminder, if we ever needed one, to read the book first before you give it as a gift. Not a favorite....more
Burdett does something memorable in this episode of his Bangkok series (Sonchai Jitpleecheep #5). He introduces two of the most interesting character Burdett does something memorable in this episode of his Bangkok series (Sonchai Jitpleecheep #5). He introduces two of the most interesting character creations he’s had in years: the bipolar and incisively intelligent Inspector Chan of the Hong Kong police force, and the incomparably sophisticated Detective San Bin of the Shanghai police. Mind you, these two men are creations of a Western mind, but they are everything a reader wants in a detective: very smart and very sly, with an unparalleled streak of righteous vengeance and duty to protect.
It’s been awhile since I have visited Burdett’s world, and perhaps I did not choose an auspicious time. His somewhat loose narrative and rants about the sex trade in Thailand didn’t hold up well next to the heavy-duty nonfiction I have been immersed in lately, but gradually I relaxed enough to acknowledge the points he was making. I just finished watching the third series of Danish TV called Borgen, where the same questions Sonchai’s wife, Chen Mai, is researching for her doctorate are being considered, e.g., prostitution as a woman’s right rather than exploitation. So Burdett is quite topical, and not just in the tropics.
The bulk of this mystery, however, is about international organ trafficking, always a topic that arouses strong emotions and means money changing unsavory hands. For the first time our Buddhist hero, Sonchai, travels overseas: to Dubai, Monte Carlo (!), Hong Kong and Shanghai. We meet a pair of Chinese doyens who specialize in organs, transplanted or otherwise, and this adds to the unreality of the scenes he conjures. Undoubtedly some of the research is true (six-star hotels in Dubai, for instance) but it seemed just a little ‘out there’ for me to get scared.
Again, his character creations for Chinese cops are ground-breaking in my experience and I’d love to come across them again. It almost seems Burdett could colonize some new territory if he wanted to move to Shanghai, for instance.
A word about the ending, in which Chen Mai’s friend Dorothy features: seems a little ‘out there,’ and yet another figment of a western man’s mind. We learn more about Burdett than human nature, perhaps, but…ain’t it always the way? ...more
Every picture I’ve seen of Ruth Ozeki shows her smiling broadly, like a woman who knows what happy is. How then, I wondered as I began this wonderful,Every picture I’ve seen of Ruth Ozeki shows her smiling broadly, like a woman who knows what happy is. How then, I wondered as I began this wonderful, fabulous, crazy novel, does she have her main characters contemplate suicide? This disconnect was one spur to my reading, and the other was the clarion voice and view of teenager Nao who told us of her life in Japan.
Ozeki does what great authors (e.g., Morrison, Saramago, Kertész) do: she takes critical, current questions we face as human beings on earth and makes us think about them. She also offers answers, something for which I admire her even more. She allows us to realize that there are people of great talent and humility out there who are willing to put their wealth, time, even lives on the line for the least of us. She makes us look at the world in a new way. She gives us hope.
I have placed Ozeki among the greats, but she is less somber. She is playful. She is funny. She is real. I attribute this ease of handling big issues to Ozeki’s life as a Zen Buddhist priest. This novel is big but there was not a moment I was not rapt in her vision. It is a mystery, slowly unfolding, about a young girl whose diary washes up on a Canadian island some years after the tsunami disaster in Japan. The girl tells of her life and that of her parents after they moved back to Japan from America after the dot com bust. It is not a happy time, and both the young girl and her father contemplate suicide. Her hundred-and-four-year-old-great-grandmother, a Zen Buddhist nun, discourages this path.
Parallel to this are the lives of Ruth (who rescued the diary), her husband Oliver, and their cat Pesto. All live near Whaletown, a locality on a small island off the coast of Vancouver. She is a writer, he is a land artist, and the cat is a pest. Ruth claims to experience writer’s block, but at the same time she admits to dream-like sessions where she writes for hours, unconscious, only to awake and reread what she has written with surprise and awe. It is difficult for me to imagine a woman with Ozeki’s vivid imagination having writer’s block, but I think many of us can write…we just can’t always write meaningfully on a specific topic whenever we sit down. Writer’s block, dreaming, same thing.
