March 16, 2007
Ephemera is forever
You’ve got to wonder about ephemera. How a word whose Greek root means “lasting only a day” could be used to classify the bits and pieces of printed matter we cherish as our keepsakes. And I mean letters, theatre programs, postcards, ticket stubs, brochures, greeting cards, and all such various things which stuff my drawers and cupboards. That these items we save forever could possibly bear an etymological link to the mayfly— any insect of the order ephemeroptera, of course, and noted for its life span of just a few hours— is yet another example of the English language’s perplexity.
But then I have to wonder also about ephemera on my own terms. Because my drawers and cupboards are truly stuffed, and chances are that I’ve got a few good years before me still. From time to time I grow concerned that my desire to keep everything will one day find me buried up to my eyes in printed matter.
In particular, I have a big box in my closet filled with cards of all sorts— birthdays, anniversary, Christmas, Valentines, engagement, bridal showers, wedding etc., as well as a fat stack of postcards I’ve acquired over the years. And I cull this box from time to time; whenever I find a card from a name I no longer recognize, I force myself to toss it in the recycling. But in spite of these efforts, the box’s contents continue to amass at an alarming rate. I rarely even look through this box, but I can hardly bear to part with anything inside it.
I do pity the poor somebody who is left to sort through my ephemera once it has outlived me. Sometimes I wonder if I should just toss the lot of it now to make it easy later, and whether perhaps these things were meant to be ephemeral after all. Did I miss the point, going through my life-so-far hoarding such an abundance of stuff? Maybe there is another word for ephemera, and that word is “crap”, and my suspicions will prove correct that none of it is of interest to anyone but me.
But then I was recently gratified to have it confirmed otherwise. To learn that ephemera can be forever.
When my grandfather passed away recently at the age of 94, of course all of us who will miss him were terribly sad, but there was some relief to be had. In an end to his suffering, and that he would no longer have to live without his wife— she had predeceased him in 1998 after 63 happy years together.
But for us there was further consolation, as the extended family went back to my Aunt and Uncle’s house to visit together following the funeral. And we spent a wonderful afternoon sorting through black and white photographs of familiar faces, and also a box of cards, notes and letters which have lasted much longer than only a day. Some of them were over 70 years old.
I never knew that my grandmother had collected postcards, just like I do. And some of the postcards she saved were truly works of art, with “This is a real photograph” stamped on the back as proof of authenticity. Many of the postcards we found were purchased as souvenirs and never sent, shut up in a box all these years so they still look brand new. Beautiful black and white images of British seaside towns, presumably collected by my grandfather while he served in the navy.
One postcard is labelled “A Rough Sea at Brighton”— a photo of waves crashing up against the long-gone but once-spectacular Palace Pier. The night shots are tinted in reds, yellows and blues for a carnival effect. Some of the postcards were sent through the mail with just a brief note. Usually my grandfather apologizing to his wife that it had been too long, but a letter was to follow. During the war he was away for six years.
The greeting cards in the box were equally fascinating, and not only for the notes they held in store, but as objects in themselves. As with the postcards, there seemed to be a superior quality compared with contemporary cards. They were either very elaborate, with fabric pieces, pop-ups, ribbons, bows and gorgeous art, or they were hilariously cheeky, and just so much more interesting than your average happy birthday.
But the messages inside were what won our hearts after all, whether it was the hastily scrawled signature of someone who hadn’t been remembered in years, or that my grandmother was called “Mom” in quotations in her baby shower cards because momhood was still weeks away then. A third birthday card for my aunt from her dad, or a message from my own dad to his mother pencilled in a shaky childish hand.
It was amusing to see the number of belated-occasion cards exchanged between my grandparents, with their humble notes of “Sorry, I forgot.” Though forgetfulness never undermined the sentiment these cards were expressing.
How amazing to find a card from my grandmother dated 1935 with “Happy Birthday to my Boyfriend” on the front. All the cards from the years they had to spend apart during the war, making clear that they were counting down the days. I especially adored the card my grandfather gave my grandmother for their third anniversary in 1939. He noted that if the rest of the years were as good as the first three had been, then he was a very lucky man.
And he was.
And then so too are we, for having all these treasures to remember him by.
March 15, 2007
The Birth House by Ami McKay
All right, so I am the very last one to get on The Birth House train, but even still it wasn’t what I expected it to be. Which isn’t surprising, the novel is not quite what it seems to be. CanLit written by a (transplanted) American. Nova Scotia regionalism with the feel of a book by Fannie Flagg or the Ya Ya Sisterhood series. “A novel” it is proclaimed to be, but then after all it is a “literary scrapbook”. There is something truly original at work in this book, and thus classification is difficult. What Ami McKay has set out to do, she does very well, and this is a remarkable debut from a talented writer.
