bitterfig

For the last month or so I’ve been engrossed in Susanna Clarke’s novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.  It’s a huge book, a meticulously detailed 19^th century style novel.  In 1806 as the Napoleonic wars are raging, the reclusive Mr. Norrell takes it upon himself to revive practical (as opposed to theoretical) magic in England, where it has been dormant for the past three centuries. 

 

Of course Mr. Norrell has some very specific ideas of what magic ought to be.  Over the years he’s amassed the definitive library on the subject, yet he has no desire to share his books or knowledge with other magicians so that they might make the step from theoretical to practical.  In fact even the existence of theoretical magicians seems to irk Norrell.  His first demonstration of practical magic is tinged with his possessiveness of magic and malice towards those he considers unworthy of calling themselves magicians.  When the Learned Society of York Magicians doubts Norrell’s claim to be a practical magician (after all, it has been 300 years since magic was practiced) Norrell agrees to prove himself but the members of the Society are required to take an oath that if Norrell is capable of performing magic none of them will ever again study magic or call themselves magicians.  

 

Previous to Mr. Norrell’s rise in prominence magic and fairies were synonymous in the public imagination, something Norrell, an association Norrell is determined to see buried.  So far as he is concerned fairies are dangerous and should not be dealt with by a proper magician.  As such Norrell dismisses the magical legacy of the mythical Raven King who once ruled in both England and Fairie. 

 

An avarice hoarding of knowledge and an aversion to fairies are the twin pillars of Norrell’s vision of English magic and yet he violates both of his dearly cherished principles—and there are far reaching consequences.

 

When Norrell arrives in London, he is unable to convince the government to take him seriously or see the usefulness of his magic.  When Lady Emma, the fiancé of high ranking government official Sir Walter Pole dies Norrell strikes a deal with a fairy king referred to only as “the gentleman with thistle-down hair” to revive her.  Pole get’s his wife back and Norrell gets his in with the government but there is a considerable price to be paid.  According to the deal Norrell made, half of Emma’s remaining life belongs to the gentleman with thistle-down hair and he holds both her and household servent Stephen Black in magical thrall. 

 

Later Mr. Norrell meets Jonathan Strange, a young man presumptuous enough to practice magic.  Though largely self taught Strange is an imaginative and innovative magician.  Norrell is impressed and rather than crushing Strange’s magical aspirations takes him on as a student. 

 

Strange proves to have a very different approach to practical magic then Mr. Norrell.  While Norrell has remained in London and aided the British army from a distance, Strange encamps with Wellington and experiences the triumphs, discomforts and horrors of war firsthand.  His natural creativity emboldened by his wartime experiences Strange longs to venture deeper into magic.  He quickly grows impatient with Norrell’s cautious approach to magic and the way he hordes his knowledge and the two part ways.  They eventually become rivals, struggling to define English magic. 

 

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is taking me forever to read (I still have about 200 pages left at this writing) but I’m enjoying every minute of it.  Clarke flawlessly incorporates real-life historical elements into the world of the novel which has a complex and richly detailed past involving magic, magicians and fairies.  There is a great deal of wit in the novel that seems quintessentially British to me.  Clarke draws her characters with a spot-on sharpness reminiscent of Jane Austen.  Really a wonderful novel. 

I’ve developed something of a passion for the manga of Ai Yazawa, mostly Nana (I’ve devoured the first eight volumes) and also Paradise Kiss (which I’ve read the first volume of). 

 

Her series Nana was recommended to me based on a bit of Princess Tutu yuri I’d written and right before I lost my second job at Biff’s office I decided to take a chance and secured copies of the first eight volumes of the series from e-bay.  A rather significant risk, I might have hated the series, but as luck would have it Nana turns out to be one of the better manga series I’ve ever read. 

 

Basically it’s about two very different 20-year-old women, both named Nana who come to Tokyo, meet and whose lives become increasingly intertwined.   No science-fiction or supernatural elements, just a pair of girls trying to build their lives and become themselves. 

 

Nana Komatsu is an exuberant but essentially aimless young woman.  Good hearted but clueless she allows herself to drift through life in the wake of whoever she happens to be in love with.  When her friends, including her boyfriend, move to Tokyo to attend art school, she follows them.  On the train to the city she meets the other Nana, Nana Osaki.

 

Nana Osaki is a punk rock singer with very definite goals.  Her previous band, Blast, was a local success in the small city she is from but that ended when their bassist Ren left to join the major label band Trapnest.  Ren was also Nana’s lover and he asked her to come with him but she declined as it would have meant being relegated to “rock star’s girlfriend.”  Their affair was put on hold and in Tokyo, Nana O is determined to become a success at least equal to Ren, with her new band.    

 

Nano O is guarded as Nana K is open, sharing little about her painful childhood or her personal life.  Yet her music has the ability to move people deeply.  Through her music, she seems to speak for them. 

 

While there’s some cutesy stuff, overall Nana is much more adult- as in grown-up, than most manga I’ve read.  Also it’s more novelistic, things seem to develop, grow and deepen with each installment. 

 

Also it has a sensibility I love. 

 

While so much manga seems to focus on students in school uniforms who aspire to the student council, Yazawa’s characters are hip bohemians, artist and musicians in Nana, an enclave of edgy fashion designers in Paradise Kiss.   They shop at thrift stores and vintage shops and garner inspiration from the Sex Pistols and Velvet Goldmine- definitely my kind of scene.  In a way Nana reminds me somewhat painfully of my college years, especially Nana K’s desire to be included in Nana O’s circle of punk musicians.  

 

Though I’m quite late to the party, I’ve started watching the BBC series Torchwood.  I polished off the first season on DVD and am two episodes into season 2 via downloads.  Overall I like it quite a bit.  Season One was fairly uneven.  There were some good episodes but some truly baffling suspensions of logic were required (I’m sorry, but any solution that involves reading the complete works of Emily Dickinson aloud is not acceptable).   Still, it’s amazing what you can forgive of a show that makes just about everybody in its entire cast more or less bisexual.    

