Quickie Review: THE MEMORY GARDEN

The Memory GardenThe Memory Garden by M. Rickert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review is probably biased. I’ve been a fan of Rickert’s writing for almost a decade. As far as I know, I’ve read her entire published oeuvre, and have gone on record talking about how much I love it. I even had the pleasure of telling her face to face a few weeks ago!

A lot of Rickert’s shorter work is often populated by the walking wounded. Characters who are often terribly aware of whatever darkness (some kind of guilt, trauma, tragedy, maybe some secret) pervades their lives. It often isolates them, as those who might share that grief–well-meaning lovers, family, community–move on. And while sometimes (not every time) I’m left with a sense of a character’s transformation, of some tiny newfound strength or hope in the future, I would fear what tomorrow could bring them.

The difference in Rickert’s debut novel The Memory Garden, is that Nan and her friends Mavis and Ruthie made it through to the other side of their darkness. They lived past a shared tragedy some sixty years into old age. Not unscathed, of course. The damage to their lives is done, and they drift apart. But one way or the other and with varying degrees of success, they each soldiered on to eventually move into and through their own individual guilts and traumas–and occasional blessings, too. Nan was given the care of Bay, an unexpected, maybe even undeserved miracle. And Nan chooses to raise Bay, even if it meant doing so in the shadows of everything that came before. Even if it meant more secrets.

It’s the sort of situation one falls into once life becomes about more than survival.

The Memory Garden‘s peculiar cast of characters gathered under even more peculiar circumstances shows us what any of Rickert’s short story characters’ lives might be like sixty years after a given tale, about a time when the past will, despite whatever life you might have lived in the interim and whatever you’ve done to put distance between you and it, demand to be reckoned with. And this is, at least as far as my memory of Rickert’s other work goes, fresh ground.

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“Making my entrance again with my usual flare…”

It’s been a publishing dry spell, folks.  No one’s fault but my own.  But now I’m back, both barrels blazing!

Because I have a face made for radio, I’ve made my first foray into the wide, wonderful world of podcasting with “The Naturalist Composes His Rebuttal” by Fran Wilde in the latest issue of Lakeside Circus!

I have a story in there too, which should go live next month.  And, I’ll be recording that one, so stay tuned!

Quickie Review: THE INCAL

The IncalThe Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ll be honest, I finally got around to reading this classic only after having seen Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. I’d heard of Jodo and his El Topo, and you can’t be any kind of comics fan without having at least heard the name Mœbius. Still, I came late to this particular party.

It’s absolutely true what people have said–you can literally pick out the bits that have been used in any number of sci-fi films over the past 30 years. I’d never read The Incal, but every one of Mœbius’s meticulously drawn panels seemed familiar. Jodo’s writing didn’t disappoint either–it’s a good example of a writer weaving his beliefs into a story while avoiding, IMO, turning the work into a tract.

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“I will see you on Good Friday…”

As some of you know, my Good Friday tradition is listening to the song “Good Friday” by the Black Crowes while looking up who got crucified in the Philippines this year…

SAN FERNANDO, PAMPANGA (Updated) — Devotees in San Pedro Cutud village here had themselves nailed to a wooden cross to re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as thousands of local and foreign spectators watch the bloody annual rites to mark Good Friday in Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation.

The money quote comes from Lasse Spang Olsen, a 48-year-old filmmaker from Denmark who joined in on the fun…

After being helped down from the cross, [Olsen] said of his experience: “Fantastic, you should try it.”

On Track to Shoot Chi or Lightning Bolts From My Hands

So I made it through my second yoga class the other day without stopping (or dying!), and I was warmed up enough that when I walked home, I barely noticed that the temperature had dropped to a balmy 7 degrees.

This time around, I was a touch less focused on just surviving the class, and could pay attention to things like exactly what my limits are right now (more than there used to be), and exactly how my body was having trouble moving (ways that never used to trouble me before).  I did do every pose though!  The quality sucked near the end, but I pushed myself as far as was reasonable I think.  That’s what matters.

And yet…

See, what I’m feeling with my return to yoga is almost exactly what I’ve been feeling like with my writing lately.  I can’t seem to bring myself to feel good about the rebuilding I’m doing.  Oh, I do it.  I take a step forward and I’m determined to show up and take the next one; lots of people would pat me on the back for that.  Yet, I know how far I’ve fallen.  I don’t go, “Yay, me! Let’s keep moving forward!”  I think, “One step down, 9,995 to go until I’m back to where I was.”

It’s motivation by self-loathing.  It’s letting fear and anger fuel me.

It’s the Dark Side of the Force.

Probably not a good thing.  But what to do about it…?

I LIVED!!! (Ow.)

Sunday, I survived my first yoga class in about 2 or 3 years.  It was a small class, but well run.  I had that awkward moment where I was the oldest person in the room, but I got over it.  (That’ll only get more frequent, right?)  The studio is new, so it’s not quite finished yet.  The folks that run it are getting it there, though.  I’ve no doubt it’ll become the tranquil place they envision.  But it didn’t phase me.  I have a history of working out in places that were far worse (but where I got the best training).  Plus, I’m Filipino; training in garages, backyards, on concrete, etc. is in my DNA.

