Beautiful Ruins

I started this book on the coast of somewhere beautiful. Laying on a beach staring off into the crystal clear aquamarine water off the coast of Cancun Mexico. My sun-tanned toes glistening in the sun, flip-flops forgotten by the lounge chair. I was excited about the prospect of visiting the Cinque Terre myself (my planned 40th birthday adventure --start planning all those who are interested :)  You have nine more years). I read a few pages at home in Seattle, cuddled on the couch under a blanket, the occasional ray of sunshine coming through the sliding-glass door of my apartment living room. I finished the book on a shaded park bench at the entrance to a canyon in Utah, gazing into the blue-green waters of the dam, staring at the clear blue sky above me, and pondering all the places my life has been; My flip-flops keeping my feet company as the geese meander around in the lush green grass bathed in sunshine.  I never thought that I'd make it to the glitzy shores of the Cancun paradise. It seemed a place out of reach for a long time in my life. And for a long time, I never thought I'd make it back here. Back to a place where I could see myself returning- to the place I left to become myself in a time that is at once so long ago, and a blink away from yesterday. The person I was when I left is not the person I'm returning as. Am I ready to turn the page to this next chapter of my life? I finally think that I am. I've contemplated it for a long time --whether I was strong and secure enough in who I am to return to a place that is so different from a world that I've come to love. I spent a short time today driving through the college campus that consumes so many of my memories from this place. So much of my foundation spring-board into life. And it too has changed. Buildings are new, buildings have changed, and some are just gone. But my memories remain unfiltered by the shadow of time. And what a metaphor that was for me today.

There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. 

--Milan Kundera (as quoted in Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter)

My next few tangible present moments are going to be hard. There's going to be tears and smiles, laughter and silence. And isn't that the way it should be? Isn't any situation worth living in deserving of wistful tears of sadness and farewell when it comes to an end? All situations come to an end, you know. For better or for worse. Nothing is permanent and fixed. Such a beautiful fact of life. If it wasn't so, what a dull boring existence we'd have. No room for growth or failure. No room for experiences, love, loss, and learning. It's a strange thing to feel so significant a chapter coming to a close. Standing on the precipice of change; fear, trepidation, and excitement coursing through your veins as you count down to leap.

This is the stuff life is made of. And at the end I only hope I am able to reflect back on my journey and realize that I made the right decisions and marvel at all that I've seen, accomplished, and become. That's all any of us can really hope for.

Today's Literary Wisdom

"That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games ...and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want...

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they're fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men --friends, coworkers, strangers-- giddy over these awful pretender women, and I'd want to sit those men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I'd want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn't really love chili dogs that much --no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They're not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they're pretending to be the woman a man want them to be. Oh, and if you're not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn't want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version --maybe he's a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he's a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every F****** thing he likes and doesn't ever complain...

I waited patiently --years-- for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.

But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed --she wasn't just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren't then there was something wrong with you.

But it's tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it's tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants... I didn't worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.

...But then it had to stop, because it wasn't real, it wasn't me... It all started collapsing on itself.I hated Nick for being surprised when I became me... He truly seemed astonished when I asked him to listen to me. He couldn't believe I didn't love wax-stripping myself... That I did mind when he didn't show up for drinks with my friends... Again, I don't get it: if you let a man cancel plans or decline to do things for you, you loose. You don't get what you want. It's pretty clear."

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (p. 222-225)

(Maybe this is the rant of a sociopath teetering over the line *spoiler alert* but the premise is that level of raw that can only be achieved by stark truth.)

This Ridiculous Obsession

What a funny thing this heart of mine is. Why the desperate need to believe in love, to believe in passion that conquers all?  Why the inability to be truly happy without the secure knowledge that it exists in a tangible way out there? In the absence of it in my own life, I seem to find joy in the love others have in their lives. Which is all well and fine, except, well, when other people's relationships don't work out it breaks my heart a little bit. My eyes well up and my chest hurts a small hurt.  Even if I don't know them. Why? I'm not sure it's healthy to allow others to influence my emotions so. But it's my silly little heart and I'm stuck with it. Emotions are funny things. It's silly I suppose, but I need to believe that two beautiful people can be blissfully happy and make it work. Famous people, regular people, everyone.

