"Out of Sheer Rage" - not the least bit political

The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances. It is a very elaborate, extremely simple procedure, arranging this web of self-deceit; contriving to convince yourself that you were prevented from doing what you wanted. Most people don't want what they want: people want to be prevented, restricted. The hamster not only loves his cage; he'd be lost without it. That's why children are so convenient: you have children when you are struggling to get by as an artist--which is actually what being an artist means--or failing to get on with your career. Then you can persuade yourself that your children prevented you from having this career that had never looked like working out. So it goes on: things are always forsaken in the name of an obligation to someone else, never as a failing, a falling short of yourself. Before you know it desire has atrophied to the degree that it can only make itself apparent by passing itself off as an obligation. After a couple of years of parenthood people become incapable of saying what they want to do in terms of what they want to do. Their preferences can only be articulated in terms of a hierarchy of obligations--even though it is by fulfilling these obligations (visiting in-laws, being forced to stay in and baby-sit) that they scale the summit of their desires. The self-evasion does not stop there: at some level they are ashamed because they realise that these desires are so paltry as barely event to merit the name of desires and so these feeble desires have to take on the guise of obligation.

--from pp. 126 - 127 of Out of Sheer Rage [Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence] by Geoff Dyer

It's been several vacation days of not-really-reading but I read this bit the other night and found it somehow relevant to some things that had been discussed earlier in my friend's kitchen. Typing it out now, a few days later, I see that it's really a very bitter attitude / perspective / view of humanity that Mr Dyer has, and I find myself wondering which of his friends had children and thus ruined their relationship with him. That notwithstanding, however, I think that he's got the root of the matter in him: much of the time people embrace their excuses [not the word I want]--those circumstances that interfered with their ideal existence--without being willing to admit that that's what they're doing. God knows I am aware of my own tendency to stack up obligations; now I have to ask myself what it is that I'm denying in doing so.

Anyway, it's an odd book, is Out of Sheer Rage, but I'm enjoying it while also wondering how it's possible that I'm reading yet another work of non-fiction. I've not been myself, that's all I can say.

The vexations of the modern world

I had a plan to get a few things accomplished this evening, I truly did, and that seemed like a sign that maybe I was emerging, if only ever so slightly, from the state I've been in for just under a week. Oh, 6:45 p.m. PST, of November 8th; how I miss your hopeful outlook. Oh, it might not have felt hopeful at the time but, comparatively speaking, it was. I was still playing with being worried about the outcome of the election; the horror had not truly dawned as yet. My first thought on waking Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday was, "Trump will be president." On Sunday I made progress: it was my third thought. But it's not been cheery in my head, even as I recognize just how privileged my head is.

 Tonight, though, I was going to log my miles for Ride in the Rain and then create this cheery little post that was to segue from politics to events in the yard. But alas. I changed my Luum password while at work a week ago and now I can't remember what that new password is and the work server seems to be taking a break so I can't change the password again so here I am, back in the pre-election land of first-world problems. How I've missed being vexed by things that don't matter a damned bit. But I'd still like to log those wretched miles.

 After devoting a few hours of Saturday afternoon to shifting the geraniums into the garage for the winter (because, despite it feeling like a "now we can swim any day in November" sort of winter, there is talk of snow in the lowlands this year. We'll just see about that.), I made the rounds to pick what remained of the roses for what I assume will be the final bouquets of the year. But then, I've thought that before. Still, this seems pretty nice for November 12th:

While I wasn't entirely surprised by the roses, what with seeing them every morning I shift Bessie out of the garage, I was startled to come across a handful of raspberries while setting out some peanuts for a persistent squirrel on Sunday.

They were not, sadly, the sweetest or most flavorful raspberries I've ever had but given that they were there at all, doing their best to suggest there is hope in this wretched world, is something, right? Oh, the more scientifically inclined might suggest that it's not a good sign that the primroses are rioting in the kitchen window box, the camellias are showing flowers, and--well--I've got these late-appearing raspberries, but I say phooey to such an attitude. Logic is a pretty flower that smells bad; raspberries in November are a gift from the gods.

There's no bunting, like snow bunting . . .

 I spent most of last week, if I have my days straight, in Banff attending the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, and it was a very good, educational, fun, and possibly even blog-worthy experience. But that's not what has motivated this evening's brief return to blahdeblahblah land. No, I am here to post a few photos from today's expedition to Discovery Park because it's in Seattle's own Discovery Park that one can find a snow bunting this week and, well, SNOW BUNTING!!! Life bird, for those who care about such things (and possibly I am such a person), but more it's such an adorable, sweet, obliging, and worryingly seemingly defenseless and unaware sort of bird. I post its photo here and just hope and hope and hope that it soon finds its way to wherever the rest of its friends are wintering and that it's not killed by a dog or a coyote or a hungry raptor.

