Notes From the Sock Drawer

Smells like home

On the short walk from home to the office, I pass this shrub. I always pick one of the flowers, and I don't care if I get caught. The flower smells like 47 Union Street to me. That's the house I grew up in, and there was a stand of these, which we called Bridal Wreath, in the front yard. In a box under the guest bed, there's a picture of me in my first communion dress standing in front of them.

Gray, purple, and green

My Boston days were rainy ones this week. The beauty of the Public Garden can't be dulled, however. Those beds of purple allium were gorgeous on a gray day.

And in other news, the yard prepares for summer. The grass is green, but alas, so is the pool.

A little domesticity

Some may dream of tremendous mansions; I dream of itty-bitty dwellings. A tiny cottage, perhaps perfectly appointed, perhaps practically tumbling over, stirs my imagination. I think it's a genetic thing. One of my sisters has created a cozy seaside office in a shack half the size of a one-car garage; the other painted amazing, larger-than-life oil portraits in a studio carved out of a garden shed at our summer place. (My brother, who has remarked that he prefers enormous couches so that he may feel small, is not part of this craze and likely won't be.)

All of this is to direct you to this link, which has the word PO** in it but I assure you has absolutely no nudity, just lots of shingles.

NB -- In reading over the post, I see I've been less than honest. Tiny houses are the biggest part of my sheltering fantasy, but another part involves a living room large enough to hold 50 or 100 people for my dream party. More on that in another post on another day.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

Last night's insomnia provided me time to finish a book I've been pecking at for a week or so: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt. A friend mentioned in passing that he had read the book and enjoyed it. He stammered over what to say about it, and settled on "It's funny." I love funny books. I respect funny books. When I get to my book, I want it to be funny. I put the book on my list.

Turns out, it was on last year's Booker Prize short list. I like Booker nominated books. The prize is awarded to a book of the year award for novels written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Last year's winner, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, underwhelmed me. I guess I scratched the whole year's worth of nominees from my future reading plans; what a bad idea. The judges and I stand apart on this one: DeWitt's book is a better read.

The Sisters Brothers, Eli and Charlie, ride horses and shoot things up in the American West. One brother dominates, and the other is ambivalent about their line of work as guns for hire. The story follows them as they follow a target from Oregon to San Francisco. The funny in this book is dark. I can't say I ever laughed out loud, but I'm still thinking on the absurd situations Eli and Charlie land in.

Yellow flowers

I don't know if it's true or not, but Julia Alvarez said, in her speech to The Muse and The Marketplace yesterday, that Juan Luis Borges couldn't write unless he had yellow flowers on his desk to look at. Alvarez wasn't suggesting yellow flowers were necessary for all writers, but I thought I'd give them a try.

The flowers were but one of the many bits of inspiration, advice, and encouragement I picked up at the conference. The others might not be quite as easy to implement. 

 

From the Longfellow Bridge

I walked to my Cambridge writer's group meeting last night from the car park downtown. I don't think I've ever crossed on the Longfellow Bridge before. The sailors had a great and gusty wind. I'll take the Buzzard's Bay standard southwest over squirrelly river breezes any day.

A fan letter to The Wall Street Journal

Dear Saturday/Sunday edition,

I love you.

You've brought the fun back into my relationship with the broadsheet. I relish stumbling out to the porch first thing Sunday morning and bringing you in. Often, I let you linger on table until mid-week. You are so full of ideas I read you with a notebook by my side.

Here's a sampling of what I found today:

Ten Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You by Charles Wheelan The article is full of worthy yet subversive advice. Let's start with the first principle: "Your time in fraternity basements was well spent."

"The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world," -- Leonard Cohen A top-of-the-page quote, a delight of the Review section's design, relating to a book review.

Anna Quindlen's list of Five Best novels about women in search of themselves. I put three of her choices onto my "must read" list. And what cheering I take from her note on author Mary Wesley: "Born in 1912, and having written a few children's books, she did not publish her first adult novel until 1983 at age 71 -- and then wrote one best seller after another until her death in 2002."

Jonah Lehrer on "Taking the Knowledge Out of College" 

And more. A review of a fashion exhibit; eight paragraphs on painter Edouard Vuillard; two great gardening articles, one vegetable, the other landscape; a review of Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill by Barry Singer, a book Bucky's deep into just now; some travel, some architecture, quite a bit of foodie goodness.

Did I mention I only read your last two sections, Review and Off Duty?  Those newsy bits you wear up front might bring you the button-down readers you are known for, but I love you for what you have inside, where it counts.

Love,

Birdie

Unterzakhn by Leela Corman

Bucky's been away, and as usual, I'm not sleeping quite right. While the bags under my eyes grow, the book pile next to the bed is getting more attention than usual. I'm part way through with The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. I'm finding it a slog, although many people love the book.

To break from reading slow, I picked up Unterzakhn, a graphic novel by Leela Corman, last night and finished it this morning. The story follows Jewish sisters growing up in New York's Lower East Side in the first half of the last century. One sister becomes a whore and then an actress, the other runs a one-woman reproductive rights campaign.

The art is great; it plays nicely with the text. The story was gritty and interesting enough to keep me going, although a middle section following a pair of Russian Jews running from the Cossacks was hard to follow. I'm still not sure what purpose it served.

Like The Fun Home by Allison Bechdel, there was a fair amount of myth allusions. I'm wondering if that's a graphic novel convention. Also like The Fun Home, this one's too gritty for my taste, and perhaps yours. (You know who you are!)

Knittin' Mittens

A writing buddy is off to Montana in the fall for its well-regarded MFA program. These mittens should keep her fingers warm. The black slash is the spot I'll pull out to attach a thumb.

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

Steal Like an Artist is a short and sweet book with great illustrations about creativity. I loved it, and it took me a half an hour of bathtime to read it. I can already think of a dozen people I'm going to recommend it to.

Sure, most of what's in the book I've heard before or thought of myself. Saying that just helps prove the book's thesis: everything has already been said, but no one was listening, so it's okay to say it again. When you do say it again, you'll be saying it your own individual way.

The page in the photograph above describes my writing process with such accuracy that I wonder if I've been watched. Austin Kleon claims to have stolen it from a friend of his, but I'm not so sure.