 

And when I say everyone I mean everyone.  The leader of Torchwood (an alien hunting organization that’s sort of the UK equivalent to Men In Black) Captain Jack Harkness  openly admits to lovers of both sexes, is sexually involved with a member of his team but still manages to have a kind of “unresolved sexual tension” thing going with Gwen.  In addition to holding up her part of the UST with Jack, Gwen has a boyfriend and has an affair with the team’s medic Owen.  This doesn’t stop her from kissing a woman processed by an alien in the second episode of the show.  Computer expert Toshiko, who seems to have a crush on Owen has an affair with an alien who is female in human form.    An episode is devoted to another team member, Ianto’s efforts to resurrect his girlfriend but it’s gradually revealed in future episodes that he’s become involved with Jack.  Even Owen, a compulsive womanizer and seemingly the straightest member of Torchwood makes out with a guy in the series premiere and during an apocalyptic moment suggests that both Ianto and Toshiko have end of the world sex with him. 

 

I sort of love this kind of stuff. 

 

Season One had a lot of promise which I hope Season Two will deliver on.  It definitely seemed to be off to a good start in the first episode (appropriately titled “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” when Spike (yes, that Spike—Buffy Spike) shows up looking for Jack to be his Drusilla.  Okay, it’s not Spike.  His name is Captain John Hart.  He’s brunette and American.  And he’s not a vampire, he’s some sort of time agent thing that I’d know about if I’d actually watched Dr. Who before watching the spin-off but basically it’s Spike engaging in violent making out with a really cute (if full of himself) guy and in my book, that is pretty stunning. 

 

On the literary front I just finished reading Sarah Water’s novel Fingersmith.  It’s the third novel I’ve read by Waters (I admit it, I have a thing for Victorian lesbians).  The others were Tipping the Velvet (my favorite) and Affinity.   

 

I’d seen a BBC adaptation of Fingersmith a couple of years ago so I knew the basic outlines of the plot, which is probably a good thing.  I’m less concerned with being surprised than I am with knowing what’s going on and Fingersmith is full of the sort of twists and turns and reversals that often times confuse the hell out of me.  Knowing where the story was going freed me up to focus on the characters, the wonderful period dialogue and the rich atmosphere that Water’s evokes.  This atmosphere is by turns sensual and sickening.  Water has a way of making you smell the 19^th century and what with chamberpots and close rooms on rainy nights reeking of dog and unwashed bodies it doesn’t always smell good. 

 

In Fingersmith, Waters seems to deliberately set out to write a sort of post-modern  Dickensonian novel brimming over with melodramatic contrivances such as switched babies, ghastly uncles, and dastardly plots as well as expanding Dickens social themes to include issues of gender and sexuality as well as wealth and class. 

 

Another bit of post-modern pseudo-Victoriana I’ve indulged in lately is Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, about a pair of rival illusionists.  This was my second viewing of The Prestige.  I have to admit my first left me rather baffled.  As I said, I’m not so good a following plots and The Prestige is extremely complicated, a puzzle of a movie in much the same way Nolan’s Memento was.

 

The film’s complexity is encapsulated by its framing device—much of the movie concerns a man reading another man’s diary about reading his own diary.  Follow?  Of course both diaries were intended to be read and are full of deliberate misinformation.  Appropriate for a film that’s central themes are doubles, the creation of illusion and how things are not what they seem to be.  I definitely got much more out of the Prestige by seeing it a second time and I’d like to watch it again just to clear up some details I didn’t really follow.  Also having watched it, I’d rather like to see Nolan’s contribution to the Batman mythology.  I’ve been intensely interested in Batman as a sort of masculine   archetype since I was a teenager but somehow I never got around to seeing Batman Begins. 

I saw my brother and his wife on Wednesday- our sister had everyone over for dinner at her place.  It was really good to see them again.  They’re fun to be around; unlike me (and my sister to a lesser degree) they don’t seem to devote most of their time to being REALLY ANXIOUS.  My brother is so easy going and self-assured sometimes it seems impossible to believe we come from the same household. 

 

I think part of it might be that he figured out early what he wanted to do with his life (be a lawyer and make a shitload of money) and worked towards it with a single-minded focus from a fairly early age.  I on the other hand have always know I wanted to be an artist and writer but have gone about it in a completely half-assed way never feeling that it was a legitimate career to pursue and that to make a living I’d have to do something else.  Ironically I am barely making a living whereas if I’d gone after I interests with more conviction I might be doing something I enjoy much more than working as a supermarket casher and making more money. 

 

I know I shouldn’t compare myself to my siblings but its difficult not to.  I do feel like I’ve accomplished so little compared to both my brother and sister who are in stable relationships, financially well off and reasonably happy.  Whereas I seem to have such a hard time with basic stuff.  A very good illustration of this was the dinner itself.  They were both comfortable enough with themselves that they could eat Indian food and drink wine whereas I did neither.  I ate before I came so I could control my calorie intake and drinking is not an option for me because once I start I can’t really stop.

 

Not that the evening was unpleasant in anyway.  A great deal of interesting stuff talked about. 

 

My sister-in-law is working on a master’s thesis in interior design on vintage art-deco hotels in Miami, Florida which sounds absolutely fascinating.  I’d love to see some of the places she was talking about.  She says that the furnishings weren’t always as far out as the architecture however and sometimes would be down right Victorian as if to reassure the people who stayed there that it wasn’t such a far out establishment. 

 

She and my brother also go to Disney World at least once a year as do my sister and her family so they talked about it quite a bit.  I’ve never been and would probably hate it if I did go (being 0% fun) but in theory all sounds very exotic to me, all the internationally themed restaurants and crazy pirate and Haunted Mansion stuff. 

 

Politics of course came up as they’re bound to.  My brother and sister-in-law live in Washington DC and they were at National Park when George W. Bush threw out the first pitch and was booed by the crowd.  They’d seen him throw out the first pitch of the season a couple years ago (2005 I believe).  My sister-in-law had stood up and turned her back on him and she said she got quite a bit of flack from it from people in the crowd but that when she did it this time nobody said a word.  “Even guys who look like me we booing him,” my brother (who is very corporate/conservative looking) said.  So apparently there’s not a lot of love for President Bush anywhere these days. 

 

My sister had heard about the incident and actually had a discussion about it with one of the other mothers at my nephew’s school.  The other mother said it was wrong to boo the president and that people needed to show respect for the office even if they didn’t like the person in it.  My sister disagreed with this as there have been countless examples of people in positions of authority- Hitler being the example she gave- who have done horrible things and should not have been respected simply because they had a title or occupied a high position. 

