My Year of 144+ books.... part 1

I was writing this really long intro to my favorite books of the year, and then I realized I was doing that thing I hate ... making someone read to the end to get to what was promised.

So, instead, I am dividing up the post. I SWEAR this is not a dangling parts post. I really already wrote and POSTED part 2!

...

I set myself a seemingly impossible goal of 12 books per month as my goal for 2019. April was nearly my undoing as I got behind by 8 books. But I used May, June and July to get back in the game. I started choosing "lighter" books, in part, because my book clubs were killing me with long, involved family trauma books. I needed a vacation from my heavy books. But, I also needed lighter fare that I could just get through more quickly to catch up.

I learned a few things. I relax by reading serial killer books. I don't know if others have this as their beach read style. I tried romance novels. But I spent more time gagging and being horrified by the inner monologue of all the female leads than listening to the books.

Sometimes you just have to give up on a book. You don't have to slog through every last word of a book that you hate. Goodreads was not my friend on this. If I said I was "currently reading" something, which was my standard habit: start a book, mark it on Goodreads. It seemed like the easiest way to do it. Then I felt guilty about abandoning the book when I hated it.

Here's how I solved that problem: 1) I created a shelf called "tried-and-hated", and 2) try books for the first forty pages before marking it "currently reading".

I didn't want to lose credit for a book who I had read passed its usefulness, but had already wasted significant hours trying to get into it. And then I wouldn't have to leave a book in the currently reading limbo forever.

Trying books was a hard concept for me because I needed to get through so many books in a month, but necessary, and, in the end, useful. I would go through a library's online available list and download three or four. Then I would try one. And if I didn't immediately love it, go on to the next one. At first, I would send it back to the library if it wasn't love at first listen. Then I realized the issue.

After just finishing a book I had come to love in the listening, any book I tried was never good enough. But I didn't have the luxury of time to savor the book before starting a new one. So, sampling was great. I would listen to a chapter on one, then another and another until the one that would ultimately be my next book was clear. That didn't mean that I abandoned all the others. Since I had already listened to the first chapter, I would go back and give each another try. Sometimes in the second listen, a book would hit. Others never hit, and I sent them back to the library for others to peruse.

If you need to get through a lot books really quickly, trying new things and giving up on them if they are not your cup of tea is the ticket. At the end of the year, you also have a really diverse set of books.

I am trying to figure out which books I liked the best. As I look through my list, I am pleased by the diverse sample of books. It also makes me want to set my sights on new challenges for myself.

This year, I tried to read more Black women writing mysteries. Since I am listening, it turns out to be harder than you think because so many books I want are not available in audio, or not available through the library on audio.

I like some romance books, but there are also lots of romance novels that are not for me.

I really, really like serial killer books. I still don't know what about them makes me feel unencumbered and relaxed. That introspection is for another post.

Lists tomorrow...

Grace, Part 2

In the early years of my schooling at a Catholic elementary school, I learned about Grace.

It was one of the most interesting and difficult to grasp concepts I remember learning.

I think if you asked each of the forty of us in that class what we took GRACE to mean, you would get forty different answers.

This is what I remember from those lessons: Grace is something that you want to collect - that you will bring with you from this world to the next. It is something only God can grant. Grace is not something you can buy or sell. [I guess I learned at a much later date about the buying of indulgences, note, this is quite different from Grace.]

There were ways that you could EARN Grace. I understood from what the teacher told us that Grace was earned by doing things selflessly; that you would never know when the Grace was granted, rather the heavenly tally was something God and St. Peter would know when you met them after death.

I am not sure that I was moved to try to earn Grace by that lesson. It seemed like one of those things that was so out of your control that you shouldn't worry about it. Besides how would you know if you had reached the correct level of selflessness? Wouldn't that just invalidate the action if you were worrying about whether or not your act was selfless.

By the way, I was probably seven when I was trying to assimilate this concept into my life.

I equated the concept of Grace with my dad who would literally give the shirt off his back if you needed it, even if you didn't ask for it. My dad never appears to stop and consider whether or not he should give. He certainly doesn't seem to worry about whether or not the act of giving is selfless.

