From the Chapbook: Mr. Palomar

At the beginning of Transparent Things, Vladimir Nabokov writes about the surface of things:

A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film. Otherwise the inexperienced miracle-worker will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright among staring fish. (p. 2)

I recalled these words often as I read Italo Calvino's luminous little book Mr. Palomar. For what Mr. Palomar does is precisely what Nabokov cautions against: he breaks the veneer of reality with all the grit of a philosopher and the naivete of a child. He considers the waves, his front lawn, a gecko who climbs on his window at night, the stars, and the cheeses in a favorite cheese shop, drawing from each of these his own, idiosyncratic conclusions about the universe, his place in it, and ours.

On language:

A stone, a figure, a sign, a word reaching us isolated from its context is only that stone, figure, sign, or word: we can try to define them, to describe them as they are, and no more than that; whether, beside the face they have shown us, they also have a hidden face, is not for us to know. The refusal to comprehend more than what the stones show us is perhaps the only way to evince respect for their secret; trying to guess is a presumption, a betrayal of that true, lost meaning. (p. 97)

On speaking or keeping silent:

Whether he should refrain from expressing his ideas is more debatable. In times of general silence, conforming to the silence of the majority is certainly wrong. In times when everybody says too much, the important thing is not merely to say what is right, which in any event would be engulfed in the flood of words, but to say it on the basis of premises and consequences, so that what is said acquires the maximum value. (p. 103)

On the difficulty of having knowledge, especially of the habits of a flock of starlings:

Mr. Palomar has not yet managed to understand. The explanations offered are all a bit dubious, conditioned by hypotheses, wavering among various alternatives; and that is only natural, since these are rumors that pass from mouth to mouth, while even science, which should confirm or deny them, is apparently uncertain, approximate. Things being as they are, then, Mr. Palomar has decided to confine himself to watching, to establishing down to the slightest detail what little he sees, sticking to the immediate ideas that what he sees suggests. (p. 62)

If the possibility of acquiring knowledge is as bleak as Mr. Palomar concludes, then why bother undertaking an investigation like his in the first place? Here Mr. Palomar does discover something:

Each individual is made up of what he has lived and the way he lived it, and no one can take this away from him. (p. 125)

Is Nabokov right to say that the only way to fully inhabit the present is to refrain from breaking through the surface of things? I'm not so sure. Perhaps, after all, the best way to be is to shatter the tension, to descend open-eyed, like Mr. Palomar, among the impossible fish.

Setting foot in the same river

Winter Flock (from the archives)

One Friday, pace Heraclitus, I walked through the same flock of birds twice. They were scattered thickly across the sidewalk, a black pool of feathers and pulsing hearts. When I approached, they burst upwards like a geyser, swirled breathlessly around my head, and then settled down across the concrete a few feet in front of me. Foolish, nearsighted birds; I was unstoppable. Three more feet and the pebbles of my stride sent ripples over the surface of the soft water, parted the anxious host. Up they burst; in concert for a second time; a persistent, incorrigible whole.

"creature of milk and black sky"

The new Ruminate is out (and there's a new version of the website to go with it). My name is in the letters section this season. We wrote in about "things being up in the air;" I wrote about waking up every day 2,600 miles away from my heart.

My favorite poem in this issue is by Karina Borowicz.

***

One Chance 

The child's skin is transparent
at the inner corner of the eyes
back of the neck
up along the small soft arm
the veins are being written
in a language we weren't meant
to comprehend 

she will grow
neither beautiful nor plain
it is written
there will be work
at the cotton mill
these tiny fingers will spin
barrelsful of the resinous mass
into miles of fine thread
around a towering bobbin 

the love of a poor cabinet-maker
eight children
the verses of happiness written
into her body
along with psalms of loss
the black rosary wound
around her daughter's small
cold hands 

creature of milk and black sky
the words being written now
upon your body
have been coiled inside their own
silence for so long
waiting for your arrival
their one chance
to be spoken

***

Borowicz has a book forthcoming, The Bees are Waiting. I'm looking forward to it.

Surely goodness and mercy

It was a gray, happy Christmas here. Among the many things that my parents have done well is to teach us how to give. And so, come Christmastide, we gift elaborately to one another, practically swimming in the ocean of wrapping paper, literally basking in the goodness of generous, grateful hearts. Sometimes I wonder vaguely if it's too much, and of course it is. We don't need all these shiny things. But love itself is a little like this, isn't it? It just keeps welling up. And it doesn't have to be that way, but there it is: overflowing our hollowed hands.

The Way I See It: Birth

When I first started thinking about Molly's prompt this week, I thought I would share some of my family's Christmas traditions and the special things we do to mark the coming of the Christ child.