 

This sort of reminded me of one of the many themes in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, which I was reading at the time.  The idea that Billy is essentially innocent but has to be punished by death because that is the law and the law is the decree of the King (Billy Budd is set in the British navy) and therefore must be observed to the letter.  This is the argument put out by Captain Vere.  Melville portrays Vere sympathetically but I don’t think he intended it to be lost on the reader that the same King who’s decree Vere is set on upholding is the same King that his countrymen revolted against in the American Revolution and that Billy Budd is ultimately a tragedy because law wins out over morality.

Given that it has not been so terribly long since my complete physical and mental collapse I probably haven’t been taking the best care of myself the past couple days.  Sunday and Monday my schedule was as follows—Wake up at 6:30 a.m. and be to Biff’s office by 7:30 or quarter of eight.  Work there till noon, go home and get in a fifty minute workout before heading to work at the market till closing.  Yesterday I didn’t work at Biff’s at all but I had a long shift at the market and I ended up being so tired I didn’t work out.  I tell myself that this is okay.  Most people do not workout everyday.  My sister-in-law works out four or five days a week and it doesn’t seem to have affected her ability to run marathons so I’m going to try not to worry about it too much. 

Today was my day off but I had to go for training at the North Halsted store (which is actually only a couple of blocks away from my home store).  We’re getting new registers put in next week and had to learn the basics.  It wasn’t too bad though I always get a little rattled when faced with any kind of new method of doing something I’m used to doing a certain way.  Still, I think I can handle it.  It’ll be tough going at first, I’ll actually have to concentrate to do things I’m used to doing automatically but after a few days the new way will be automatic and I think it’ll actually be easier to do a lot of things and save time during cash up. 

It was cool to finally see the North Halsted store.  It opened in July but I’d never been there before.  It has more room than the Lakeview store where I regularly work and seemed fairly quite and slow paced.  Of course the thing that appeals to me the most about this particular branch of Whole Foods is that it’s located smack dab in the heart of teh gay.  It’s in the same building as the Howard Brown GLBT Health Center and Biff tells me it’s a very popular cruising spot.* I spent the training scanning the aisles for lesbilious ladies but it seemed like most of the shoppers were women with kids, not unlike at the Lakeview store. 

Of course having children in tow doesn’t automatically rule someone out as gay—I’ve mentioned Biff and his partner Jorge are going to have a baby.  A sonogram was done on the 15^th and they know for sure now it’s going to be a little boy!  Very exciting.  I’m going to start campaigning for Biff to name him after a Dr. Who character.  Not that I’ve ever watched Dr. Who mind you but Biff has a Dr. Who obsession that goes back about 25 years so I think it would be cool for him to name the baby after a Dr. Who character. 

I’m sure this is the sort of thing only a safely single, non-parent would think.  I’m still a little disappointed that my brother-in-law prevailed on my sister not to name my niece Calliope after her favorite Days of Our Lives character from the 80’s. 

After the training I went to Brown Elephant, the thrift store run by the Howard Brown Health Center which is right across the street from the North Halsted Whole Foods.  I bought a knitted pink hoodie which miraculously fit me despite being a small (no matter how thin I get I will never be a small person) and an armload of books.  I got copies of Slow River by Nicola Griffith and the poems of William Butler Yeats to replace the one I left at my parents in Upstate New York,  as well as a couple anthologies of erotica to help me with my writing, an oversized Spanish language comic book adaptation of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, a book on Goddesses by comic book artist and historian Trina Robbins,  Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forester, The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit (which I’ve long wanted to read) and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (which somehow I’ve never read). 

 

*It should be noted that Biff and his husband have been together since the mid 90’s so he probably has about as much clue as I do about popular cruising spots.

Back to work today.  It wasn’t too bad.  I didn’t pass out or anything.  After work I had to do an hour long training on customer service.  I was very well behaved and refrained from making a great many snarky comments.   We’re going to start doing “team huddles” every day.  How I look forward to that. 

Because I was better on Wednesday but still not working and I needed to get out of the apartment and away from the kitty I went to the movies.  There were three films I wanted to see at Landmark Century Cinema—No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Juno.  For mental health reasons I decided I’d better keep it light and went to see Juno.  I actually liked it quite a bit even though it’s so beloved I was prepared to despise it.  The entire cast was from television shows which I found momentarily disconcerting.  I know its acting but it still takes me a minute to get myself into the proper frame of mind to accept Sydney Bristow as a young wife desperate for a baby and Vern Schillinger as a dotting dad.  Faces bring with them certain associations.

I’m fairly sure Juno bears about zero resemblance to the actual life of the average pregnant sixteen-year-old since the world its set in a sort of a Wes Anderson terrarium where everything is cute and kitschy and everyone is quirky and clever.   I’m also pretty sure Juno was a lot more fun to watch than the life of the average pregnant sixteen-year-old (which to my thinking would probably be a high anxiety nightmare— I was shall we say volatile at that age, not unlike napalm).  There really wasn’t even any conflict, you sort of knew everything was going to work out and be okay so it was actually a really good film for me to be watching given my stress level lately. 

Still, amidst the sarcasm and whimsy where were some moments of hard insight.  Unlike a lot of films it actually acknowledged that there are different social classes and that they sort of live on different planets.  Mark and Vanessa, the couple that is planning to adopt Juno’s baby, live in a posh but generic suburban McMansion that’s worlds away from the more working class existence of Juno and her parents.  In this dream house, Mark has a single room which he devotes to his abandoned dreams of being in a rock band.  He’s still enough of a kid that he seems more interested in convincing Juno that he’s cool than in being a father.  And in some ways I can’t blame him.  Vanessa seems so uptight and controlling, the way they live so of personality I couldn’t help sympathizing with Mark’s dissatisfaction with his way of life even though it was meant to be seen as immaturity.  I actually thought Vanessa’s character was one of the greatest weaknesses of the film.  She seems like a brittle perfectionist who doesn’t really have any wit or imagination.  It’s stressed again and again that she desperately wants a baby but given the very superficial view we get of her it seems like she could only want a baby because that’s what successful people have, offspring as a sort of accessory.  We see a brief glimpse of her playing with a friend’s child at a mall but a brief glimpse doesn’t make a rounded character.  Mark, even with his considerable flaws felt much more fully realized. 

Book-wise I’ve started reading Anne Bishop’s Daughter of the Blood which is the first volume in The Black Jewels Trilogy.  It’s a dark fantasy series and since I’ve only just started it I’m struggling to figure out the world its set in which is matriarchal and has a complicated hierarchical system based on family and the shades of mystic jewels and also how magic works in this world. 

