What to Keep and What to Not Keep: the red sweatshirt

Now that I'm back in my home space after nearly a year in a very minimalist space and am slowly recovering from burnout (giving up helps), my urge to clean up my space is irrepressible.  I also have a little more energy to devote to it, since I have given up on my career, so this is working out slowly but well. 

One of my problems with choosing not to keep things is my emotional / strong memory attachments to them.  (Another is my inability to remember why I kept a thing and the urge to save it anyway just in case I remember later why I kept it, but we'll talk about that some other time.)  So I decided that I would take pictures of the things I am tempted to keep not because I use them but because they are tied to something else.  Then I'll write about them and have an online memorial to look at even when the item in question has moved on to a new home or a new use.

#IGuessThisWasDuring90210DaysOrSomething

Today's is this red Donald Duck sweatshirt.  I never cared for the image, but my beloved aunt K gave it to me in my youth.  It was in heavy rotation (basically because I only had maybe two sweatshirts until college) once I outgrew my most favorite thick, amazing black sweatshirt with the random Italian writing and the day-glo neon colors that I adored and saved for decades.

The memory attached to this is that my mom in her unflagging (but mostly futile) attempts to get me to care about clothing and my appearance always said red was a great color on my.  There is a photo of me wearing this sweatshirt being hugged with obvious affection by my incredibly adorable and young-looking mother as she was recovering from a nearly-deadly illness (maybe during a family birthday celebration???).  Because of my connection of this sweatshirt with the generosity of my aunt and the love and affection of my mother, I have carried it to another state and through 14 moves (if you count the 8 back-and-forths for college undergrad).  I have not worn it in decades, but I haven't been able to give it up.  

Until now.  It's very well preserved and is Disney, so I decided to donate it instead of recycle it.  Hopefully someone else will look great in red and be hugged affectionately by someone else while wearing it.

#LoveYou,Mom!

memorial

It is Memorial Day, and I have been watching a lot of Gundam lately.  This means I have been spending more time than usual contemplating war, peace, soldiers, duty, honor, criminal orders, justice, mercy, military history, human nature, consequences, just war theory, and the terrible things we can do if we are convinced we are doing the right thing or that our cause is just or that our goal is noble and right and thus our means are justified no matter what.  I have been thinking about the soldiers who are alive and dead and the military relatives of my friends. I have been thinking of my grandfathers and the soldiers still POW and MIA.  I have been wishing that people would just stop having wars and armed conflicts, that they would stop finding causes they would kill for.  Conflict is the heart of a story, and humans, warped and twisted as we are, live and die in stories of conflict real and imagined. I long for the time when all those stories are told and finished and there is a new story structure in place and peace is all that is left behind.

To all the soldiers who have sacrificed so much and to the families who have lost so much, I send my thanks and prayers.  To the dead and the living both, thank you for trying to do what you thought was right.

RIP Pauper's Paperbacks

My dad called the other day because he passed by an old used bookstore I loved when I was younger and poorer and ravenous for books.  Now they serve subs to a different kind of ravenous people on the corner of X and Main.  I would use no more than 10% of what I earned at my job at the library across the street to buy fascinating old mass market paperbacks from the owner, Mr. Leo, for fabulous discounts.  I think it was when I was in college that Mr. Leo sold his store to a man with long curly hair who changed the store name, cared little about books, and allegedly used the business as a place to hold anarchist meetings.  (I always wondered how anarchists would hold meetings.  Probably not using Roberts' Rules.)  This new owner never gave me the same kinds of insane faithful customer discounts Mr. Leo gave me, but that's probably why Mr. Leo folded in the first place.  Wherever he and his books may be, may they all rest in peace.

our precious things

". . .And all our precious things have become a ruin." - Isaiah 64:11d NASB

I had a watch.  It was the latest of the late eighties or possibly early enough in the 90s that there was no functional difference in fashion.  The watch was a dark metalic purple, and it had what I can only describe as a wristband made of tightly coiled Slinky, also colored metallic purple.  It was uncomfortable to wear because the coils would pinch hair and even skin sometimes, but did I mention it was shiny? 

It was a gift from my mother despite her better judgment, I think.  She was afraid I would break it or lose it because, as a tomboy, I was not particularly nice to my clothes, and as a dreamer, I was not good at keeping track of my possessions.  No matter how hard I tried, my things always seemed to get lost, torn, or broken. 

