dual personalities

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty uneventful, but I didn’t mind the quiet. I saw a friend for happy hour on Friday, and that’s about all the socializing I need for one weekend. Otherwise, I spent a good amount of time reading under a pile of quilts, puttering around the house tidying up corners, and preparing for the week.

Unfortunately, I had to spend all of Sunday afternoon reviewing applicants for a job search I am chairing. Oy vey, the never-ending pile of cover letters. I suppose I am not at liberty to say much (we get a real talking to about confidentiality from our “equity officers”) but it has been…quite an experience. I broke up my time in human-resources-mode by online shopping and brainstorming Christmas gifts. We are getting close!

I bought these cards to give to colleagues, since they are holiday-neutral and appropriately disgruntled for that staff office vibe.

Maybe next weekend I will bring up the Christmas storage and see what I have on hand. In my old (tiny) apartment, I could never use everything I had, so I am hoping to discover some new-feeling decor and ornaments. In the meantime, I will try to muster up all of my energy for one last full work week before Thanksgiving. I’m in the midst of this search, as well as an office move to a new building, and a slew of student meetings, so it’s going to be a busy one.

By the way — did you catch the moon this week? The November full moon was on the 12th, but it blazed each night all week, at least in our apartment’s view. It was pretty wild!

“There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.”

From Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

It’s finally Saturday! I have no plans for the weekend other than exam grading, and that’s just fine with me. I’m going to channel my inner Stoic and cultivate contentment. As Seneca wrote,

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

Let’s ignore the kerfuffle in Washington. Whatever side you’re on, outrage will only raise your bloodpressure and shorten your life. Who needs that? Well then, let’s leave the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands to other people.

It’s time to enjoy the things we love and be grateful that we can. Today, for example, I’m going to finish re-reading Mary Stewart’s The Moons-spinners (yet again) and top it off by watching the Hayley Mills film version tonight. I haven’t seen it in ages and ages, but judging from the movie stills, it doesn’t follow the book very closely. I don’t mind — I’m in the mood for the mild peril of a mid-1960s Disney movie.

I looking forward to at least one swinging party that definitely isn’t in the book. 

But who cares? At least the characters will be decent, the scenery will be pretty, and nothing will affront my old-lady sensibilities. Plus, the script contains memorable lines like the one in the title of this post. So, if you are feeling a little overwhelmed by life, why not check out for a while and enjoy a some Mary Stewart/Hayley Mills?

*Tony Gamble in “The Moon-spinners”.

I still have most of the books I read in graduate school. And “most” is kind of a lot! I took my sweet time graduating. Occasionally, I pull something off the shelf that surprises me, particularly now, after moving, when everything has been shuffled and resorted. (Sometimes I pull down a book that, I quickly realize, does not surprise me. I promptly reshelve it. I should keep a list of books to cull.)

Lately, the most successful of these whimsical trips to our new-look bookshelf has yielded Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies (1930)—a satirical novel recounting the escapades of the so-called Bright Young People of the late 1920s and early 30s—and Langston Hughes’s I Wonder as I Wander (1956)—the second volume of Hughes’s autobiography chronicling his travels between 1931 and 1938. On the surface, these two books and their authors seem to have little in common. Waugh was an upper-crust, white, Tory Oxonian. Hughes was a poor, black, Communist Kansan. However, both men share a wry distance toward the events of the 30s and their life in it. Waugh knows better than to take seriously the smart-set. Hughes circles the world and then some, never content that what he’s just seen is the final word. Both men, wise enough not to believe too firmly in their own opinions, look sideways at the 30s. Both men want to laugh at their times; they are in it but not of it.

Here are a couple of choice morsels. In Vile Bodies, Waugh combines economy of language with a withering anthropological eye.

They lunched at Chez Espinosa, the second most expensive restaurant in London; it was full of oilcloth and Lalique glass, and the sort of people who liked that sort of thing went there continually and said how awful it was.

No one has ever thought to diminish my existence in 40 words (as far as I know), but I shudder when I imagine Waugh giving me a quick up-down. The novel is not all sneer. It can lure you in with style, too. Feel how comfortable your eye gets when reading this description of being driven across the decaying grounds of a manor house. Then feel the sharpness of class distinction as your driver drops both you and his vowels.

They drove on for another mile. The track led to some stables, then behind rows of hothouses, among potting sheds and heaps of drenched leaves, past nondescript outbuildings that had once been laundry and bakery and a huge kennel where once someone had kept a bear, until suddenly it turned by a clump of holly and elms and laurel bushes into an open space that had once been laid with gravel. A lofty Palladian façade stretched before them and in front of it an equestrian statue pointed a baton imperiously down the main drive.

“‘Ere y’are,” said the driver.

I Wonder as I Wander is less overtly witty, but Hughes is a better observer and analyst. In the 1930s, Hughes bopped around the Caribbean before embarking on a book tour through the South. He washed up in San Francisco, after which he travelled back to New York to begin a stage production of his work just before sailing for the Soviet Union via Western Europe. Spending a year in the U.S.S.R. writing a film and another year traveling around Asia, Hughes finally finagled a ticket on the trans-Siberian railroad. Then he was thrown out of imperial Japan and spent another year in California, then to Mexico to bury his father, then back to New York, and then ultimately to Spain as a freelancer during the Spanish Civil War. That is to say, I won’t go too far into it, but Hughes has a lot of history to recount and a lot of nuanced opinions he wants to express. The best part about I Wonder and I Wander is Hughes’s endless drive to empathy. He often finds himself recalibrating his expectations or confirming his assumptions via skepticism.

