Witness this!

Witness by Karen Hesse. 2002.

This book was made up of poems from different points of view and usually in differing and discernible voices all telling one story.

The plot, though ... the story seemed to end at the wrong spot. It ended with one of the secondary (even tertiary) characters, with a sort of twilight zone “dun dun dun!” campfire ghost story ending. The whole meaning of the book was lost.

I saw little Esther’s attempt to take the Heaven Train (i.e. kill herself) as the primary focal point of the book—she’s certainly the only character the reader ends up knowing intimately and loving thoroughly. Yet this scene happens mid-way in. The scene seen by the author (I’d guess) as “climax” is her father getting shot. Why is this climactic? We don’t know nor really care about her father, except in how his death might hurt Esther.

So, today's lesson boys and girls, is this: end a book with something directly related to the character we come to love most. And the most emotionally charged moment maybe ought to be the climax? Or that the emotional intensity must escalate to the climax. So if the reader is choking on sobs at the half-way point, she sure better be all-out weeping by the end. Dénouement is allowable, but it really can’t take up half the book (and the “shooting” scene, like I said, wasn’t resolution—it was escalation/climax, except it ended up being anticlimactic related to the Heaven Train in the middle).

A Compass of Gold, off to a Good Start

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

The power of a great opening: Pullman’s The Golden Compass begins, “Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.” We see a bit of each method of creating conflict. We know Lyra only by name, but it’s a lovely name, likeable and not quite ordinary. We sense that Lyra is also a likeable and not quite ordinary girl. The hook in this case involves action—Lyra is sneaking around in the dark—which provides obvious mystery: why is she sneaking? What on earth is a daemon? Pullman makes us wait.

Pullman continues to keep us waiting. He follows his opening line with a smidge of description—Lyra lives in a fancy place—and then provides a glimpse into Lyra’s character when she taps crystal to hear it ring. She’s curious and playful, yet her response to her worrywart daemon of, “They’re making too much noise to hear from the kitchen,” shows Lyra as a sensible, independent girl.

In effect, we are dumped straight into the action in a strange world. Lyra snoops where girls aren’t allowed, but before our curiosity about Lyra and her world can be sated, she must duck into hiding to avoid detection. Yet more questions arise as she overhears a plot to murder her uncle. Lyra’s character has heart, we have ample hook to propel us forward, and Pullman gives us abundant mystery. If we want answers, we must read on.

The end of the book continues with questions. Lyra rescues a group of children, but the story continues into the next book. Of the three, I thought the first two fit together best. The whole world of the dead/souls/something like that in the third was bizarre and hard to follow.

The Gift of Suffering

The Giver by Lois Lowry. 1993.

Lowry opens The Giver with a description of fear and immediately cements the unusualness of the world she’s created as well as giving us insight into the young protagonist, Jonas. She also is so deliciously good at creating a Utopia that seems wonderful, at the start, and only slowly becomes sinister. It’s not at all obvious, unlike, say, Wrinkle in Time, that this Community is full of darkness. Especially chilling is the parallel between Lowry’s Community and that created in Hitler Youth.

• Emotions are real and honest. I think it was Stephen King who wrote that the key to creating fear was to let characters respond in a realistic way to unrealistic situations (something like that). Lowry does exactly that. Jonas has the same doubts and confusions any of us would have given his situation, which makes the story all the more believable.
• Last residency some of us were discussing the ending, some saying that Lowry was shocked that anyone thought Jonas and Gabe died in the snow. They’re riding down to an “Elsewhere that held their future and their past.” Throughout, Elsewhere has been the place people go when they’re released. I.e., when they die. So where else but into death was Jonas headed? I always assumed the boys died. Yet reading the book again, I see the ambiguity. My only point is that clarity would have been far, far more satisfying. I spent 10+ years being disappointed and peeved by the end to the book, while now I’m just bewildered.

ChuggaChugga ChooChoo!

Freight Train by Donald Crews. Greenwillow, 1978.

Conceptual, informative, this little book teaches object permanence (through the tunnel cut away) and prepositions like through and by, and it uses real train terminology. It has a certain energy and excitement to it—forward momentum and rhythm of a train.

What is my Job?

Job as in work, not Job as in the guy with all the bad luck from the Bible. You know, the one who has a whole book named after him.

For the past few months I've been thinking of working, of vocation, of all the "free" time I'll have when all three kiddos go to school in a few weeks. Sure, I'm a student again and sure I have a house that I love and an aversion to offices. But what of meaning and purpose and all those Big things that drive other women into the workplace? What of a paycheck?

I applied for a job before leaving for my MFA residency. Part time, a sort of mirror-under-the-nose job (meaning you only have to be breathing to get it). I didn't get it. The ones who did get hired are, well, alive I suppose, but very young. I'd never thought of myself as old, and I've never once thought the past ten years raising children would be seen as inconsequential (honestly, how many 20yr olds know how to feed a family of five for less than $100 a week?). But, well, the girl doing the hiring was herself no more than 25 so I must have seemed positively ancient. Who knows. That may not be the reason at all. The job description said some weekends and I said, "yeah, sure, a few weekends are ok," yet the two new hires were scheduled for every single weekend. What's more, I already did the job on a volunteer basis, so why pay for what they could get for free? I was even called to cover some of the newly hired employee's shifts (without pay), which was enough for me to say see-yah-latah to the volunteering gig, which is too bad because I *liked* being there. But I *dis*like being used more.