I don't know if she bought it because I actually showed interest in something that might have been considered a fashion accessory (in the 80s).  I suspect this was the case.  I liked it a lot for some reason.  I took it with me to camp, and I vowed to keep careful track of it.  I would not lose this thing.

To this day, I firmly believe I didn't lose it.  I know I put it with my shirt and shorts and shoes before I went to swim in the pool, and when I came back, it was gone.  At first I thought it just fell out of my shorts pocket, but I searched every inch of that grass by the pool all the way out to the fences, and it was not there. 

I searched way past a reasonable amount, determined that for once I would not lose something my mother had given me.  I searched because I knew that if I came back without it, even if it was stolen, she would look at me with that sad, "How can you be my daughter?" look.  I searched with tears of frustration and rage because someone stole something from me when I was actually keeping track of it and not losing it, and my mom was going to sigh and dismiss me and remind me once again that I was not her favored child, this time because some bad girl stole this thing I was trying to prove myself with. 

When I tried, I still failed in this arena.

After that, I never asked for anything perishable or expensive because what's the point if it can be stolen even if you're being careful.  The world is that kind of place sometimes.  Best not to get too attached to anything valuable if you are only going to ruin it or lose it or have it taken from you.  Really, it's better this way.

Absorption v. Consumption

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Excerpts from a conversation I had with a fellow reader:

"I read to absorb."
"I read to consume."
"You make it sound so . . .  There has got to be more value to reading than just shoving it down your throat like roughage."
"But there's so much to read . . ."

Do you read (for pleasure) to absorb or consume?
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Remembering The Chosen

I saw a gaggle of Jewish boys in yarmulkes, long dark pants, and long-sleeved white shirts on their way home from playing sandlot baseball, and I thought of that opening bit in The Chosen by Chaim Potok, a book I read on a whim back in high school, I think.  I was in an experimental honors English class that year, or something, so I missed the books my regular classmates were being forced to read, which made those books seem enticing. 

I had a lot of time to spend in the school building that year, waiting for practices to start after school ended, I think, and once I finished the reading material I'd brought along, I would read almost anything I could find.  (I drew the line at textbooks.)

There were stacks of books I hadn't read in the English teacher's room, and he gave me permission to read whatever I found.  I think that was how I discovered The Chosen and A Separate Peace (the book that finally taught me how to spell separate correctly all the time) and The Promise and eventually My Name Is Asher Lev (which I hope you read). 

There was no discussion with a group about themes and symbolism and such, just me and amazing works of literature that percolated in my brain and helped make me who I am today; you know, the kind of person who sees a bunch of Jewish boys with baseball gloves walking down the sidewalk away from a ball field and thinks of a book she read fifteen years ago. 

Have you ever seen something in passing that reminded you of a book from long ago?

Freakazoid! and being a fan

I loved Freakazoid when it was on TV a million years ago, and I love it now.  It's smart and goofy and random and as likely to make me snort orange juice as my sister.


In one episode, Freakazoid (the ostensible superhero of the story) and his police buddy Cosgrove are waiting in line at an autograph session for construction guru Norm Abrams.  Cosgrove is nervous about being an idiot in front of his idol, and Freakazoid is being nice and calming him down. 

When they reach the front of the line, Freakazoid flips out.  "I am shaking Norm Abrams' hand!!  I am holding Norm Abrams over my head!!!!" 

While I have never narrated my interactions with authors I adore out loud or held them over my head, I am aware of how embarrassing it is to be a super-dork in front of someone you admire who will only have this single interaction with you in both of your lives.

It's kind of cathartic to see someone else doing it.  :)

Do you have any embarrassing author-meeting stories?

Yuri's Blessing

"Yuri" is what I call one of our regular customers even though that's not his name. For a long time, I could not remember his real name, and I knew a man with a similar accent named Yuri. I think.

He is from eastern European and speaks with a wonderful, peanut-butter-thick accent that he wholeheartedly enjoys using. He is lonely, gregarious, and now attached to a cane he looks at with distaste. His hair and short beard are neat and white, his humor is gently dry, and he reads voraciously (always has a new book he heard about and wants to discuss).

He loves children; I learned this at the same time I indelibly learned his real first name. A baby was being fussy, and the mother was calling his name to soothe him, and "Yuri" stepped over to ask what the baby's full name was.