Last week I had a craving to read something voluminous from the 19^th century and inspired by a post hyel had recently made as well as fond memories of the movie (James Purefoy, sigh) I decided to give William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair another go. 

 

I made a previous attempt to read Vanity Fair back in December of 2001.  I was living in New York and my parents and I went out to Chicago by train (the parents don’t fly) to visit my sister who was pregnant with her first child at the time.  I remember that I was reading Vanity Fair at the time because when you travel with a 10 pound book you don’t quickly forget it.  In the end I made it about half way through, about 400 pages of the 800 page edition I was working on, before abandoning it. 

 

It seems to be going much faster on my second attempt.  I hate to admit it but I think watching the film adaptation helped.  I can follow things much better when I have a general idea of the direction they’re going in.  Despite my literary background and considerable pretenses, I have limitations as a reader.  I can either garner the big picture or savor the details, not both at once and I think Vanity Fair works much better when you can appreciate all the jabs and jibs and witty asides.

 

I can’t help but think that it would do me good to be a little more like Rebecca Sharp, the novels anti-heroine.  She does have an amazing ability to make the best of whatever situation she finds herself in.  She might be a scheming little minx but she’s also fearless and I have to admire that.  Faced with the sort of dismal gothic governess situation that would chill the blood of a Jane Eyre, Becky Sharp simply takes over the household.  I imagine a dead car battery wouldn’t thwart her for a minute.  She’s simply impose on the nearest available person, enlist their aid through whatever means were required and driving away think no more of them. 

 

Interestingly, I started watching the anime series The Rose of Versailles which deals with the court of Marie Antoinette leading up to the French Revolution and all the villainess in it (Madame DuBarry, Jeanne and to a lesser extent Lady Polignac) seem to be homicidal versions of Becky Sharp.   Women born without advantages who know how to use what they do have, beauty, intelligence, charm and sexuality and who by shrewd maneuvering are able to rise in the world and gain power, women who use and discard others without remorse. 

I'd like to be sharp, like Becky, but I suppose like everything thats a double edged sword.  It can be empowering or it can be evil.

Things have worked out so that I’ve ended up with a bit of time off for Christmas after all. I got sent home several hours early on Christmas Eve and had Christmas day off because the market was closed. Yesterday I was supposed to work 1:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. but the supervisor forgot to put me on the schedule and since my tire blew out on the way to work I decided not to push the issue and ended up not working. And today I was scheduled off at the market and am working at Biff’s. I guess I could have gone to New York for Christmas after all but I think it’s better that I stayed home and rested instead of dealing with holiday travel and family. Maybe now I won’t be quite as tense and strung out when I do go back to work. 


Yesterday I wound up spending a lot of time in garages. My car was making a grinding noise when I used the brakes so I took it in yesterday morning. It was ready just on time for me to head to work where I hit a curb and popped my tire. This was probably very unwise but I drove the two blocks to the service station with the tire flat because I didn’t want to spend the extra money for a tow truck. When I was having my tire fixed I think the man at the service station was trying to come on to me. He offered me part of his chocolate bar and then later sort of put his hand on my waist and squeezed. I’m honestly not sure if he was being sleazy or friendly, I’m not good at calling these things. 


After I got all that taken care of I went home and devoted myself to pop fantasy. I’m reading New Moon, the second book in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, which is a sort of vampire romance. I have mixed feelings about the series. The first volume mostly annoyed me because every male the heroine, Bella, encountered seemed to be attracted to her despite her constant reassurances that she was plain and klutzy. However when it got to the history of the vampire I found myself drawn in. Frankly I’m much more interested in vampires than high school students. 


Overall, New Moon seems like a much better book so far but I find the romance at the heart of it, between the human Bella and vampire Edward sort of disturbing. He basically has every advantage in the relationship, indulging or ending it (to protect Bella) as the mood strikes him. I know this series is very popular and that sort of bothers me because it’s about a girl who makes the boy she loves the center of her world. Yet I’m done that, as a teenager and yes, as an adult woman and it seems to capture how that feels (it feels really fucking bad). 


Perhaps because the relationship with Edward is so uneven and all consuming I can’t help but find myself hoping Bella ends up with Jacob (her friend who’s a native American, two years younger and who I think is going to end up being a werewolf.) Jacob at least doesn’t spend all his time protecting her and doing things against her will that are for her own good. 


I’ve also been watching the Sci-fi channel mini-series Tin Man, which updates my beloved The Wizard of Oz. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of adaptations of this story I can absorb. My favorites include Wicked (both the book and musical), Geoff Ryman’s novel Was, and David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. Tin Man takes a science fiction approach involving the search for an emerald that contains vast magical power. The Dorothy figure is DG (the always lovely Zooey Deschanel) but she’s also an Ozma of sorts. Not an ordinary girl from Kansas at all but the lost princess of the Outer Zones (O.Z.) hidden away in another world. The wicked witch is her mad, malevolent older sister Azkadellia. It’s pretty entertaining thus far (I’m 2/3 of the way through) though I wish I had it on DVD. I’m watching AVI’s on my computer so the picture is about three inches in size. I really like Alan Cumming as Glitch, a scarecrow figure who’s literally had part of his brain removed (of course it should be noted that I adore Alan Cumming in general and therefore like just about everything I’ve ever seen him in). I also like the storyline with the two sisters, the flashbacks to their past together and how Azkadellia became evil. 


Sometimes I think I spend entirely too much time consuming fantasies and not enough on my own life. Of course sometimes I think that fantasies are the only thing that protects me from my own life. I did make it through Christmas intact which is a positive step. I felt a little sad that I was on my own but nothing too bad. 


I often make an effort not to get involved with others but recently I’ve been taking tentative steps towards one of my co-workers to whom I’m rather attracted. Not deli-boy, who was glamorous but totally beyond my reach. This is a guy I’ve actually had conversations with who doesn’t have a girl friend and I think seems kind of interested. I worry though that I’m reading the situation completely wrong and will make a fool of myself. For starters he’s about 10 years younger than I am. I just finished watching the Twin Peaks boxset and I’m worried that I’m the equivalent of Nadine running amok at Twin Peaks High. He might think of me as this pathetic old lady, not someone he’d be interested in at all. Well, since I’m not drinking I don’t have to worry about coming on too strong. My sober persona tends to be very, very restrained. 

