I felt this with this book. Powerful writing and beautiful prose. I found myself marking pages with little green sticky notes to come back to later and reread and eventually write down because they captured something I have held within, without words or illustration, just an ache. My mother will mark pages in books and keep a log at the back in those random blank pages of all the words she finds to be curious and a bit odd; a dictionary of sorts to return to when she wants their meanings. I marked the pages of stunning prose and bring me to tears literature.

Here are some excerpts with a ribbon of theme:
“Whenever you leave cleared land, or a path, or a road, when you step from someplace carved out, plowed, or traced by a human and pass into the woods, you must leave something of yourself behind. It is that sudden loss, I think, even more than the difficulty of walking through the undergrowth that keeps people firmly fixed to paths. In the woods, there is no right way to go, of course, no trail to follow but the law of growth. You must leave behind the notion that things are right. Just look around you. Here is the way things are. Twisted, fallen, split at the root. What grows best does so at the expense of what’s beneath. A white birch feeds on the pulp of an old hemlock and supports the grapevine that will slowly throttle it. In the deadwood of another tree, fungi black as devil’s hooves. Over us the canopy, tall pines that whistle and shudder and choke off light from their own lower branches.”

“When things are very quiet, the old house ticks. Not regularly, like a clock, but softly all through itself as the slats in the walls change temperature or the plaster tightens or the earth shifts underneath the granite slab foundation. From time to time, the little sounds that the house makes reverberate inside the drum. My breath does, too. I hear a rising, then a falling. In and out. A greatness, a lightness. I grow heavier, then so inert my body seems without life. Between breaths, I lose feeling. And then my chest fills, a resurrection.

There is another thing that our old house does in the deep of night. I have heard it before and now I wait for it to happen. The house releases the whole day’s footsteps. All day we press down minutely on the wide old floorboards, moving about on small, regular errands, from room to room. It takes hours for the boards to readjust, to squeak back up the nails, fro the old fibers of the pinewood to recover their give. As they do so, they reproduce to the sounds of footsteps. In the night our maze of pathways is audibly retraced. I am used to it, as is mother, but sometimes a wakeful guest is frightened. I can understand this. For now, as I rise and I stand in half-darkness in the doorway of my bedroom, I hear the distinct creak of footsteps proceeding towards me, then past me, over to my bed. It’s very cold. My skin prickles. I feel the breath of my own passage, as though my dead self and living self briefly met in that doorway to sleep.”

“As I return from my berry picking, carrying the lobster pot with both handles, I brush through the jewelweed. The light seeds bounce off me, ping off the curve of the cheap old pot. Some tear like tiny cannonballs through the webs I’ve tried so hard to avoid. I stop, of course, and watch the spiders. Exiting the field, I leave them to the suave calm of their thoughtful repairs. My scratches tingle and my hair’s a knot of twigs. I’m slick with sweat and gritty with scrapings of bark and wood rot, and I’m peaceful. I have reached an understanding in the woods, as I always do.”

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

He is an INTJ, sometimes P, and I am always an ESFJ. This should explain everything. Well, at least why we peruse book stores separately. You will most likely find Ivan in the history section with his nose deep in one of those grand and epic biographies of some dead man who was a master general in some army winning some famous war. I, on the other hand, will be located in the memoirs or in the brainless fiction section and occasionally thumbing the shelves of psychology (aka: self-help).

Tonight we perused. And I came home with some loot. I did this last summer, I recall. Got a stack of books and steadily read through them as the summer plodded, sometimes skipped and most of the time sprinted along. I am not like Ali, who can read a book in one sitting or maintain focus while blow drying my hair and reading a novel at the same time (amazing!). I am a reader of the sorts that reads for ten to fifteen minutes as my eyes gain in weight and eventually cave closed and there is no more reading to be had. My husband will sometimes tease me because I will have all sorts of grand intentions of reading prior to falling asleep but I only get as far as picking up the book, climbing into bed, covering myself with the down blanket and then…well, I somehow can’t pull that book up and open to read even one word. That, my friends, is what one calls “dead tired”.

Well, here is my stash (as we say in the knitting community when describing our gobs and gobs of rat nested skeins, balls and hanks of yarns we simply must have) of books. [In order of how I think I will read them, all based, of course on the opening paragraph.]

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The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan
A memoir of a woman diagnosed with cancer.

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Astrid & Veronica by Linda Olsson
Fiction…a story of a friendship between a young woman writer and her elderly neighbor.

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An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
Another memoir, also of a sad nature [why am I drawn to these?] telling the story of a woman who experiences a stillborn birth.

I have to say, despite the grief laced and sadness braided stories, I really am looking forward to them.

This story was written for my children:
Chad–the Gentle Deep
Nicholas–the Tender Explorer
Andrew–the Kindhearted Affection
Amy–the Joyful Knower
Alexandra (Lexi)–the Shining Power
Matthew–the Becoming Wonder

Doesn’t it kind of remind you of the titles given to the four children in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia?

King Peter, the Magnificent
Queen Susan, the Gentle
King Edmund, the Just
and Queen Lucy, the Valiant

And maybe, just a little, it reminds me of the tones and impact in the spiritual world as when Peter is declared, the Rock by Jesus himself.

It makes me wonder what my more significant name might be. A name that reflects my true persona and true self, separate from all that is earthly and in tandem with my flesh. And then I get thinking, what might my children names be, who are they becoming, what is emerging within each of them?

Oh, to not just wonder and be curious, but to actually start looking for these new names and then set our eyes a gazing.

I have been reading a very “young adult” novel about vampires.

A few months ago, Ivan and I got to escape to Borders (don’t we pick exciting date options??) by ourselves without the little midget. It was a Sunday night (or some obscure night when you would think no one would be out) and the place was packed. Packed with teeny-boppers all dressed in very odd costumes. Some were wearing galoshes. Some were wearing wedding dresses. Some were quite dark and goth looking. And others had a vampire look to them. Strange. They had to all be around the average age of fifteen and not your stereotypical northwest Chicago suburban teenager. More like the socially awkward and maybe fringe type who hadn’t quite figured out how to wear makeup quite yet. There were stations set up all around the store–games, prizes, microphones blasting quiz questions about some characters I didn’t know.

I saw the cover of the book(s) being released but I still was quite confused. Let’s just put it this way: I was playing my “old lady” card. We ended up leaving because it was too “rowdy” and not conducive to our vegging out reading random books we happened to let our fingers land on.

Well, a few months later, I am in Borders again; lo and behold I pick up the first book in this very same series these teeny boppers were oogling over and wouldn’t you know…I got sucked in.

Not very complex writing and really probably not very good writing by any means. But the story was interesting and intriguing and I wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen. And it was definately brainless reading which was just what I needed last weekend, for my brain had turned to cobwebs and moosh.

So here is my true confession (Ali, don’t laugh): I am reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. And like I said, I am only confessing this to all of you because I found out that my coworker who is just a few years older than me is reading it too. So it must be okay, right?

All jokes aside, it really is a good story. A bit dark and creepy at times; but heck, it’s that time of year for scary and spooky stories.

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