Along a similar and very vulnerable line, from my night-time notebook last night:

I lay in my bed swaddled by darkness. My mind however is deep in the middle of the novel that lies discarded near the couch in the other room. I love Scarlet O'Hara. I love her gumption, her fortitude, her survivability, her strength, her brazen disregard and defamation of convention. And yet, she is one of the most truly terrible human beings brought to life. She's a terrible terrible person when it comes down to it. A terrible and wonderful person. I find myself relating to her all too easily, readily, and on the whole. So I love her.

As my mind races through thoughts and feelings, it opens the door to a stark cold room of fear that brushes past. I feel myself recoil from the feeling as though it never existed and race to other thoughts. "No," I tell myself. Feel it. It was fear you felt. Why? Fear of what? Find the hidden door that led to that room and enter it. Sit with that emotion. Don't run, don't deny, don't refuse, don't ignore. What is it about that train of thought that opened the door to the cold draft? Am I afraid to admit that I love those fierce qualities? That I'm like her? That the ways in which I relate to her will ultimately keep me from happiness as they did her? Or maybe it was just a supremely written novel with a cast of characters that we all have a piece of within us. I don't know.

But through the dark I probe the corners of my thoughts searching for the release to the trap door. I open it up, feel the cold draft brush past, go to the back wall of the room and sit down.

That's a lot of vulnerability right there... struggling to stay open, not to close it off... Progress.

On Civility

It's not hard to see why I got lost in this book. What's not to love about indulging in New York in the 1920s? The jazz, the prohibition, the style, the intrigue.  I found Rules of Civility by Amor Towles a captivating story that wasn't a tale. It bore a real-life element that was so refreshing. It's how life is. And I related to it on a whole new level. The way that friendships change, relationships change, and what once seems meant to be never happens and it's okay.  A few particular gems:

It was a matter of making it through the night, which is often harder than it sounds, and always a very individual business.

It was a cute answer. At least, that's what I thought at the time. But on cooler reflection, it struck me that when you're asked your favorite day of the year, there's a certain hubris in giving any day in June as you answer.  It suggests that the particulars of your life are so terrific, and your command over your station so secure, that all you could possibly hope for is additional daylight in which to celebrate your lot. But as the Greeks teach us, there is only one remedy for that sort of hubris. They called it nemesis. We call it getting what you deserve, or a finger in the eye, or comeuppance for short. And it comes with an appropriate raise in pay, responsibilities, and professional status.

Oh, I think you're wrong. I think we all have some parcel of the past which is falling into disrepair or being sold off piece by piece. It's just that for most of us, it isn't an orchard; it's the way we've thought about something, or someone.

It is a bit of a cliche to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time --by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still?

In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions  for a hundred visions and revisions --we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.

Maybe that sounds bleaker than I intended.

A Classic

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes --a fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

...

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter --tomorrow we will run faster stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ----- 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

F. Scott Fitzgerald -The Great Gatsby

A transitory enchanted moment. Aesthetic contemplation. Commensurate to a capacity for wonder.  How I related to this book. I found myself in the narrators place, and I found myself contemplating how similar to Gatsby's fate would be my own. Ultimately what facades come down and what about us do they bare to the world?

Great Great Gatsby

I'm only twenty-one pages in and I'm overwhelmed. So many like the following but this was the one that pushed me over the edge into setting the book down for a quick moment to record my thoughts.

"Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart." F. Scott Fitzgerald -The Great Gatsby

One sentence and your mouth assumes the posture of an opera singer. One sentence when said out loud that makes you feel like you're lounging warm on pure silk and satin clouds. One sentence that tastes like sheer decadence. Not in words or in message; strictly on structure, weight, depth. Horace Mann once said that a house without books is like a room without windows. In a society that is too lazy to correctly pronounce a simple three letter word, there's a lot to be said for the elegant prose of minds gone by. This is why I read. To escape, to dream, to learn, to preserve, to appreciate, to become more. More. In a world where the majority of communication has been reduced to hurried text messages with abbreviations, codes, and slang unrecognizable to the worlds greatest minds; a foreign language to the literary masters of the English language such as Shakespeare, Dickens, and Payne. In a world where television and film has to switch scenes an average of every 30 seconds to hold our decimated attention. In such a hurried massacred garble of un-intelligence that becomes every day life it's refreshing to let the beautiful prose roll languidly over the tongue and around your mouth. Page 22...