On Sunday I was working in the office but I took an hour off and met my sister and her family at the Renegade Craft Fair being held at the Pulaski Park field house.  I found a gift for my mother.  There was a vendor who made journal/sketchbooks out of old hardcover books.  One of them was made out of a 1951 Whitman Publishing company copy of Margaret Sidney’s The Five Little Peppers which was the exact same edition mum used to read us a chapter of every night for a bedtime story (she also read us Little Women and the Little House books this way.  I have my issues with mum but I do appreciate some of the things she did.)  She’ll either love it or think it’s horrible to cut up a book and make it into a journal. 

 

Last year I didn’t really give gifts as I was scarcely making my living expenses but I’m doing somewhat better now and am trying to get everyone something though I do wish I had more time and energy to make things.  In addition to the journal I also got my mother a pair of Bratz Lil’ Angelz holiday ornaments that she admired in Target when she was visiting.  They’re really cute with big heads and huge eyes.  I like dolls that are very exaggerated and cartoony and aren’t intend to look real.

 

I got my father a copy of the film To End All Wars, a film set in a prisoner of war camp during WWII.  I’d watched it a couple of months ago because I’m semi-obsessed with one of the actors who appears in it (Mark Strong) but I think he’ll find it interesting both for the historical element and it’s exploration of morality and spiritual issues.  It’s really an extremely powerful film, particularly in today’s climate where we’re being told that torture is acceptable and really being encouraged to view “the enemy” as less than human.  To End All Wars contains scenes involving a sort of primitive water-boarding and you realize it’s a horrible act of violence, not an “intensive interrogation” method.  Also, though the film is told from the perspective of Allied POW’s there’s a Japanese character, a translator, who is shown to be a kindred spirit to the narrator.  At its heart it really shows how honor codes trap men, Japanese and Western a like and how following the teachings of Christ is very much contrary to the ideas of good vs evil and us vs them that fuel wars. 

 

I’m also hoping to make some Christmas gifts.  A few days ago I bought some flour and salt (since I don’t actually have flour or salt in my apartment, the closest I get is textured vegetable protein and soy sauce) and am going to try and make bread dough ornaments.  I’ve haven’t gotten to it yet because 1) I had to work on stories that were due of 12/12 and 12/15 for 

fem_exchangeand yuri_challengeand 2) Winter weather makes my skin very dry and I get fissures in my fingers and I imagine kneading a dough made with a cup of salt would get very painful.  However I 've finished the stories and my hands seem to be healed so maybe tomorrow night....

 

I was scheduled to be off at the market Saturday, Sunday and today then yesterday I ended up having to call in because I had to take my car into the shop so I’ve had an unprecedented four days off.  Keep in mind of course that three of those days I’ve been working at the office but still, it’s nice to get away after the craziness of Thanksgiving week. 


I spoke to Mum last night and she pretty understanding about my working during her visit (I requested time off but was scheduled anyways).  I will have one day off during her visit, Sunday, so we can do something that day.  I’d like to take her down to see the windows of the State Street Marshall Fields (previously Macys).  My sister took her children and was showing some pictures she’d taken on Thanksgiving and the displays looked absolutely gorgeous—they’re scenes from the Nutcracker Suite, which is one of my favorite holiday stories. 

One of the versions of the Nutcracker I love the most is the picture book illustrated by Maurice Sendak.  I just started reading The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present, which I found in the library yesterday.  It’s a huge, beautiful oversized art book and the text is by Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner.  While I love Sendak’s earlier wrote, (Chicken Soup and Rice, What Do You Say Dear and Where the Wild Things Are were staples of my childhood) I’m fasinated by a lot of the things he’s done more recently-- dark, melancholy children’s stories like Dear Milli and Outside, Over There (which I've always thought influenced the film Labyrinth), art in his “old world” style, and more adult illustration and theatrical design (including The Nutcracker and the Holocaust themed dance production he created  with the Pilobolus Dance Theater at my old alma mater SUNY College at Purchase which is the subject of a documentary, The Last Dance). 

I’ve known for years that Sendak considers Mozart and William Blake huge influences but I was interested to learn that another is Herman Melville, particularly his novel Pierre or the Ambiguities which Sendak did a series of illustrations for.  I’ve never read Pierre. I know of it mainly because several years ago I saw a film, Pola X, that updated and adapted it (I actually saw his movie when I was on a visit to Chicago, at the theater in the  Fine Arts building on Michigan Avenue which has since closed).   I think I’d rather like to read it now if only to understand what’s happening in Sendak’s beautiful illustrations that evoke both the ballet and the works of William Blake. 

I’ve been reading Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which is essentially a biblical style mythology/history of Middle Earth.   It’s proving slow going on account of all the unfamiliar words—names of characters, races, and places.  Because of my learning disability I’ve never been able to “sound things out.”  Since I can’t do this my method of reading is based around recognizing common words and patterns of letters.  Words that I haven’t encounter before are pretty much lost on me so I have to repeatedly go back to figure out exactly what or who is being referred to. 

 

Not surprisingly I find myself being distracted by books that are, simply, easier to read. 

 

Last week I polished off A Ruby in the Smoke and A Shadow in the North, the first two (of four) Sally Lockhart Mysteries by notorious corruptor of children and enemy of the faithful Phillip Pullman (I’ll get into that in a later post).  While this series isn’t quite on the same level as Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy it was quite enjoyable.  They’re atmosphere heavy Victorian thrillers with plucky orphans, smart mouthed office boys, opium dens, illusionists, evil industrialists (Blake supposedly is a great influence of Pullman’s and I can tell when he describes the dark satanic mills of a factory  that makes weapons in A Shadow in the North) and murderers who go around cutting people’s throats.  They have well drawn characters and a bit of wry satire and social commentary thrown in as well. 

 

My holiday weekend reading was Laurie Lindeen’s memoir Petal Pusher, which recounts her days as a member of the early 1990’s all-girl indie band Zuzu’s Petals.  I was actually a fan of Zuzu’s Petals back in the day.  I still have a cassette of their first album “When No One’s Looking” kicking around somewhere and I’ll occasionally find myself quoting random snatches of their lyrics “God calls on the telephone, she has a temper…”  “Wish I may, wish I might find what I’m wishing for…” “Cinderella, you’re dreaming.  Wake up your conscience is screaming…” “Aye carrumba and I surrender and I guess it’s got something to do with my gender…”  So when I stumbled upon Petal Pusher at the Bucktown library I couldn’t believe my luck. 