 It was, as it happens, a lovely day for a bike ride. After biking up to the Junction we bussed to downtown and then rode along the waterfront, through SAM's sculpture park, Myrtle Edwards, and Terminal 91 into Magnolia and up the tedious incline to Discovery Park. Once at the park we studied the map to work out a route to the stairs down to the North Beach.

Possibly what we really wanted was the South Beach but, well, we just didn't know. En route we encountered a woman with binoculars who told us that yes, the snow bunting was still around, just beyond the lighthouse and then, near the lighthouse, a second woman with binoculars who gave us very specific directions to the bird itself. It truly was just off the path.

After admiring the wee creature for a good long time we retraced our steps, eventually climbing back up those 200 stairs (I counted on the return) and then rode back downtown, admiring the various sights as we went. Seattle, you may be stuck up and pretentious and not as clever as you think you are, but I adore you, with your mountains and waters and parks and birds, birds, birds.

There's no business like house business (an instructional post about window repair. mostly)

The marigolds of October

This weekend in Seattle was, of course, all about preparing for and surviving the major storm that never happened. Oh, it rained a bit and some people lost power--including me on Harbor Island for just long enough to lose 40 minutes of unsaved work which, yes, was vexing--but the big storm never really materialized chez Aurora. This was sort of a pity since, emulating Alex, I had prepared:

Life-sustaining necessities: scones and tea and crosswords and Proust

And although the storm never materialized, we didn't let my preparations go to waste. We didn't plant tulips and instead stayed indoors having tea and scones. (I've also got Marcel nearly to Balbec.)

But all that's just by the by. This point of this post is to share last weekend's installment of This Old House of Aurora's. Earlier this month the window over the kitchen sink closed violently, causing the cute little crack that has been in the corner of the pane of glass since we first looked at the house to spawn a number of additional, potentially more troublesome cracks. We responded like the responsible owners of a 90-year-old house that we are and put some tape on the new cracks and headed to Boise for a wedding.

Scott assured me that fixing the window would be a simple matter of ten or fifteen minutes; the main thing was to get the old window up the hill to True Value so we could get the right size of replacement glass. That time estimate was before he'd actually removed the window to discover that whereas some people might feel like a bit of putty is sufficient to hold a piece of glass in place, "Ned" (as we call Aurora's imaginary son) had opted to keep the glass in place with a strip of well-affixed wood. Since getting the glass out was taking longer than planned, and since the cause of the sudden crash that started the adventure had been, presumably, the cord that held the counterweight breaking, I figured that I might as well fill my time while Scott worked on the window by removing the molding around the window so we could get at the weights.

The attentive reader will note that none of the photos that follow show me working on the molding. It turned out--and perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised--that the final piece of molding which was holding everything together wasn't a simple strip but rather a specially milled, sort of angled block of wood that was nailed in place through the wall of the neighboring cabinet. It wasn't a piece that came out without some destruction.

Fortunately, Scott is pretty imperturbable so he took it all in stride. (There are no photos of him finally breaking all the old glass out of the frame; he did that downstairs without telling me in advance.) The trip to the hardware store was successful and we came home with glass, putty, and glazier corners which Scott knew how to use. There was really a lot of me not doing much other than take photos. Maybe I'd rather be more useful, but I'm told my time will come when we get around to painting.

The ever so clever glazier point that you use to sort of hold the glass in place.

Scott applying the glazier's putty

The sash cord installation. Do note all the fascinating crap behind the wall. Some lath. Some plaster. A bit of drywall. 

There were a few casualties: Ned's screwdriver snapped under the pressure.

There's still some work to be done but the new window--with its new sash cords and re-attached weights--opens and closes like a dream.

I'm not sure what the horseman with a very fine hat I found in this morning's tea leaves might signify, but I tack it on here anyway:

Amounting to a hill of beans

Today was a gorgeous fall day in Seattle, though maybe a little warmer than most fall days tend to be. It was perfect weather for a long bike ride or a tramp through the woods. Naturally, we didn't do any of that. No, we got around to eating breakfast at nearly noon and then, after a visit to the Farmers Market, Scott settled in to putting a coat of paint on the garage doors while I raked leaves and did some tidying in the front 40.

Flowers, grapes, tomatoes, cucumber, dried beans, and raspberries!

 But such activities are not without their rewards. I can't speak for how Scott feels about the garage door, but I suspect we'll both be glad to have an extra coat of protection on it as the cold winter moves in, assuming we get a cold winter this year. (I've seen squirrels lately; do their tails seem extra bushy? I just can't say . . . .) You would think that finding a handful of fall raspberries would be the highlight of my hunter-gathering, and I've got to admit that was mighty sweet. I was also pleased, if confused, to find that the cucumbers have decided to get serious about flowering and fruiting and that the cosmos and marigolds continue to bloom up a storm.