In my mind, this meant that Grace was another one of those amorphous rules, like the Golden Rule, that you strove to achieve, but that was not something you could reach and then coast through. Rather it was like a heavenly measuring stick you needed to keep trying to reach. I don't remember fretting about it at all.

I had a classmate, though, who clearly spent much more time considering how to achieve Grace. Let's call her Melanie. I discovered Melanie's Grace quest by accident.

Our school, like many Catholic elementary schools, was on the grounds of a Catholic Church. We walked by it everyday. We played in its shadow at lunch and recess as its parking lot became our playground during school hours.

At this Catholic Church, like many others in the country, there is a morning mass every day. It starts at 8am and runs roughly thirty minutes. Though my dad's regular schedule when I was in school had him leaving the house by 7:30am, during Lent, I would often walk past the church parking lot in the morning and see his work truck, painted bright orange, parked there.

It turns out during Lent, my dad liked to go to morning mass every day. It is now his daily practice in retirement to go to mass every day. I started leaving for school as early as I could, and this was extremely challenging for me as I was almost always late for school. I wanted to spend a little more time with my dad, so my reasons for trying to make it to morning mass were anything but selfless.

I noticed, on those mornings that I arrived in time for mass, that Melanie was there. As I got one last hug from my dad [who we have to say is lovely and wonderful in so many ways, does not really do well will showing physical affection], I noted that Melanie was sitting in a pew outside the confessional.

It turns out during Lent you can also go to confession right after morning mass. Maybe not everyday, maybe only one day a week. I can't exactly remember. But on those days, I started to notice that Melanie would be late for school, but she never got in trouble. Being inquisitive and not employing filters, one day at lunch I asked Melanie about it.

Melanie was one of four classmates who came from an inordinately large family. The "large" families ranged from 8 to 12 children. And Melanie was number 10 of 12 in her family. Her mother prescribed to the healthy, earthy-crunchy lunches way before it was fashionable. So, there was Melanie with her perhaps homemade whole grain bread, thickly sliced, with peanut butter and jelly. I asked innocently why she was coming late to class sometimes.

She answered briefly, "I went to confession after mass." This is why I think it was every day during Lent because my response, probably read in my eyes widening, was astonishment and shock. Pretty sure my follow up question was, "What do you have to confess every day?"

She looked at me innocently and resolutely and said, "I'm collecting Grace."

We clearly had gotten different messages about earning Grace from the same lesson.

What does this have to do with Jamey? Sorry, it's getting long, you'll find out in part 3.

Poetry Thursday, actually Quote Thursday - still working on this virtue

Difficult times have helped me 
to understand better than before, 
how infinitely rich and beautiful 
life is in every way, and 
that so many things that 
one goes worrying about 
are of no importance whatsoever.

~Isak Dinesen


I get to spend time with my nephew this weekend. It is bittersweet. I cannot be with him and not think of his mother. This trip we will be celebrating the milestone of finishing middle school. These milestone events are the hardest. Though we do our best to be substitute moms while still being aunts, as sisters our hearts break into a million pieces that she is not here to witness her baby's accomplishments.

Last year we watched her daughter graduate from college. I had my mom bring the small heart filled with my sister's ashes to the ceremony. We each took turns holding on to it during the ceremony. I cannot put into words the pain associated with just acknowledging that she is not here, that there are so many important events in the lives of her babies (and ours) that she did not get to witness.

So, this quote is especially timely today. There is no amount of worry that will bring her back or change the fact that she did not get to be here for this. It is beyond important to understand the richness and beauty of life. And the difficult time and the pain just has to be borne.

Poetry Thursday, Rumi returns

I want to sing 
like the birds sing, 
not worrying about 
who hears or 
what they think.

~Rumi

Rumi ...um, Poetry Thursday

And don’t think 
the garden loses 
its ecstasy 
in winter. 
It’s quiet, 
but 
the roots 
are down there 
riotous. 
~Rumi

not Poetry Thursday, extra, for the trees

Epistemology
 ~Catherine Barnett
 
Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.
Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.
Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord
to keep it from fraying?
Not the man who called my life a debacle,
a word whose sound I love.
In a debacle things are unleashed.
Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.
I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate,
the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing.
They don’t use words, but they can be said to love.
They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another
          tree.
And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing
stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect
or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare,
to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.
Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth
and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.