 

Reading the cover blurb, I was rather shocked to learn that Lindeen has multiple sclerosis, a disease that I find especially baffling and frightening.  Also that she’s married to Westerberg from the Replacements which doesn’t mean a lot to me.  I was obsessive about indie and punk rock for many years but I only ever paid attention to the women.  As a result I’m intimately familiar with many obscure bands while there are Gods and giants I’ve never listened to.

 

Excited as I was to read Petal Pusher I ended up having pretty mixed feelings about the book.  It seemed sort of sloppily written, jumping between past, present and future through a sort of free-association that I couldn’t always follow.  Also it seemed like there were huge areas of her life Lindeen really didn’t want to go into.  Having MS was something she repeatedly states she didn’t want to think about and therefore seems to sort of side step the subject of living with her disease in favor of a lot of antidotes about life on the road and gossip about the Madison, WI and Minneapolis, MI rock scenes that seem sort of petty in comparison.  There were some good bits but overall I never got a sense that being a musician or a member of Zuzu’s Petals was something that was fulfilling to her and I honestly found myself wondering why she bothered.  I was kind of disappointed.

 

I found myself really disturbed by the section of the memoir where Lindeen describes having an abortion, particularly at the end of the scene where she writes about being picked up by her band mate who will be in the same situation in a few months.  Part of what bothers me is knowing that these are educated women in their late 20’s.  It seems like there are so many options available to them that they shouldn’t have to be having abortions.  Because as much as I support legalized abortion and the right to choice I’ve never been able to go along with the “it’s just a piece of tissue” argument.  I hate the idea of anyone having to go through something like that…  Maybe I’m just particularly sensitive about this issue right now because last week I gave a co-worker, a 20-year old girl, a ride and somehow she ended up telling me about how she’d had an abortion in June.  She works in a supermarket, lives with her parents, has taken a couple of college classes… It’s almost like Sophie’s Choice, you can have a child or you can have a future.  No one should have to make that kind of a decision.    

 

I never want to be in a position where I have to make that choice.  I’ve never been pregnant and if I can help it I’m never going to be. When I was with my ex-boyfriend I remember it was an area of contention between us that I used birth-control.  He was Catholic (though obviously selective in his morality as he was divorced and had two children by a woman he had never been married too, plus having non-marital sex with me plus being a liar) and considered it wrong that I was on the pill.  He was always telling me I was neurotic and that he’d never known any women who were as uptight about using birth control as I was.  He may have been partially right.  I have a lot of issues regarding bodily integrity and view becoming pregnant in a sort of David Cronenbergian manner.  Still, I don’t really see how it’s possible not to take something like birth control really seriously considering the consequences.  I know I can’t be a mother, I simply don’t have the resources emotionally or financially and the idea of having an abortion just seems very devastating to me. 

On Wednesday night I went to see a reading by Lydia Lunch at Quimbys (an underground book/comic book/zine shop on North Avenue).  I was a little hesitant to go because I’ve been feeling off lately and really don’t want to do much but stay home and watch movies. 

 

Lydia Lunch looms large in my personal pop culture hierarchy.  She was one of the women featured in Re/Search’s Angry Women anthology, a book that went a long way towards shaping my feminist sensibilities.  She was also one of the first American women in punk rock and her scary, sexy little girl persona would be a huge influence on Courtney Love’s archetypical  kinderwhore persona.  Despite this impressive resume, I’ve never really been a fan of Lydia Lunch’s work.  Her music never really impressed me and I found her writing ugly, extreme and disturbing without being illuminating.   Also I’m a little scared of her. 

 

Still, I decided to attend the reading.  Lunch turned out to be one of three authors reading that night, the others were Arthur Neresian and local boy Joe Meno. 

 

Neresian started off with an excerpt from his novel Swing Voter of Staten Island.  It was a sort of science fiction action adventure crossed political parody.   Something about tying Ann Coulter to the roof of his car like a deer.  It was juvenile and very violent and not nearly as funny as it should have been. 

 

Lunch was next.  I was sort of relieved by her physical presence.  She’s not very big which made her a little less frightening to me (she and illustrator Bob Fingerman did a comic book called Bloodsucker a few years ago that featured a character that looked like Lunch performing acts of sexual vampirism.  I know you shouldn’t confuse authors and their characters but I guess I sort of see Lunch as the Bloodsucker character).  She read from Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary which was written a decade ago but only recently published in the united states.  Before she started reading a stoned out young kid, maybe about 19 or 20, with a fresh, vacant face came up and sat at her feet then kissed her shoe.  Careful what you wish for, silly boy.  After all, this is the woman who sent Nick Cave scampering.

 

The excerpt Lunch read (which she assured the audience was all true) was about her experiences as a teenaged runaway in New York City in the 1970’s, basically living by stealing, turning tricks and occasionally stripping.  A potentially terrifying situation but Lunch denies fear, presenting us instead with a seventeen year old heroine who is the most dangerous creature on the streets, out of exploit everyone she encounters, a sort of a reversal of Sade’s hapless Justine.  From what Lunch read, Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary does seem to take a very Sadian worldview where everything, especially sex, is really about power, about using, about fucking someone else over. 

 

Lunch may be a predator but I’ve always considered myself prey, so I have a hard time identifying with her writing.  Maybe it’s because I am at heart hopelessly Christian and middle-class but I’m not sure if I believe in her brand of fearless amorality and not sure if I want to.  Still, her performance did a lot to enhance the material.  She brought a lot of humor and bravado to her reading and was quite engaging all things considered. 

 

Joe Meno was the final reader, following Lunch.  Quite a few people in the audience left after she finished, which I thought was sort of rude.  How hard is it to stick around for fifteen more minutes to support a local writer?  Of course I have a soft spot for Joe Meno.  I’ve haven’t gotten around to reading any of his books (Hairstyles of the Damned, How the Hula Girl Sings, Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir) but I’ve seen him read about half a dozen times at various venues around the city.  He’s an expressive reader and real cute to boot.  He looks like a nice little boy (even though he’s in his 30’s—33 to be exact, two years younger than me and all those books published.  Sigh.) then you notice the sailor tattoos.  I actually found the piece he read, from his first book Tender As Hellfire which was just put out in paperback, quite engaging.  It was narrated by a twelve-year old kid, all about a haunted barn, taxidermy eyes and an annoying girl, and was really funny and actually made me wonder what the rest of the book was like.  I’d actually seen a copy of it at the library just a few days before. 