There is also something bigger here, a discussion of wave theory and quantum theory. If one has time, and inclination, there is something larger behind the ordinary story of a girl displaced and despondent, or a woman with writer’s block, though both can be related to these larger theories of how the world works. And I like to think that Haruki Number Two was on to something with his work in origami, bending and folding and placing two dissimilar moments in time next to one another, so closely that they align and form something new.
If I were a graduate student in literature, I might just like to take on the notion of dreams in the works of Pynchon (Bleeding Edge) and Ozeki (For the Time Being). There is something impactful in the dreams we often disregard, and perhaps we should pay attention.
Anyway, there is nothing new in being despairing about the evil in the world, nor the possibility of multiple outcomes. “Nothing is new, if you buy the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.” We can use our knowledge for evil or good, and there have to be enough good folks left alive to keep bad folk in check. We must struggle on to make a difference in outcomes.
This book was given to me as a gift with the proviso that I return it to the giver when finished. I read it quickly and then read it again slowly, oveThis book was given to me as a gift with the proviso that I return it to the giver when finished. I read it quickly and then read it again slowly, over a period of months. It has a simple, clear style: the short paragraphs remind one of a literally simple but intellectually dense Buddhist discussion on wakefulness and being. Author Bender makes a journey that many of us might make in a lifetime: from a cluttered, busy, “what am I missing?” lifestyle to one that is far less dense. “You are missing nothing important,” a Buddhist might say.
One day many years ago, Bender the artist saw some old Amish quilts used to showcase men’s tweed clothing in an artful display in a boutique on Long Island. She went back several times to view the quilts, and realized that there was something understated and truly unique in the style:
”Odd color combinations. Deep saturated solid colors: purple, mauve, green, brown, magenta, electric blue, red. Simple geometric forms: squares, diamonds, rectangles. A patina of use emanated from them…
The basic forms were tempered by tiny, intricate black quilting stitches. The patterns—tulips, feathers, wreaths, pineapples, and stars—softened and complemented the hard lines, and the contrast of simple pattern and complex stitchery face the flat, austere surface and added dimension.
At first the colors looked somber, but then—looking closely at a large field of brown—I discovered that it was really made of small patches of many different shades and textures of color. Greys and shiny dark and dull light brown, dancing side by side, made the flat surface come alive. Lush greens lay beside vivid reds. An electric blue appeared as if from nowhere on the border.
The relationship of the individual parts to the whole, the proportion, the way the inner and outer borders reacted with each other was a balancing act between tension and harmony…How could a quilt be calm and intense at the same time?”
Bender the artist sought, and found, a way into the community that could produce such work. She lived with different groups of Amish for periods of weeks over a period of years in Iowa and Ohio. She learned that the larger group called “Amish” has different sects which live differently, but generally it is a group which focuses on living as a community, each producing what it can so that the whole functions harmoniously.
She did work on a quilt or two, but mostly she was involved in understanding the lifestyle in which someone can produce art but whose work is as prized as someone else. This joy in the process, rather than the finish or the glory, seemed profound to Bender. She developed an attachment for the nine-patch pattern, and in one of the last chapters, pulls her experiences together in nine observations that serve to calm and direct her when life threatens to subsume her once again.
1. Patch #1 VALUING THE PROCESS/VALUING THE PRODUCT 2. Patch #2 LIVING IN TIME 3. Patch #3 CELEBRATING THE ORDINARY 4. Patch #4 HOME 5. Patch #5 COMMUNITY 6. Patch #6 LIFE AS ART 7. Patch #7 LIMITS AS FREEDOM 8. Patch #8 POWER OF CONTRAST 9. Patch #9 CHOICE
Bender has worked to eliminate the clutter from the book, so it is calming to read and has many one-liners that make good daily fare for musing and developing one’s spiritual muscle. One of my favorites: “I learned there is nothing simple about the ninepatch.”