I have been watching the trees turn for the past few months. Every once in a while, I don't just admire from a far, but I collect. Sometimes I pick up perfect specimens and other times I pick by color or variation. Mostly I have been capturing in photo rather than collecting. But I had the idea that I would put them in my thanksgiving cards.

Some of them have now gotten so brittle, but I think I will include them anyway.

Why should leaves be perfect or retain their color or not get brittle?

I feel like there has a been a war against the leaves raging for the last week. Aggressive leaf collecting, herding, blowing. They don't rake. They ride lawn blowers. Leaf blowers. Leaf. Blowers. Seriously? 


I am lazy about yard work, it is true. But I also think if nature decided to blow the leaves off the trees that there might be a secret plan. I think the leaves should stay on the ground like a blanket. As the cold settles in, the leaves huddle together, covering the roots, keeping their trees safe.

That's what I think.

And, yes, I do name everything. Every. Thing. Every. Thing. 

Quote Thursday - inspiration

There is a vitality, a life force, 

a quickening that is translated 

through you into action, 

and there is only one of you in all time, 

this expression is unique, and if you block it, 

it will never exist through any other medium; 

and be lost. 

The world will not have it. 

It is not your business to determine how good it is, 

not how it compares with other expression. 

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, 

to keep the channel open. 

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. 

You have to keep open and aware 

directly to the urges that motivate you. 

Keep the channel open. 

No artist is pleased. 

There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. 

There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, 

a blessed unrest that keeps us marching 

and makes us more alive than the others. 

~Martha Graham

Poetry Thursday

Bringing joy 
to one heart 
with love 
is better than 
one thousand 
repetitive prayer recitings.
~ Sufi Proverb

The Boy

Life is eternal, 

and love is immortal, 

and death is only a horizon; 

and a horizon is nothing 

save the limit of our sight. 

~R.W. Raymond

I love this picture of The Boy.  Sometimes I think it is because I love this couple so much and their connection is palpable here.

When I used to see this picture on his mom's desk, I would think, they are soulmates.

I was sure they would get back together, have beautiful babies and be happy.

But then again, I was sure of so very many things that we will never see.

He has been close in mind lately, not just in the past few days, but especially this month.

Now when I look at this picture, it is the eyes, that look.  It tells you so much about this old soul.  There is a knowing about the trials and tribulations, the power of love, and the importance of connection.  There is compassion and world weariness and strength.  He was steady and wobbly at the same time, fearful and hopeful, ready to take on the world despite his reservations about well everything.

I see this picture and I think there is no way he is gone.  There he is, right there, forever that sweet, smart, relentlessly idealistic and pragmatic young man, my future governor or president. 

Some days I weep for the world because we lost that light, the one we so desperately needed.

Some days I weep for his mother who is trying so hard to learn how to be in a world without him.

Some days I weep for the children who don't get to grow up with father; he would have been the absolute best father in the world.

Some days I even weep for myself because there were so many more stories to tell, issues to discuss and adventures to have... and I try to be brave remembering his last text, the one he sent when he found out I was dealing with yet another loss, before he knew I would have to deal with his as well. 

Stay up.

Trying.

Rest well, sweet boy, but let your mom know you are okay.

Citizen Resistence in Signs

Grandma

 Today my grandmother would have been 112.  I have been thinking about her a lot lately, as I contemplate how to tell her story -- whether I should or not -- what I know and don't know -- what is her story...

There are lots of questions and very few answers.

Questions like ... who did she cut out of this picture? It is just like my grandmother to have this picture with someone cut out.  She was the kind of person who could cut people out of her life.  It surprises me to admit this while at the same time I know it to be true.  I remember her as harsh, judgemental, not wishy washy at all.

But in this picture, sometime in the 1920s, I think, sometime before she married my grandfather or had my father, she is young and her face tells very little.  Inscrutable, that is another way to understand her stoicism which I often read as harsh.  Maybe she was feeling super vulnerable all the time.

I just can't always reckon how someone who had lost two parents by the time she was 9, or two siblings by the time she was 30 could have then turned around and cut out her only living sister.