In Dan Savage’s Savage Love column a woman calling herself “Auntie Mame” wrote in about her five year old nephew who she suspects is gay.  Apparently the little boy enjoys “putting on make-up, watching and dancing along to musicals with vampy women (like Chicago), playing dress-up.”  The boy’s father however had strictly prohibited these activities and his Aunt wondered if it was okay to let her nephew do these things he was visiting her even though his father didn’t want him doing them at all.

 

Dan Savage responded by saying that she should love her nephew unconditionally, provide him with a safe space in which to be himself and to “lie lots” if necessary.  I imagine Savage is going to take a certain amount of flack for this suggestion.  Parental authority is a touchy subject and a lot of people are going to disagree with the idea that it’s ever all right for an adult to lie to parents about their child or expressly go against their wishes and rules. 

 

Still, I have to admit when I read this it reminded me of something I was thinking about when I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden earlier this year.  In almost every enduring childrens book—from Where the Wild Things Are to Harriet the Spy to Harry Potter- there are almost always situations where children disobey parents or authority figures, break their rules and sneak around behind their backs.  I find this interesting, almost like a system of checks and balances.  While children are told they must do as adults, especially parents say they’re also sent the message through stories that adults and parents have limitations, that sometimes they don’t know best and that staying safe and doing as your told isn’t always the right thing. 

 

The Secret Garden is almost a reversal of the Adam and Eve legend.  Mary is essentially set loose on the grounds of a great house and the only thing forbidden to her is the secret garden.  She insists and finding it, entering it, bringing others in and in the process changes the lives of all involved for the better. 

 

Somewhere in this world there are parents who don’t want to control their children, who want them to grow, but I didn’t have parents like that.  Even when I was in fourth or fifth grade I still thought I could live by their rules all the time.  I remember I’d get indigant when classmates say “Oh my God,” because that was swearing and according to the parents that was wrong. 

 

I can’t help but think that I was encouraged to look beyond my parent’s very restrictive worldview by reading books.  Trixie Belden for instance was always doing dangerous things, sneaking around and spying but she always ended up helping people and solving mysteries in the end. 

I though I might have been being a bit of a hypochondriac calling in sick on Thursday but today I’m feeling so much better I realize I was pretty sick.  I probably should have taken yesterday off as well because I felt very poorly for most of my shift and my level of customer service probably dropped to an all time low.  It’s hard to be pleasant when you’re wondering if you’re going to pass out.  Today I really felt like I was myself again, no cold sweats, sensations of spinning or shaking.  I was actually in quite high spirits.  It was a beautiful, perfect fall day and market was hosting a “Halloween Freak Out” which included people form a local arts center making masks and students from the Paul Green School of Rock (which is just down the street) playing Black Sabbath songs.  All this was out in the parking lot but you could hear the music inside and it was fun.  I’m not exactly a Black Sabbath fan but I love Halloween and I thought it was a cool idea in general. 

 

I finished Good Omens which I really liked.  I don’t read a lot of humor or watch many comedies but I’m beginning to think maybe I should because I always seem to end up really loving the things I do watch/read.  One of my all time favorite films in The Life of Brian and probably the best movies I saw last year were the only two comedies I went to, Strangers With Candy and Little Miss Sunshine.  Still, I tend to be very wary of comedy and humor.  I don’t quite trust it.  Too often there’s cruelty at its heart.  I’m guilty of this myself.  I can be viciously funny, usually at someone else’s expense, if I don’t watch myself.  Also I think humor is often misused to create a smokescreen and avoid dealing with something that needs to be addressed. 

An update on what I’ve been reading lately.

 

I finished re-reading John Nathan’s biography of Yukio Mishima quite quickly.  I find his story is so fascinating, his desire to move from the realms of fantasy and creativity to those of action and physicality, from thoughtfulness to what William Butler Yeats would call “a mind that nobleness made simple as a fire.”   Given the state of the world today I really do find something disturbingly relevant in Mishama’s conscious decision to embrace nationalism and fanaticism. 

 

Currently I’m about two thirds of the way through Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, a stiletto sharp, whip smart riff on the end of the world which I’m enjoying very much.  I think Kevin Smith’s Dogma, which I love, must owe a certain debt to Good Omens.  The portrayal of the workings of heaven and hell and the tone seem similar to me. 

 

Between Mishama and Good Omens read the first two volumes of a really interesting manga series called After School Nightmare.  It’s a really bizarre and psychologically complex story about a school where certain students are brought to a subterranean infirmary to participate in a special class they need to pass before they can graduate.  In this class the students enter a dream where they appear as they truly are and compete with each other for a key that unlocks a door they must pass through to graduate.  After a student graduates, they’re completely forgotten by their classmates so the school is eerily full of empty desks and lockers.

( cut for spoilers, pictures )

I’ve just finished reading two books, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Francesca Lia Block’s Psyche in a Dress.

( cut for length and spoilers )

I have the next two days off thank goodness.  I just finished a fairly grueling three days where I was working at Biff’s office from 8:00 a.m. until noon followed by a mid-afternoon to close shift at the market. Taxing, but it’s worth it to secure my financial peace of mind through the next paycheck.

In all honesty I sometimes think overwork might be good for me. It doesn’t leave me any time to worry or feel bad about myself, I feel like I’ve accomplished something when I get through the day and I don’t need to wear eyeliner because I already have dark around my eyes.

When I went into Biff’s on Monday morning I found out that one of his dogs, the poodle he’d adopted two years ago, had died. Poor little thing, he was such a happy, hyper dog and only three years. It’s especially hard on Biff and his husband, Jorge, because when it happened the dog was away being trained (he tended to bite when he got too excited). Biff says they treated him well there but apparently the stress was too much for him. Really sad. Biff got him from a shelter and he’d been abused by his former owner. His coat was overgrown and ungroomed to the point where he literally had poodle dreadlocks and when he got cleaned up he was scrawny as a lizard underneath. For the first week he was very scared and shy but then he realized he was safe and going to be fed and started bouncing off the walls. I’m glad he was at least able to have two years of being pampered and running around like a maniac.

Biff is currently doing Weight Watchers and feels a bit ambiguous about it so I lent him by copy of Wendy McClure’s book I Am Not the New Me. McClure is a Chicago woman in her 30’s who I’ve seen at a couple of book signings and literary events around town. She writes a column for Bust magazine and in her book talks a lot about her experiences in Weight Watchers, which she has very mixed feelings about. I’ve never attended Weight Watchers (though several people have suggested I should) but apparently the cultish/cheerleader aspects strike a sour note with people around my age who have a skeptical, ironic take on life.

 

On Monday I finally got into see my new therapist.  This was only our second session together so we’re still in the introductory phase and it’s still too early to know if we’re going to work well together.  At the Eating Disorders Clinic I go to there’s a shelf of books you can borrow and I picked up a copy of Marion Woodman’s The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Repressed Feminine which I just finished reading this afternoon. 

 

One of the things I really like about The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter is that it recognizes that obesity and anorexia are not opposites of each other counterparts which I really believe is true.  “In both pathologies,” Woodman writes, “the girls are repressed, too compliant, too desirous to fulfill their parent’s expectations, even to fulfill their parents’ unlived lives… Both want control and seek that control through denial of food.” 

 

When I was overweight, I often tried not to eat but would inevitably rebel at the restrictions and binge with tremendous shame and self-hatred.  I stopped binging for the same reason I recently stopped drinking.  Living with myself after I did it had become too hard.  Now I only binge a few times a year, or every few years but everyday I’m aware that I have the capacity to binge, to over eat, to gain weight, to get fat.  Everyday I still feel that shame and self-loathing.    

 

The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter approaches eating disorders from the standpoint of Jungian psychology and as such treats fear and compulsion as serious, soul killing maladies instead of trying to make them light and harmless as most self-help and pop-psychology does.  Unfortunately this had the side effect of making me profoundly sad as I was reading this book but maybe that’s for the best.  I don’t often feel a lot of compassion for myself. 

 

I’ve always been very much attuned to Jungian theory.  I’m a superstitious person who tends to see things in terms of witchcraft, ghosts, demons, Gods and superpowers.  Jungian psychology, which places importance on religious imagery, mythology, dreams and symbols very much speaks my language.  Not surprisingly, when Woodman writes of being “possessed” by eating disorders it resonates deeply with me. 

 

I really did feel like the book articulated many of the conflicts underlying my problems with weight and food.  In a summary of factors in family background many seemed to describe the environment I grew up in.  In fact it’s almost scarily accurate—

 

“Mother usually unconscious of her own femininity, out of touch with her own body and sexuality.”

 

“Mother tended to be domineering towards whole family rejecting the girl as an individual, and projected her own unlived life onto the child.”

 

 “Mother probably considered the father weak and incompetent in his relationship to the world”“

 

“All spontaneity in the home was rigidly disciplined.”

 

“Daughter felt the hopes and dreams of both parents were pinned on her.”

 

“Daughter forced into maternal role too early, therefore rejects mature maternal role, prefers to remain a child.”

 

A summary of the personality problems likely to develop from a background of this kind describes me fairly well—

 

“As an adult, still dependent on the mother or father, at the same time rebellious against them.”

 

“Inability to cope with reality,,, flights of fantasy.”

 

“Feels herself manipulated and victimized by evil forces from outside (e.g., parents, Devil, God).

 

“”Passivity” terrifies her… “To surrender” for her means giving up, cowardice, loss of control, annihilation.  Can not understand “losing one’s life to find one’s life”, either sexually or spiritually.”

 

“Devoted to Apollinian order and discipline.  Terrified of anything remotely smacking of the Dionysian, therefore prone to possession of it (e.g. midnight binges).

 

“Fantasies of perfection lead to “all or nothing” attitudes which discourage moderate dieting.” 

 

Woodman sees the way out of eating disorders as “surrendering control, opening herself up to fate.”  This involves accepting the chaos of the world, accepting and even embracing co-existing opposites.  I know this is something I have a huge problem with.  It you want to see the evidence go to my entry of a few days ago where I made a snide but fairly mild comment about people on food stamps shopping at whole foods. 

 

Yet the minute someone took offense I became convinced I was a horrible person and wrote voluminous responses trying to assure myself and anyone who would listen that I was indeed a decent person that I was non-judgmental, resented no one, and harbored no incorrect thoughts.  It never occurred to me that you can be a decent person and still be cranky, judgmental, irritable, insensitive and even wrong.  I don’t think in those terms.  I’ve never been able to accept contradictions in either myself or the world. 

 

I could give thousands of examples of this but it would only illustrate what I already know, that I have a serious problem existing, being myself, living any kind of a life.  I get angry with my family because they don’t seem to understand how hard things are for me.  They tell me what I ought to do and all I want to do is cry because it seems impossible to me.  How do you meet new people or sell yourself at a job interview when you hate yourself so much that it’s an effort not to cut yourself or starve yourself or eat or drink to the point of insensibility?  

 I was sad to hear about the death of author who I adored.

 

Unlike many readers I never read any of the books growing up.  I started reading her at some point in my mid-twenties after the pastor of the church I was attending at the time, a really wonderful and creative woman who was a huge influence on me, quoted her in a sermon.  After that I read most of the series of children’s fantasies that begins with A Wrinkle In Time as well as several of her adult novels and her non-fiction.

 

It’s been several years since I read anything by L’Engle and I wish I could remember the specifics of her stories better but they did make a significant impression on me as a writer and a person on me at a very difficult time in my life, that long period between 1995 and 2001 when I had to slowly rebuild myself, physically and emotionally, after anorexia had reduced me to almost nothing.

 

Perhaps because of the way I was introduced to her work, I consider L’Engle to be a writer primarily concerned with spirituality.  To me her fantasy novels were allegories of the soul’s journey that expressed emotional states and stages of development with amazing, vivid and imaginative imagery.  There was wisdom in her books, wisdom and compassion both.  I think L’Engle was essentially Christian writer but a Christian who understood that the spirit of Christ’s teaching went beyond the limits of culture and creed, encompassing all of humanity and the entire universe. 

A couple of weeks ago I was read the manga Earthian.  It’s an earlier work Kouga Yun the mangaka (writer/artist) responsible for Loveless, a series I’ve had an ambiguous fascination/revulsion relationship with since I started reading it last year because of the eroticized, highly romantic manner in which it deals with the relationship between a 20 year old man and a 12 year old boy. 

 

Earthian was disturbing in different and similar ways.  Like Loveless, Earthian focuses on male characters but what bothered me was the manner in which the primary female supporting-- Aya, Elvira and Miyuki-- were portrayed. 

( cut for length and spoilers )

Things I’ve been reading lately:

( The Bull From the Sea by Mary Renault )

( Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess )

( Strangers in Paradise Vol. 11-16 )
( Veronica by Mary Gaitskill )