International Book Club

Will read for fun.

I've read 20 books in the past 9 weeks here in Guatemala and have decided to start an International Book Club -- like Oprah's but better.  Your job: let me know if you've read any of the following books and let's discuss via email, gchat, facebook, whatever!  OR you could conversely just read one of the following books that strikes your fancy.  Your choice.  Here they are, in order from most favorite to...well, actually I enjoyed and/or loved all of them except for Silas Marner.  Sorry, George Eliot.  Here they are chronologically, from first to most recent, with a haiku about each.

1. The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins

remember Harry

Potter? this fills a very

small hole. still, good read

2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

this: the perspective

of an autistic boy who

finds a dead dead dog

3. Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk

religious cult meets

the rise of celebrity

and a plane crashes

4. Atonement, Ian McEwan

who doesn't love a

prolix period piece with

war, estates and love?

5. Lord of the Flies, William Golding

revisit this high

school classic.  there is more there

there after years passed

6. The Talented Mr, Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

inspiration for

film, but with much less homo-

eroticism

7. Marya: A Life, Joyce Carol Oates

took me 200

pages to say, "Mariah,"

not "Mar-ee-ya."  right?

8. We Were The Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates

a family comes

apart and tries to heal, with

mixed results, obvi 

9. Silas Marner, George Eliot

didacticism

of the transparent and dry.

don't linger here long

10. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami

it's never too late

for pursuit of a new dream

or twenty-six miles

11. The Book of Salt, Monique Truong

cuisine, Gertrude Stein,

a gay Southeast Asian chef,

Paris, the thirties. 

12. Bluebeard's Egg, Margaret Atwood

we all know how I

feel about Ms. Atwood, yes?

Let's leave it at that. 

13. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

Egan contemplates

interconnectivity:

virtual / fleshy

14. Room, Emma Donahue

trapped in the closet,

but sans R. Kelly (or for

that matter, music)

15. Death of the Adversary, Hans Keilson (unfinished)

dense unappealing

prose, fascinating premise.

maybe in ten years?

16. Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan: my hero.

confronting the true evils

of the modern world

17. Under the Banner of Heaven, John Krakauer

just more religious

crazies; proof that god simply

should not be. ever

18. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

the allegory, 

for some, will be lost to the

femicide. A+

Sonnet 100

Ginny contemplates existence.  On the toilet, natch.

My left forearm now bears the mark of Margaret, fulfilling a dalliance I entertained in my initial blogpost.  Nice follow-through, Hawkins!  These last four lines of Margaret Atwood's Variation on the Word 'Sleep' serve as a testament to my allegiance to the written word, both mine and that of others.  A constant reminder that it is through writing that we come to know ourselves, and through reading we come to know our world.  And maybe something about love, blah blah.

Taken within the context of the orginal poem, these lines have an eerie voyeuristic quality, a desire to be unknowingly essential to someone.  But I also appreciate how they resonate in terms of the muse -- that which inspires us (sometimes unbeknownst, sometimes fleetingly) to act, create.  That muse that inhabits us for only a moment, giving us the capacity and space to take a heretofore inchoate thought and forge a tangible product or empirical action.  Thanks to all the muses out there. (Especially Josh Silverman of Schwadesign who helped me with font selection, and my tattoo artist-in-residence Mike of Black Lotus.) 

I had another tattoo finished in this sitting, but Imma waiting for that to heal 'fore I post photos.  Think: an ode to Providence.

Most Erudite Feline II

Dictionary.com isn't the only way to receive Word of the Day.  Lucy's selection for today is most fitting for her: phonophobia.

Most Erudite Feline

Ginny embarks on a literary journey her father began many years ago. Personally, I would have recommended beginning with The Robber Bride, but I don't like being pushy -- and the short essays in Writing with Intent are more palatable for a cat.

Interpretation

"So then Love walked up to Like
and said 'I know that you don't like me much
let's go for a ride...'"
--Tori Amos, "Cooling"

I've wanted to go under the needle for this tattoo going on 4 years now, and on Monday I went in for my final touchup, after a two week respite from my initial session. Want to thank Mike Boissoneault at Providence's Black Lotus for his gorgeous translation of this image of Tori/Scarlet and his unparalleled patience as I adjusted to the intolerable pain of having a needle jab against one's rib cage ad nauseam (or rather, ad dolorem). The artwork is from her 2002 album Scarlet's Walk and this tattoo really worked for me on a number of levels:

1) Tori has been a pretty significant contributor to my happiness over the past 13 years, ever since I first heard her in Katy Demos' Mercedes Benz, Prout School parking lot, 1997.

2) I like the challenge of paying homage through indirect means. I've seen some pretty scary Tori tattoos, and I didn't want her actual face on my body. I faced the same dilemmas with my other tributary tattoos, so this rendering of her, while not ostensibly her, was perfect.

3) Scarlet's Walk is Tori's most cogent album -- conceptually, aurally, and musically. I won't digress into an analysis of my relationship with this album and its themes at present, but this image of Tori/Scarlet reifies that relationship, both with the album and the artist. If you haven't given Scarlet's Walk a whirl, check out "a sorta fairytale," "Taxi Ride," and "Wednesday."

On a side note, Tori's personification of ideas/concepts, as evidenced by the above quote, is just one of myriad reasons I am so enamored of her. I mean, what would else would Love say to Like, given the chance?

Inspiration

Variation on the Word "Sleep"

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth

dark wave slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

--Margaret Atwood

Immediately, I loved the genderlessness of this poem. But before we get into that, I must thank Jessica Paden for bringing this work to my attention again. I’ve been under Atwood’s spell for about 5 years, but until recently only read her novels and dabbled in her poetry. I’m now delving full force into her verse, and this poem is the perfect gateway. It’s pure Atwood – fantastic, mythological, terrestrial, heartbreaking. The poem’s unadulterated and selfless longing (I would like to give you…the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center) is tempered, possibly, only by the voyeuristic I/eye who yearns to be needed. I guess that’s a pretty universal sentiment – wouldn’t we all want to be as necessary to someone as a breath? Unnoticed – perhaps – but therein lies the selflessness. To me this poem embodies love, though paradoxically the majority of it transpires in dream. Does the speaker desire a conscious union, or merely a slumberous one? Will/can this love only exist in dream?

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping...

It’s as if after confessing and subsequently realizing the futility of such a wish, the speaker arrives at an alternative: While I may not be able to watch you sleep, I could watch you while I sleep, and meet you in dream. The insertion of a comma at the end of the third line brings both subject and object to bed, though not necessarily together. Soon, the speaker serves as guide, a Virgil to a Dante, and leads the dreamer out of the grief pervading within, and back, where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in. Here one must wonder: whose body is now being entered? In this nighttime reverie, does the speaker allow the dreamer to “enter,” or permit the dreamer to return to [gender neutral pronoun] body?

The last four lines resonate so fully within me that I’m tempted to transcribed them indelibly onto myself. This, of course, is still up in the air. Maybe I’ll sleep on it.

At any rate, this poem has galvanized me to write more, and so welcome to “That Unnoticed & That Necessary.”