Like placing a baby doll in a handmade cradle under the Christmas tree, a reminder of God's gift to us:

Or like the Advent calendars we have used over the years and the snub-nosed holy family, made of more-or-less durable plastic, that we have had since before I was born:

Both these traditions help keep our hearts centered in the midst of the baking-buying, celebratory chaos of the holiday season, although in recent years we have neglected the Advent calender in favor of Advent devotionals.

But then, before I even managed to take pictures, Mama outdid all our previous Christmas observances by announcing a new baby. A real one. Not the kind you put in a cradle under the tree or in a plastic mini-manger of straw. The kind that is birthed into the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the world to grow and live. We are all terrifically excited--my erstwhile-youngest sister most of all, I think. She is keeping track of Baby G's progress in a book that was a staple in our house when I was little:

This week's image:

There is nothing quite like the promise of a real baby to rekindle the joy and thrill of this time of waiting. If you have any "G" names for either a boy or a girl, we are currently accepting submissions ("G" is next in the alphabet).

Wishing you all a blessed Christmas and an equally felicitous New Year.

***

This week's exquisitely apt photo prompt courtesy of Molly at Close to Home.

Arise, shine, for your light has dawned;
The Presence of the Lord has shone upon you!
Behold! Darkness shall cover the earth,
And thick clouds the peoples;
But upon you the Lord will shine,
And His Presence be seen over you.
And nations shall walk by your light,
Kings, by your shining radiance.

Raise your eyes and look about:
They have all gathered and come to you.
Your sons shall be brought from afar,
Your daughters like babes on the shoulders.
As you behold, you will glow;
Your heart will throb and thrill--
For the wealth of the sea shall pass on to you,
The riches of nations shall flow to you.
Dust clouds of camels shall cover you,
Dromedaries of Midian and Ephah.
They shall all come from Sheba;
They shall bear gold and frankincense,
And shall herald the glories of the Lord.
***
And I will add glory to My glorious House.

(from Isaiah 60, in Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures)

Friday round-up

"Do as I say, not as I do": "Living by Default" (James Surowiecki, The New Yorker)

When it comes to debt, then, the corporate attitude is do as I say, not as I do. And, while homeowners are cautioned to think of more than the bottom line, banks, naturally, have done business in coldly rational terms. . .  

Of course, many borrowers made bad decisions and acted irresponsibly. But so did lenders—by handing out too much money and not requiring sensible down payments. So far, banks have been partially insulated from the consequences of those bad decisions, because Americans have been so obliging about paying off overinflated mortgages. 

Research simplified: ReadCube: Free Reference Manager
Ht: The Philosophy Smoker. I've been needing something like this for my burgeoning collection of .pdf's. The annotation feature is especially attractive--but I haven't had much time to play around with it yet.

College tuition and faculty salaries: "Buying the Professor a BMW" (Perry Zirckel and Jean Johnson, Inside Higher Ed)

[T]he relationship between parental costs and faculty compensation is far from direct or one-for-one. In analyzing the complex picture, most experts have concluded that the biggest driver of spiraling tuition costs for public colleges and universities has been the decline in state appropriations.

Making theism safe for science: "Philosopher Sticks Up for God" (Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times)

Mr. Plantinga says he accepts the scientific theory of evolution, as all Christians should. Mr. Dennett and his fellow atheists, he argues, are the ones who are misreading Darwin. Their belief that evolution rules out the existence of God — including a God who purposely created human beings through a process of guided evolution — is not a scientific claim, he writes, but “a metaphysical or theological addition.”

Chilly, chilling fiction. This short story will make you uncomfortable: "Stone Mattress" (Margaret Atwood, The New Yorker)

Why should she be the only one to have suffered for that night? She’d been stupid, granted, but Bob had been vicious. And he’d gone scot-free, without consequences or remorse, whereas her entire life had been distorted. The Verna of the day before had died, and a different Verna had solidified in her place: stunted, twisted, mangled. It was Bob who’d taught her that only the strong can win, that weakness should be mercilessly exploited. It was Bob who’d turned her into—why not say the word?—a murderer.

The little engine that could

More deadlines tomorrow. Personal statements are practically second nature by now. And my writing sample? It's just getting better and better--thanks to much revising and, of course, thanks to copious feedback from generous readers (you know who you are). Just when I think I can't change another thing, I discover I can, and I do.

The Way I See It: White

Some years, this is as close as we get to a white Christmas:

Just these billows of pale, dying grass and the chill blue of a clear sky.
Or translucent beads of rain strung along green threads.