But, of course, I don't know her story, not really.

I know bits and pieces.

Snapshots, like these photos that reveal so little and so much at the same time.

 What to make of the starch and the serious face ... everyone else here seems to be having a good time.  [click on pic to see the whole thing... maybe it is only the men who are yucking it up.] Did she not smile because the person behind the camera tried to get her to smile?  Who was behind the camera??

In another from the same day, she has that half smile that I remember from real life.  It was bemused and amused and slightly annoyed and maybe holding something back all at the same time.

But she looked smart in that hat.  Maybe that is why she needed to give the serious pose.

What about this one with my aunts.  She is almost smiling here -- at least her eyes are smiling.  Was my grandfather behind the camera this time? Was she about to break out in the big smile or was this as big as it got, emotions slipping out of the eyes even though the mouth holds the smile back.

And the hand gently holding her oldest daughter's hand ... not her youngest daughter's hand.

Maybe that says more about my aunts than it does about my grandmother, but is says something.

Happy birthday, Grandma. 

Hope you don't mind me teasing out some meaning from these photos and your life.

Quote Thursday, on hope

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.

It is not the conviction that something will turn out well,

but the certainty that something makes sense,

regardless of how it turns out.

~Vaclav Havel

Poetry for a Troubled Monday

you can listen to it here.  It is long but so worth it.

  

What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do
~Parneshia Jones, 2017

Dawn oversees percolating coffee
and the new wreckage of the world.

I stand before my routine reflection,
button up my sanity,
brush weary strands of hair with pomade
and seal cracked lips of distrust
with cocoa butter and matte rouge.

I ready myself once again
for morning and mortify.
Stacking poetry and bills in a knapsack;
I bundle up hope (it’s brutal out there).

For a moment, I stand with ghosts
and the framed ancestors surrounding me.
I call out, hoping she can hear me
over the day-breaking sirens—
hoping she’s not far away,
or right down the street,
praying over another dead black boy.

How will we make it through this, Ms. Brooks?

                     Hold On.

When she held a body,
she saw much worse than this.
I know she was earshot and fingertip close to oppression.
She saw how hateful hate could be.
She raised babies, taught Stone Rangers,
grew a natural and wrote around critics.

She won a Pulitzer in the dark.

She justified our kitchenette dreams,
and held on.
She held on to all of us.

                    Hold On, she whispers. 

Another day, when I have to tip-toe
around the police and passive-aggressive emails
from people who sit only a few feet away from me.
Another day of fractured humans
who decide how I will live and die,
and I have to act like I like it
so I can keep a job;
be a team player, pay taxes on it;
I have to act like I’m happy to be
slammed, severed, and swindled.
Otherwise, I’m just part of the problem—
a rebel rouser and rude.

They want me to like it, or at least pretend,
so the pretty veils that blanket who we really are—
this complicated history, can stay pretty and veiled
like some desert belly dancer
who must be seen but not heard.

                     Hold On.

We are a world of lesions.
Human has become hindrance.
We must be stamped and have papers,
and still, it’s not enough.
Ignorance has become powerful.
The dice that rolls our futures is platinum
but hollow inside.

Did you see that, Ms. Brooks?
Do you see what we’ve become?
They are skinning our histories,
deporting our roots,
detonating our very right to tell the truth.
We are one step closer to annihilation.

                    Hold On, she says, two million light years away.

She’s right.
Hold On everybody.
Hold On because the poets are still alive—and writing.
Hold On to the last of the disappearing bees
and that Great Barrier Reef.
Hold On to the one sitting next to you,
not masked behind some keyboard.
The one right next to you.
The ones who live and love right next to you.
Hold On to them.

And when we bury another grandmother,
or another black boy;
when we stand in front of a pipeline,
pour another glass of dirty drinking water
and put it on the dining room table,
next to the kreplach, bratwurst, tamales, collards, and dumplings
that our foremothers and fathers—immigrants,
brought with them so we all knew that we came from somewhere;
somewhere that mattered.
When we kneel on the rubbled mosques,
sit in massacred prayer circles,
Holding On is what gets us through.

