June 3, 2013

This is a photograph made by Abelardo Morell. The Art Institute of Chicago is doing a special exhibit of his work entitled, “The Universe Next Door.” I walked into this exhibit and felt like I was held hostage, seized by the beauty of his remarkable photographs. He uses a camera obscura to project images of the outside world onto walls, and then photographs them. So this picture to the left is from an apartment with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Somehow he manipulates the camera obscura to right-side-up the image. He also has this cool “tent” technique - he brings a tent to various spaces in the U.S. and aims the camera obscura image onto the ground in the tent and then photographs it. Here is an example:

How cool is that? I can’t stop thinking about these photographs. I’m going back to the museum on Tuesday to look at them again.

Okay.

Well, then.

Hello June!

Good-bye May.

I travelled to the Northwest at the end of the month. Seattle, then Portland, then Spokane. I did interviews and a few readings at bookstores; Powell’s in Portland, Aunties in Spokane. Good crowds. I met up with old friends and met some new ones. I took my Aunt Bonnie with me to Portland, we took the train from Seattle, eating snacks she had prepared and looking out at the Pacific and we whizzed along. We spent two days walking all over Portland. We ate at fancy restaurants and off food trucks. We took naps. It was an Auntie-Niece getaway.

After I got to Spokane, Michael and Mulan flew from Chicago to join me. We hiked around the Bowl & Pitcher in Riverside State Park, just outside the city. We went to Holy Cross cemetery and looked at Bill’s grave; it was my brother Bill’s first Memorial Day in the ground. My mother had friends over to her condo for a little party. Michael and Mulan and I stayed in an airbnb rental. Do you know airbnb? www.airbnb.com Don’t go there unless you have some serious time to waste - ahem… I mean enjoy. We stayed at a little house in Spokane on the North side, near the Garland Theater. This wonderful place made the stay in Spokane twice as good. We could lounge around the backyard, we had a kitchen to make breakfast. Just great.

What did I watch, what did I read in May?

I got my basement back together after the flood. It probably took me 20 or 30 hours. But my basement is now a model of organization. I know every single friggin thing in my basement. I took a lot of books to the library for donation. I got rid of bags and bags of old clothes. We re-carpted the home theater. It’s baaaaaack.

However, I only watched one movie down there last month. I also saw one movie in a theater.

Movies watched in May 2013:

1.) The Great Gatsby, 2013, directed by Baz Luhrmann
2.) No Greater Glory, 1934, directed by Frank Borzage

I did not respond well to The Great Gatsby. My review: BAD. It seemed like an empty shell. I didn’t understand the connection between Gatsby and Daisy. I think the story should’ve been called, “She’s Just Not That Into You.” All style and no connectability. I guess I need to read the book again. There was a painful lack of subtlety. The billboard with the eyeglasses watching everything seemed overplayed and screamed out: SYMBOL!!! Luhrmann said he had to rework some of the story to make it contemporary. Well, if he was going to take those kinds of liberties, he should’ve added to our understanding of why Gatsby is in love with this narcissistic, vapid, shallow, callous and deeply unlikable person. I think if you better understood how one-sided his obsession with Daisy was, and maybe why he was so tragically incapable of seeing it himself, it would’ve been a much better experience.

No Greater Glory was absorbing and lushly lensed, like all Borzage. The main characters are almost exclusively children, and none of them were (or later became) stars. The story centers on two gangs in a neighborhood battling over territory just as if it were a real war. It’s practically like a silent film. George P. Breakston plays the main character and his thick Brooklyn accent sounded to me like that of a much, much older man. I realized that this is how children sounded from Brooklyn! Older men didn’t develop their sound as adults, they always had it. But it’s a long-ago accent, unlike contemporary Brooklyn intonations.

I’m really enjoying my Frank Borzage concentration these last few months. His imagery is really beautiful, and the story very Catholic - typical Borzage. Lots of sacrifice and redemption, but with kids!

Books read in May 2013:

1. Promises I Can Keep, written by Kathryn Edin & Maria Kefalas
2. Doing The Best I Can, written by Kathryn Edin & Timothy Nelson
3. Antifragile, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
4. Instant Mom, written by Nia Vardalos
5. The Forgotten Waltz, written by Anne Enright
6. Attempting Normal, written by Marc Maron
7. Becoming a Writer, written by Dorothea Brande
8. The 5:2 Diet, written by Kate Harrison
9. How To Live on 24 Hours a Day, written by Arnold Bennett
10. Beautiful Ruins, written by Jess Walter

Whew. I guess I did a lot of reading this month. I just finished Walter’s “Beautiful Ruins” so I’ll start there. My God, it’s really a masterpiece. It’s funny, it’s meaningful, it’s surprising, it’s just…. fucking brilliant. My GOD. And he’s a Spokane writer! I am so happy - for Spokane - that she produced this person. I was already a big fan - I loved the two other books of his that I’ve read so far: “Ruby Ridge” and “Citizen Vince.” But “Beautiful Ruins” is on a whole other level.

The first two books on my list, “Promises I Can Keep” and “Doing The Best I Can” addressed a long niggling question. But I never actually stopped to investigate my curiosity. I have to admit, this question - well this question I had - I was embarrassed to have it! I felt very judgemental and lacking in compassion just wondering about it. But still, I had a voice in me that continually asked this question.