We know it's December, though--by the way the air burns in our lungs when we leave the house and by the way a coat is never enough. The weather leaves us rummaging through drawers for gloves and scarves, and the days are strangely volatile: clouds burst, sun shines, fog descends,

and bows--the essence of white--

they just break inexplicably through:

***
This is my contribution to Molly's "The Way I See It" photo meme. Join the fun here.

Where were you...

...on July 24, 2010?

See what the rest of the world was doing here.*

Compiled from over 80,000 YouTube submissions by contributors in 192 countries, Life in a Day presents a microcosmic view of our daily experiences as a global society. From the mundane to the profound, everything has its place as we spend 90 minutes gaining greater insight into the lives of people who may be more like us than we ever suspected, despite the fact that we're separated by incredible distances.

It will be the most beautiful and exhilarating 90 minutes of home video you will ever see. Promise.

*My sister and I actually recognized one of the contributors--a local who stops by the campus library to sell eggs to the staff. In the video, she describes the contents of her purse.

What keeps me up at night:

Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy. I had to try the first book twice. The first time, I gave up after a few pages of the simple, mediocre prose; the second time, I made it to the plot and couldn't stop until it was done. Collins is not a word-smith, but she's a fantastic story-teller. What made the books for me was the smart blend of Greek mythology and reality TV, plus an intriguing post-apocalypse setting. Not a masterpiece, but definitely worth reading. Recommended.

Today, 2011:

The Writing Center's annual Christmas party. Hot soups and bread. Mashed potatoes. Shrimp and rice concoctions. Frosted cake balls, pumpkin cookies, peppermint fudge. We exchanged gifts and talked about the highlights of 2011. When it was my turn, I said: Falling in love. Which about sums it up.

More linking

Lanier unveiled her latest project this week: a series of handmade books, reprinted from the public domain. The finished product, a reprinting of L.M. Montgomery's Kilmeny of the Orchard, is gorgeous--and already sold out ($35 + S&H, which is incredibly reasonable, given the amount of labor that has been invested in these). But Lanier's promised another run after Christmas:

The pages are acid-free rag content and the signatures were folded and sewn entirely by hand onto cotton tapes with Irish bookbinder’s thread. I used an archival PVA book glue and traditional English mull for the binding, and the headbanding at the head and tail of the spine are silk. The book cloth is Dover linen and the endpapers are Italian cotton. As I have mentioned, the artwork is from original oils painted by my sister, and the cases were individually debossed and inked on an early-twentieth century engraver’s press. I would not even be able to begin to say how many hours went into each book, but I can avow that every one of them was a labor of love.

Pictures and more info here.

Like link

The Good Women Project had a great post on "Anger, Cat-calls, and Forgiveness" last week. This topic is a near and dear one, although I don't talk about it much here. Until I moved away from home last year, I was surrounded by men who respected me for what I could do and who I was, and not just for what I looked like or how I could make them feel. In Toronto, I realized that not everyone thinks about or relates to women this way, and I was horrified. Really. Sometimes walking down the street or into a particular conversation made me feel like I had regressed about 100 years. I hated it: it was threatening and derogatory, and it made me feel helpless, because there was nothing I could do to change those attitudes or disarm those words and what they implied about women (even if they weren't directed at me and even if the people saying them were otherwise genuinely nice).

I don't have any solutions to offer, but I do think Grace is on the right track: setting aside the large-scale social and political changes that would have to occur to make environments more hospitable to women, the best thing individual women can do is to react to these kinds of situations out of a spirit of graciousness and forgiveness rather than anger. You can read the whole post here. The comments are interesting too.

Notes and recommendations

So November is over and done in a swirl of leaves and paper. My first PhD application is due next Tuesday with the others following throughout the month, and today I submitted two applications--one for a conference, the other for a summer seminar. Work is winding up, too, since finals are approaching and papers are coming due.

Christmas looms ever nearer. I am looking forward to garland-making and story-telling and Christmas shopping. Last year I did all of my Christmas shopping in three hectic hours at the Eaton Centre during a forced break from paper-writing. It was a success, but not nearly as enjoyable as it ought to have been. However, if Thanksgiving is a reliable indicator, I will relish it this year (this Thanksgiving, for the first time in five years, I wasn't writing a philosophy paper).

Highly recommended:

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I don't even care that this recommendation is over a decade late: read it.

Cassio Vianna's new album Letters to Grace. Yes, he's my sister's fiance, but my recommendation goes beyond family loyalty. I've had the CD on repeat in my car for the last week. It's Brazil meets Oregon: rain meets samba. Many of the lyrics were translated from Portuguese by Donna Henderson, whose poetry inspired this post. My favorite songs are "Rain Samba" and "Letter to Grace." Download a song for free here.

Merry Christmas!