We must remember who we are.
We are worth fighting for.
We’ve seen beauty.
We’ve birthed babies who’ve only known a black President.
We’ve tasted empathy and paid it forward.
We’ve Go-Funded from wrong to right.
We’ve marched and made love.
We haven’t forgotten—even if they have—Karma is keeping watch. 

Hold On.
Hold On everybody.
Even if all you have left
is that middle finger around your God-given right
to be free, to be heard, to be loved,
and remembered…Hold On,
and keep
Holding.

Poetry Thursday

The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
--Ellen Bass

pure joy

A couple of months ago, a friend asked me to her birthday celebration -- a bonfire on a remote beach on the new moon. When the day came, I almost bailed. I was tired. Depressed. Bereft, really, if you want to know the truth. But, I had made a promise, and I am nothing if not loyal to commitments I make to others. So I dragged my ass out of my apartment and drove the 40 miles over hill and dale to the remote beach chasing the setting sun.

A funny thing happened on that twisty turny road... I had a little moment.   As I was turning some corner, looking at the trees, watching the sun and wondering if I would make it there while there was still light, a thought popped in my head, "joy."  I looked around me, at all the beauty, and I realized what I needed more of in my life was joy.  Not just any joy, but pure joy.  I knew it because just seeing that beauty, I experienced pure joy.

As I write this, a single tear runs down my cheek, but it is not burning this time because joy engenders tears as much as pain does.

So I have been seeking expressions of pure joy -- whether mine or others.  Here's one. 

This is Dexter. I met him briefly on another drive to a remote beach.  When he saw new people, his first response was to pick up this huge buoy as though it were a ball and suggest we play with him.  Look at this marvelous ball I have found he seemed to be saying. 

Here are some other pictures of sights I found to be full of joy or that produced feelings of joy.

 The tiniest sand dollar I have ever found.

 The happy cows on the road to Point Reyes Light House.  It was really the tiny baby cows (yes I know there is a name for them), but I didn't snap a picture of them.

This tiny dog having a great time on a walk... and the one that I didn't snap a picture of ... his owner told me he waits patiently for the walk to the post office because at the end of waiting there is a treat.

It's the little things that bring us pure joy.

Quote Thursday

A painful time 
in our life is 
what I call a 
“healing crisis.” 
We are letting go 
of something old 
and opening to 
something new.” 
- Shakti Gawain

Perspective and Gifts from the Universe

A friend 

is one 

that knows you 

as you are, 

understands where 

you have been, 

accepts what 

you have become, 

and still, 

gently allows 

you to grow.

~Elbert Hubbard
Philosopher, Author, Publisher

[I saw this posted, and mis-attributed to Wm Shakespeare, and had to investigate.  The author's life story, and the number of quotes of his that we use in daily life are amazing. ]  

I had the opportunity to meet Bruno, pictured above, on my short jaunt into Chicago in August.  His life is worthy of a children's book.  Maybe someday I will get around to that one.  His life, and his owners, brought me some perspective at a challenging time.  When I see his little face, I remember how important it is to not judge a book by its cover.  I remember the power of love and how unexpectedly it can come - or maybe that it can come in unexpected packages.

We rarely have control of the gifts the universe will bestow.  The best we can try to do is be receptive when they land on our doorstep.  And, of course, to be thankful.
I am thankful! Still working to incorporate into my life all the gifts I received on that trip to Chicago.

Poetry Thursday

Live life 
as if 
everything 
is rigged 
in your favor.
~ Rumi

Poetry Thursday, Rumi ... again

The garden 
of love 
is green 
without 
limit and 
yields 
many 
fruits 
other than sorrow 
or 
joy.






Love is 
beyond either condition: 
without 
     spring, 
without 
     autumn, 
it is always 
     fresh.
 ~ Rumi

Poetry Thursday ... what the world needs now...

Somewhere somebody 

must have some sense. 

Men must see that 

force begets force, 

hate begets hate, 

toughness begets toughness. 

And it is all 

a descending spiral, 

ultimately ending 

in destruction 

for all and everybody. 

Somebody must have 

sense enough and 

morality enough 

to cut off 

the chain of hate and 

the chain of evil 

in the universe. 

And you do that by love.

 
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr 

– “Loving Your Enemies Speech”

 Nov. 7, 1957

[emphasis added]