"That's my name, too," he told the baby with a quick grin. He then went on to explain to the parents how his name was the eastern European equivalent of the baby's. "It's not a popular name like it was back when I was born," he told them. They were nice people, and they let him talk. I think it helped that the baby, also fascinated by his accent, quieted down when he spoke.

"I hope you grow up to have as good a life as I have," he said to the baby, and then the family left the store.

What makes something worth revisiting?

I am sobbing right now.  You see, this character died suddenly and with little fanfare, and it's kind of rough.  Even though this is the fifth time I've seen the show.  In fact, this time, I started crying early, in the episode before, because I knew it was coming.

It reminds me of the way I cry earlier in The Warrior's Apprentice the more times I read it.  This is why I think I don't ever want to be involved with any prophecies of the future and stuff.  I'd be (more of) a wreck if I knew it was coming.  (Or maybe I'd get really stubborn about making a different future happen . . . :)

Anyway, all this crying and reflecting got me thinking about the topic of what gives a book good reread value (or a show/movie good re-watch value). 

Some books are harder for me to reread because of the tragedies (Mirror Dance); while the tragedies in other works are the things that make them worth revisiting.  Some comedies are great for one watch and then pointless while other funny works need to be appreciated over and over again (Hogfather).  One friend once said that he reads David Eddings' books just for the chance to hang out with the characters again, and some people reread the same mystery over and over because they love the plotting.


What is it for you?  What makes you revisit a work over and over again?  (How long do you usually wait?)  What works do you regularly revisit (and why)?

O, the Neighbors Inside Are Frightful

Ah, last night brought back memories.  'Tis the season to be jolly, and some of my neighbors were being extremely jolly last night, though why this should involve so much cigarette smoke that you could see it in the hallway is beyond me . . . 

Anyway, back in college, it used to drive me crazy when the RD would do curfew checks to make sure we were all in our rooms by whenever we were supposed to be.  I always was because I was in bed before 10 most nights because I cannot function well on less than 9 hours of sleep and always seemed to have 8 'o'clock classes.  Unfortunately, I was a light sleeper, so even if she didn't open the door and look in, I would wake up as soon as she touched the doorknob.  This has always been irritatingly true.

I am paranoid since the last roommates I had refused to lock the door and got me robbed in broad daylight while one of them was actually in the apartment.  It's a good thing I am paranoid because if I weren't, I would have had several strange men wandering around in my 385 square feet being jolly.  Probably five or six of them tried my door by mistake, the last one at around 1 am.  (Quiet hours in our building are supposed to start at 10.)  Ho ho ho!

Do you have any amusingly grim holiday neighbor stories you'd like to share?

The bicycle graveyard in Oxford

For some reason yesterday, I thought of the bicycle graveyard.  I think it was because I saw all the bike racks that look like poles with the London Underground symbol attached, which made me think of England and bikes and that short stretch of fence in Oxford where the street divides around a tiny catholic church and its tiny graveyard right before you get to Cornmarket Street.

For some reason, that fence was always adorned with bits of bicycles left behind when other bits of the bicycle were stolen.  There were a lot of seats and front tires with attached bike chains clinging to that wrought-iron-y fence around the ancient graveyard.  It was like a zombie movie, night of the living dead bicycles.

That area always seemed very chilly to me.  Probably this was because the wonky intersection and the tall buildings around it blocked out the sun as I would walk through there in the morning.  It could have had something to do with the Martyrs Memorial at my back as I walked south.  There were a lot of trees in that graveyard, too, muffling what little light would have been left. 

Often I would take the western branching of the road so as to avoid that oddly cold spot, but it was mostly because there was a patisserie on that side of the divide, and a fist-sized quiche Lorraine covered a multitude of hardships on a two mile early morning walk to class.  Mmmmmm, quiche Lorraine. 

I wouldn't always get a quiche because if I didn't leave early, the patisserie would be sold out by the time I got there, which would make me want to cry a little. It was tough to talk about Augustine and philosophy that was way over my head on an empty stomach after a late night trying to write smart 8-10 page papers every week.  The quiche made it better.  Or some real hot chocolate from that cart vendor just on the other side of the High Street. 

No cream, thank you.  It was like putting butter in your hot chocolate and left little oily bubbles covering the top of your chocolate as the skin formed so fast on the really cold mornings.