My question was this: why do poor people have kids early and often? Why do poor people have kids at all? It seems so obvious to me, that ,if you’re poor - then last thing you should do is have kids. In fact, the very thing that will ensure your poverty will be to produce children. Having kids will make your life full of peril.

And yet, poor people have kids. Early. And often. Why?

So I got these two books. The first one, “Promises” was written in 2005 and addresses women in poverty who choose to have children. “Doing the Best…” was published in 2011 and it centers on men in poverty and fatherhood. I cannot recommend these books enough. The bottom line is this: if you have little or no expectation of developing a good career or ever exiting the cycle of poverty, if it all seems hopeless, then having children provides instant meaning and purpose! A reason to pull yourself together. A reason to work hard and strive. The same goes for men. It’s much more complicated than that, of course. But I have such a deeper understanding now, and I’m so grateful for the work of these social scientists and the years of study they did. I could hardly stop reading once I started these two books. One of the books has a last chapter about a pilot program where low-income teenage girls were trained in a field that included a lot of meaning, for example, teaching pre-schoolers, or developing community gardens, and they’re rate of teen pregnancy dropped precipitously. The authors describe a “meaning” desert in low-income urban areas, where babies and little children provide hope and connectedness. WOW. A “meaning” desert! This just reinforces for me that meaning is much more important to humans than anything else. (I can’t honestly say that my own decision to become a mother was based on anything other than the same reasons a low-income teenager would. I was in the middle of a meaning desert too. Motherhood did provide instant focus and purpose.) Another aspect of human psychology and biology was reinforced for me as well - and that is that most of our decision-making - everyone’s, not just the poor - is made without our conscious awareness.

Our bodies and brains are making the calculations about what we should do, and our conscious awareness is just a chatty tag-a-long, oblivious to the fact that the decisions were made long before.

“Antifragile” - oh Lordy, I think I really do love Nassim Nicholas Taleb, but honestly he is incorrigible! I listened to this book on audio while I cleaned the basement. He is so arrogant! He is so unpleasant in so many ways! But he does have really interesting ideas. I laugh out loud when I read or listen to his books. I loved “The Black Swan.” It changed the way I saw things. “Antifragile” did too. I listened to the whole book twice and then read the actual book! I practically have this book down by heart now. Antifragile is a word he made up. Something is antifragile if it gains strength from uncertainty.

“Antifragile” led me, oddly, to the “5:2 Diet” book. HA. That is weird, but I love these random connections.

You see, Taleb talks about the body’s response to exercise (stress causes muscle growth) and then writes about how intermittent fasting does all this great stuff for the body. I had noticed that, when I got a colonoscopy and had to fast for a day or two beforehand, it was actually quite easy once you got past your initial hunger. This is saying something - I struggle a lot with food issues and need to lose weight. So I started reading studies about fasting online and found this book. I guess it’s big in England. The idea: You fast two days a week. Non-consecutive days. I’m doing Monday and Wednesday. (In fact, I’m writing this as Michael and Mulan have dinner together.) I don’t totally fast either, I have a small 300 calorie breakfast. Then that’s it. Nothing but water for the rest of the day. On the other days I eat whatever I like. It’s my third week to do this, and I’ve lost a little bit. I want to go slow. Maybe this is my thing! I don’t know yet, but it feels like it’s the right fit, the right program for me.

I actually look forward to my fast days. I haven’t been overdoing it on the “eat” days, that’s the key. On the fast days, I feel more alert, brighter, leaner. My favorite thing to do on a fast day is to brush my teeth after breakfast, and then that’s it. I’ve done my brushing for the day because I’m having nothing but water from that moment on! I’m not sure why this gives me such a thrill.

“Becoming a Writer” was a lovely book, written in the early 1930s. “How To Live on 24 Hours a Day” was written by Arnold Bennett in 1908. It’s a 92 page self-help book that is delightful and informative and generally quite funny too.

“Attempting Normal” is hilarious, classic Maron. The chapter about his grandfather’s funeral and his father’s behavior at the funeral home was so horrific-funny, it stayed with me for days. I’m STILL thinking about it. Also, the story of getting a prostitute and having her ask Marc to check her breasts for lumps was so horrifying and funny. Painful. Hilarious. That’s Marc Maron.

Nia Vardalos wrote a book about her experiences adopting a daughter just like I did. It’s called “Instant Mom.” It was also released on the exact same day my book was published. Wherever I went to do major types of publicity, Nia had been there the day before. Many of my interviews started with a conversation about how much fun they had the day before with Nia. And her book is sweet, quite enjoyable, honest and refreshing, and much more about the sadness of infertility and information about adoption than my book which has nothing about infertility and also nothing about how to adopt. And yet, I was in a constant state of comparison to her book. So, I thought I should read it. I did. It was good.

I’m really into this Irish writer, Anne Enright. I enjoyed “The Forgotten Waltz” so much, and now I just got “The Gathering” at the Book Stall, my local independent bookseller. I’ve sworn off Amazon for books, unless it’s a Kindle purchase.

Speaking of Ireland, I’m headed to London and Dublin at the end of this month. I’m really looking forward to it.

I’ve run out of steam. Until July, people!