 This year I've been oddly slack about some day-to-day harvesting; the scarlet runner beans I planted mostly for the flowers have gone largely uncollected--though the one time we french-cut and cooked some of the green beans up they were excellent. This means that a number of pods have been left to dry out on the vine. Today I brought them in and split them open. Opening the pods was maybe a little reminiscent of opening the reeds that you can use for mason bees but, having also investigated the leafcutter bee block today to find that it contained a dozen earwigs and nary a sign of bee cocoons, I've got to say the bean pods were more rewarding. The beans are beautiful! Looking at them I could see why you'd trade a cow for a handful of  them.

Scarlet runner dried beans

There are plenty of still-green pods on the vines that I hope will obligingly dry out as these did so that we have enough to use in soup or something this winter; this recipe for stewed runner beans with tomato looks pretty tempting.
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Don't judge a book by its cover: The Castle Cross The Magnet Carter

So I've just finished up The Castle Cross The Magnet Carter, a book that deserves some sort of award for worst title ever and a close runner-up in the competition for bad cover design. (I give that title to Strange and Dangerous Dreams, however, which is such a fabulous book but it never got its chance, I feel, because it has such a godawful cover.) Take a moment, do, to look past the covers on both these books and give their contents a chance. They're worth it.

Sure The Castle Cross The Magnet Carter is 800 pages long but four of those pages are blank and everything after page 789 is backmatter that you can skip. Hell, page 789 has only about 150 words on it. You can probably knock it out in a long weekend.

 Okay, maybe not. But you'll try because it's a pretty compulsive, "oh, I'll just read another two pages" sort of book. It can be pretty intense: there are three 2 -3 page sections where I had to read with my eyes averted, picking up the general nature of the action without really reading every word as it was just too awful. But what is it about, you might wonder. That's not so easy to say.

 The story is structured around two families each of which contains two brothers (one of them also has a sister but she's pretty marginal, except when the plot needs her) who live in different parts of the south: Maryland for the black family and Alabama for the white. It jumps around in time but it starts when the boys are young, during the depression and ends in 2010. Most of the action is right around 1960, with the attempts at desegregation and voter registration so really not a lot of fun for anyone. (Those people who do have a lot of fun in this book are, for the most part, really very nasty people. Did you miss the note about the three 2 - 3 page sections I had to skip?)

But it's not all misery and you could even say it ends on a hopeful note. There are some interesting results from the way the book is written and structured which may have been accidental--and signs of a not-that-capable writer--or deliberate--and indicative of a really nuanced writer. More than once I forgot which family I was reading about and I'd have to remind myself: "BJ and Randall are the poor white kids whose father works in the mine" or "Eliot and Dwight are the Maryland sons of the black Pullman porter." So maybe Kia Corthron is trying to make a point about how, at some level, they're all people with a lot of the same problems and same relationships, and that among the many tragedies is their inability to recognize their shared humanity. That seems to be the note on which she ends and it could be argued that that is what each brother recognizes in his better moments. But the story she's telling is very much about how different it is for the different races: how much hatred and misunderstanding and willingness to see the other race as completely "other" leads to horrific, awful, and tragic actions, with most of the suffering being inflicted--deliberately--by the whites. It was troubling, I tell you, the number of times that I became confused about whether I was remembering something I'd read in my book or heard on the news.

I don't really seem to be selling this, do I? The thing is, it's a good read. The characters--especially in the first few hundred pages--are engaging and interesting. The kids haven't lost a certain innocence. You feel hopeful for them because they're hopeful. That sets up the later tragedies, of course, but it's also something you can enjoy. And the bulk of the book isn't relentless misery: some of it is hopeful and some of it is educational and, well, some of it is just plain gut-wrenching. In the end, however, you want the world to be a better place. And maybe this book is a step on the road to understanding which I suspect is a essential to getting to that better place.

Gearhart: City of Bikes

An hour or more of fighting with a slow connection followed by Myrna's conviction that every site on the web was insecure has led to my forgetting entirely what it is I was going to write about here. Was it this year's grape jamly production? The Castle Cross The Magnet Carter, aka my current book which has both an absurd title and an off-putting jacket design but which I'm still finding unputdownable?

No, now I remember. I was going to post a handful of theme photos from bustling downtown Gearhart which we didn't actually discover until fairly late in our visit. The photos that follow were all taken on our last morning in town, after we'd stopped at the Pacific Way Bakery to pick up supplies for the trip home. By 11:00 Monday morning, the cases were pretty picked over but what they still had was pretty darned tasty. We sat on a nearby bench to eat (turnover for me; scone for Scott) and drink our coffee. As we sat there, I couldn't help noticing that Gearhart is a very bikey little community. How bikey? Well look: