Friday, July 04, 2008
A root of evanescence
Have you ever heard of Sankofa? It's a concept that stretches across many cultures in west Africa, about the idea of going back to get what you have lost. It's usually symbolised by a bird turning back to its own tail, sometimes with an egg in its mouth.
Sometimes a thought can be better expressed in poetry than in prose. Tell me what you think of this poem about Sankofa by my fellow blogger Fenix.
Sometimes a thought can be better expressed in poetry than in prose. Tell me what you think of this poem about Sankofa by my fellow blogger Fenix.
------
Sankofa
if it was important enough to be taken from you
then it is important enough to be fought for
if you've lost sight of your legacy
and you can't place your roots
if you know what was taken from you
Return and get it.
if it was important enough to be taken from you
then it is important enough to be fought for
if you've lost sight of your legacy
and you can't place your roots
if you know what was taken from you
Return and get it.
Black Fenix, "The Spirit of Sankofa"
Friday, December 14, 2007
Tight
I'm going to talk about two very different books today, which I read in short succession and which left me standing in very different places afterward.
I don't know how I feel about Haruki Murakami. On the one hand, I love his style (or, I guess, how I've received his style as effortlessly translated mostly by Jay Rubin). He's sort of incessantly readable - frustratingly so. Because I can read a book of his like, say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and feel like crap the whole way through, right til the end, and even have to put it down more than once because I feel like I'm going to vomit or cry, but five minutes later I'll be restless if I don't pick it up again. That kind of author.
Norwegian Wood fits squarely in Murakami's self-made genre of loner-alienation-pop culture junkie-fiction, and it might have been, in isolation, a poor choice to read while trying to figure out the process of grief myself. I picked it up on the basis of remembering a handsome German man had recommended it to me, and that it was sort of a love story, but fittingly enough for me right then that sort-of-love-story is jigsawed in with the question of what two people do with the chasm of a suicide hanging between them, and how they stumble towards and away from each other around it.
I'm beginning to understand, I think, what he means in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle when he's fixating on this deep dark abandoned well, on the idea of needing to find your deep dark place and go to the bottom of it. Murakami is definitely on to something in these explorations he keeps coming back to of the connection between physical darkness, loss, and the power of dreams and what comes out at night. Making contact with that immense well that only rarely surfaces from the subconscious for most of us is, I think, one of the great confrontations we city folk born under permanent orange-pink skies need to run amok with. But if you are trying to find your way out of that dark place yourself, I recommend that you do not read Norwegian Wood. In such case, I think you'll find it appeals to a nostalgia and an understanding of love that don't fall in the right space on the continuum for getting well and getting through.
Joan Didion, on the other hand, is an author I feel I know very well now after having read The Year of Magical Thinking, and I am glad for it. Oddly, I considered reading the book for this blog sometime last year, because it was on all those 2006 best ofs lists, but I couldn't be bothered until it occurred to me it might have something to say to me last month. Indeed, Didion's frank, direct account of getting through the first year after her husband John's death might have been the perfect book to stray across my path.
What struck me about the way she speaks about her own experience of the process of grief was that, as a woman who lives through writing, she found herself trying to research herself, research the last 100 years of widowhood in American culture, of public and private grief, of the slow process of accepting death as a sort of eventual marble stone with which to put a name to all these impulses suddenly turned inward when the one you love isn't there to bring them to. I love what she says about self-pity.
I don't know how I feel about Haruki Murakami. On the one hand, I love his style (or, I guess, how I've received his style as effortlessly translated mostly by Jay Rubin). He's sort of incessantly readable - frustratingly so. Because I can read a book of his like, say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and feel like crap the whole way through, right til the end, and even have to put it down more than once because I feel like I'm going to vomit or cry, but five minutes later I'll be restless if I don't pick it up again. That kind of author.
Norwegian Wood fits squarely in Murakami's self-made genre of loner-alienation-pop culture junkie-fiction, and it might have been, in isolation, a poor choice to read while trying to figure out the process of grief myself. I picked it up on the basis of remembering a handsome German man had recommended it to me, and that it was sort of a love story, but fittingly enough for me right then that sort-of-love-story is jigsawed in with the question of what two people do with the chasm of a suicide hanging between them, and how they stumble towards and away from each other around it.I'm beginning to understand, I think, what he means in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle when he's fixating on this deep dark abandoned well, on the idea of needing to find your deep dark place and go to the bottom of it. Murakami is definitely on to something in these explorations he keeps coming back to of the connection between physical darkness, loss, and the power of dreams and what comes out at night. Making contact with that immense well that only rarely surfaces from the subconscious for most of us is, I think, one of the great confrontations we city folk born under permanent orange-pink skies need to run amok with. But if you are trying to find your way out of that dark place yourself, I recommend that you do not read Norwegian Wood. In such case, I think you'll find it appeals to a nostalgia and an understanding of love that don't fall in the right space on the continuum for getting well and getting through.
Joan Didion, on the other hand, is an author I feel I know very well now after having read The Year of Magical Thinking, and I am glad for it. Oddly, I considered reading the book for this blog sometime last year, because it was on all those 2006 best ofs lists, but I couldn't be bothered until it occurred to me it might have something to say to me last month. Indeed, Didion's frank, direct account of getting through the first year after her husband John's death might have been the perfect book to stray across my path.
What struck me about the way she speaks about her own experience of the process of grief was that, as a woman who lives through writing, she found herself trying to research herself, research the last 100 years of widowhood in American culture, of public and private grief, of the slow process of accepting death as a sort of eventual marble stone with which to put a name to all these impulses suddenly turned inward when the one you love isn't there to bring them to. I love what she says about self-pity.I recall coming in from Central Park one morning in mid-August with urgent news to report: the deep summer green has faded overnight from the trees, the season is already changing. We need to make a plan for fall, I remember thinking. We need to decide where we want to be at Thanksgiving, Christmas, the end of the year.The book, I found, to most embody this thought of Lewis' in Didion's probing exploration of herself, her own reactions to the prospect of a Christmas planned alone, to the concurrent illness of their daughter Quintana, her readjustments to her reflection in the mirror and in front of the computer or notepad. The book's unapologetically prosaic the whole way through, and I love her for it. Some trickle of W H Auden's plain, elegant talent for whipping miracles out of a simple sentence finds it way through here. I wonder, expect, it's characteristic of Didion's work as a journalist, but I haven't read anything else by her yet. I think I love how prosaic it is because she examines death as fact, as astonished but unbreaking truth, and that, my friends, is what I have to recommend to you today, and hold up The Year of Magical Thinking as a fine way to find yourself through it.
I am dropping my keys on the table inside the door before I fully remember. There is no one to hear this news, nowhere to go with the unmade plan, the uncompleted thought. There is no one to agree, disagree, talk back. "I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense," C S Lewis wrote after the death of his wife. "It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many cul-de-sacs."
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Slim
For those of you still dropping by on this little blog about books and freedoms looking for more information about Ross Moroz's death last week, hello. I would add that I wish we could have met under better circumstances, but perhaps no other circumstances would have brought us together.
The funeral was apt. His sister spoke very eloquently about what kind of man he was, and wanted us to be. A few notes rang untrue, to my ears, in other parts of the ceremony, but then I guess none of us really knew the whole Ross. If you haven't heard, his alleged underground campaign to make Four Strong Winds Alberta's provincial anthem goes on strong.
[Edit: Aiya. This isn't a tabloid, thanks for the reminder, Misha. To clarify for readers: yes, he did fall. No, I do not know how or why.] I just never really imagined using a venue for my rantings on novels and photo contests and climate change to talk about the stuff that I can't hide behind witty banter to avoid being too intimate about. I'm not shy to admit pageviews to this thing have gone up about 1000% in the last few days. But there are other places he'll be written about. Places where you'll have a better chance to hear Teenage Wasteland again.
Probably the last you'll hear about our friend on here, then. For those of you who missed the service, it was a full room. Standing room only, yes. But filled with many other things too.
The funeral was apt. His sister spoke very eloquently about what kind of man he was, and wanted us to be. A few notes rang untrue, to my ears, in other parts of the ceremony, but then I guess none of us really knew the whole Ross. If you haven't heard, his alleged underground campaign to make Four Strong Winds Alberta's provincial anthem goes on strong.
[Edit: Aiya. This isn't a tabloid, thanks for the reminder, Misha. To clarify for readers: yes, he did fall. No, I do not know how or why.] I just never really imagined using a venue for my rantings on novels and photo contests and climate change to talk about the stuff that I can't hide behind witty banter to avoid being too intimate about. I'm not shy to admit pageviews to this thing have gone up about 1000% in the last few days. But there are other places he'll be written about. Places where you'll have a better chance to hear Teenage Wasteland again.
Probably the last you'll hear about our friend on here, then. For those of you who missed the service, it was a full room. Standing room only, yes. But filled with many other things too.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Closer
For those of you who ever met Ross Moroz, it is with difficulty and a good deal of sadness that I would like to let those of you who haven't heard know that he died suddenly and inconceivably last Wednesday. If you haven't heard about him before, you've probably read me writing obliquely about him in this blog before. For the year or so I've been doing freelance work for Vue, he's been my editor, but he was many things to me, and most of all one of the most surprising good friends I know, knew... I'm no good with tenses, forgive me.
Last year we were at Remedy talking about writing, and I asked if he would mind helping me put together a few samples of my stuff to send to See, since they'd been looking for writers (specifically, they had put out an ad [which I may still have] that said 'Yeah, you've got a blog. But we've got an audience.') He said 'Fuck that. Write something for us.'
Ross had a way of encouraging with a sharp kick in the ass that I needed. I cannot really comprehend yet that he's gone. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't.
His obituary is online here, and in his picture he's wearing the tie he wore the very first day we met. It was a hard day to forget, like every day with Ross. A funeral, a 'celebration,' as it's being called is being held for him this Tuesday, October 2nd at Devon Community Center, 20 Haven Ave, (East of IGA) in Devon at 4:00 pm. [Edit: If you were wondering, yes, all are welcome.] His family's asked that in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Kidsport Alberta - 403.217.3761.
Last year we were at Remedy talking about writing, and I asked if he would mind helping me put together a few samples of my stuff to send to See, since they'd been looking for writers (specifically, they had put out an ad [which I may still have] that said 'Yeah, you've got a blog. But we've got an audience.') He said 'Fuck that. Write something for us.'
Ross had a way of encouraging with a sharp kick in the ass that I needed. I cannot really comprehend yet that he's gone. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't.
His obituary is online here, and in his picture he's wearing the tie he wore the very first day we met. It was a hard day to forget, like every day with Ross. A funeral, a 'celebration,' as it's being called is being held for him this Tuesday, October 2nd at Devon Community Center, 20 Haven Ave, (East of IGA) in Devon at 4:00 pm. [Edit: If you were wondering, yes, all are welcome.] His family's asked that in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Kidsport Alberta - 403.217.3761.
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