I didn’t quite survive unscathed, though.  I was doing pretty well at first; there wasn’t a single pose the whole class that I hadn’t attempted before.  But about 3/4 of the way through, all those intercostal muscle spasms came back.  I dealt with it at first, but then I had to stop for a bit until the very end.

Not proper yoga mindset.

I pushed for two reasons.  1) I constantly mistake yoga classes for my old kung-fu classes where, if you feel too strained to execute a move or drill at full force, then you do it slowly using the best technique you can bring yourself to muster and 2) I’m just stubborn by nature.  One of the very few things that life hasn’t beaten out of me quite yet is the idea that it’s better to light an inch than curse the dark.

It’s just that sometimes, that attitude has less to do with following through with goals and more to do with defying whatever’s keeping me down.  Even if it’s myself.  It’s like that old joke about the parrot who resists its owner trying to teach it not to constantly say “Fuck you.”  Finally, the owner gets frustrated and throws the parrot in the freezer.  And when he opens the freezer the next day, he finds the parrot frozen with it’s middle finger raised.

Sure, maybe passive-aggression against myself isn’t the healthiest way to pursue goals but hey… whatever works.

Just Like the Phoenix…

The day before Lifehacker featured the discussion “How do you start exercising when you’re older and out of shape?” I’d signed up for a yoga class at a new studio that opened up an 8 minute walk from my place.  Probably one of the few times in my life that I started out a little ahead of the game.

In keeping with that, I’m scheduling this post to be pushed out after the class, just in case it kills me.  This actually isn’t  (unless I’m deluding myself, which I suppose is possible) an attempt to fulfill a freshly minted New Year’s resolution.  Getting back into shape has been on my mind since I turned 40 last July.  I’ve known for awhile that it’s past time I put some consistent effort into maintaining this meat-sack of mine.

I set the bar low: to just not be a mass of blubber with no muscle tone.  I’m not trying to recapture what I had in my late 20s/early 30s when I was training different martial arts and feeding an endorphin addiction by working out 3-4 times a week.  Though I admit, I looked good those years.  I’d lost two pants sizes, and wore jeans from high school.  Now I’m back to where I was before I worked out, and then some.  I was flexible back then.  I’d just like some of that back.  It’s still kind of there I think; I’ve always had slightly above-average flexibility.  But it doesn’t take much to push it too far these days.

It still feels like a lot of my moves are still in me, though.  But I’d be stupid to try them now, without a slow return via something like yoga.  I’d end up looking just like this…

So, assuming this isn’t my last entry, I’ll be back with tales of how this over-40 meat-sack rises from the ashes…

My Everyday Horror Story

From “An Everyday Horror Story”
by Harvey Pekar.
Art by Gerry Shamray.

Whatever lung pox I had that led to two weeks of paroxysms of coughing has messed up my voice.  To clarify, it’s messed it up for an additional week after the coughing is now more or less under control.  I’m starting to wonder if it’s one of the two(!) inhalers I’m on.  I’m this close to having to having to use one of my Field Notes notebooks to write things out instead of speaking them.

Anyway, it reminded me of a story in Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor (issue 5), “An Everyday Horror Story,” in which our man has a long bout with laryngitis and it starts to do things to his head.

I’ll tell you, I’m starting to relate.  It’s not just the voice loss, but these weird muscle spasms I’ve been getting lately.

I try to avoid soliciting curbside consultations from the medical professionals I work with, but a lot of them are just generally helpful by nature.  So the other day, some of them dropped some knowledge on me.  Now, I knew the muscles that were spasming (my intercostals) are the ones I use to cough but what I didn’t realize is that the reason they can take a long time to heal is because they can never truly rest, seeing as they’re the same muscles I use to breathe.

That’s what’s messing with my head.  My voice I can rest, but I can’t stop breathing.  Talk about feeling like a supernatural force is messing with you.  It’s bad enough fighting my own procrastination, which I do every day.  It’s even harder when you can’t talk and have trouble moving, or even sitting.  But I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill, really.  Harvey got his voice back.  I’ll likely get my voice back (gonna call the doctor again, though).  My intercostal muscles will get better.  Maybe I’ll get my groove back, too.

Maybe.

Quickie Review: JAGANNATH

JagannathJagannath by Karin Tidbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is technically incomplete. I finished this book back in September (’13) but didn’t write about it until now (January of ’14). I felt I couldn’t write about it because I didn’t (and still haven’t) rated the story “Some Letters for Ove Lindström.” (I’m still too close to the subject matter of that story.)

I know almost nothing about the Swedish/Scandinavian myths and didn’t think I necessarily had to in order to see the heart of these stories. Nor could I tell which stories were translated and which were written in English. It’s testament to Tidbeck’s writing, I think.

The collection started strongly and ended with a bang. The stories that didn’t move me were generally the ones where Tidbeck revisits certain themes without, at least as far as I could tell, adding anything new. Those aside, the ones that did move me are positively gut-wrenching.

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