Anyway, I applied for another job just last week, interviewed two days ago, and now am waiting to see if I'm called for a second interview. My emotions are more tangled than St. Nick's shoelaces because, you see, I want them to want me, but I'm not so sure I want them.

I should have thought through this earlier, say before applying, but I didn't. I only thought, "Wow, I could do that job! I might like it!" I didn't think of my MFA of my kids my garden my dog my running program my photography ... I just thought of this title and how cool it would be to add to a query letter "I'm the Program Coordinator at blablabla."

The job would involve public speaking. Fine. I like to give presentations, I'm seldom (that) nervous, I think I'm pretty entertaining when I speak. But, well, my sense of humor is a little *off* sometimes, and I've noticed this organization lacks a sense of humor (certainly my type of humor). And I don't wear cosmetics. I blame it on sensitive skin but really I just hate the way it feels. I hate feeling "made up" and artificial. I hate not being able to give Dr. D a hug without leaving a smear of foundation on his jacket or not wanting to snuggle up to Mud Pie because my mascara might smear. I like to feel superior to all the "made up" ladies out there, which covers for knowing that they, rightly, feel more beautiful than me. I'm not a pretty person, and I'm ok with that. Some days. When I'm at an interview with a mascara-clad, hair-highlighted, heel-and-hose-wearing potential boss, however, I don't like feeling homely. I want to scream "look past the freckles! The start of wrinkles and dark circles around my eyes! You need me!" But inside I know they're seeing the future Face Person for their organization and they're judging her on her face. Which isn't much to look at.

The job would involve writing. Fabulous! I love to write, rather obviously. But that's the problem. I do love to write, I have to write to breathe, but I love to write what I love. I may not want to write for their publications or in their way, or I may enjoy it but may have little lovin' left for my own writing, which just won't fly with this aforementioned MFA.

A job could offer me so much. Money, a feeling of competence and importance, immediate gratification, an avenue for growth and pushing beyond my anxiety (agoraphobia, you've met your match!). But I'm just not sure. I had these great ideas for starting a book club at the kids' school or being a room mother or building a chicken coop. I'm eager beyond words for my mornings of sweet solitude once ALL THREE little ones are in school. I'm thinking maybe, just maybe if I can ever get this anxiety disorder kicked I might get off the medications and perhaps, oh dare I think it, have one last baby. I want to get a Ph.D. so Dr. D and I can be a pair-a-docs. I want to be the kind of mom I imagined myself being, before the reality of motherhood knocked me on my ass. I want to rake leaves this fall without the panic of too-much-to-do-too-little-time. I want to inhale. To exhale. To feel both. I want to grow my photography business and hook rugs.

So, anyway, the phone just rang and I ran to answer it with hope-mingled-terror. Do they want me? Do they? Oh, please, please, please want me. Prove that I'm not ugly, not marked by my past and the shadow I carry and will always carry as long as I'm alive. Please make me meaningful.

And yet ... when caller ID foretold a sales call, I was greatly relieved.

a drawing I did in college ...

How to Build a Mosque

Mosque by David Macaulay. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

The intro is sort of dry, but the melding of fiction and nonfiction with fascinating detail on construction held my interest to the end. Yet why was there such a need for bathing? (I know it’s ritual bathing, but the text doesn’t tell me this.) There’s a ton of info on engineering, but not much on culture. The how is thorough; the why is underdeveloped.

That's Just Plain Nonsense, Eddie

The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear. by Edward Lear and edited by Holbrook Jackson Dover, 1951.

Lear was the youngest of 21 children and was brought up by his sister, who cared for him until he was nearly 50. He was an eternal child with “invincible boyishness,” according to the editor. This collection contains several works from 1846-1895.

Random thoughts:

These are so like the jokes my kids make up—so un-funny that they’re funny. A woman playing harp with her chin. Ha! They make me want to rhyme and be silly. Some have double meaning, like a person of Leeds with a head full of beads who eats gooseberry fool. And Lear uses great words like scroobious, dolorous; he embraces the absurd and violent—characters file off thumbs or kill a flea on their knee with a hatchet. Others are most un-politically correct, which I always appreciate.

For a time there’s a theme of going and not coming back (perhaps around the time of his sister’s death?). The short stories are like dreams of free association. He employs repetition like a picture book author might, but with horrendously creepy elements: story of seven young of various animals and all die awful deaths until the parents pickle themselves. Um, lovely!

The Nonsense Cookery is hysterical as are the visual puns in the Botany. He has fun rhymes for the Alphabet. I notice the limericks get more sophisticated in his later work. Rhymes are frequently brilliant, and this without the benefit of rhymezone.com!

My favorite on p. 205: “There was an old man in a garden/who always begged every-one’s pardon;/when they asked him, “what for?” – he replied “you’re a bore!”/And I trust you’ll go out of my garden.” I can imagine Lear writing this on a particularly grumpy day.

Is Lear an influence on Dr. Seuss, I wonder? He has some critters chopping up a Sage because they need sage for a recipe. HAHAHA!

The final alphabet points to some rather obvious Father issues.