The line drawings decorating the book are just the right touch, and the color plates chosen for the removable dust jacket also leave one looking and thinking deeper. All in all, Bender has succeeded in creating something lasting that can help us get through the bad “patches” in our own lives, and seek the serenity of being at home in our own skins. “Miracles come after a lot of hard work.” A joy, and a classic....more
I have just realized I have never reviewed any of Alexander McCall Smith's series, though I have read from each one. McCall Smith's series are primersI have just realized I have never reviewed any of Alexander McCall Smith's series, though I have read from each one. McCall Smith's series are primers in "how to be kind." He calmly and rationally helps us to negotiate everyday conundrums that plague us and make us anxious and bitter. The thoughtful reactions he puts in the voice of Mma Ramotswe are kind and comforting, her solutions sensitive and gracious.
If blue shoes can bring happiness, it may be worth owning them even if they are too small. And, there is evil in the world, but most people want to do the right thing. It’s just that people are weak. One should recognize one’s weaknesses: if they are inconsequential or will make your life (or the lives of those around you) a misery to change, it may be better to just live with it.
Mma Ramotswe is a forgiving woman. She doesn’t chide her assistant for small failings, like purchasing blue shoes that are too small, nor does she agonize over her own “traditionally-built” size. She knows she should diet, but if she wants (and deserves!) cake, is it so very wrong to have a small piece?
Every book in this series is a little vacation for the mind. We are given time to consider problems that many of us face, and see how elegant solutions can be found that satisfy. The voice of Lisette Lecat defines the series. Her voice is such a perfect vehicle for the writing that I prefer to listen to these books published as downloadable files by Recorded Books.
The heart of this novel is set in Burma, pre-WWII. The author Sendker was correspondent in America and Asia for Stern, the weekly German news magazineThe heart of this novel is set in Burma, pre-WWII. The author Sendker was correspondent in America and Asia for Stern, the weekly German news magazine, for some years. This is his first novel. Sendker was successful and very clever in his choice of subject. In making the setting a mountain province of Burma, a country not much opened to the outside and stuck in a pre-WWII lifestyle, things had not changed significantly since the 1950s and if they had, very few English-speaking eyewitnesses would be able to refute it.
In addition, Sendker gave his main character a disability, blindness, which gave Sendker the latitude to describe through the voice of another person what the main character was meant to be seeing. Not only does this help us, but it helps the author, in that readers are a little like blind men: the author must describe everyday things giving focus to sounds, smells, colors. If the reader has any experience in a Southeast Asian country, the descriptions trigger unforgettable memories.
But Sendker did more than just excel in describing what any reader could see. He delved into the psyche of the Burmese and showed us folk tales, beliefs, habits, and ways of living. A novel is always suspect in what it reveals, but in this case we can understand as outsiders understand, a way into a South Asia culture that is so remote and so different from modern-day Western culture.
All this and I haven’t mentioned the novel is a love story. But not an ordinary love story—it tells of a love that any of us would be happy to call our own. Some reviewers may call this a fairy tale, but I would merely say it was an especially daring and insightful attempt to create a plausible story that works on many levels. And so it does.
Special kudos go to Other Press, for republishing this story at this time of the opening of Myanmar to the outside world (2012, originally published 2002), and to Blackstone Audio for making a very good audio version of the title with American-accented Cassandra Campbell. I have to admit the Americans in the novel were so much less spiritual, likeable, and accepting than the Burmese that one can see the stark contrast in our approaches to the world. Let’s hope these differences do not keep us apart. We’d all do better if we had just a little more influence on one another. ...more
I read this years ago and realize now that I did not review it. The book is startling in its revelations. I remember thinking at the time that there iI read this years ago and realize now that I did not review it. The book is startling in its revelations. I remember thinking at the time that there is NO WAY I would reveal this much about myself to the world at large. It was as though we, girlfriends all, were standing at her closet, rifling through her clothes, discussing her figure flaws, commenting on what looks best, falling finally into intimate details of life and love, snickering over the painful bits. There was so much intimacy it took my breath away. But Gilbert's essential open-hearted enthusiasms broke through my defences and I really liked her by the end, and hoped the best for her. I loved being along for her ride of discovery, and she told me things about women and men and and Italy and meditation that I'd not really ever thought about before. I have enthusiastically recommended this book to others, none of whom ever seem as impressed as I. The sheer nakedness of this memoir left me round-eyed and exhaling long sibilant sighs, accompanied by head shaking. By India, I was laughing out loud with her--she'd won me over. ...more
"In the beginning Kailas was just rock—rock and stones. Without spirit. Then the gods came down with their entourages and settled there. They may not
"In the beginning Kailas was just rock—rock and stones. Without spirit. Then the gods came down with their entourages and settled there. They may not exactly live there now, but they have left their energy, and the place is full of spirits…"the myth behind Mt. Kailas
Now in his seventies, famed travel writer Colin Thubron left his wife and home in England and trekked to a holy mountain in Tibet from Nepal. It was a personal journey. From Nepal, where his father hunted bear and big cats eighty years before, Thubron headed to Kailas, or Gangs Rinpoche, the holy mountain, the “precious jewel of snow.”