A Many Splendored Thing

Love is not an equation, it's not a contract, and it's not a happy ending.  It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air. It is the place I come back to, no matter where I've been headed. 

--Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

Pittsburgh State of Mind

So many things to still get caught up on. The good news is in my three days off in the last two weeks, I've started doing just that! I've read three books, cleaned my apartment, and well... that's just about it. The last book I read was The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephan Chbosky. Loved it. It was so well written and one of those books that is instantly relate-able and therefore in my opinion timeless. Everyone has a coming of age experience and the awkward transition that is middle to high school. The family story, the friend story, the personal story were all intertwined beautifully. I liked it so much that I ordered the movie on demand and enjoyed it instantly well. The whole thing put me in a Pittsburgh state of mind.

It's a place I had never visited before last fall and probably would never had visited had a dear friend not gotten married there. Now I have a sudden urge to go back just so I can ride under the tunnel completely free and utterly infinite with my hands in the air and my hair in the wind. And of course epic rock would be blasting from the stereo.

It is a remarkably beautiful place, and I'm quite grateful I had the opportunity to go. The thing I remember most about the trip of course is the memories made with dear friends.  There's something to be said for being able to get back together with our small group of three and not miss a beat. I had gone to Tampa with Ken the year before, and DC with Tricia the year before that, but the three of us hadn't been together since Key West nearly two and a half years previous.  And still when Tricia got in late that night, we all huddled in our hotel room to get caught up on everyone's lives. And it was as though we had never been apart.  Over the course of five minutes we went from Marfan Syndrome in Abraham Lincoln, to incest in West Virginia, to reconstructing a tympanic membrane, and wallpaper in home depot. Go figure :)

Ken and Sylvie's wedding was absolutely beautiful. Sylvia was stunning and radiant, the boat was the perfect setting, the music was fantastic, and the company was unbeatable. At the wedding another friend from NYC joined us, and it was great to see Heather and meet her fiance as well. At one point as the three of us were reminiscing about the good old days in the city, Heather's fiance just laughed at our stories and said, "Sex and the City is over ladies, you have all gone home." And he was right, and it was funny how well the analogy fit our time there together. And heather said it perhaps best in a line that hit me in many areas of my life. "Sometimes it wasn't meant to be. It was just a great moment." Beautiful.

Miss you Pittsburgh, miss you New York, miss you friends!

Timeless

Great works of literature are truly timeless. I've spoke of it often lately, but this will be the last for a while. I've finally finished my journey with A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith.  It is amazing to me that words written by a woman nearly a century ago still ring so true to my heart when I read them now. This is the power of well written words. Timeless literature, eternal quotes. Some truths never change, and that is oddly comforting to me at this time in my life.  I've started reading books with a set of colored pencils nearby. Every time a passage speaks to me it gets highlighted. For those books I read more than once, each time through gets a different color.  I'm going to leave you with the two of the last highlighted portions of the book.  The first a prayer of a 15 year old girl named Francie:

"'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere --be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.'" 

The second a conversation between mother and daughter after a 16 year-old Francie gets her heart broken for the first time:

" 'Say something,' demanded Francie. 'Why don't you say something?'

'What can I say?'

'Say that I'm young --that I'll get over it. Go ahead and say it. Go ahead and lie.'

'I know that's what people say --you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, you'll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget.  Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.' "

The last paragraph especially. Sigh. It's true. Timeless words so eloquently spoken and woven into a story that will stay with me for a long long time.  These are the reasons I'm in love with the smell of old book shops. These are the reasons I'm so passionate about losing myself in a good book whenever possible.  In no other way can you completely transport yourself to another place and time. And in the best of books: quotes, paragraphs, pages that last with you for a lifetime.  Not sure which of my pile of 15 books is next, but I'm excited to find out!

During My Break From School

"She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read! From that time on, the world was hers for the reading... Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories..."

From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith (p. 166-167)

The third book I've read since the quarter ended, there are bazillions more to fit into every spare minute I have, and I'm loving it.  The other one I just finished was The Freedom Writers' Diary ...amazing.  I love summer breaks!! 

What's on your summer reading list?