Nichan and his girl would usually just lie there and talk quietly for a long time. But then, if I were still awake, beyond the partition I might hear in the middle of the night a terrific rolling and wrestling, scuffling, pushing, pulling, leaping and running about—which, when I first overheard such sounds, I thought they must be indicative of rape. Later I heard that it was just the way Uzbeks make love.

and

The restaurant’s presence confirmed something I had long suspected from observation, not only in the Soviet Union but around the world—even in places where there is almost nothing, the rich, the beautiful, the talented, or the very clever can always get something; in fact, the best of whatever there is.

And sometimes I discover that what I thought was more recent—an original base for non-alcoholic cocktails—is in fact very old.

Breakfast at the Alianza consisted of a single roll and “Malta coffee”—burnt grain, pulverized and brewed into a muddy liquid. Sometimes there was milk, but no sugar.

At some point it hit me: what possesses me to stick with these books rather than reshelve them is a terrifying compulsion. I gravitate toward these texts as a symptom of that dread impulse of middle-aged men: I want to read … non-fiction. I might as well get cracking on the Davids—you know, McCullough, Halberstam, Sedaris.

Just please promise to set me straight should I think to start writing my own memoirs.

Well, our long national nightmare is over and Sean Spicer got kicked off Dancing with the Stars. It was fairly obvious to this long time viewer that the scores were manipulated to make it happen. I’d care more but that would require me to care at all.

In other news, I had a lovely Veterans Day (a state holiday) and spent the entire day indoors, watching the snow blow around outside and feeling #blessed to be in my cozy apartment with a lots of chips and Diet Coke. For once, I was adequately prepared. I stitched, and read, and stitched, and hung a heavy mirror all by myself.

After reading Daughter #2’s post last week about quotes, I took some time to page through Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a favorite of female, millennial writers whose parents probably pay half to all of their Brooklyn rent. One of those good things that has been ruined by mainstream popularity, like Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Bob Dylan when he went electric (jk jk jk).

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.”

–Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook

I enjoyed it immensely, while hating myself for doing so. Such is living in these modern times.

Following my wonderful visit home last weekend, I came down with a cold — probably caught from those adorable, germ-y wee babes. My sister caught it too. An aunt just doesn’t notice all the runny noses when they’re busy playing with “Lottie’s Dollhouse” and reciting children’s Moby-Dick, you know? But this is my third cold in two months, and I am over feeling sluggish!

We constantly anticipate repose. Yet it surely can only be the repose that is in entire and healthy activity. It must be a repose without rust.

–Henry David Thoreau, from his Journals

I am definitely getting rusty.

DN and I did manage to swing a visit to his parents’ house for some r & r. I was happy to find a fully-stocked medicine cabinet with name-brand decongestants, a sparkling bathtub, and a crackling fire, all things which aided in my recuperation. And I would be remiss if I did not mention the perfect dog companion, who loves stretching out on the couch as much as I do.

It’s definitely beginning to feel crisp and cold outside (hence the fire) and I’m looking forward to November and December. I’ve been thinking about Christmas cards and Thanksgiving side dishes and the best season for movie watching:

So let’s all just pretend Vera Ellen is me, kicking this cold once and for all!

Another week has flown by. Last Sunday, after the annual Gratitude Luncheon at church, the DH and I finally got out to our cottage to check on it after that huge windstorm I blogged about last week. Although a big tree had come down, it did not fall on the house or garage (talk about feeling grateful!).

Time to rev-up the chainsaw!!

On Monday, we celebrated the DH’s birthday in the most modest way imaginable — with leftovers of the wonderful roast beef dinner the birthday boy had cooked the night before. Okay, I’m a bad wife. But in my defense a curriculum kerfuffle* at work required me to stay late at a meeting, so I wouldn’t have been able to cook anyway. Past experience has taught the DH that in order to eat well he has to cook his own dinner. Our children sent thoughtful gifts, while I gave exciting items such as a flashlight, socks, and pajama pants. Despite the boring presents, I am grateful every day for my dear DH!

The rest of the week went by in the usual blur, although we did get one surprise, the year’s first snowfall.

Everything looked pretty, but it was hard to feel grateful because it was cold, I couldn’t find a windshield scraper, and the remote car starter wouldn’t work. One of my ‘hardcore nature-man’ colleagues begrudgingly turned on his furnace for the first time. We’ve been using ours since late September or early October. I guess that marks us as sinfully wasteful. What can I say? I’m with old Baudelaire:

“I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass; 
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.” 

If, like me, you decide to hibernate and ignore the outside world until the snow melts, why not watch the great Greta Garbo film Ninotchka that premiered on this day in 1939?

Or, if you feel like something more somber but still involving a communist theme, I’d recommend Lives of Others, a film about the Stasi in East Germany not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Those who need reminding of how fortunate they are to live in a free society should definitely watch it.

That’s about it for this week. It’s time to face the piles of grading with gratitude and objectivity. Wish me luck!

* Curriculum kerfuffle = fighting over the composition of the committee tasked with reorganizing the curriculum. Think Black Friday at Walmart and you’ll get an idea of the emotions involved.