The plot seems sort of secondary to all the “stuff” within the book, which would matter in most novels, but then the stuff here is so good. McKay uses historical fact, local lore and a dash of magic to render a catalogue of midwifery– not so different from “The Willow Book” which Dora Rare, the midwife in the novel, consults herself. McKay’s novel is constructed from Dora’s journal entries, letters, clippings and advertisements. As a result of this structure, character development can be stunted in places, but then the characters as “types” seem to conform to these as stories a woman might tell over her back fence. A very authentic sense of “this was how it was” without affection.
McKay creates this sense of simplicity, however, whilst employing prose not short of exquisite. Nothing is clumsy and not a line rings untrue. Anyone who composes the line “But I’m so far from home and everything I know that even my prayers feel like sinning” is well on the road to mastery.
And speaking of sinning, McKay doesn’t shy away from the sordid, the brutal, or the brutally honest. Women’s sxual health is provocatively examined throughout, and no punches are pulled, and yet still there manages to be a spirit of lightness. Similarly does the novel treat motherhood and mothering, and womanhood in general. As Dora Rare struggles personally and professionally with restrictions on her freedom and the pressure to conform to societal expectations, the reader becomes her champion and when Dora triumphs– well, her triumphs are so sweet.
March 15, 2007
Uneasy
I am somewhat uneasy based on the fact that the story I’ve been working on for a year now must be put away for a week or two. Until I get some feedback on the whole thing, which might just lead me toward defenestration. And I just don’t know what to do with myself. Luckily I’m reading Lullabies for Little Criminals and it’s gripping and surprising.
I am also uneasy by the fact that it looked like spring, it wasn’t, I didn’t wear gloves, and now my hands won’t move properly.
March 15, 2007
Quite
I tend to overuse the word “quite”, which is probably apparent from this blog, but I’m not going to check to be sure because then I’ll just be embarrassed. And so I’ve just gone through my entire story and removed most instances of the dreaded Q word. It really is the most ineffectual word one can use. In its ability to either intensify or lighten meaning, it comes to mean nothing. It’s not so bad in speech I think, when tone can guide it, but in writing it just obscures the point. Or in my writing, at least.
Not so related, but thinking about this has made me remember the way students use to use “maybe” when we taught English conversation in Japan. “Maybe” preceded anything someone didn’t feel quite (! but I won’t backspace) comfortable saying.
“Why don’t you love your boyfriend Yumiko?”
“May-be [drawn out long] he is not so handsome.”
or
“Are you okay today Tadayuki?”
“Hmmmm. May-be, I am sleepy.”
And most effectively:
“Gosh, it feels cold in here today.”
“May-be there is hole in back of your trousers.”
Other words I overuse: suppose, perhaps, so, bit, sure, fast, etc I am sure.
March 14, 2007
Anywhere
In lieu of news about us going without jackets these days, check out a good old fashioned spring post over at Calhounsville. And I have been gobbling books like mad: just finished The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, which was like one big looong story out of her prize-winning collection. This is not a bad thing; it’s just not the most typically-structured novel (ie my thesis advisor would probably hate it). Does that woman wrench hearts though? Also, I’m realizing that final changes to my story are just about done, which is very odd. I’m sending it out to my helpful copy-editors this weekend. And now I’m about to fall into the tub with Ami McKay (haha- she has a cool website though).
March 13, 2007
On time
Alan Lightman won my heart with this article recommending books on “the mysterious nature of time”. He’s mixing up the fic and nonfic, suggesting Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity, and The Seven Day Circle by Eviatar Zerubavel. Apart from the good picks, I learned a whole lot about time from Lightman’s article itself.
March 12, 2007
Helpless by Barbara Gowdy
Barbara Gowdy’s Helpless shifts between a variety of points of view: Rachel, an uncommonly beautiful young girl who has been abducted; her mother Celia, desperate with worry; Ron, the appliance repairman conscious of his unhealthy urges, who is holding Rachel captive in his basement; and Ron’s girlfriend, Nancy, who struggles between her feelings for Ron and her own attachment to Rachel. These various points of view– each one convincing in its own right– enhance the structure of this suspenseful but relatively straightforward narrative, and the result is a multi-dimensional examination of empathy, understanding, and love.
Christie Blatchford is thanked by Gowdy in her acknowledgements, and I imagine her counsel helped to lend this book its verisimilitude– she’s written about so many of these missing children cases in her columns over the years. The near-journalistic quality of Gowdy’s depiction of the police investigation is one of the most compelling parts of this book.