”Early wanderers to the source of the four great Indian rivers—the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej, and the Brahmaputra—found to their wonder that each one rose near a cardinal point of Kailas.”
Kailas is a holy mountain for Buddhists and Hindu alike, and thousands of worshippers every year pilgrimage to Kailas to circumnavigate the base.
At 15,000 feet, the base of Kailas is 52 km long, and it sits next to the highest freshwater lake in the world, Manasarovar. Kailas is reflected in its waters: “To the Hindus…the lake is mystically wedded to the mountain, whose phallic dome is answered in the vagina of its dark waters.” Kailas has never been climbed. Perhaps it is true that “only a man entirely free from sin could climb Kailas.” Thubron’s journey to Kailas is spiritual as well. He meditates on his life, his recently deceased mother and long-dead sister as he walks, but he shares with us what he sees along the route, in case we don’t get the chance.
The journey begins as if “through a ruined English garden,” strewn with viburnum, jasmine and syringa, honeysuckle, dogwood and buddleia. Soon the track becomes “savage and precipitous,” and as he gets closer to Kailas, the road becomes positively alive with pilgrims dressed “in a motley of novelty and tradition,” often scattered in groups of two or three, who look "unquenchably happy". And closer yet:
The monks, who have been praying in a seated line for hours, advance in a consecrating procession. Led by the abbot of Gyangdrak monastery from a valley under Kailas, they move in shambling pomp, pumping horns and conch shells, clashing cymbals. Small and benign in his thin-rimmed spectacles, the abbot hold up sticks of smouldering incense, while behind him the saffron banners fall in tiers of folded silks, like softly collapsed pagodas. Behind these again the ten-foot horns, too heavy to be carried by one monk, move stentorously forward, their bell-flares attached by cords to the man in front. Other monks, shouldering big drums painted furiously with dragons, follow in a jostle of wizardish red hats, while a venerable elder brings up the rear, cradling a silver tray of utensils and a bottle of Pepsi-Cola.”
But finally the destination is reached, and a Buddhist monk shares his philosophy: “Only karma lasts. Merit and demerit. Nothing of the individual survives. From all that he loves, man must part.” ...more
Jan Chozen Bays has written a book that brings us back to ourselves and calmly, gently, laughingly teaches us to focus on immediate tasks…not to get tJan Chozen Bays has written a book that brings us back to ourselves and calmly, gently, laughingly teaches us to focus on immediate tasks…not to get them over with but to be guided by the process. This is book meant to be read slowly, which is a good thing, for it took me a year. Each chapter is meant to be read one week at a time, giving us time to perform the daily exercise for a week. It gives us time to savor the moments of everyday life, not rush through them as though there were somewhere to be other than where we are.
Everyone can do these exercises. They do not require special equipment or set-aside time. They do require some flexibility, and the author encourages us to do them with a group that may meet at the end of a week and discuss the results. This seems a fine way to grow in closeness, since, as the author points out, intimacy is what we humans crave more than any other thing.
Whether or not one completes the exercises for a week at a time, just reading about them brings a sense of peace, lengthens the spine, deepens the breath. One wants to be in that place of mindfulness. And it is a book one can pull out again and again to remind oneself what it is to be “in the moment,” to focus, to notice. The group of exercises themselves will undoubtedly bring a sense of control, and of peace, to those that practice.
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