Empathy is essential to the process of tracking down missing children, as investigators must try to get inside an abductor’s heads to know where the crime might go. Such attempts at understanding are also enacted by Celia, who herself suffers with being empathized with by those who really cannot possibly understand what she is going through (the absolute impossibility of true empathy, dealt with also in Afterwards). Gowdy portrays the resistance of empathy as well; speaking to a man who actually does understand her situation, Celia is “instantly on her guard. She doesn’t want her feelings to be feelings he knows. His child died.” Similarly, Nancy also struggles with and against her understanding of Ron’s intentions with Rachel, and links the girl’s plight with trauma from her own past.
These concurrent themes of empathy and the resistance of help the reader to negotiate their understanding of Ron, who, as Gowdy explains in this CBC interview isn’t likeable, but is real– as in complex, interesting and human. His motivation for the abduction is love, which is twisted where it lies, but stems from a long-ago place more understandable. And though this understanding verges on discomforting at times, Gowdy’s is a fascinating portrayal of an often-simplified type of character– also the case with Celia and Nancy, who are fleshed out well beyond the stock figures of “single mom” or “former addict”. Her child’s voice for Rachel is also very convincing.
Wonderfully located in a readable Toronto and secure of its time, Helpless considers the sxualization of young girls, the make-up of the modern family, maternal devotion, and rites of childhood. The tension present from the very start is upheld and deftly orchestrated by Gowdy throughout, and makes for a rich and readable book.
Note: Heather Mallick cites this novel in her latest column .
March 11, 2007
Round the Back of My Hotel
We just got The Fratelli’s CD “Costello Music” which we’re obsessed with.
We were also happy to find that they are our age. Stu went off The Arctic Monkeys when he found out they were still in their teens (though I actually don’t think they are anymore).
March 11, 2007
Other Springs
Late Morning March
The air through the open window is the same
as when you breathed for what you don’t believe in now
and such anachronistic miracles are dizzying
separating you from local time.
I remember every spring that came before this
linked in the smells the city makes.
The armature of scattered selves
fastening you to year-to-year.
I posted this poem last year, and wrote it many years before that. And while I don’t think it’s a particularly good poem, and I don’t even write poems anymore, it says everything I want to say about this time of year, so I feel no need to say it another way. Because there is something so evocative about spring time. I think one’s senses become primed after months of hibernation, and so walking around there is so much to see, notice and revel in. And it takes you back to other times you felt that way, other springs.
Yesterday we walked around as if in a time warp. The weather wasn’t even particularly good, but I wore a vest instead of a winter coat, and we could hold bare hands instead of gloves. And we stomped around places I used to know before I knew Stuart, and at the same time the weather and how we spent our time reminded us of passing Saturdays in Nottingham, and quite a few things happened that were exactly like in Japan. And so yesterday, which was a magical lucky day, we relived all our springs at once.
We got up early and I got three hours of work in, just so I would be happy for the rest of the day. We went up to Bloor and went out for lunch sets at Thai Basil, and then searched for treasures in the bargain basement at BMV Books. After that we went to Whole Foods, with a basket in tow so we wouldn’t look conspicuous, and went up and down the aisles eating free samples amongst the beautiful people. Our basket stayed empty. We went back to Bloor Street and looked at clothes after that, and got depressed because beige seems to the new black. (And we saw Pickle Me This reader Erica G. at the Gap. Hi Erica!). We went to The Cookbook Store next, and bought the three recipes books we don’t yet own by our beloved Jeanne Lemlin omnibussed in hardover and on sale for $13.00. What luck! I showed Stuart The Toronto Reference Library which he’d never seen before and he was quite impressed. And then he got new shoes, which he loves and they’re wonderful, and we got a box of cookies and a chocolate bar as a gift with the purchase. (?) We had tea/coffee at7 West after and looked at the paper. Walked home, and then had just about an hour to relax before going out again to the Jonker/Lev’s for dinner– but there was magic on the way, of course. The Bloor-Danforth Line had been diverted and we got to see Lower Bay Station! And then the rest of the night proceeded absolutely splendid, with good food and fine company.
Today is a little bit shorter, but yesterday stretched on so long, I am not bothered.
March 11, 2007
Chang chang chang
It has been a joy to return to shorter novels. I enjoyed Middlemarch, but it wasn’t constructed for a reader like me. Slipping back into the fiction of my time is like putting on something that fits me perfectly, and maybe that means I just don’t want to work so hard for my reading pleasure, but it’s always nice when it comes easy. Particularly with books as great as those I’ve been reading lately. I am now reading Helpless by Barbara Gowdy, which is the first book by her I’ve ever read. And you’d think I would have read The White Bones considering I’ve got a publically-acknowledged thing for elephants, but the premise of the book has always made me keep my distance. Perhaps this new novel will pave my way toward it?
Note: Afterwards and Radiance reviewed favourably in The Globe this week.
